Telford-based Lyreco's sales beat expectations

The Telford-based business, part of a French office supplies giant, racked up sales of £244 million for the year, up from £230 million the year before.

It also found the positive side of a fall in pre-tax profits from £17.3 million to £13.7 million, pointing out that it represented an "excellent return during a challenging trading period.

"Turnover exceeded the company's expectations," a statement accompanying the newly-published accounts for 2016 said.

"The company maintained strong controls over its operating expenses, continued to focus on driving efficiencies and maximising working capital opportunities, but was adversely impacted during 2016 due to the significant weakening of sterling versus the euro."

It added: "The turnover for the next reporting year is anticipated to exceed that of 2016 financial year, in an environment showing ongoing controls on expenditure by clients and with a general decline in the market for traditional product ranges such as IT consumables and paper.

"Future company developments will be aimed at maximising our opportunities to protect and grow our market share in these traditional product ranges whilst also focussing on the continued expansion into new ranges such as personal protective equipment, catering, hygiene and print."

The company has continued to invest in its headquarters at Donnington in Telford, having unveiled one of the country's largest rooftop solar farms on the site last year.

Since then Lyreco has spent £250,000 installing three 12-metre vertical storage machines to grow capacity at its base, and this month is scheduled to unveil a new battery storage to further improve the company's green credentials.

Employee numbers at the company, led by Slovakian Peter Hradisky, within the business continued to grow over the year, from 1,325 in 2015 to 1,382 last year.

In its statement, the company added: "Lyreco's long-term growth target performance depends upon the company's ability to successfully identify changing customer requirements and develop and sell new products and services to match these customer centic needs.

"Lyreco has constantly monitored the market place to ensure that it keeps abreast of customers' requirements and in response to this it launched its global vision for expansion 'to become the single provider for all office and work solutions' to ensure that it brings its services to a wider range of customers and becomes a unique solutions provider for businesses nationwide.

"Lyreco's proposition covers office and work solutions and is targeted at becoming a globally recognised workplace solutions provider with an expanded product portfolio aimed at fully supplying businesses with competitively priced, ecologically friendly products and services."