Oxford on track to double up

Announcing the company’s results for the year to 31 March today (10 June), chairman Nigel Keen said: "We have continued to make good progress towards our plan to double the size of the business and to improve margins significantly.” It had been a year that combined strong organic growth with successful acquisitions that were already contributing to earnings and had provided access to new technologies, he added. In the current year, trading had been in line with expectations and despite a challenging economic environment, Oxford’s end markets remained resilient, driven by demand for products that delivered environmental and safety benefits. The results showed turnover up by 9.2% to £176.5 million (2007: £161.6 million) while adjusted pre-tax profit rose by 26.7% to £9.5 million (2007: £7.5 million). Chief executive Jonathan Flint said Oxford was now two years into the plan to double the turnover of the business over five years, starting from 2006/07. “We plan to achieve this by becoming a more customer focused business, increasingly concentrating on new products and markets, such as nanotechnology,” he went on. “Our products more and more consist of complete systems sold direct to end-users.” On emerging markets, Flint said the company was seeing continued growth in China with revenues up 32.4% year on year. Other technology oriented Asian countries were showing similar growth and there had been a significant upturn in demand in Russia and Eastern Europe for products from Oxford’s NanoAnalysis and Plasma Technology operations. He also reported that work is underway on a new Plasma Technology site being built at Weston-super-Mare, about 10 miles from the existing business unit at Yatton, the sale of which is largely providing the funding.