LONDON (Alliance News) - Hydrodec Group PLC Thursday said its pretax loss widened in 2013 despite an increase in revenues as increased costs and expenses hit the company.
The cleantech industrial oil re-refining company said its pretax loss widened to USD17.7 million from USD14.5 million in 2012.
The company said its revenues increased 54% to USD40.1 million from USD26.1 million driven by an 11% increase in sales from its core re-refining business to USD28.9 million and the acquisition of OSS Group Ltd in September.
Hydrodec noted that sales volumes of its Hydrodec SUPERFINE transformer oil and base oil increased 12% to 25.2 million litres, bringing its total sales volumes, including from the new OSS business, up 65% to 37.0 million litres.
However, the company said its cost of sales increased to USD30.7 million from USD20.7 million, its employee benefit expenses increased to USD8.6 million from USD7.1 million, and its finance costs increased to USD9.1 million from USD5.3 million the previous year.
In December 2013, Hydrodec operations were hit when its Canton re-refinery in the US was significantly damaged by an explosion and subsequent fire.
In February, the company received an initial USD2 million insurance payment for the Canton accident, and it said the facility was safe and operational capabilities have been restored so that it can receive and dispatch oil. It said it was continuing to expand the capacity of the plant by 50% in 2014.
On Thursday, Hydrodec said it expects that two re-refining processing units to be operational at Canton in the fourth quarter, with four more trains following in the first quarter of 2015, which should bring capacity at Canton to 150% of that in operation before the accident, with further expansion later in 2015.
Hydrodec shares were down 2.8% to 11.30 pence on Thursday.
By Tom McIvor; tommcivor@alliancenews.com; @TomMcIvor1
Copyright 2014 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
