04.07.2011

Strong order pick up at Tanfield

Tanfield, owner of Snorkel has issued a preliminary trading statement today that indicates a 24 percent improvement in first half revenues to £24.4 million, while strong order intake resulted in a 170 percent increase in its backlog to almost £21 million.

The company says that trading in the first half was in line with the expectations, while net cash improved almost 30 percent to £4.7 million. It also warned that on-going supply chain capacity constraints and working capital demands will limit the speed of growth throughout 2011.

Chief executive Darren Kell said: "We continue to work closely with all of our suppliers to remove bottlenecks, so we can further increase production, meet the recovering market demand globally in our products and reduce our lead times. We expect the wider market will continue to improve in the second half of 2011, as the company moves closer towards break-even. "

Vertikal Comment

Not much to say at this stage apart from this being another positive piece of news in the on-going market recovery. Tanfield is relatively well placed to benefit from the upturn if it can overcome the component supply problems that everyone is facing and regain investor confidence sufficiently to obtain some new credit lines to help cope with the growing demands on working capital.