Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Ibstock bricks up hole in results

Tom Stevenson
Tuesday 04 October 1994 23:02 BST
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.

The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.

Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.

GREATER demand from housebuilders and rising prices across the range of its products helped Ibstock, Britain's third-largest brick maker, back into the black in the six months to June.

But Ian MacLellan, managing director, warned that, despite builders' complaints about increasing raw material prices, further rises were necessary to restore margins.

Flagging demand and over-supply caused a collapse in prices during the recession, and Ibstock fell to a pounds 27.6m loss in 1992 followed by an pounds 18.7m deficit last year.

Interim pre-tax profits were pounds 4.4m, compared with a pounds 17.1m loss in the first six months of 1993 when an pounds 18.7m charge was taken against the closure of a Portuguese paper mill. Earnings per share were 1.13p, compared with a loss of 4.93p, and the interim dividend was maintained at 0.5p.

A swing from a pounds 2.9m loss to a pounds 1m profit in forest products benefited from a surge in pulp prices from dollars 350 a tonne in 1992 to dollars 550, well above the division's break- even level of about dollars 430.

Mr MacLellan said that price rises of about 8 per cent for bricks this year would probably be followed by a similar rise next year. But the increases had only returned brick prices to pounds 120 per thousand compared with pounds 190 at the peak of the market in 1989.

In the core UK brick operation, profits rose from pounds 1.1m to pounds 3.9m. The brick industry's stock levels, which stood at six months' supply a year ago, have fallen to two months.

Greater demand in the north-east of the US helped the American brick division bounce from a pounds 509,000 loss to an pounds 826,000 profit. Much of the benefit was wiped out, however, by a swing from a pounds 424,000 profit in Portuguese building materials to a loss of pounds 287,000.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in