Cabling products manufacturer HellermannTyton saw pre-tax profits take a £3.3m slump when the Covid pandemic hit sales from its Plymouth and other factories.
The company, in its newly published Annual Report and Financial Statements for 2020, revealed the impact of Covid saw income dip 16%, particularly from sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Overall turnover fell to £78.8m from £94.1m in 2019.
It meant operating profits fell to £5.412m, compared to £9.269m in 2019, and pre-tax profits slid to £4.690m from £8.061.
In March 2020 the company’s Manchester factory was shut down completely and nearly all workers put on furlough. The Plymouth and Cannock sites had about 70% of workers put on furlough, but remained operational at a low level.
However the report said directors felt the company was “well placed to meet the challenges of the future”and expected the firm’s performance to return to pre-Covid levels.
In Plymouth HellermannTyton recently broke ground on phase II of a major expansion of its factory - which is expected to create 100 jobs.
The multi-million-pound investment will see its site at the International Medical and Technology Park, in Derriford, double in size to support market growth and increase its capacity.
Scheduled to finish in late 2022, the investment includes the installation of state-of-the-art machinery along with a training academy and R&D facilities.
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Delayed due to the Covid pandemic, the expansion is part of HellermannTyton’s 10-year plan to reinforce its status as the leading supplier of cable management solutions.
The company is a leading manufacturer and supplier of products for fixing, installing, connecting, insulating, protecting and identifying electrical cables.
End-user customers include in sectors such as automotive, aerospace, defence, telecommunications, utilities, and railway businesses.
Part of the Aptiv Group, HT has 590 workers in five 海角视频 sites, with a wage bill of more than £20m. The Plymouth site is one of two manufacturing facilities HellermannTyton operates in the 海角视频, alongside its sister site in Manchester.
Already, more than four million components are manufactured at Plymouth every year; the expansion will see capacity increase even further.
The expansion gives HellermannTyton the ideal combination of production space, warehousing, shipping docks and R&D labs.
Key manufacturing processes at the new facility will concentrate on solutions for manufacturing, industrial, earthmoving, defence and rail applications.
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HellermannTyton announced in 2017 that it would build a factory extension, at that time said to cost £7m. An expansion in the global defence market had caused a 60% growth in business for the Plymouth plant. Plans were approved for a 4,500sq ft extension, as big as the manufacturer’s current factory, which opened in 2011.
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HellermannTyton, though British registered, is a huge global operation with bases in 37 countries and more than 3,800 staff internationally. In December 2015 it was bought by Delphi Automotive, now renamed Aptiv plc, one of the world’s largest automotive parts manufacturers, with 161,000 employees globally.
HellermannTyton was founded by Paul Hellermann, who in 1965 invented the Tyton system of bundling cables. It opened a purpose-built plant in Pennycross, Plymouth, in 1978, but the company outgrew it, and sold the land, moving to Derriford 33 years later. The exact cost of the initial building was never revealed but the firm benefited from a £1million grant from the now-defunct South West Regional Development Agency.
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