Molins rolls up profits but predicts lower performance

Reporting on its results for the first six months of the year, chief executive Dick Hunter (pictured), commented: "As announced in June, order intake in the first period of the year was lower than had been expected. This resulted in the Board lowering its expectations of full year sales to levels similar to the previous year, and with the different mix in activity levels across the three divisions, the Board's expectation remains that underlying performance in the full year will be lower than that of the previous year." Sales for the six months to June 30 were £40.3 million compared with a £42.2 million for the first half of 2009 while pre-tax profit was up from £0.6 million to £1.7 million Molins said it remained focused on the organic development of its three businesses: Molins Tobacco Machinery, which designs, manufactures, markets and services specialist machinery for the tobacco industry from bases in the UK, US, Brazil, Singapore and Czech Republic; the packaging machinery division, which supplies engineering services and capital equipment from the UK, the Netherlands and Canada; and the scientific services division, with main facilities in the UK and US, comprising two businesses, one of which supplies process and quality control instruments for the tobacco industry and the other being an independent tobacco and smoke constituent analytical laboratory.