Coilte announces record earnings of €98.3m for 2016

Forestry company Coillte has announced record earnings of €98.3m for 2016.

That is an increase of 10% on the previous year.

Coillte said its revenues for the year amounted to €287.7m.

The company manages a forest and land estate of over 440-thousand hectares, which is equivalent to approximately 7% of the country's land.

Commenting on the results the Chief Executive of Coillte, Fergal Leamy said: “During 2016 we made considerable progress towards achieving our ambitious financial and operational targets.

"A key focus of our new strategy is to grow operating cashflows so that we can increase the return to our shareholder. In 2016 operating cash increased significantly to €15.2m from €6.5m in 2015. Historically operating cash has been negative or breakeven.

"The significant growth in operating cash gives us further confidence that we can achieve our 5% cash yield target by 2020 and we have set ourselves the challenge of more than doubling operating cashflows in the next two years," he said.