The revelation has been made as the company, which was also the filming location of this year’s Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, announced it achieved record revenue of 75m for the year ended 31 March 2015. That’s up from 64.1m the previous year.
Operating profit, meanwhile, hit 5.8m up from 4.9m for the year ended 31 March 2014.
“Pinewood is a uniquely positioned independent operator and has once again delivered strong growth. We are encouraged that the current financial year has got off to a strong start with good visibility into the coming year,” said chief executive Ivan Dunleavy.
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In order to keep healthy numbers and prevent refusing business, the Pinewood Group has signed off on a design and build contract to expand the site, which has seen phase one of construction begin.
The film production firm has also raised 30m in an AIM share placing, while two independent non-executive directors were added to the board. Additionally, Pinewood looked beyond movies with more focus on video games and high-end TV productions.
As our core business has grown we have expanded the range of services for the screen-based industries. We are seeing encouraging results from this strategy. Our growing presence internationally continues to deliver clear benefits,” Dunleavy added.
Following the successful share placing in April 2015, construction has begun on the first phase of the Pinewood expansion. This is an exciting development for the group and we are pleased with the support and commitment given to us through the placing.
Although we have hosted the three largest film productions of the year, being Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens, Avengers: Age of Ultron and the 24th Bond film Spectre, we continue to be unable to meet all the demand from large films. This will be partly addressed by the first phase of the Pinewood expansion.
