The company's preliminary results, released at the end of May 2003, showed that trading profits in the UK division of Shanks fell from 36.1m in 2001-02 to 19.7m in 2002-03. Though this loss was distorted by additional money from the Foot and Mouth crisis in the 2001-02 results, the majority of the loss came from a decline in landfill activity and a difficult trading environment in the Group's collections and recycling activities.
A change of management this year saw Shanks appointing former SITA (UK) head Ian Goodfellow as director of its collections, recycling and transfer division in England.
But in a statement issued to the London Stock Exchange this morning (24/07/03), Shanks warned that its first quarter performance has seen “unsatisfactory” results in collection and recycling activities.
The statement said: “The recovery plan relating to UK Waste Services, described in the 2002-03 results announcement, continues to be implemented. Further personnel changes have been effected and the new team is making progress in certain areas.
“The performance of Landfill, Power and Wales is in line with the Company’s plans but the results of the English Collection & Recycling segment and of Scotland remain unsatisfactory.
“In aggregate better than planned trading profit in PFI Contracts, Chemical Services, Belgium and the Netherlands has partly mitigated this shortfall leaving the Group slightly short of its plan overall.”
Shanks was forced to pull out of running the Milton Keynes MRF earlier this year because it was a loss-making venture for the company (see letsrecycle.com story).
Shanks is hopeful that its two Mechanical Biological Treatment plants for the multi-million pound contract with the East London Waste Authority will go before a planning committee in August and September (see letsrecycle.com story) . If built, these plants would form the centrepiece of the contract's aims to reach 25% recycling of the Authority's annual 550,000 tonnes of waste by 2005-06 (see letsrecycle.com story).
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