Bord na Móna announces €2.9m loss

Bord na Móna made loss before tax of €2.9m for the year ending March 2012, it was announced today.

Announced its annual results, the company saw a marginal increase in total revenue, but EBITDA was down by 15.9% to €61.1m from €72.7m.

Bord na Móna blamed this on the prolonged closure of West Offaly Power Station while a refit was being carried out, and reduced fuel sales resulting from a mild winter.

There was also a significant non-cash impairment to the company’s resource recovery business of €23.6m.

"The company’s underlying profitability and performance remains strong and, excluding the significant impairment charge, the group made a profit before tax of €20.7m," said a company statement.

The group had a cashflow before capital expenditure of €42.1m.

Turnover was €383.8m, a marginal increase of 0.5% from €382m in 2010/2011.

The average number employed in the group increased marginally to 2,141 from 2,112

Bord na Móna Group CEO Gabriel D’Arcy said: “This was an extremely resilient performance by a company performing well despite an unusual combination of environmental, economic and industry based challenges, most of which were outside our control.

“These results add further impetus for the group to diversify and this year we can report that we have achieved real progress in this area. We continue to drive change and operational efficiency across the company.

“As part of this we have streamlined our retail operations in fuels and horticulture into one new business unit.

“Our performance in 2011/2012 was impacted by a significant impairment charge in AES, our resource recovery business. We were also affected by one of the mildest winners in 23 years coupled with the temporary closure of the West Offaly Power station for a planned five-month refit.

“Since Bord na Móna acquired AES in 2007, the waste industry volumes have shrunk by 30%, while levies have increased by 325% which combined have given rise to a substantial fall in net income.

“As these industry factors have impacted on AES, we have taken action to improve our performance and made a number of changes in this business and these are already showing a positive impact on trading performance in 2012.

“We have previously highlighted the unique and enormous potential of the Midlands region in terms of growth, investment and employment. Last December we announced the results of our analysis that showed our land bank has capacity to generate in excess of 2GW of wind energy.

“We want to clearly state that we welcome the Minister’s recent announcement regarding energy co-operation with the UK and look forward to supporting initiatives in this area.

“For Bord naMóna, I’m proud to say this is not just an aspiration, we are already delivering the wind energy potential of the region, in support of national targets, and I am delighted that we have commenced work on our two new windfarm projects which will bring some 120 MW of wind energy on to the grid over the next 24 months.

This represents an investment of €160m with some 150 people to be directly employed on the construction, operation and maintenance of these projects in the Midlands.”