THE good news keeps on rolling in for a long-established family-owned demolition firm.

Less than two weeks after its chairman was made an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list, Thompsons of Prudhoe reported a growth in turnover and profits for the financial year ending on March 31, 2019.

Chairman John Thompson, who recently received the royal honour, spoke of his pride and delight that the company had continued to thrive in challenging market conditions.

The firm, based in Princess Way in Low Prudhoe, saw its revenues grow from £35.8m in 2018 to £47.7m last year.

Contributing to such a high increase was the amount of extra work carried out by the company, which raked in £32.6m from £21.6m in the space of 12 months.

The company’s haulage business also improved its turnover, rising from £4.7m to £7.5m.

As a result, Thompsons profit margins grew from £2.5m to £3.7m, the equivalent of £1.8m to £2.7m after tax.

Mr Thompson praised his workforce for helping the company achieve such good results.

He said: “At the moment, our business is really good, but we are investing in a lot of heavy equipment to this work and going slightly further afield with our activities.

“You have to have a good workforce and everybody here is well trained and know their jobs, and are happy to keep rolling on and engage in what we are doing.

“We are a long-established business and, within those 71 years, our business has grown to such a standard that we often get repeat work.

“We have to be competitive in what we are doing because there’s plenty of businesses out there doing what we are doing, but having different divisions where we can share machinery enhances what we can do.”

Despite redundancies elsewhere in the industry, the staffing levels at Thompsons of Prudhoe, which has worked on various high profile developments in the region, fell by just one to 304.