Fitzers Catering slides into red with €633,000 loss

Contract catering company Fitzers Catering last year recorded a pre-tax loss of €633,537, newly filed accounts show.

The swing into the red followed the firm generating a pre-tax profit of €1.18m in 2013.

The firm — which employs 1,215 — recorded the loss after its gross profit more than halved from €10.3m to €4.76m.

Staff costs reduced sharply from €4.9m to €3.19m due to the drop in business at the company.

According to the directors’ report section of the accounts: “Trading in the business is affected by economic conditions where the company’s turnover is generated.”

Aggregate remuneration to the firm’s five directors — managing director Barry Storey, Sharon Fitzpatrick, Paula Fitzpatrick, Noeleen Sharkey, and Leonard Fearon — reduced from €497,610 to €456,891.

The firm was employed to cater for high-profile visits here by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and Hillary Clinton of the US, in recent years, and catered for Michael D Higgins’s presidential inauguration in Dublin Castle.

Fitzers Catering was set up in the late 1980s by Sharon Fitzpatrick.

It holds the contracts to provide the catering for Dublin’s Convention Centre and the Titanic Belfast.

It has also catered for a number of movie sets, including In the Name of the Father, Michael Collins, and Braveheart.

The accounts show that accumulated profits at the firm last year stood at €1.68m while the firm’s cash pile reduced marginally from €1.04m to €1m.