Raising its prices and improving its supply chain helped Bath-headquartered global advanced engineering group Rotork increase its revenues by 18.6% in four months.
The group, which manufactures flow control equipment for the global oil, gas, water and chemical industries, has been buffeted by global problems over recent years, including the impact of the pandemic.
But in a trading update to shareholders this week for the four-month period to 30 October it said action taken over the past 18 months was now paying off while it was also benefiting from the return to growth in some of its markets.
Among measures brought in have been direct purchasing and forward buying of semiconductors, re-certification and re-engineering of products, securing of contracted logistics routes and tactical inventory build.
It said activity in the period was driven by customers’ operational rather than capital expenditure and they continued to spend on automation, electrification and digitalisation projects as well as modernisation and maintenance.
While order intake was slightly ahead of the same period last year, this reflected the strength of the prior year period when several larger orders were secured. Order intake in October was “encouraging, solidly ahead year-on-year”, it added.
Growth opportunities were emerging from changes in its core markets, it said, including in North American upstream where, for example, there is growing momentum behind electrification in the drive towards methane emissions reduction, while in the Middle East, carbon capture and storage is increasingly being incorporated into major gas projects and the desalination market is particularly active.
Rotork’s pre-tax profits fell 12% to £44.6m on revenues down 2.9% to £280m in the first half of this year. In its trading update it said it would be entering 2023 with a record order book that was “significantly higher” than when it started this year.
