According to preliminary results, the Cylinders Holding Group, which is the main globally operating manufacturer of seamless steel cylinders and high-pressure vessels based in Europe, achieved a non-consolidated turnover of 4.99 billion crowns (or approximately 204 million euros) last year. This is theoretically about 11.3 percent more than in 2020, when the group included in the non-consolidated sales even companies that no longer figure in the total last year. After changing the structure and methodology, such as Brexit or creating a new, independent company for the retail market for oxygen cylinders, the turnover for 2021 is actually higher by 17 percent.
Last year's EBITDA Cylinders Holding amounted to 566 million crowns, which means, calculated from a comparable base in 2020, growth of about 21.5 percent. Sales and profit increased year-on-year for all large companies in the group. Vítkovice Milmet performed best, growing by 22 percent or more in all key indicators last year.
Ostrava's Vítkovice Cylinders paid for the paint shop fire, which at the beginning of the second half of 2021 put the company out of normal operation for a while and caused it almost 100 million in damage. The operating profit of Vítkovice Cylinders thus remained roughly half the expectations of this important production subsidiary.
The group also evaluates negatively the impact of the coid and the associated 20% morbidity of employees. "In the second half of the year, high energy prices began to have a strong impact on our results. At a time when there was a shortage of materials on the market, logistics was stuck and overall input prices were rising, we could hardly defend ourselves, "said Jan Světlík, CEO of Cylinders Holding.
On the contrary, the return on investment from previous years had a positive effect on the 2021 balance sheet at Cylinders Holding. In particular, the production of Cylinders Bel and the newly robotic line in Milkovice, Vítkovice, Poland. For example, the Polish daughter recorded a 23 percent increase in sales. But even the return on investment could have been better, according to the plan, if traffic around the world did not "get stuck" and "coronavirus sinusoids" did not take place.
This year, Cylinders Holding invests mainly in new products and research and development related mainly to hydrogen technologies. "We see that our revenues from hydrogen projects have increased tenfold compared to 2020, so we will clearly continue in this direction," said the group's CEO.
The program called Cylinders 4.0 will also run. The aim is to achieve a high share of so-called circularity and organic production in manufacturing companies. Due to the lightweight materials, large volumes and long service life of steel bottles and containers, which Cylinders Holding already makes as standard, the group could reach a share of so-called green production of around 90 percent. Cylinders Holding is currently involved in all major hydrogen programs in transportation and energy.
