Wincanton loses HMRC contract, issues profit warning

Published by

Peter Davison

Logistics firm Wincanton has issued a warning to investors after losing a major contract with HMRC.

The Chippenham-based group said this morning (Tuesday) that it was "very disappointed" to have lost the contract for the provision of logistics services to support UK customs arrangements at inland border facilities following a re-tendering process.

The contract will be transferred to another provider in June this year.

"Wincanton is extremely disappointed to lose this business after a well-executed implementation delivered in exceptionally shortened timescales and acknowledged strong performance over the past two years," investors were told.

The group said it "remains a strategic government commercial partner with major contracts with HMRC, Defra, the Department for Health and Social Care and the Cabinet Office."

As a result, and because of "a more challenging external environment in the coming financial year, including an accelerated reduction in consumer spending and customer volumes," results for the year ending March 2024 will now be "materially below" market forecasts of around £63 million, said the firm.

Trading in the year ending March 2023 has been in line with expectations, with revenue growth of three per cent and profits up five per cent.

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.