Jotun, the world’s biggest producer of marine paints, has delivered its best result yet for the first eight months of the year.
The company, with headquarters in Sandefjord, Norway, had a pre-tax profit of NOK 2.1bn ($233m) for 2020 so far, through the end of August.
That is up on a NOK 1.6bn profit in the first eight months of 2019, representing an increase of 36%.
Jotun had operating revenues of NOK 13.9bn in the first eight months of this year, up from NOK 12.9bn in the same period in 2019.
Jotun had previously warned that the coronavirus could become very challenging for the company.
“In total we have come through this in an almost good way,” CEO Morten Fon told Norwegian financial daily Finansavisen this week.
“The most important priority was to ensure that our staff was well. This was necessary in order to have the plants operating and to have open offices,” he said.
The welfare of our staffers was thus priority number one, Fon said.
In spite of the record result thus far, Jotun has also had to shut down some plants due to Covid-19, but Jotun management has managed to avoid firing staff.
The Gleditsch family holds 54% of the shares in the privately owned company, while industrial conglomerate Orkla holds the remaining stake.
At the end of August, Jotun's book equity was slightly less than NOK 10.4bn.
Jotun, which was created in 1926, has about 10,000 employees and is represented in more than 100 countries.
