JOINT VENTURES on State-funded building projects helped construction and civil engineering group Siac stay in profit last year.
Accounts just filed with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) show the group’s pretax profits in 2007 fell by 61 per cent to €5.4 million from €13.8 million.
Group turnover in 2007 dipped by almost €40 million to €236.5 million.
Siac had an operating loss of some €6.9 million, but a €10.8 million contribution from joint ventures left it with operating profits of €3.9 million.
A small profit from the sale of assets and interest payments of €1.3 million helped boost this figure to the pretax total.
The projects on which Siac was working included the M3 Clonee-Kells motorway, and the M50 upgrade.
Both of these contracts are joint ventures with Spanish road building and civil engineering specialist Ferrovial.
It won the M3 contract in 2006, and the deal is worth €600 million.
Siac was involved in a number of other joint ventures, such as road building.
It also worked on the regeneration of O’Connell Street in Dublin.
Siac’s profits doubled in 2006. The company depends for much of its income on large-scale civil engineering projects.
It cannot recognise profits in its accounts until the final account is agreed with the client and it has been paid.
This means that its surplus fluctuates according to the number of jobs completed.
The company is one of the top 20 in its sector in the Republic and is one of the biggest privately owned firms in the State.
The group’s balance sheet remained strong in 2007, and it ended the year with €24.4 million in net assets, less than €1 million under the figure 12 months earlier. It had €10.4 million in cash.
Ireland was responsible for the bulk of its turnover last year, with Britain contributing just €466,000 of the total. During the year, it bought UK steel fabrication business Graham Wood Structural, which is based in Sussex in southern England.
Siac operates a defined-benefit pension scheme, which had a deficit of €1.56 million at the end of 2007.
It also contributes to a Construction Industry Federation-backed scheme for building workers.
Numbers employed by the group fell by 254 in 2007 to 495. Its wage bill was €32.3 million in 2007, compared with €42 million the previous year.
