NI animal health firm’s finances in good shape

ANIMAL health manufacturer Norbrook has said its finances are in better shape than its most recent report would indicate as it “reaps the rewards of investment of £11m over the past year”.

The company’s new financial statement showed that turnover decreased in 2019 by 11% to £212m last year.

Its pre-tax profits also fell from £8m to £4.2m while operating profit sat at £4.4m compared to 2019’s £11m.

But the company said that its results were “typified by two halves”; one half when it struggled with supply issues and another half when its investment programme paid off.

“It was a challenging year for us,” Liam Nagle, chairman and chief executive of Norbrook told the Belfast Telegraph.

“We have previously talked about challenges in our supply chain, but those were potentially resolved in the first half of his year.

“We invested heavily in the business and that four-year investment amounts to £63m, £11m alone this year, and we will continue to invest in our people and management capability.

“It was anticipated that some of the manufacturing and supply issues which we experienced in the second half of 2019 would persist into 2020. By the second half of the year the majority of these had been resolved, and by the year end the business had returned to normalised levels of output and supply.”

He said the business was impacted by Covid-19, with the firm forking out £1.2m on health and safety measures for staff, but any disruption from the pandemic has levelled off allowing the business to enter a period of growth.

“As an industry, we are fairly Covid-robust,” Mr Nagle continued. “At the beginning of the pandemic some veterinary practices closed but most have reopened. In some US meat packing plants there were closures because of infection rates but that too has returned to normal. We are cautiously optimistic about our future.”

Mr Nagle also said he is confident that the company will be a good position to weather out the transition period on our exit from the EU.

He added: “It has been confirmed that the NI Protocol will be a key part of the plan going forward. The EU and UK have reconfirmed that and that is very positive. We do anticipate short term logistic challenges and we’ve brought some additional material to clear ourselves.”

He said the business would continue to invest “heavily in R&D”, with “companion” products a key part of growth as pet sales grew during the pandemic.