Closing books after a year of struggle

Like in most parts of the world 2020 proved also in the Baltic's to be a rather challenging year. During periods the whole Baltic area was on lock-down creating obstacles to even keep many businesses running. At INTRAC all guidelines from authorities have been imposed as soon as requested and the operations have accordingly been undertaken under various restrictions. In spite of the many restrictions INTRAC has throughout the year been able to keep a high customer service meaning customers' machines have been able to maintain a high productivity.

INTRAC's deliveries of new machines in 2020 accounted to 316 new sit on machines, a drop in numbers by close to 25% from the 400 units delivered in 2019. Shipments fell already during the first quarter by more than one third compared to sales in 2019, then during summer sales stabilised and deliveries picked up somewhat during Q3 which ended with only a 10% decrease compared to the 2019 Q3 deliveries. Finally machine sales at the end of the year was instead rather strong exceeding 2019 by some 10%. If total revenues from sales of machines was down during 2020 the after sales and especially sales of service work managed to keep up the operations and actually reached 2019 revenues. "The year 2020 was quite though on us but first and foremost I am pleased we have had very few Covid-19 cases in our group of companies. Only very few individual persons have been affected and those have immediately been sent home on quarantine, to be able to first get healthy and later also back to work." says Mr. Carl Leijonhielm, INTRAC Group President and continues "We had to take measures from the very beginning, but I am happy we could keep the operations going at all our 13 locations throughout the year. Our staff has made tremendous efforts and maintained a very high service level in spite of the difficult conditions."

"We saw already early in the year a slight drop in machine sales and this drop accelerated during March-April-May" says Marketing Director Mr. Fredrik Brandhorst. "Since then our customers' confidence in their businesses has strengthened and they have during the autumn also restarted to invest in new machinery, both to exchange old equipment but we also see many companies now increasing their production capacity. Sales and deliveries of new machinery accelerated at the year end and it together with the maintained high level of after sales helped the group to reach full year black figures at the bottom line." Mr Brandhorst concludes.