MINOAN Group has underlined its appetite for expanding its Stewart Travel brand across the UK after opening in England and Northern Ireland for the first time.

Duncan Wilson, Minoan managing director, confirmed the company would be looking into speeding up the extension of its presence to add to its 11 outlets in Scotland and recently opened shops in Belfast and Nottingham.

Mr Wilson said: "Those are our first moves in other parts of the UK other than our acquisition [of a minority stake] in Miles Morgan Travel.

"We do expect to inject a bit of pace into our presence throughout the rest of the UK during the rest of the year."

That came as the AIM-listed group narrowed its annual losses from £1.2m to around £1m.

The travel and leisure arm more than doubled pre-tax profits to £454,000 but general corporate costs and the ongoing development bill related to its Greek resort development led to the loss.

Mr Wilson said the travel business had benefited from acquisitions from recent years now being fully integrated and all operating on the same IT system. The corporate travel arm was said to have done particularly well during the year.

He said: "Last year was the first year we had them all named Stewart Travel, all on the one IT system and buying into the fact we are one family. That doesn't happen overnight. We now have a unified culture and unified perspective on what it is we are about to do and we are trading really well."

Since the start of the current financial year total transaction value and gross profit at the travel business are running 15 per cent ahead.

Mr Wilson said slower growth in its corporate travel business, mainly caused by tightening in Aberdeen, was being offset by stronger sales in cruises and long haul as well as niches such as Christmas trips to Lapland to see Santa.

He said: "We are very upbeat looking forward. Generally when a year starts slowly it finishes off really well.

"So if we are doing what we are doing at the moment in a flat market then as and when things pick up we would anticipate getting our share of that as well which should produce a good year for us."

On the Crete resort, which has received Greek Presidential Decree, Mr Wilson indicated the final presidential and government signatures are expected in "the next couple of weeks".

He said: "You can never tell with Greece but there are no new pieces of paper which need to be produced. Every stage it has to go through it has gone through. All we are waiting for are the actual signatures."

He suggested the resort has been valued at around €100 million which dwarves Minoan's current market capitalisation of close to £20m.

Mr Wilson added: "The potential for upside in this current year is significant and we have been focusing considerable efforts on this and are just about there."