James Halstead has announced that it is confident of reporting record profits after a period of robust trading.

The commercial flooring manufacturer and distributor saw a 15.2% increase in revenue for the first half of the year, with chairman Geoffrey Halstead reporting confidence that the company would continue in this way for the second half of the year.

Its pre-close trading statement says, "Trading performances across the company's export markets have remained strong and overall turnover should have increased by around 15%."

"The growth in our export markets is particularly strong and it is too simplistic to put this down to the value of sterling. Our exports have grown over a generation and we are well placed to continue supplying flooring to major infrastructure projects across the globe."

The group said it is confident of reporting "another year of record profits" in the year ended 30 June 2011, in line with market expectations.

At 10.41 on Tuesday morning, James Halstead's share price fell 0.35% (-1.75p) to 493.25p.

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