In Brief: ZOODigital; Earthmill; Costcutter; R3
ZOO Digital Group has today said its results for the year are expected to be slightly ahead of those previously indicated.
In an update on trading for the financial year ended March 31 2014, the Sheffield-based provider of workflow management software and services for creative media production, said it expects to report revenue for the year of $9.7m and a loss at the EBITDA level of $0.3m.
The business said this follows a period of significant investment in ZOOsubs, the group’s proprietary cloud-based subtitle production and management system, to ensure the group remains well positioned to capitalise on this market opportunity and demand.
Stuart Green, chief executive officer, said: “We remain very confident in the value proposition and prospects for our ZOOsubs offering and are pleased with the momentum achieved in the early phase of the rollout. We are encouraged by the current ramp up of revenues that provide better visibility and further diversification of the mix for future periods. We expect this trend to continue into the new financial year and view the future with cautious optimism.”
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A FURTHER six new jobs are being created by rapidly expanding renewable energy company Earthmill as it expands to meet demand for farm scale wind turbines from farmers and landowners across the UK.
The £15m turnover Wetherby-based company, that already employs 25 staff in Yorkshire and 20 approved sub-contractors across the country, has announced plans to hire a new finance director and a senior planner after announcing investment in a move to a new 2,500 sq ft head office at Audby Lane in Wetherby.
“We’re recruiting a full time finance director at board level to take over some of my role, as well as a financial assistant, senior planner to oversee turbine planning applications, account managers and engineers both in Wetherby and in Scotland. The new head office is just yards from our current base, as we’re committed to staying here in Wetherby,” said operations director Mark Woodward.
“We are continuing to create jobs here in Yorkshire as well as employing more and more contractors to install the turbines on farms all over the country,” he added.
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JERSEY retail group J Mart has joined Yorkshire-based convenience retail business Costcutter in a move that will see its 18 stores adopt the Costcutter brand.
Its 18 stores previously traded as Spar and include two petrol station forecourts and four post offices.
Costcutter Supermarkets Group, based at Dunnington, York, is one of the UK’s biggest symbol groups supporting more than 2,500 independent retailers to develop their businesses and meet the needs of their customers and communities.
This deal brings Costcutter stores to Jersey for the first time.
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FIFTY per cent of people in the region are worried about their level of debt, close to the national figure of 51% – the highest share of people that have felt this way since September 2012.
That’s according to insolvency body R3’s poll in association with ComRes, which found that more than 2,000 British adults found that people with debt concerns were most worried about credit cards (55%); followed by overdraft (20%); mortgage repayments (19%); and bank loans (17%).
Forty-six per cent of adults in Yorkshire and Humberside say they often or sometimes struggle to make it to payday, slightly higher than the national figure of 43%. Of those in this position in the region, 59% cite the rising cost of food as a problem, 45% blame rising household energy bills, and 39% blame the rising cost of transport.
The R3 report also showed a more optimistic picture of prospects in Yorkshire and Humberside with 30% of adults here expecting their personal finances to improve over the next six months, compared with 24% across the UK. Only 18% of people in the region expect their personal finances to worsen, compared with 25% nationally. However, almost a third of people in the region (31%) say they do not have any savings at all at the moment.
