COUNTRY Tyrone plant auctioneering firm Gardrum Holdings has seen its annual sales smash through the £100 million barrier for the first time.
The company, which trades as Euro Auctions (www.euroauctions.com), has reported a 28 per cent rise in revenues from £78.4m to £100.2m while its profits before tax rose 15 per cent from £13.1m to £15.3m.
Gardrum Holdings is principally engaged conducting off-site and on-site machinery auction sales and valuations from 10 sales sites in seven countries on four continents.
It also regularly moves plant around the globe so that international buyers can obtain exactly the equipment they need to meet their individual requirements.
Collectively, it now auctions over 75,000 lots each year, consigned by more than 6,000 regular vendors. Each auction also has massive appeal with sustained corporate marketing initiatives regularly reaching a global audience of over 150,000 potential buyers.
It is also involved in the sale of plant and machinery both through group auctions and private sales, while some group companies hold properties and farm land for rental, development and resale.
Based in Dromore, where its first auction took place in 1998, Gardrum was founded by Derek Keys and is still a family-run business.
It went on to hold its first plant auction outside Northern Ireland in 2000 in Yorkshire and further expanded to auctions at a number of permanent sites around the world including Germany in 2006, followed by Brisbane in Australia, Spain, the US and, two years ago, in both Hong Kong and Dubai.
Figures filed at Companies House show that the group's turnover to ratio of just 79 staff gives Gardrum a turnover-per-employee of £1,268,000.
Bottom line profit came in at £11.9m against £10m a year earlier, and is attributable to the fact that the company held 55 auctions in 2017 against just 34 the year before.
In January 2017 Euro Auctions acquired Yoder & Frey in Florida, and it contributed a turnover of more than £3m though recorded an operating loss of £102,000.
Director Mr Keys (52) said he considered Gardrum's overall position as "satisfactory" and said he will continue to seek every opportunity to increase profitable turnover, adding that he has "plans in place to ensure the group is strongly placed going forward".
In March this year Fraser Homes, of the north's longest established house builders, entered into a deal with Gardrum Holdings to deliver 1,000 homes over the next decade.
The agreement will see the development of residential development sites in Greater Belfast, Saintfield, Carryduff, Newtownards and Larne all brought forward as the housing market continues to improve across the north.
Mr Keys said: “For a number of years now, there has been an under-supply of new houses being built in the Northern Ireland marketplace alongside increasing demand for first time buyer and family homes”
“We are currently active in the residential construction market in mid-Ulster and the west and we see this agreement with Fraser Homes as a perfect opportunity to give us an expanded presence across the whole of Northern Ireland given Fraser's extensive land holdings in the greater Belfast area.
“Fraser Homes have a long established reputation and experience in the residential construction market, following this agreement, we plan to complete at least 100 new builds per annum with the aim of building out around a 1,000 homes in the coming years.”
