Asian flu hits Norish operation, but company is in black

Storage company Norish has reported pre-tax profits of £200,000 (€293,000) for the first six months of this year. This follows a loss of £800,000 (€1.2m) loss in the same period last year.

Norish has a registered office in Ireland, with 11 outlets in the UK.

Turnover was unchanged at £6m.

The company said that a number of its sites had suffered as a result of Asian flu.

The company reduced its central and operational costs through the closure of the Reigate head office. The benefit of this is reflected in the results with administrative expenses reducing from £400,000 (€585,500) to £300,000 (€439,000).

Looking forward to the end of the year, the company said: "Trading in both our commodity and ambient businesses continues to be difficult, particularly due to the decline of our cocoa storage business. The cold storage division historically performs well in the second half of the year and at this stage we have no reason to believe that this will not be the case."