Northern Ireland medical testing company Randox made pre-tax profits of £275m last year after winning £777m in government contracts for Covid-19 testing.
t £275m, its pre-tax profits are almost three times those of Schrader Electronics, which is number one in the Belfast Telegraph Top 100 Companies 2022, with a figure of £101m.
Randox staff also got a 13% pay increase in the second half of 2021, the company revealed.
It added that, while £777m in contracts were won, it had been paid £419m by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) up until March 2022.
Randox was linked to a lobbying scandal last year, culminating in the resignation of MP and ex-Northern Ireland Secretary of State Owen Paterson.
He resigned as MP for North Shropshire in November 2021 after he was found to have breached lobbying rules while working as a paid consultant for Randox and Co Down food firm Lynn’s Country Foods.
A probe by the National Audit Office found that, of Randox’s £777m in Covid-19 testing contracts, 60% were awarded with no competition under emergency rules.
Government officials were found to have failed to keep adequate records of meetings with Randox but that there was no evidence, it had seen, that contracts were awarded “improperly”.
The company, which is based in Crumlin, Co Antrim, revealed details of the financial performance of Randox Holdings for the year to June 2021 ahead of the publication of accounts at Companies House.
The business, which was founded by Dr Peter Fitzgerald, turned around a £16m loss in its previous 18-month results.
Over the year to June 2021, sales more than doubled from £218.4m to £619.2m. The figures were first reported in The Times.
In a statement to the Belfast Telegraph, the company said it had been “uniquely situated” to respond to the Covid-19 crisis in early 2020.
“The company developed and built, in record time, the UK’s largest Covid-19 laboratories and testing services, ultimately providing the DHSC with a PCR-testing capacity rising from 300 PCR tests per day to 120,000 PCR tests per day by January 2021.
“In total, Randox has processed over 25m samples for the UK’s National Testing Programme and in support of international travel for business and personal reasons.
“Randox is confident that, in addressing rapidly changing DHSC and Department of Transport requirements, it delivered unique value to both government and to individuals.”
The company confirmed it had made pre-tax profits of £275m and after-tax profits of £224m.
It said all profits were taxed in the UK and no dividends had been taken, with £141m invested in labs and £50m paid in corporation tax.
Staff numbers had also grown from 1,400 to a peak of 3,400, including 800 research and development specialists.
Randox added that staff had made an “outstanding contribution” over the time, leading to a 13% pay increase in the second half of 2021.
The business said it was now investing £150m in opening Randox Health diagnostic clinics around the UK to make preventative healthcare more accessible.
It’s investing £45m in a new Randox Institute of Preventative Health at Boston House in London’s Fitzroy Square and providing £10m to support one of the UK’s largest diagnostic research projects, Our Future Health.
According to The Times, Randox bought Boston House for £29m from entrepreneur Touker Suleyman, an investor on BBC business show Dragons’ Den.
