Losses at SR Technics Ireland hit €6m

Redundancies, a sale of assets and cost savings cut losses at the Irish division of aircraft maintenance multinational, SR Technics, to €6 million last year, writes Barry O'Halloran.

Accounts just filed with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) show that the Dublin airport-based SR Technics Ireland Ltd had a turnover of €118 million in 2005, slightly down on the €119.1 million it recorded the previous year.

In 2004, the company's first full year of operations here, it lost €20 million before tax. However, last year, that figure dropped to €6 million.

Operating costs fell by more than €7 million to €11.1 million in 2005 from €18.2 million in 2004.

In 2004, the company began and largely completed a redundancy programme that cut jobs there by 100 to 1,200 and cut its payroll by €1 million to €70.8 million. In 2005, it cut numbers by a further 120.

It restructured the business and raised a further €3 million from the sale of assets.

At the same time, the company incurred a number of one-off charges, largely relating to the redundancies and to the roll out of an IT system that totalled €9 million.

Exceptional costs in 2004 came to €10.3 million, according to SR's figures.

At the end of 2005, shareholders' funds were €11.1 million in the red, compared with a shortfall of €25.7 million a year earlier.

The figures also show that the company had a €19.4 million shortfall in its pension scheme at the end of last year.

SR Technics staff are either members of the Irish airlines employees' scheme, an external fund to which the company and the relevant workers contribute, or SR's own defined-benefit scheme.

The deficit relates to the company's pension fund. During the year, it contributed €925,000 to the Irish airlines scheme. That fund dates from the period when the company was Team Aer Lingus, the then national airline's maintenance arm.

Directors were paid a total of €705,000 in 2005, compared with €558,000 in 2004. SR Technics took over the business in 2004 from its parent, FLS Aerospace, which bought it from Aer Lingus.