A building and office services firm — which has delivered more than 5,000 contracts in its 100-year history — has been rescued from a million-pound loss by the upturn in the property market.
The John N Dunn Group, which has its head office at Wallsend in North Tyneside, last year posted a £1.03m loss. Its latest accounts, to the end of March 2014, show the firm is now out of danger with a pre-tax profit of £123,520.
A 21 per cent increase in turnover to just over £26m, up from £21.6m the previous year, helped bolster the firm’s finances allowing the group to increase the workforce across its three bases in the North-East, West Lothian and Leeds from 271 to 292.
“The directors recognise that the economic climate remains challenging and the construction industry is highly susceptible to liquidity and credit default risk,” explained a strategic report issued with the accounts.
“However, conditions within the sector have improved significantly aided by Government initiatives and, as such, confidence within the industry is continuing to improve.”
The statement said that the group board had, over the past two years, been designing and implementing financial measures to “safeguard the future” of the business.
“The company has undergone rigorous cost cutting and organisational restructuring exercises and negotiated funding facilities with Centric Commercial Finance sufficient to meet its working capital requirements,” the report added.
“It enters the new financial year with a secured workload 20 per cent higher than the previous year and has implemented internal procedures to improve the efficiency of contracts to produce better gross margins.”
John N Dunn was established in the late 19th century as plumbing and heating engineers. Over the next six decades it incorporated new trading entities and acquired several businesses, increasingly shifting its core speciality to building services.
In 1976 Dunn opened a Scottish office followed, a year later, by one in Yorkshire. To compliment its plumbing and heating divisions the group branched into electrics and security in 1992. Ten years ago it became one of the region’s first building and office services providers to adopt green building solutions.
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