STVA UK, the British arm of French multimodal automotive logistics company Groupe STVA, is back in the black despite a 15% fall in turnover during 2009.
The Bristol-based operator - which moves cars by road and rail - turned a pre-tax loss of £116,000 in 2008 to a pre-tax profit of £484,000 for the year ended 31 December 2009. However, as STVA conducts a lot of its export business in Euros and US dollars, it was the beneficiary of currency exchange fluctuations over the year.
That aside, the company says it would still have made a net profit of £162,733 without taking into account these exceptional items.
Meanwhile, it says the 15% decrease in turnover to £20.4m for 2009 - which followed an 8% increase to £24m in 2008 - was primarily due to the substantial fall in UK-manufactured car volumes.
Speaking to CM, deputy MD Ian Brown says: "We had already started to take action towards the end of 2008 when the crisis in car production started.
"We re-engineered the business and had to have a programme of redundancy and job changes, but we were able to take advantage of the scrappage scheme."
The company says it is now in a good position to "take advantage" of trading conditions in the automotive sector this year and is hiring new drivers as a result.
Brown adds: "We are encouraged by 2010 so far. There has been some hangover from the scrappage scheme, but our business is based around customers who were relatively stable without the scheme."
