(Alliance News) - Modern Water PLC on Monday reported higher revenue and a narrowed loss but said the first half was "difficult" for the company as the commercialisation of a product did not progress fast enough.
In the six months to June 30, the wastewater technology firm posted 6.6% revenue growth to GBP2.0 million from GBP1.9 million in the first half of 2018. Modern Water's pretax loss narrowed to GBP1.3 million from GBP1.5 million.
Chair Piers Clark said: "The first six months of 2019 have been difficult for the company: on the positive side Modern Water's excellent innovative all-membrane brine concentration technology was again proven by the sale of a full-sized plant to one of the world's leading chemicals companies; and the Monitoring Division's sales increased significantly.
"On the negative side, sales, especially in the Membranes Division, were not developing fast enough. The board is working on selling the Monitoring Division and on re-structuring the Membranes Division to ensure that its valuable technologies can be commercialised more rapidly."
The Monitoring unit, which develops instruments and technology to assess water toxicity, had a 12% revenue gain to GBP1.8 million from GBP1.6 million.
The Membrane division, which contains the brine concentration technology, saw a 23% revenue fall to GBP212,000 from GBP277,000.
Modern Water added: "The company's commercialisation of its innovative membrane process technology did not progress fast enough and the strong performance from the Monitoring Division was offset by a lower than forecast performance from the Membrane Division."
After slow sales in the Membrane unit and the delays in implementing a project in Gibraltar, Modern Water appointed liquidators to its Modern Water Services Ltd and Cogent Environmental Ltd subsidiaries.
The company explained: "Hard work on obtaining planning application for the new Effluent Treatment Plant in Gibraltar successfully passed a meeting of Gibraltar's planning authorities, but this proved a false dawn as even now the project has not got off the ground, owing to political delays."
Modern Water is also in discussions to sell its US-based Monitoring Division, Modern Water Inc.
Looking ahead, Modern Water will focus its efforts on the restructured innovative Membrane Processes Division, "in which there is an encouraging pipeline of international development projects".
Shares in Modern Water were 2.8% lower at 1.58 pence each in London on Monday afternoon.
By Eric Cunha; ericcunha@alliancenews.com
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