Carclo bucks industry trends
CONTINUING growth in Carlco’s specialist medical and optical business and investment in new technologies has helped keep trading positive.
The Ossett-based technical plastics group, which supplies plastic components and produces specialist lighting products for several high performance cars by Porsche, Lotus and Bentley, said today that trading was in line with expectations and that strong performances from its technical plastics and precision products divisions had offset the impact of weaker demand in the group’s more difficult electronic and automotive markets.
Good progress developing a blood testing device at medical firm Platform Diagnostics, in which Carclo now has a 27.1% share alongside investment partner BBI Holdings, has also contributed to the firm’s trading confidence.
It said that despite the downturn in the car industry demand for its specialist lighting programmes for the supercar market had so far been largely unaffected.
“Design and development revenues from recent contract wins should help to underpin a very satisfactory performance for the full year,” it added.
Carlco’s continuing programme of investment in technology has seen it branch out into the manufacturer of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) components.
Its conductive inkjet technology (CIT) enables the design of innovative devices using printed electronics.
However, the firm is planning to bring forward the planned closure of its Slough manufacturing facility and redeploy the remaining production capacity to lower cost facilities within the UK in an effort to maintain margins.
Net debt at the half year was £15.9m. To mitigate further weakening of sterling Carclo has converted around half of its US dollar debt to sterling.
But it added that cash was being generated from operations and that debt remained well within its facilities.
Carlco continued: “Overall, the group continues to show resilience in a challenging and volatile environment and remains well positioned in some exciting growth areas such as medical diagnostics and devices, LED optics and lighting, and printed electronics.”
