Shipbuilder Harland and Wolff has reported a widened pre-tax loss of £25.5m as expenses swelled during its Covid-19 recovery.
The maritime engineering company is known for the famous Belfast shipyard where the Titanic was built, and its parent company InfraStrata plc bought Devon’s Appledore shipyard in August 2020 in a £7m deal.
The group published detailed accounts of its financial performance for the 17 months to December 31, 2021, in its latest annual report.
Revenue swung to £18.5m by the end of last year - up from £1.4m for the 12 months ending July 31, 2020.
During this time, in addition to its purchase of Appledore, the group also took over two steel fabrication sites in Scotland and secured a major contract to build foundations for offshore wind turbines for Italian firm Saipem.
The group said between the middle of 2020 and the end of 2021 its workforce had grown from 105 people to 410.
It added that it had £20m in future contracted revenue. More recently, outside of the reported period, Harland and Wolff has struck two deals - worth £8.5m and £10m - with waste management company Cory Group and its subsidiary Riverside Energy Park to build barges for transporting waste on the River Thames.
Bosses said the company had made an operating loss of £22.3m (up from £9.1m in July 2020). Chief executive John Wood said the company had gone from a “one-project non-revenue generating” company to having “one of the largest” fabrication footprints in the UK.
In the report Harland and Wolff also reported it had agreed a $70m loan in March with US private equity Riverstone to support its growth and supplement its working capital requirements. According to its accounts, the company had £233,277 in cash at the end of last year - down from £6.7m in July 2020.
The board said the company had a contracted backlog of £110m, and they were expecting revenue for the 2022 financial year to be between £65m-£75m, with contracted revenue for 2023 also already exceeding £40m.
Last month the company secured a £55m contract to refit a former Royal Navy mine-hunting vessel HMS Quorn for the Lithuanian Government.
Mr Wood said Harland and Wolff was looking to become a £500m turnover firm within five years.
He also said the group would consider the sale of its Islandmagee gas storage project in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, if a judicial review later this year, prompted by local protest groups, finds in its favour.
The report also detailed that the group paid £185,760 to Arrow Marine Management - in which Mr Wood is the sole director - over the 17 months to December 31, to perform environmental survey works in relation for a marine licence required for the Islandmagee project. According to the accounts, Mr Wood earned a total of £516,446 in salary and fees and pension payments during the period.
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