Essentra narrows full year losses as dividend held

Plastics and fibre maker Essentra on Friday reported a narrowing of full year losses while declaring a flat dividend.

The company said pre-tax losses came in at £5m compared with a £63m loss a year earlier. Revenue increased to £1.03bn from £999m and the dividend was held at 20.7p a share.

Essentra, which suffered supply problems during the year when hurricane Maria hit two of its sites in Puerto Rico, said a strong second half performance in its filter products division helped lift revenue, aided by its components solutions business.

However, there was a fall in sales at health and personal care packaging, which reported a 9% drop at constant currency rates £409.5m.

Chief executive Paul Forman said the business underwent “significant change” during the year.

“This was not only in terms of restoring stability across the organisation and addressing skill and capability gaps, but also in developing and articulating clear and data-driven strategies for each of our larger global divisions, together with a clearly defined role for the group in adding value,” he said.

"I have previously expressed that restoring Essentra to sustainable, profitable growth is not a rapid journey, and we clearly have a lot of work still to do. However, together we have made great progress and tangible improvement in 2017, so we are already well on our way."