Turnover at Scottish metal reprocessor, steel trading and environmental services company John Lawrie Group has broken through the £100million barrier for the second year in succession.

The firm has reported turnover of £107million for the year ended 31 December 2012 – a similar figure to that recorded in the previous year. Profit before tax came in at a healthy £3.4million for the year.

Group financial director, Charlie Parker, said: “Results in 2012 were very encouraging – we achieved our goal of maintaining the levels of activity after recording significant growth in previous years. The majority of our scrap metal continues to be exported to European steel mills and the ongoing economic uncertainty in some of these markets means that prices can still fluctuate quite a bit. At the same time we completed a number of important capital expenditure projects and made some new investments.”

In the United States, September 2012 saw the completion of new offices and adjoining 25-acre pipe storage and handling facility in Houston for the group’s US subsidiary, John Lawrie Inc. It supplies steel tubulars to oilfield and construction customers across north and south America. In Aberdeen, the NORM decontamination facility for NORM Solutions Ltd, a joint venture with Enviroco Ltd, was completed and became fully operational in the final quarter of 2012.

Mr Parker said: “Our core business of metal recycling, in Aberdeen, Montrose and Evanton, near Inverness, is benefitting from the major infrastructure investments that we have made in previous years. This allows us to provide our customers with an excellent support service for oil and gas decommissioning and other dismantling projects.”

Improvements were also made to the group’s Montrose pipe handling and storage facility. These changes will benefit John Lawrie Group’s UK steel tubular business, which is seeing increased demand from energy and construction sector customers.

Mr Parker added: “We will continue to develop our core businesses at home and abroad, but we will always look for new investment opportunities.”

Established in Aberdeen in the 1930’s as a scrap metal merchant, the John Lawrie Group now offers a diverse range of industrial services and has developed an enviable reputation for quality customer service. It is one of the country’s leading privately owned companies and employs a 90-strong workforce across operations in the UK, America and Europe.