Babcock tops up its order book with £1bn of work

Defence and engineering contractor Babcock International put itself in line for £1 billion of contracts in the last five months, setting itself up to show “strong progress” at the year end.

The group, which owns the Rosyth dockyard and manages the Clyde naval base, said in a pre-close trading statement that its order book was stable at £12bn and it expected to meet analysts’ profit expectations.

It added £100 million to the order book for a year’s extension to its warship modernisation initiative contracts with the Ministry of Defence – some of that work will be carried out on the Clyde.

The extension keeps the fleet modernisation programme going while new arrangements, expected to become operational later in the financial year, are negotiated.

Babcock said: “Since the half year results in November 2012, we have won or are preferred bidder on contracts valued at over £1 billion. Contracts at preferred bidder stage will transfer into the order book as final contract signature is completed over the next few months.”

The firm has been named as preferred bidder for ground fleet maintenance contracts with British Airways and baggage handling systems operations and maintenance work at Heathrow-owned airports, worth a combined £440m.