Currie European’s MD said it had been focusing on customer and route profitability during 2016, in order to mitigate limited success in increasing its rates.

Stephen Turner said “good improvements” had been made but that a lot of work remained on boosting margins.

He was commenting following the publication of its latest financial results, which showed a 10% reduction in turnover for the year ending 31 December, to £40.6m.

Pre-tax profit slid by 4.6% to £94,653.

Turner said: “Customer rate increases have again been very limited during 2016 and the driver shortages remain a major industry challenge.

"It is therefore imperative that we continue to find ways of improving efficiency and our main focus here has been to concentrate on improving customer and route profitability, which is being achieved by minimising our largest cost, such as empty miles.

“We have achieved this through improved IT and reporting.

“During this year we have made good improvements in this area but there is more work to do, which is why this is still very much at the forefront of our day to day decision making.”

Earlier in the year, Currie European joined Pall-Ex and took on the CA, DG and TD postcodes.

Turner said: “Joining Pall-Ex was a strategic move by the company to source a more cost effective solution for our increasing number of one to three pallet deliveries.

“Since joining we are pleased with the progress made to date.”

He added: “We are delighted to have recently been awarded the contract to provide Pall-Ex's new northern hub operation, which will operate from our Warrington facility starting in January 2017.”

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