Recruitment and outsourcing group Staffline continues to grow, despite its chief executive Andy Hogarth describing 2012 as more challenging than the previous year. 

He also tells Recruiter the company is “confident” of hitting budgeted numbers for the rest of the year.

Revenues in the first half of the year rose by 36% to £163.9m, while operating profit before amortisation hit £3.8m, the same as last year’s figure. Within the recruitment sector, which makes up the majority of the business, sales revenues increased by 34% to £158.4m, and operating profit before intangibles was £4.2m, up by £800k.

Hogarth tells Recruiter that in the period the company’s new openings have been particularly concentrated on the South-East, as it looks to “join the dots” along the South Coast towards its Cornish operations.

Looking forward, he says: “We’re still confident that we’ll hit our budgeted numbers for the next half year, but it is a strange environment, certainly the coalition government seems a little rockier,” while he notes that 2012 conditions have been tougher than 2011.

In particular, he says that as it has a number of clients in food manufacturing and “people are still eating”, he would expect “most of our core business” to retain a health appetite.

He also responds to Recruiter’s question on the impact of the Agency Workers Regulation (AWR) – this being the first half-year fully within the AWR era – saying: “We haven’t seen an awful lot of impact.”