Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed (Plipde­co) has achieved a 28 per cent in­crease in prof­it be­fore tax of $15.6 mil­lion for the half year end­ed June 30.

The state owned com­pa­ny's lat­est fi­nan­cial re­port, which was post­ed to the T&T Stock Ex­change yes­ter­day, shows the in­creased prof­it was due to a nine per cent growth in con­sol­i­dat­ed rev­enues over the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od in 2014.

Com­ment­ing on Plipde­co's per­for­mance, chair­man Ian Ather­ly said: "This was main­ly as a re­sult of a 15 per cent in­crease in vol­ume for con­tainer­ised car­go op­er­a­tions. In fact, growth was record­ed in all ar­eas of con­tainer­ised car­go where the port saw a three per cent in­crease in im­ports, a five per cent in­crease in ex­ports and a 67 per cent in­crease in trans­ship­ment car­go.

"The rev­enue gains as a re­sult of the in­crease in con­tainer­ised car­go were par­tial­ly off­set by the de­crease in gen­er­al car­go where a 17 per cent de­crease in vol­umes was record­ed as a con­se­quence of an 89 per cent de­crease in ex­ports and a two per cent de­crease in im­ports."

Ather­ly said to­tal as­sets grew to $2.32 bil­lion, an in­crease of two per cent from De­cem­ber 2014's as­set base of $2.26 bil­lion. There was al­so strong im­prove­ment in work­ing cap­i­tal from $49 mil­lion in De­cem­ber 2014 to $68 mil­lion in June 2015.

He said the com­pa­ny plans to con­tin­ue with its growth and de­vel­op­ment dri­ve by en­gag­ing in in­fra­struc­tur­al im­prove­ments, de­vel­op­ment projects and equip­ment ac­qui­si­tions through­out the port and in­dus­tri­al es­tate, all aimed at im­prov­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy in a glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment.