Simon Bain, Business Correspondent
I & H Brown has seen expansion out of Scotland pay off with a two-thirds
rise in turnover to £55m, while pre-tax profit rose 75 per cent to £2.1m.
The Perthshire-based landowner and civil engineer currently has a £28m
order book, up from £23m a year ago, and its property development arm
contributed its first profit last year, chairman Scott Brown has said.
The family-owned group moved into northern England in 2007, and now also
has an operation in Berkshire, but its biggest project is a contract for
Leeds council to carry out early work on its major Kirkstall Forge
development, now worth £9m. Mr Brown said Brown’s £6m contract to build a
hydro-electric scheme at Cia Aig near Lochaber for German utility RWD was
making “reasonable progress despite the wet weather”.
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Although the group is not looking for new projects in wind farm
infrastructure, Mr Brown said some facilities might begin to upgrade their
turbines. “You might anticipate that some wind farms would perhaps start to
repower to larger machines, because they are more efficient.” He said a new
less generous subsidy regime might prompt operators to scrutinise their
efficiency more closely. “There is a slowdown but we would not see the work
disappearing.”
A sale to SSE of Brown’s North Calliacher site in Perthshire has fallen
through, but the group expects to secure a grid connection.
Brown’s property division, headed by former Taylor Wimpey executive Allan
Miller, has a portfolio including major housing sites at Dunfermline and
Kelty, in its original Fife
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