Ibstock says housing shortage and government commitment to housebuilding is bolstering prospects
Posting a 4% rise in annual turnover brick manufacturer Ibstock said its markets had 鈥渟hrugged off鈥� concerns about Brexit, with demand continuing to come from the new build sector.
As the firm delivered a 12% increase in pre-exceptional profit before tax for the year to 31 December 2017 to 拢88.3m on turnover of 拢451.6m, its chief executive Wayne Sheppard said economists had been 鈥渙verly pessimistic鈥� in the wake of 2016鈥檚 EU referendum and the group鈥檚 volumes were progressing strongly into the new build sector.
Sheppard said its margins would likely rise as the housing shortage and UK government commitment to increase housebuilding volumes remained robust.
鈥淒uring 2017, UK brick demand exceeded supply, manufacturers destocked and import levels increased. Consequently the investments we have made to increase capacity in both brick and roof tiles have been well-timed and our customers value this additional capacity.
鈥淲e therefore expect a margin improvement of one to two percentage points for our UK brick business in 2018.鈥�
Ibstock said a new brick-making plant in Leicestershire would add 100,000,000 bricks to its output once it came fully online next year, taking its capacity to around 780,000,000.
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