Lord Bob Edmiston’s Coleshill-based IM Properties has reported another strong year of profits. The timing of projects meant a slight dip on the previous year, but IM still declared pre-tax profits of £22.6 million up to December 2012. Its property development division – which concentrates on medium to long term projects – contributed £6.6 million.

Business in the UK is brisk, while in Munich IM Properties has completed the design and build of a £22 million logistics hub for vehicle giant BMW. The prestige project – BMW’s largest non-production facility – represented the biggest deal to date for award-winning IM Properties on mainland Europe.

And IM Properties scooped another top award, lifting the 2013 Developer of the Year accolade at the Industrial Agents Society awards.

In the year to December 31, 2012 IM Properties reported rental incomes of £33.9 million with occupancy levels of 95 per cent. The firm has an investment portfolio worth than £458 million. That’s down on the previous year following the disposal of its French division, and internal transfers to trade stock.

Market value of properties under construction was £8.4 million.

The company continued to invest in growing its pipeline of development sites, with work starting on two speculative large-scale logistics units totalling more than 330,000 sq ft at its Birch Coppice business park in Warwickshire. Purley Way Retail Park in Croydon and Midpoint Birmingham are among its most high profile assets.

During the year the group secured new senior debt funding totalling £146 million from Royal Bank of Scotland, Handelsbanken and Lloyds banking group in three separate transactions. The Handelsbanken deal was against IM’s purchase of the Mell Square shopping centre in Solihull.

The company’s bespoke residential arm, Spitfire Properties, celebrated its second full year of trading by starting construction on four more developments at Little Aston, Solihull, Bath and Ascot.

Meanwhile things are progressing well at IM Group’s other major business – its automotive arm, which imports Subaru, Daihatsu, Great Wall and Isuzu vehicles. The company picked up the Best Developing Market Distributor award for its work in bringing the Great Wall pick-up from China to the UK. In addition IM added Greenland to its markets for Subaru through its Subaru Nordic distributor which supplies Scandinavia and the Baltic states.

The group continues to support Lord Edmiston’s charity Christian Vision with substantial donations from its bottom line. Lord Edmiston - who was made a peer in 2010 - remains in the top 10 list of Britain’s biggest philanthropists, having donated to religious, humanitarian and educational charities through Christian Vision. Since 1998 he has donated nearly £200 million to various causes.

He is also a significant donor to the Conservative party.

Christian Vision sponsors three city academies in the Midlands including the Grace Academy in Darlaston which has just completed its new £27 million building in Herberts Park Road. Teaching is based on Christian principles, encouraging decency, respect and compassion.

A former finance director at the failed Jensen Motors, Lord Edmiston used his £6,000 redundancy pay to set up International Motors in 1974. He began as the world’s only distributor for Jensen parts before acquiring the franchises for Subaru and Isuzu.

In 2011 IM Properties re-located from Haseley Manor near Warwick to join the wider IM Group in Coleshill. The group is housed on a purpose-built 200-acre site which is the headquarters of its global operations.

Sixty-seven year-old Lord Edmiston is a committed and active Christian and began Christian Vision in 1988. This charity – founded on biblical principles – has helped families and children around the globe, and has a presence in the United States, Brazil, Chile, Zambia, Mozambique, Australia, East Timor and Angola, among others.