Merit announces significant investment for growth in latest accounts

Offsite construction firm Merit is targeting annual turnover of £450m on the back of investments in R&D and production capacity, despite drops in profit and turnover last year.

The Northumberland-based firm’s results for the year to 30 June 2024 showed that pre-tax profit had dropped from £7.64m to £5.77m, while income stood at £79.8m, down from £88.5m.

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Source: Merit

Merit specialises in manufacturing and building high technology cleanrooms, laboratories and complex M&E services such as this complex for the British Antartic Survey

Despite the weaker performance, which it blamed in part on “uncertainties brought about by political events” delaying projects, the firm continued to push for growth, with an £8m investment in new intellectual property during the financial year.

It also made attempts to bolster its production capacity. Currently, Merit operates a 270,000 sq ft offsite manufacturing facility in Cramlington, which it claims is one of the largest factories of its kind in Europe.

An expansion to one of its facilities has planning permission and the site has been cleared ready for a further 250,000 sq ft of factory space.

The firm estimates that this expansion will enable it to increase its capacity to deliver annual turnover of around £450m.

>> Read more: 5 minutes with … Tony Wells at Merit

Merit is a manufacturer of three modular building products which are commonly used in healthcare, pharmaceutical and bioscience developments, as well as the defence and aerospace industries.

Its methods enable it to deliver facilities with a pre-manufactured value of between 75% and 95%, it said.

Last year the business was appointed to design and fit out a new medicines manufacturing centre in Northumbria.

Merit’s chief executive, Tony Wells, has been vocal in espousing a gospel of radical change to increase productivity in the sector.

Last year, he told Building’s Building the Future Commission conference that while manufacturing had gone through four industrial revolutions, the construction sector had “sort of checked out around the 1910s”, and said the industry should not be “afraid of disruption” in order to address this. 

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