Low & Bonar starts year well but sees profit hit from strong pound

25th Mar 2014 08:09

Strong civil engineering and building product sales helped high-performance material group Low & Bonar (L&B) to start the year well, but it said the strong pound would affect annual profits by £2m.The group, which provides industrial fabrics for lining landfill sites, avoiding coastal and river erosion and reinforcing concrete, said sales since November 30th had been comfortably above last year's."Sales to the civil engineering, building products, industrial and leisure sectors have performed particularly strongly," L&B said in a trading update.The company said it was making good progress in integrating recently acquired Texiplast business, now renamed Bonar Geosynthetics.The business was performing well and savings were starting to come through as planned.L&B said sterling had strengthened since the end of the year against all the major currencies in which it made sales and profits. "Based on current exchange rates, the projected impact on current year reported profits, as previously noted, would be circa £2m in comparison to last year's average rates," it said, adding: "The group remains on track to deliver another year of significant progress."Shares in L&B fell 0.75p or 0.9% to 83.75p in early trading in London.PW