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Plymouth’s luxury bedmaker to the stars Vi-Spring saw profits fall by more than £2m due to the Covid pandemic and had to make redundancies at its factory and accept £1m from the Government to pay the wages of furloughed workers.

The company - whose high-end mattresses and divans, are beloved by the likes of David and Victoria Beckham, Tom Daley, Claudia Winkleman, Paris Hilton, and Kirstie Allsopp - nevertheless made an operating profit of £4.16m and paid shareholders a dividend of £7.69m.

Its recently published annual report and financial statements, for the year to the end of 2020, revealed, leaving it with just over 200 staff, and took £1.027m from the Government in furlough cash.

Vi-Spring from March 23 in order to make the factory Covid-secure. It reopened at 50% capacity for eight weeks before returning to full working in July.

But many customers remained closed, as their shops were “non essential”, and orders dropped by 10%. Revenue fell by nearly 15%, having grown 4% in 2019, with º£½ÇÊÓƵ sales down 17% and exports by 13%. Turnover was £38m compared to £44.8m a year earlier.

A hike in the cost of raw materials, not covered by increased wholesale prices, meant gross margin fell to 63.8% from 65.1%.

Operating profits therefore tumbled by 35% to £4.16m, from £6.4m, despite belt-tightening tactics including furloughing staff and making the redundancies.

Directors and senior management took a 20% pay cut for the four months in which staff were furloughed. And though a dividend of £7.69m was paid to shareholders the firm stressed this was acceptable because the only Government cash it had taken was to pay wages of furloughed workers.