Plymouth manufacturer Plessey Semiconductors Ltd made a £7.8m profit and took on more staff despite the Covid pandemic due to global hunger for its world-leading technology.
The company, which operates out of its own factory at Roborough on the edge of the city, is a leading developer at the forefront of micro LED technology, which is used in display screens such as smartphones, TVs and laptops.
A globally recognised brand, in 2020 Plessey struck a deal with Facebook to develop augmented and virtual (AR and VR) technology “smart glasses”.
Although the company saw a slight decrease in profit during the year to the end of June 2021, it maintained its high level of sales, averaging about £2.9m a month, despite the challenges of the pandemic.
The firm’s newly published accounts reveal a before tax profit of £7.8m for the year. This was down from the £16.1m reported in the previous set of figures, though that was for an 18-month period from January 2019 to June 2020.
Also, production was halted from April to July 2020 when the Covid virus was at its height in the UK.
Despite this, Plessey retained an impressive turnover of £34.9m for the year. For the previous 18-months this was £51.4m. Nearly all of those sales were abroad and outside of Europe with the company only exporting to the EU “infrequently” and therefore Brexit has only a “limited impact” on the business..
European sales for 2020/21 amounted to just £57,000 and UK sales were nil - so all the remainder was earned from exports to the rest of the world.
Plessey saw that recruitment “increased significantly” to match growth of the business in 2020/21. Headcount rose from 145 to 185. And much of the recruitment was in research and development where Plessey took on an extra 48 people, to total 69 now involved in the R&D, alongside 100 in production, and 16 in admin and support. The wage bill was £10.3m with the highest paid director pocketing £265,000, plus £14,000 in pension contributions.
The company spent £8.4m on R&D in the year and installed a new semiconductor processing line to enable faster production of its micro LED processes.
Following the acquisition of intellectual property from the University of Cambridge in 2012, the company has developed its novel GaN on silicon LED process. In 2017 the firm decided to focus on micro LED displays pivoting from its initial semiconductor production business. The company’s annual report and financial statements said: “With the investment and support from its external investor and the multi-year development and manufacturing agreement with its key partner, the company has secured its cash position and has been able to implement its strategy of developing best in class micro LED technology and processes.”
