30th Mar 2016 10:07
LONDON (Alliance News) - Norish PLC on Wednesday said it had started 2016 with a "very encouraging" performance across divisions, after it posted a fall in pretax profit for 2015 as its increased revenue was offset by a higher cost of sales.
Norish principally operates temperature-controlled storage centers, providing storage, freezing, picking, and order assembly services for food companies.
Norish posted pretax profit of GBP557,000 for the year ended December 31, from GBP762,000 the previous year, after revenue increased 17% to GBP27.5 million from GBP23.6 million, but cost of sales also came in higher at GBP26.2 million from GBP22.0 million.
The group said revenue growth was driven largely by an increase in blast freezing volumes, but noted production issues at one of its main customer plants reduced the amount of product going into its Birmingham cold store division during the year. Norish said this had since been rectified.
Norish added the performance of its commodity division had been "very encouraging" since its year-end, whilst the operating performance of the temperature controlled division continues to improve in 2016. Norish said it was looking to invest some of the funds raised in a share placing in December within the cold store division.
The warehousing company said in the "coming weeks" it will be signing a lease for a dairy farming site in Kilkenny, Ireland, and has already purchased stock, in line with plans to be milking cows in Spring 2017.
"Management are actively engaged in discussions with a number of businesses, who are seeking investment in areas of interest to us. However, we will remain disciplined with respect to required returns, scalability and quantum of capital required for each project," the company said.
The board recommended a final dividend of 1.50 euro cents per share, unchanged from the previous year. The company does not pay an interim dividend, so the final dividend is its total dividend.
Shares in Norish were untraded on Wednesday, having last traded at 34.97 pence.
By Hannah Boland; [email protected]; @Hannaheboland
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