Uniparts faces recession with £9.5 million profits

Unipart Group is back on form after doubling profits in 2010.

Pre-tax earnings grew from £4.9 million in 2009 to £9.5 million from a turnover of £1.13 billion.

During the year the Group’s operations generated £8.9m in cash of which £7.0m was reinvested as capital investment.

The results reflect good performances and growth across most of the Group’s businesses together with some significant new business wins.

Commenting on the results, chief John Neill said The Unipart Way – the company’s people and efficiency philosophy – had played a key part in achieving the growth.

“Like many other companies, the last two years have been particularly challenging for our business but 2010 has seen a return to growth, with excellent performances across our logistics, manufacturing and international business.”

The Group’s markets span a wide range of sectors including automotive, technology, retail, rail, defence, health, utilities, leisure, marine and manufacturing.

Its technology logistics business has enjoyed a particularly successful 12 months, wining a major contract with Virgin Mobile; opening a new dedicated repair centre for BSkyB; and developing its partnership with Vodafone.

Similarly, despite continuing economic pressure in the consumer logistics sector, Homebase has extended its partnership with Unipart Logistics for a ground-breaking 12 years.

In its manufacturing operations, Unipart reports a rapid increase in volumes during 2010, exceeding performance from before the economic recession.

This, it said, was driven in part by VMs returning to production to meet consumer demand and by new model introductions.