At the Annual General Meeting of Hardide plc (LON:HDD) to be held today at 11:30am, Robert Goddard, Chairman of the Company, will make the following statement:
“The Company continues to trade in line with our expectations. The positive trend in the underlying oil and gas market conditions experienced in FY2016-17 has been maintained through the current trading period and Hardide continues to see an upturn in activity. The two recently-announced international framework supply agreements, one with a major international oil and gas operator, the other with a global developer and provider of completion technology are progressing well with one moving into regular production and the other in development phase.
Multiple aerospace applications continue in development and testing across a range of customers in the UK, Europe and North America. Considerable detailed work is underway with the engineering teams at Airbus and a number of parts are currently either in testing or in the sample preparation phase. In addition to the civil aerospace sector, tests have started on parts with two new prospective customers in the defence sector. The Board remains confident that production orders will result from this work and will keep the market updated as appropriate.
We are seeing regular demand for our coatings from the manufacturer of advanced X-ray baggage-scanners and this customer expects to increase production further this year. We are working with Royal Mail on two further new applications after solving a wear problem that saw Hardide-coated deflector blades fitted onto every letter sorting machine in the UK in time for Christmas 2017.
The Hardide facility in the US is performing very well and producing excellent quality product. It is currently undergoing the AS9100 aerospace audit which is on-track to be completed by mid-2018. The order has been placed for a third reactor at Martinsville and this is expected to be operational later this year.
Half year results are expected to be published on 14 May 2018.”
