Babcock cashes in on outsourcing

Engineering support services group Babcock yesterday assured investors that the new financial year had started well and it was confident of meeting expectations.

The company, which maintains Royal Navy submarines and has major Scottish operations at Rosyth, said the economic environment was actually a help as customers outsourced more of their technical, engineering and training support needs. Bidding activity across the group had remained strong, and as a result its bid pipeline had increased to £13 billion from £9.5bn in May.