SHIPBUILDER Cammell Laird has enjoyed a record year, achieving pre-tax profits of more than £10m, LDP Business can reveal.

The Birkenhead firm improved sales by £2.5m to £93.2m in the year to May, 2010, building on the phenomenal 70% growth achieved a year earlier.

The £10.2m pre-tax profit, up 8.8% on 2009, is the largest since the company emerged out of the wake of the failure of the former Cammell Laird shipyard a decade ago.

The stockmarket-quoted Cammell Laird collapsed after a dispute with its largest customer, Italian cruise line Costa Crociere. Its former managing director, John Syvret, then set up Northwestern Shiprepairers and Shipbuilders, which changed its name to Cammell Laird Shiprepairers and Shipbuilders in November, 2008.

It has carefully re-established its reputation, which was cemented a year ago when it was awarded a £44m contract to build sections of the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier.

It is also now halfway through a five- year support contract for 11 of the Royal Fleet AuxilIary’s 16 vessels, and in the 2010 financial year completed major refits of Fort Victoria, Black Rover, Diligence and Orangeleaf.

Mr Syvret, Cammell Laird’s chief executive, said the growth “has been achieved as a direct result of the company’s growing reputation for delivering a cost effective quality service to the ship owners and operators in the ship repair, conversion and military market place”.