FAMILY owned Castle Precision Engineering has seen an eight per cent rise in turnover from £16.9 million to £18.2m.

The Glasgow business, which makes high end engineering components for the aerospace and automotive industries, saw pre-tax profits edge up 2.6 per cent from £475,386 to £487,927 in the 12 months to the end of July last year.

In annual accounts recently filed at Companies House the directors state they were happy with the performance particularly as the trading environment remained challenging with "increasing cost and global competition pressures".

They added: "The company is committed to its long term strategy of transitioning away from the traditional sub-contract operations market and towards being the single source finished product provider for its customers. The transformation as expected brings significant short and medium term challenges but is key to securing the company's long term future and position in the market."

The business, owned by the Tiefenbrun family, showed almost £1.2m of capital spending in its cash flow statement, up from £171,000 in the prior financial year.

It still ended the period with a net funds position of more than £164,827 although that was lower than the near £297,000 it had started out with.

Average staff numbers were down slightly from 151 to 147.

Directors' emoluments came in at £320,120, up from £317,715.

Castle Precision said it had taken a £150,000 provision relating to the cancellation of an order from one of its largest customer.

The company has been involved in building the solid aluminium wheels for the Bloodhound supersonic vehicle, which will attempt to reach a speed of 1,000 miles per hour in South Africa next year.