ONE OF Scotland’s largest independently owned and longest established residential and construction businesses, the Cruden Group, announced their financial results for the year to 31 March 2022. Despite a challenging operating environment and economic uncertainty, the Group delivered a twenty-third consecutive year of profitable trading with a robust financial performance.
The Group, founded in 1943, builds nearly one in fifteen of every home built in Scotland. Against a challenging sector-wide backdrop of cost inflation and rising interest rates combined with labour and material shortages, the Group saw total turnover increase by 29% to £247.4m (2021: £191.5m) and profit before tax increase to £4.9m (2021: £0.3m).
The Group has secured a solid forward pipeline of work, both in house building and construction, and has benefitted from the consistent high demand for new build housing, for private sale, from housing associations and local authorities, and from Build to Rent clients. Most recently, the Group’s construction arm, Cruden Building, was appointed to three separate multi-million-pound public sector procurement frameworks to address local housing challenges across Scotland.
The Group’s housebuilding arm, Cruden Homes, was awarded House Builder of the Year 2022 at the prestigious Homes for Scotland Awards and this year saw the number of private housing sales rise to 174 homes (2021:159). The company also benefited from a 40% increase in average sales value to £314,000 (2021: £225,00), due to the mix of units settling, including a number of luxury housing developments.
The Group maintains a robust capital base with net assets of £50.4m and held significant cash reserves of £51m at year end, both of which combine to provide a solid platform for their operations.
Cruden is one of the country’s major employers, with approximately 600 employees. In tackling the chronic labour shortages facing the industry, Cruden continues to invest heavily in recruiting, retaining, and developing their employees and providing high-quality modern apprenticeships and graduate trainees through their Cruden Academy. This year’s intake sees a further 27 apprentices and graduate trainees begin their working experience. To further future-proof talent within the business, Cruden has recently further invested in its Learning and Development programme with resources dedicated to this area.
A key direction for the Group is its environmental focus as Scotland aims to achieve Net Zero Carbon building emissions by 2045. Cruden is currently delivering the design for two major Net Zero housing developments within Edinburgh at Silverlea and Fountainbridge and is on site building Scotland’s first social housing development to ‘Passivhaus’ standard in Drymen, near Glasgow. This year also saw Cruden being appointed as preferred bidder to drive forward the first phase of the £1.3bn regeneration at Granton Waterfront which includes detailed designs for around 850 Net Zero homes.
Commenting on the Group’s operations, Kevin Reid, Chief Executive of the Cruden Group said:
“The business and our employees have shown great resilience and adaptability in a dynamic and changing marketplace and we have made good progress this year to deliver an improved set of financial results. We have secured a solid forward order book, with public sector clients, and have the capacity to expand our house building activities as market conditions allow. Our ability to secure land, fund developments and deliver large construction projects, continues to set us apart from many of our competitors.
“We have to recognise the challenges posed by ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, but we remain optimistic about our future and anticipate that we can maintain activity levels in the period to March 2023. The strength of the Group’s balance sheet also enables us to navigate the challenging business environment currently presenting and look forward with confidence to the years ahead as fresh opportunities arise.”
