Airline and travel group Monarch, which operates from Birmingham Airport, has revealed that all of its trading divisions returned to profit after achieving annual cost savings of £52 million and an increase in turnover of £31 million.
The group, which invested £20 million in its aircraft engineering facilities at Birmingham Airport, reported that passenger volumes increased by 9.5 per cent to top seven million in the year to the end of October. Gross revenues rose by 11.7 per cent to £763.2 million.
It said its expansion plans would help it deliver a capacity increase to 10 million seats by 2016 through its advanced plans to spend almost £4 billion on 60 new aircraft in its fleet renewal programme, some of which will be based in Birmingham.
Its aircraft engineering arm, which opened a new maintenance hangar at Birmingham last month, revealed a 24.2 per cent increase in revenues to £107.2 million, helped by a 26 per cent growth in revenue from third party customers.
Its package holiday divisions also showed profits.
Executive chairman, Iain Rawlinson, said: “I am delighted to announce the return to profitability of The Monarch Group in 2013. This was the outcome targeted by our 2011 refinancing, which was based on a clear plan that combined the achievement of business efficiencies and intra group synergies with growth strategies for each business area. All these elements have been delivered in tough markets.
“Whilst we are encouraged by the more positive recent economic news of late, in the short-term there remains overcapacity in the aviation industry and we believe many travel customers are cautious about the economic outlook. However, our Group structure, combining the three mutually supporting business areas of the scheduled airline, tour operations and aircraft engineering, each with its own independent growth strategy, provides us with resilience in this very competitive market environment.
“The actions we have taken in the last two years provide strong foundations from which to plan the next phase of growth and development. Our steady investment in this period - in strengthening the group and divisional management, raising awareness of our trusted travel brands, improving distribution, introducing business efficiencies, and answering the needs of customers - provides a strong platform from which to complete our modernisation agenda. ”
