The revival of global air travel in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic has helped a County Tyrone manufacturing company bounce back into profit.
Dungannon-based Mallaghan Engineering reported pretax profits for £983,278 for the full year to the end of 2021 in accounts recently filed with Companies House. That compares to a loss of over £1.1 million in 2020 and comes despite a dip in turnover of around one quarter.
It makes airport ground support equipment for the aviation sector, such as passenger stairs, luggage elevator belts, aircraft washers and airport buses, and counts some of the world’s largest airlines amongst its client list including Aer Lingus, British Airways and Emirates.
Ronan Mallaghan, managing director of the business, said he expected turnover to increase significantly for the year ahead. He said the dip in air travel during the Covid-19 pandemic gave the company the chance to focus on research and development and explore new markets in the likes of the US and China.
“That approach is now paying dividends with order books full as demand for Mallaghan products increases to fuel the uplift in air travel,” he said. “As a result, we are anticipating sales to return to pre-pandemic levels in the next financial year and are actively recruiting across the group as we ramp up production levels to meet the increased workloads.”
As well as the Dungannon headquarters, Mallaghan also has an operation in Atlanta in the US. It was started in the 1960s by Terry Mallaghan as a civil engineering contractor business before diversifying into ground support equipment in 1990.
