Surface Transforms doubles revenues at new home on Merseyside

High-performance ceramic brake disk manufacturer Surface Transforms on Monday reported reduced annual losses even though revenues almost doubled during the year ended 31 May.

Revenue increased by 94% to £1.7m over the period, which saw the company register a loss before tax of £2.3m down from £2.5m after the firm relocated its headquarters from Ellesmere Port, on the Wirral, to Knowsley, on Merseyside.

The move has allowed the company to increase its capacity to 20,000 disks per year and will benefit from two successful fundraisings which earned £4.9m towards equipment for the new site.

Chairman David Bundred said the year saw further progress on Surface Transforms' "journey from an early stage developer to a mainstream profitable volume automotive components supplier".

Looking to the new financial year he expects sales to grow further as sales begin on the Aston Martin Valkyrie contract and near OEM (original equipment manufacturer) sales continue to grow.

The firm is currently focussing on the procurement and commissioning of capital equipment for OEM production cell one, having now ordered all the required furnaces for production.

The AIM-traded company said that the cell will be the first of five identical cells which will ultimately provide capacity equivalent to approximately £50m at the new Knowsley site.

“We expect retrofit sales to be maintained at the level seen in financial year 2017-18, although this actually represents underlying growth as the sales in this 2017-18 financial year included some catch-up from the factory move problems of the previous 2016-17 financial year,” said Bundred.

Cash and cash equivalents stood at £0.9m at 31 May, down from £1.5m at the same point the year before.

Surface Transforms’ shares were down 2.70% at 18.00p at 0932 BST.