“During the second quarter 2009, the impact of the financial crisis has continued, affecting also market demand in the pultrusion business negatively," states Vesa Korpimies, Exel Composites' President and CEO. "Our sales in the second quarter of 2009 were 14.1% lower than last year. The machine industry, sports and leisure, paper industry and telecommunication markets were especially affected."

"Our sales were relatively good in Europe compared to the situation on the Asian markets, which suffered from tough competition particularly in China," he adds. "Sales to transportation and general industries, especially defence, markets improved due to new applications."

Exel expects this trend to continue and the company has initiated further actions to control costs to adapt to lower sales volume, to streamline the operating working capital and to amortise debt.

For 1 January-30 June 2009 Exel reports the following highlights and outlook:

• net sales from continuing operations were down 12.8% from the same period of 2008 to €37.8 million;
• operating profit was €4.4 million compared to €4.6 million last year, representing 11.6% of net sales;
• Exel Sports Oy will be merged into Exel Composites plc in December 2009;
• Exel will not issue any profit guidance due to the market uncertainty.

For the second quarter, 1 April-30 June 2009 Exel reports:

• net sales from continuing operations of €19.3 million, 14.1% down on the previous year;
• operating profit from continuing operations up 22.8% to €2.4 million, representing 12.4% of net sales.

Exel Composites manufactures composite profiles and tubes using pultrusion, pull-winding and other production methods. The company is headquartered in Finland and has production plants in Europe, Australia and China.