Redundancies were made at the ports giant behind Liverpool2 and Manchester Ship Canal despite its profits rising during its latest financial year, new documents have revealed.
Peel Ports Group has posted an EBITDA of £271.9m for the 12 months to the end of March 2021, up from £263.1m, while its pre-tax profit surged from losses of £99.5m to a profit of £141.4m.
However in a statement to BusinessLive, the Liverpool-headquartered group said the change in pre-tax profit is "mainly due to non-trading and non-cash movements in the fair value of derivative financial instruments".
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It added that the pre-tax profit figures "do not reflect trading activity and so should not be relied on for that".
The newly-filed documents with Companies House also show its group turnover decreased from £792.3m to £594.5m over the same period because of the Covid-19 pandemic and it selling its marine support services business in July 2020.
Peel Ports is one of the largest port operators in the United Kingdom and also operates sites in Clydeport, Dublin, Great Yarmouth, Heysham and London Medway.
The accounts also reveal the number of people employed by the group slumped from 3,135 to 1,612 during the year.
The group said the fall in staff numbers reflects the full-year effect of the TUPE transfer of employees to MDHC Container Services, a joint venture, in January 2020 as well as the disposal of the marine support services segment in July 2020.
During the financial year, the group added that "in order to respond to reduced volumes" it had to "take some difficult decisions" which resulted in "some employees" being made redundant.
Peel Ports said: "This was not a decision taken lightly; the board and management team are proud of the growth achieved by the group and the impact it has had on employment opportunities, stemming from investments made in the business.
"It was necessary, however, to align our cost base with our revised outlook for the UK economy."
The accounts come after a "significantly improved pay offer" was accepted by dock workers at the Port of Liverpool towards the end of 2021.
The group also committed in November to becoming net zero by 2040.
Earlier that month, an asset management giant sold its near 40% stake in Peel Ports to a group of investment companies.
A statement signed off by the board said: "Although turnover and volumes were lower than in the prior year due to the pandemic, strong cost control and agile responses to changes in demand allowed the group to improve its EBITDA year on year.
"The decrease in turnover is most notable in the shipping segment, where turnover fell £18.8m from £136.9m to £118.1m; this segment is a high turnover low margin business and its ability to flex its costs relative to demand meant that the segment reported results that were comparable to the prior year.
"The strong results for the year demonstrate the group's ability to continue to respond with agility to challenging markets."
A spokesperson from Peel Ports said: "Our latest figures reflect a very strong outcome in exceptionally difficult circumstances, building on a decade of continuous growth in which we have consistently out-performed the market.
"Thanks to the measures we took during lockdown we remain extremely well-positioned for further success.
"Of course, we very much regret that the economic downturn impacted on staff numbers but we are confident that the recovery will soon allow us to create significant new job opportunities as we were doing before the pandemic."
In a statement issued to BusinessLive, the group added that the change in turnover is due to the selling of its marine support services arm in July 2020.
Excluding that, the group said its turnover was c.£50m lower than the previous year, "which reflects the disruption to economic activity caused by the pandemic".
