Profits at Campbell Bewley rise 50% to £2.5m

THE Campbell Bewley group has reported pretax profits of £2.5 million for 1996, an increase of 50 per cent over the previous year.

Turnover increased by 19 per cent to £68 million and the numbers employed by the group rose from 2,000 to 3,000.

Over 80 per cent of total turnover was in the Republic and more than half of sales were in the contract catering sector.

Around 750 of the new jobs created by the group were in Britain, where much of its future expansion is likely to take place, according to group chairman Mr Patrick Campbell.

He was critical of taxation policy in Ireland, saying an "unacceptable" amount was being taken from workers' pay packets to "pay for increases in Government spending". This was spoiling people's appetite for work, he said.

The group is to introduce a share option scheme for employees who have been with it for more than two years. Last year, employees invested £127 000 through the company's employee share purchase scheme.

Contract catering business increased in both Ireland and Britain. In the retail business, Bewley's tea and coffee is now served in more than 7,000 hotels, restaurants and pubs in Ireland and Britain.

Three new cafes were opened during 1996, two in Dublin and one in London. The group's hotels on Fleet Street, Dublin, and at Newlands Cross on the Naas Road, Co Dublin, had occupancy rates "in the 80s" during 1996. Mr Campbell said a number of proposals had been made to the group in relation to further expansion in the hotel business. No firm decisions had been made.

The group is also to fond significant refurbishment of its three "flagship" cafes in Dublin, on Grafton Street, Westmoreland Street and Mary Street. Work is likely to begin in the autumn and be completed by the spring of 1998.

Some £5 million was to be spent on a refurbishment and retraining programme, Mr Campbell said. The investment would include development of information technology so as to reposition the group for international expansion.

In the Grafton Street cafe, an "atrium type" development is to be constructed in the main room. Table service is to be reintroduced in all three cafes.

The group had carried out extensive market research in the US and it was "quite possible" that cafes would be opened in New York and Boston in 1998, Mr Campbell said. The group wished to have similar flagship cafes in Dublin, London and New York.