Restructure delivers healthier bottom line for steel specialist

Structural steelwork specialist Taziker Industrial has returned to profitability following a restructuring process, according to its latest accounts.

The Lancashire-based firm’s turnover for the year to 31 March fell back slightly from £82.1m to £81.8m. This partly reflects a “disappointingly slow” start to the first year in Network Rail’s CP7 funding period, according to the accounts.

However, the company posted a £1.6m pre-tax profit compared with a £5.7m loss the year before, amid a strategic shift to focus on core services and a business restructuring process that began in October 2023. This involved a cost-saving plan and board-level changes. 

In last year’s accounts, chief executive Neil Harrison said he anticipated “the full benefits” of this strategic review to flow into the firm’s 2025 fiscal year.

One measure undertaken in the past 12-month period was the closure of Taziker’s fibre-reinforced polymer division due to “difficulties in bringing the product to market”, Harrison said in his strategic report.

He added that the firm’s bottom line had benefited from the completion of legacy loss-making contracts, and “improved oversight and controls over contract pricing and project management”.

Taziker was the seventh-biggest steel contractor by turnover in last year’s CN Specialists Index.

In the course of its latest financial year, the firm won £150m worth of civils work with Network Rail in Scotland, including preventative structural repairs, and was awarded a place on a framework to deliver £3.5bn of rail-infrastructure improvements in the East of England.

These and other awards “were particularly encouraging given the challenges of the wider economic position and continued pressure on capital spend”, Harrison said.

Taziker’s accounts added that the firm had seen “a significant upturn in work” on the Transpennine Route Upgrade, “which continues into FY26 [full-year 2026] and beyond”.

The firm’s cash at hand improved from £2.7m the year before to £4m, reflecting what the accounts said was an increase in EBITDA from a loss of £4.9m to a £3.7m profit. There were no repayable short-term or long-term bank loans.

Taziker employed a monthly average of 377 staff in 2024-25, marking an 11 per cent decrease on its headcount of 423 the year before.

No dividends were paid out.

Since the period covered by the accounts, the firm has won a place on a £750m framework from Peel Ports. Harrison said Taziker had forward orders stretching into the 2027 financial year, “which provides greater optimism for the future success and growth [of] the business in the coming years”.