Caledonian Building Systems hits £13m profit

Caledonian Building Systems has unveiled a leap in pre-tax profit to £13m which represents a margin of 8.9%.

Turnover rocketed from £70m in 2006 to a figure of £140m in the latest financial year.

Caledonian’s latest financial results cover the 12 months to 29 December 2007. There was a profit of £3m in the previous year.

The group’s business is in the off-site manufacturing of multi-storey accommodation buildings. It operates both as a main contractor and a modular specialist.

The directors comment that off-site construction continues to be a growth area with both public and private clients.

They wish to remain at the front of the push to attract further long-term clients to the off-site construction process. “Research into both market and product development is ongoing and we continue to enhance our building solutions to enable Caledonian to further penetrate the traditional construction sector,” say the directors.

Caledonian paid £1.5m for ModularUK Building Systems in February last year. The trading subsidiary of Accsys Holdings, it operates in the health, education and office accommodation sectors.

Also, Caledonian has taken on a new manufacturing site in Driffield, East Yorkshire. The plan was to have it up and running in the third quarter of this year.

Shareholders withdrew a dividend of £7.1m.

The highest-paid director received £150,000 plus a further £10,000 for his pension pot.

Caledonian had 350 employees, with 331 of this total working in production. The total wage and salaries bill ran to £12m.