Muir Group on target to have ‘best ever year’

Inverkeithing-based contractor, house builder and property developer J W Muir Group has announced that it is on target for its best ever year with turnover breaking through the £100m barrier together with a corresponding increase in profits.

Commenting on the group’s interim progress, group chairman John Muir said: “Over a number of years we have made long term investments in our land portfolio and we are now reaping the rewards of that with planning allocations received during the year at Perth, Forfar and Loirston in Aberdeen.

“We have also had a high level of site starts and I am pleased our intentions for Blair’s College in Aberdeenshire are now coming to fruition with the first showhouse available to view this Spring. We have continued to invest in plant, management and land throughout the downturn and are well placed to improve results in coming years.”

The Group’s Development subsidiary Hermiston Securities has also recorded a strong performance with Aberdeen Gateway attracting investment following the sale of 3 properties to UK commercial Property Trust for £48m stimulating the provision of new speculative office and industrial stock.

The group has also acquired additional land to extend the park.

Mr Muir said: “Hermiston has had a strong year and in addition to the success that we have had in Aberdeen we completed a Premier Inn at Perth and developments for Marston Inns and KFC in Forfar. The additional land will help ensure a pipeline of opportunities for the future.”

The group said that construction still proves challenging but the division returned an acceptable profit and order book enquiries for the year are ahead of last year’s levels.

House building remains a core part of the group and ‘encouraging levels’ of sales were recorded at Castlefleurie in Leven, Auchterarder, Montrose, Deer Park Livingston, Silverdykes at Anstruther and Castlebank at Port Glasgow.

Mr Muir added: “like any house builder we can only invest where we have planning permission and our plan over the next few years is to continue to seek opportunities where we can use our strong financial position to invest and open up new sites. This provides much needed private and affordable houses and creates local employment opportunities. We find that the planning system remains challenging and the majority of the deliverable opportunities are at locations distant from our historic heartland in Fife. We employ around 300 people from our headquarters in Inverkeithing and our strongest partnerships are in Angus, Perth, Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. We will continue to try and develop similar local partnerships and would like to see improvements in the planning process with a more proactive approach which would enable us to make investments in Fife.”

The group’s full results will be announced in June.