HIGH-tech Lisburn electrical manufacturing group Camlin has reported strong growth across its core operating markets of energy and rail sectors and predicts substantial future revenue and profits for 2021/2022.
Sales across the Camlin Group grew to £40 million - up more than 20 per cent on the 2019 total of just over £33 million.
And group-wide profit rose from £3.1m a year earlier to £4.1m, according to the company's latest accounts.
The company, who principal is Cookstown-born industrialist and entrepreneur John Cunningham (77), employs more than 430 staff mainly in Lisburn but also in European satellite facilities in Bologna, Parma and Krakow.
Camlin's chief executive Peter Cunningham (John's son) said: “We’ve made some fundamental changes to the structure and strategy of the business over the last 18 months, with a clear direction and focus on our customers’ evolving needs within the critical infrastructure markets in which we operate as they look to rapidly decarbonise.
“This has led to both a significant growth in total orders in 2020, of which over £26 million were convertible in year, as well as substantial secured orders generated for future years.”
Growth has been driven across all of the company’s core operating divisions with significant demand drivers internationally, predominantly from North America and China, for its energy asset monitoring solutions.
The company’s UK energy fault and load management business Kelvatek also continues to show strong profitability and continued year on year growth, especially via securing key partnerships and innovation projects within the UK electricity regulatory ED2 framework. Significant orders have been secured for conversion in 2022 and beyond.
Camlin Rail continues to grow internationally into 2021 with a 50 per cent growth predicted in top line revenues for 2021 in line with the increasing demand for products and services to support rail operators move towards digital railways.
Despite difficult trading conditions during the pandemic, Camlin said it worked closely with its entire supply chain to ensure demand can continue to be met to customer time lines.
Mr Cunningham added: “During a challenging 2020, operationally we have doubled down and worked closely with our suppliers to secure supply, ship products worldwide and continue the production of high-quality products to our customers.”
As part of Camlin’s growth plans it will look to invest in innovation and state of the art technologies to solve industry wide issues and support the UK in meeting its net-zero emissions target.
Announcing an ambitious R&D investment programme, he said “The Camlin Group will be investing more than £50m in R&D over the next four years to support and facilitate the digitisation and decarbonisation of the electricity and rail industries, with over £10m being spent solely on UK energy network optimisation projects to help our customer’s prepare for the ED2 Regulatory period.
“Our technologies play a vital role in making energy networks more efficient and with this investment we hope to play an even more important role in making the network greener and enabling the energy transition.”
