The company building Plymouth’s delayed £9m Moxy hotel has made a loss of nearly £500,000, it has emerged.
Mitnija UK Ltd, a British subsidiary of the Lithuanian construction giant Mitnija UAB, slid from a profitable position to a loss in 2021, newly filed documents show.
The company’s unaudited financial statements for 2021, newly published, reveal it fell from a £802,005 surplus in 2020 to a deficit of £499,764.
Like this story? Why not sign up to get the latest South West business news straight to your inbox
It comes as Mitnija UK faced delays on the site of the six-storey Moxy hotel it is building for Dutch developer Vastint Hospitality, on the site of the former Pavilions car park at Millbay.
Work is now back on track at the site, but it slowed considerably for weeks after subcontractors are understood to have walked off site, and the building won’t now be ready in 2022 as planned.
No explanation has been given for the fall into deficit and Business Live has contacted Mitnija in the UK and Lithuania but not received a reply at the time of writing.
The largest shift in the UK firm’s balance sheet showed its cash reserves dwindled from £1,738,185 to just £74,306, although it was also noted that a loan of £851,197 appears to have been paid and an extra £500,000 was paid in VAT.
Mitnija UK describes itself as “a new, young, exciting and dynamic main contractor”, and although its roots are in Lithuania the UK division started about six years ago and has been working on retail developments and hotels.
In Plymouth it is working on what will become a 200-bedroom hotel with associated landscaping, car parking, restaurant, bar and leisure facilities. The hotel, which will front onto the newly created Millbay Boulevard, will be run under Marriott Bonvoy’s Moxy brand.
Mitnija UK is also building two supermarkets in Bedfordshire for budget chain Lidl, and has been working on another for the same company in Essex.
The London-based UK subsidiary may only have nine employees but it is part of Mitnija UAB, the largest construction company in Lithuania.
That company, which has more than 50 years of construction experience, offers a complete package of construction-related services in Lithuania and Belarus where it has more than 330 staff.
Mitnija builds commercial, residential and industrial projects and has expertise in the construction of railways and other infrastructure projects. The Kaunas-headquartered firm had a turnover of 106,806,501 euros in 2020, and recorded a profit of 3,029,590 euros.
In Britain, Mitnija UK said in 2021 it was planning to have the Moxy build wrapped up in just 14 months. Work began in June 2021 but remnants of a Victorian sewer system, old railway sidings and a huge concrete block were found underground and had to be removed, delaying the build programme. The Covid-19 pandemic caused further delays. The two concrete cores, one for a lift shaft and one for a stairwell, have been partially constructed and some of the building’s steel skeleton is already visible.
Vastint Hospitality said a crane is now on site and work is under way with a lift shaft and stairwell being completed before modular rooms, manufactured off-site, arrive. Vastint said the building is now due to be ready by the first quarter of 2023.
