With promising figures at the start of the new financial year and a joint venture with one of the world’s largest truck manufacturers, car components supplier Grammer (Amberg / Germany; www.grammer.com) is looking forward to a good year in 2021.

Rather more sobering, however, is the balance sheet for fiscal 2020 despite positive tendencies in the second half of the year. Grammar’s consolidated sales declined 16.4% compared with the previous year to EUR 1.7 bn. EBIT dropped deep into the red in 2020 with a deficit of EUR 46.1m versus earnings of EUR 74.5m in the previous year.

In its business report published at the end of March, the injection moulder and PU foam processor blamed the disappointing result on the collapse in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Car sales, it said, had begun seriously declining on the global car markets as early as the second half of 2019.

The pandemic-related production stoppages and plant closures in the first half of the year significantly reinforced this negative trend (see also Plasteurope.com of 04.05.2020). However, global demand recovered quickly and strongly from June to December 2020, and the quarterly sales in all segments were significantly above those of 2019, the company said.

A negative effect on the balance sheet in this period came from provisions of EUR 12.2m for staff cutbacks and plant closures. The German sites in Wörth and Trusetal were shut down, as was the Belgian plant in Geel, all of which affected 100 employees. Apart from that, termination agreements and early retirement schemes were negotiated with a further 300 administrative employees up to the end of January 2021.

Below the line, Grammer recorded its poorest result since 2009 but with the currently justified hope that things will get better in 2021: revenue in Q1 of this year rose to EUR 503.7m, representing an increase of 10.7% over the same period of the previous year. Operating EBIT rose to EUR 22.6m, which was a more than tenfold gain. In the automotive and commercial vehicles segments, sales in the first three months of the year rose 4.9% and 24.6%, respectively.

In other news, Grammer in April signed an agreement for another JV with long-time partner FAW (Changchun, Jilin / China; www.faw.com), a national automotive group. Together with a subsidiary of the world’s second-largest utility vehicle manufacturer, Grammer will produce truckdriver seats, holding 60% of the planned company. Further details were not disclosed.

Grammer also announced that it plans to establish a Chinese headquarters in the city of Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province. No further details were given about the plans.