Profits fall for National Milk Records
National Milk Records, which has one of its laboratory sites at Four Ashes, near Wolverhampton, saw a fall in pre-tax profits for the year to the end of June
Revenue for the group, which supplies dairy and livestock information services, was down from £22.8 million a year before to £21.6m with the profit figure dropping from £2.4m to £929,000.
There was continued growth in revenues for disease and surveillance testing which grew by six per cent and five per cent respectively.
Managing director Andy Warne said: "NMR has had a challenging year and sustaining services to our customers and stakeholders up and down the supply chain has been difficult, which has therefore resulted in a fall in our revenues and operating profit.
"However, these challenges have highlighted the essential nature of NMR's service offering, and this is more pertinent now than it has ever been. We continue to recover well from both of the key challenges that we have faced during the year, and we maintain our ambition in terms of our investment and growth plans for the future.
"Given the significance of the operational impacts of the cyber-attack and Covid-19, the NMR team has performed well in its ability to sustain services to the degree where annual revenues across recording and payment testing services, collectively, only decreased by eight per cent."
The business has invested significantly during the year in a number of areas, including, investment in IT to support its recovery from the cyber-attack, but principally in support of its strategic plan, the laboratory investment programme, which includes an automation platform to support the growth in Johne's disease testing, upgraded liquid handlers and replacement milk analysers.
Mr Warne said the UK dairy sector remained strong, with positive prospects for investment in UK processing capacity and for milk prices.
