Low & Bonar, the international materials group which began life as a jute merchant in Dundee more than a century ago, reported a solid start to trading this year.
The company also said about a third of the 70 redundancies at its yarns manufacturing operation at the Caldrum works in the city have been completed.
The job cuts are taking place as a result of moving fibrillated yarn production to a new facility in Abu Dhabi.
Low & Bonar has moved a long way from jute and now makes technical coated fabrics for building, interior and transport markets as well as synthetic turf and woven carpet backing.
In a trading update published yesterday the company said profits are in line with expectations due to lower raw material costs offsetting slightly lower-than-expected volumes.
The performance materials company is confident of meeting expectations for the year ending November 30.
Its Saudi joint venture, Bonar Natpet, has secured a number of important product approvals, although sales development remains slow.
The effects of the euro’s continued weakening in recent months had been broadly neutral thanks to the strength of the US dollar and increased export sales to Europe.
The company is expected to report a pretax profit of £26.2 million in the current financial year and earnings per share of 5.68 pence.
It reported a pretax, pre-items profit of £26.3m for the last financial year.
Low & Bonar shares closed up 2p or 3.64% at 57p yesterday, and are up around 12% so far in 2015.
In October the company announced plans to relocate part of its Dundee-based yarns manufacturing operation at the Caldrum Works to the Middle East.
The entire 127-strong workforce in Dundee was put on notice of redundancy, and the firm confirmed it was looking to shed around 70 of those roles.
It had paid £2.2m in severance and restructuring costs. The company said yesterday the redundancy consultation process was completed on November 27 and the equipment is now being transferred.
To date, about a third of the reduction in staffing has been completed.