Reed Boardall upbeat despite battling tough year

Reed Boardall endured one of the most difficult years in its 30-year history, sinking into the red amid Covid lockdowns and suffering driver shortages, a criminal cyber attack and bad debt.

However, the Yorkshire-based temperature-controlled transport business says it is confident better times are ahead.

Its latest financial results showed the company managed to increase turnover by 6.2% in the year ending 31 March 2022, to £74.2m. But it made a pre-tax loss of £4.1m, down from a £705,000 profit in the previous year.

It said it had battled the impact of the pandemic’s lockdowns and staff self-isolating, along with spiralling labour, fuel and energy costs, as well as the much publicised HGV driver shortage.

Chief executive Marcus Boardall said: “The pandemic disruption appears to be settling, and we are starting to bear the fruits of the proactive initiatives we have undertaken to establish our own in-house team of drivers – for example, over the last year, we have trained over 20 new recruits from scratch at our own academy.”

Boardall added that its financial performance during the trading period was heavily impacted by a cyber attack, which left its IT systems out of operation for six days. He said the costs associated with business interruption and recovery were “substantial”.

The company also had to write off a debt when a large customer collapsed into administration.