The group describes itself as Europe’s market leader in the rental of powered access equipment.
Turnover in the 12 months to 31 December ran to ВЈ250m (comparable figure in previous year: ВЈ190m). The profit in 2007 was ВЈ19m.
John Gordon, chairman, said: “The group performed in line with expectations and grew profits. This was a good result despite the challenging economic environment.”
Turning to current trading, Gordon said that it continues to be in line with expectations.
Lavendon’s turnover comes from five geographic areas:
£106m – UK £49m – Germany £17m – Middle East £8m – Belgium & France £6m – SpainADVERTISEMENT
The Middle East operation delivered an operating profit of ВЈ5.1m which represents a margin of 31%.
The UK now represents 53% of Lavendon’s turnover compared with 57% in the previous year and a figure of 65% in 2006.
“While the business has no direct exposure to house building, we experienced slowdown in demand, noticeably in the commercial and industrial construction sectors and in particular during the final quarter of the year,” said Gordon.
In April 2008, Lavendon bought The Platform Company for £47m. It was merged towards the end of the year with the group’s largest UK operation to form Nationwide Platforms.
At the same time, the process of merging the regional businesses (trading up to that time as Panther, Kestrel, AMP and Higher Platforms) was also completed. Everything now trades under the Panther identity.
The various structural sort-outs have generated ВЈ3m of cost savings.
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