Tanfield reduces losses as markets stabilise

Announcing Tanfield's financial results for the first half of 2010, CEO Darren Kell said: "Both of the principal business units performed in line with our expectations, during another extremely challenging period for the global economy. "We maintained tight control of cash and moved closer towards a break-even position, while still retaining all our core people and skills. "Tanfield continues to leverage its status as the world leader in commercial electric vehicles (pictured), while we are also seeing signs that the global market for aerial lifts is stabilising, albeit at very low levels." The company said that, after an extremely turbulent two years, the market for aerial work platforms was beginning to stabilise. For the past two years, Tanfield has marketed aerial lifts under two brands, UpRight Powered Access and Snorkel but will now consolidate its UpRight lifts into a new global Snorkel product range. During the first half, Tanfield expanded its global dealer network, with the appointment of new distributors in Latin America and Europe. However, the company said that major equipment rental companies continued to age their fleets and held off additional capital expenditure. As these companies accounted for more than 70% of worldwide sales for powered access equipment, their ongoing lack of spending continued to impact the entire aerial lift industry. In light of this situation, Tanfield said it continued to explore other opportunities for growth, like the licensing agreement it had with Pop-Up Products which allowed it to quickly generate a world-leading position in the emerging market of low-level access. In the Zero Emission Vehicles sector, Tanfield said it remained the recognised world leader in commercial electric vehicle technologies and continued to enhance this position. After the most severely depressed period on record for the whole commercial vehicle sector, with demand in certain vehicle types down by as much as 80%, there were now some signs of market recovery, and it was encouraging that year on year revenues had grown . The Zero Emission Vehicles division had commenced delivery of the 47 electric vans through the UK Government's Low Carbon Vehicle Procurement Programme, and is on target to meet the delivery schedule for these vehicles, which are destined for a range of Government bodies and local authorities. Tanfield has also supplied the majority of the 51 Smith Edison electric vehicles for Sainsbury's Online which has the largest fleet of electric light commercial vehicles in the world. Turnover for the six months to June reached £28.1m (H1 2009: £29.9m) while the company's operating loss reduced to £9.8m (H1 2009: Operating loss of £11.0m).