Company advising Shell increases Irish profits to €9 million

THE ENVIRONMENTAL and engineering consultancy firm advising Shell Ireland on the energy giant’s onshore pipeline in Co Mayo increased its Irish operating profits by 28 per cent to €9 million in 2008.

Accounts recently filed by RPS Group Ltd and subsidiaries to the Companies’ Office show that the company increased the size of its business by 4 per cent from €112 million to €117 million to the end of December 2008.

RPS Ltd is part of RPS Plc, which is quoted on the London Stock Exchange.

The filings show that the Irish subsidiary recorded a pretax profit of €9 million in 2008 – an 18 per cent drop on the €11 million pretax profit secured in 2007.

However, the 2007 €11 million pre-tax profit was boosted by €4 million secured from the profit of tangible assets that year.

The Shell project is one of a number of high profile infrastructural projects RPS is working on – it is also engaged in working on the Shannon tunnel.

The company is currently working on an alternative route for the onshore pipeline for the Corrib gas field, where the spend on the overall project to the end of December 2008 has totalled €1.2 billion.

RPS has offices in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford and Letterkenny.

The directors state that they “are satisfied with the performance of the business during the year”.

Operating North and South, the directors state that the “Governments of Ireland and Northern Ireland continue to invest in extensive plans for infrastructure development”.

They state: “The lack of availability of finance and the general economic downturn is being felt by some of our private sector clients.

“We have many years of experience of managing project driven order books and are well able to match our capacity to projected fees.”

The filings show that the Dublin-based RPS Group has accumulated profits of €58.5 million at the end of 2008.

The group increased the number it employed during 2008 from 1,011 to 1,048 with the group’s staff costs increasing by 5.5 per cent from €55.7 million to €58.8 million.

Globally, the RPS Group Plc employs more than 5,000 people in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, Australia and southeast Asia. It reported a profit of £38 million after tax for the year to December 31st.