Stafford Group returns to profits

The Stafford Group, which includes the Life Style Sports retail chain, returned to profit during the year to the end of September 2012, and has successfully refinanced its banking facilities with Bank of Ireland.

The family-owned group, which includes Campus Oil and Stafford Fuels and is also involved in stevedoring and warehousing, had a profit before tax of €110,000 in the year to the end of September 2012, compared with a loss of €1.9 million in the previous year.

Consolidated accounts, just filed, show the group had revenues of €342.7 million, compared with €337.3 million in the previous year.

The group had 570 full-time employees and 330 part- time employees at the end of September 2012.

In his statement accompanying the accounts, chairman Victor J Stafford said the achievement of a positive, albeit modest, return to pre-tax profits was another step towards the group's key objective of returning the business to a satisfactory level of profitability. He said the positive trend recorded in the accounts had continued for the first half of the subsequent financial year.

The new facilities amount to a total of €49.8 million comprising a term loan of €29.3 million and working capital of €20.5 million. The family-owned group, which includes Campus Oil and Stafford Fuels 6 million thereafter, with a bullet repayment at the end of year five.