Growth is returning to heavy industry, with investment emerging in engineering according to one of the South Humber Bank’s leading businesses.
On Line Group has seen a five per cent increase in revenues in the past year, with turnover up from £23.7 million to £24.9 million for the Immingham firm, having fallen significantly through Covid and the following economic uncertainty. It had dropped 42 per cent, having topped £40 million pre-pandemic.
The business that provides design, consultancy and project manufacturing services to process industries including refining, power, nuclear, oil and gas, pharmaceutical and chemical sectors, believes the upward trajectory is back. Revenues had slid to £34 million and then £28.3 million, entering the red, before 2022’s recent low for the long-standing project partner of major firms.
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Losses of £2.4 million were reduced to £125,000 in the year to April, with the company having also lost group chief operations officer Brendan Conlan at the end of the period, having served for more than eight years.
Stephen Laird, vice chairman at the second generation firm, told how “industries in which the business operates saw a changing environment and a slow return to investment in engineering activities,” in the period, in his review accompanying the recently filed results.
He said: “The group has maintained strong relationships with its clients against challenging market conditions whilst improving on its gross margin by 3.3 per cent. The business has continued to provide high quality services to its blue-chip customer base throughout the year and considers the strength of its existing contacts key to future development and growth.
“The start of growth seen in the latter part of this year is continuing to take hold and provide a much more stable platform for trading and opportunities. In the coming year the group is expected to see further return to customer investment and industry growth to enable the group to draw back into a profitable position.
“The directors consider the net profit in the year to be encouraging as the extensive efficiency and overhead savings exercises in prior years, have brought an improvement to profitability of over £2 million for 2022/2023.”
Mr Laird said actions from this have led to a “leaner and more reactive approach,” while the positive liquidity position “had allowed the group to weather the storm whilst the Ƶ economy is recovering and has improved in the latter part of 2022/2023, expected to continue into 2023/2024”.
Headcount was down from 347 to 297 at the Pelham Road-headquartered business, which also provides recruitment solutions to process engineering, industrial automation, energy. health and commercial sectors.
