Bardsley building on their city successes
CONSTRUCTION firm Bardsley has revealed a 33 per cent increase in turnover thanks to a raft of city centre developments.
The family-owned firm which is based in Dukinfield saw its annual turnover to December 31 rocket to £68.3m from £51.4m in 2016.
Bardsley generated a pretax profit of £1.1m in 2017, operating profit of £1.17m and gross profit of £4.2m, up from £3.6m in the previous financial year. In a strategic report on the financial year, managing director Paul Strutt said Bardsley had ‘traded well’ in 2017 and continued to benefit from a strategy to spread risk by diversifying into the delivery of schemes across public sector, student accommodation, private residential, private rented sector (PRS) and the leisure sector.
Bardsley is on course for a ‘healthy’ 2018 with a pipeline of contracts worth more than £60m and a further £12m due to convert to secured status by June. Recently awarded contracts for Bardsley Construction include: the appointment by English Cities Fund to construct Riverside House, an 11,000 sq ft Grade A, £5m office development forming part of the wider New Bailey scheme at Salford; a contract to provide 74 apartments and family homes for Your Housing Group at Nuvu Covent Garden Village, Stockport; a £15.5m contract with Axcel Hospitality to deliver a ninestorey AC by Marriott hotel with 172 rooms, gym, café, restaurant, bar and meeting/conference facilities on Cable Street, Ancoats, Manchester; a £27.6m scheme of 135 private rented sector (PRS) apartments for developer Mulbury on the corner of Port Street and Great Ancoats Street in the Northern Quarter of Manchester.
Strutt added: “The business is now regularly competing for projects in the midrise market and for contracts of £20m or more and this is evidenced with Bardsley currently having a number of major projects in the heart of the city centre in Manchester and Liverpool.
“Private developers react quicker than public sector but strategically as a business we will remain minded to keep the balance of public and private sector in the right proportion. Whilst there continues to be delays in contracts starting on site driven largely by the planning process, there is also a general unease and uncertainty of what is around the corner in macro-economic terms.”