Engineering and agriculture company Carr’s Group has seen pre-tax profits fall but revenue rise in its latest half-year results.

The firm – which has its headquarters in Stanwix, Carlisle – has described its performance as “robust”.

It has though repeated a warning from last month about tough trading conditions affecting its full-year performance.

In the six months to March 4 this year the company saw pre-tax profits fall by 2.6 per cent to £8.3 million, down on £8.5m on the same period in 2016.

Revenue though rose to £176.8m, which was a 15.3 per cent rise from the previous year’s figure of £153.4m.

The figures were revealed in an announcement to the London Stock Exchange yesterday morning.

The company also stated that there had been a strong performance in UK agriculture, machinery sales and its retail businesses.

A contract delay in its manufacturing business and a slow recovery in American cattle prices though are likely to hurt full-year results, as the firm previously stated in a trading update in March.

Tim Davies , chief executive, said: “While still at an early stage, we are seeing initial signs of improving confidence among our core UK farming customers resulting in a strong first-half performance in our UK agriculture business, which we expect to continue in the second half. However, our USA feed block business continues to be impacted by the fall in cattle prices.

“Our engineering business has been affected by a delay to a significant UK manufacturing contract, which will impact our full-year performance, but we have a strong pipeline in UK manufacturing and our remote handling business is performing ahead of expectations.

“We remain committed to delivering organic revenue growth, supported by value enhancing acquisitions and, further to the trading update released on March 30, the board’s expectations for the full year remain unchanged.”

Carr’s has 50 UK sites, a robotics business in Germany and animal-feed plants in the US. Its Cumbrian operations include the Carrs Billington machinery dealerships and country retail stores, and Bendalls Engineering in Carlisle.