Ben Dunne shutters six gyms over ‘horrendous’ Covid-19 impact

Businessman Ben Dunne said Covid-19 has forced him to closed the doors permanently at half of his gym empire. He described the Covid-19 business impact on his fitness business as 'horrendous'.

“I’ll give you an insight into what Covid has cost us. We had 12 clubs, we now have six clubs. Our revenues are less than 50 per cent of what they were pre-Covid.”

In an interview, Mr Dunne said the business had been heading towards €13 million in revenue pre-Covid “and in the current year we are heading towards €6 million”.

But he said the group would make money in its current financial year which ends in May, and forecast profit growth next year.

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“I have lost an awful lot of money but we have swung away from that situation and we are making a profit again,” he said.

The gyms that have closed were located in Lucan, Jervis Street, Beacon and Sandyford in Dublin, along with Navan and Waterford. That leaves him with gyms in Blanchardstown, Northwood, Carlisle, Cherrywood, Navan and Portlaoise.

Overheads

Asked why he took the decision to close down the gyms, Mr Dunne said “they were showing a terrible trend”.

“If I had the overheads that I had, you wouldn’t be talking to me because there would be nothing to talk about. I had to get my overheads under control.”

He expects business to improve over the next three years at the slimmed-down gym group but he does not expect to return to pre-Covid levels of business.

“We were making operating profits of €6 million a year: in my lifetime we won’t be back at €6 million.”

He is exploring the addition of kids’ zones to some gyms to increase revenue in a business that he says is now “survival of the fittest”.

Mr Dunne made his comments after his Barkisland (Developments) Ltd business, which operates a number of the gyms, filed accounts for the year to last May.

Revenue, mostly membership income, plunged 91 per cent from €5.66 million to just €494,840 in a period when lockdowns affected the ability of the business to operate. The company fell to a pretax loss of €1.55 million from a profit of €1.26 million in the prior year.

Ben Dunne gyms were closed for most of the period from March 2020 to June 2021 and, according to the accounts, since resuming trading in June 2021 they “are trading strongly”.

The business received Government Covid-19 grants of €601,295 during the year.

Mr Dunne has ploughed €13.67 million in interest-free loans into the business, including €2.3 million last year. The company’s accumulated profits at the end of May last totalled €12.76 million with the value of its tangible assets recorded at €28.9 million.