Companies defy economic turmoil
September 25th 2007

The UK cleaning services industry is seeing a mini resurgence, despite recent jitters on the domestic and world markets, according to leading business analysts Plimsoll.

“Our summary of the market finds 52% of companies in the sector in a surprisingly confident mood,” says David Pattison, senior analyst at Plimsoll. “This has been fuelled largely by their latest results, but we have identified a group of 92 companies which are the driving force behind the resurgence, having increased their sales by 20% and lifted their profitability from 4.1% last year to 8.4% this year.

“We always knew that for many companies 2007 was a make or break year, but with all the talk of a slow down in the UK economy the figures from this elite group of companies are really refreshing. A lot of hard work during the past couple of years is finally starting to pay off.”

Also apparently flying in the face of economic scare stories is the fact that levels of investment are increasing for the first time in five years.

“Bad publicity in the shape of job losses has led people to believe that the industry is in decline, but this is not the case,” comments David Pattison, senior analyst at Plimsoll. Total output from the sector continues to rise, while sales are up 6%. But for many, those sales increases are reaching 10%. Behind all this is increased productivity and capital investment. Successful companies have been chasing new levels of efficiency to compete on the UK stage.”

Not all the results are good, and the main cause for concern, according to Plimsoll, is the failure of 31 companies in its analysis to cope with these new levels of business performance. Worse still, David Pattison warns, some of them will struggle to survive if, as expected, the wider economic picture results in a bumpy ride during the next six months for UK business in general.

The latest Plimsoll analysis of the UK cleaning services industry contains a fully updated individual assessment of each of the UK’s top 1500 cleaning services companies. The latest report analyses each company in the industry individually as well as providing in-depth market analysis.

Copies are available by calling 01642 626422. Readers of Cleaning Matters are entitled to a 20% discount when quoting reference PR09.

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