Esh Group has reported that 2022's operating profit stood at £3 million despite the industry facing pressure.

The company faced pressure from long duration contracts that were priced pre-pandemic, and the ongoing battle with levels of cost inflation, supply chain constraints and labour shortages being key factors.

Including the longer-term contracts in the first half of 2023 will negate many of the challenges experienced during 2022.

The Group has been successful in delivering liquidity of £19m at the end of 2022, with nothing drawn on its £7m revolving credit line, remaining debt free. Turnover increased to £261m which is up £6m from the previous year.

Esh Group's forward order book is at record level, totalling £600m which includes flagship schemes. After adding the largest contract in the company's history to its affordable housing portfolio earlier this year, a £56m new build scheme in Middlesbrough, Esh is set to build more than 540 affordable homes with Thirteen Group in the coming years.

Group Chief Executive Officer, Andy Radcliffe, said: "Our focus on targeting routes to market and key sectors that present a lower risk profile has provided a finely balanced portfolio of revenue which has served to insulate us from the extremes of the challenges experienced by the broader industry. Whilst of course we have not been immune to these challenges, many of which have led to the sad demise of a number of highly respected businesses in our regions, the strength of our core revenue model has been the key differentiator in our ability to navigate these industry-wide headwinds.

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"Our business model ensures that we can balance out the peaks and troughs of individual market segments over their respective economic cycles which offers a much more stable and predictable backdrop. Above all, targeting sectors that present near term growth opportunities, such as affordable housing, utilities and general infrastructure, while simultaneously reducing our exposure to more technically and commercially challenging sectors of the market, provides us with a level of resilience that has been the hallmark of both our maintenance of profitability during 2022, and our expectations for both turnover growth and margin expansion over the coming years

"Our achievements, once again, are down to the unwavering efforts of our highly skilled and dedicated team of colleagues who have battled hard to manage the challenges we faced. We are exceptionally grateful to our clients, our supply chains and wider stakeholders, who value the role collaboration plays in ensuring mutual success. We look forward to the coming years with cautious optimism and a business model that, simply put, sees us stick to what we are good at, with supply chains that we know, and clients with whom we can nurture long term partnerships."

Over the past year, Esh has launched a new education programme aimed at embedding construction into the school curriculum, an increase in T-Level and undergraduate placement opportunities and growing apprentice numbers to 8 per cent of the workforce.