DUBLIN: The Irish arm of Beckman Coulter signed off on a €6.5m dividend payout only two months after overseeing the closure of the firm’s Galway plant with the net loss of 55 jobs.
According to accounts just filed by medical technology firm Beckman Coulter Ireland for 2014, the directors of the Irish business approved the dividend payout in December, after announcing the previous October the closure of its Galway facility.
The €6.5m dividend was paid to Slidepath Ltd.
The accounts also show that the costs relating to the closure of its Galway plant total €13.8m.
The Galway closure meant most of Beckman Coulter’s operations were transferred to a Co Clare plant with some manufacturing moving to sister sites in the US.
The restructuring also took place during a year when Beckman Coulter Ireland Inc doubled its pretax profits to €9.1m as revenues increased by 22pc, going from €155.45m to €189.8m.
Numbers employed by the company during the year increased from 341 to 351.
On the restructuring, the directors state that the estimated time for the restructure is December 2015.
The directors state that the results for the year, excluding the closure of the Galway plant, are in line with directors’ expectations.
They state: “These expectations were based on internally generated budgets and management accounts.”
The dividend payout combined with a €11m actuarial loss on the firm’s pension scheme helped reduced the firm’s accumulated profits from €8.43m to €779,184.
The firm’s shareholder funds total €25.77m.
The firm’s cash during the year dropped marginally from €33.87m to €33.26m.
