Aleen Gulvanessian

Revenue at the firm saw a modest rise of 2%, standing at £141.6m compared to the previous year’s £139.2m, and the company’s operating profit before amortisation rose to £12.8m, marking 13% growth from H1 2022’s £11.4m.

The interim dividend for shareholders has been increased to 0.94p per share, up from 0.90p in H1 2022. This will be distributed on 12 October 2023.

Aleen Gulvanessian, chair of Macfarlane Group PLC, said: “The Group has demonstrated resilience in the first half of 2023, against the backdrop of a slowdown in customer demand. We have executed two high quality acquisitions which are both performing well, we continue to make good progress in Europe and have positive new business momentum.

“The inflationary impact of operating cost increases has been offset by effective input price management. We opened our new Northern Innovation Lab in March 2023 which is already having early success in helping our customers reduce their total cost of packaging and carbon footprint.”

Ms Gulvanessian added: “Whilst we expect the second half of 2023 to remain challenging, our good progress in Europe, diverse customer base, strong new business momentum and effective management of pricing and costs mean that our profit expectations for the full year remain unchanged.”