De La Rue speeds cost-cutting as revenues drop in tough market De La Rue has accelerated its cost-cutting programme, after heightened competition and delays to orders dragged down the banknote printer's full-year revenues. The Basingstoke-based company, which this year celebrates its 200th anniversary, said it had cut 100 jobs from its 4,000-strong workforce in an effort to reduce costs in the face of tough market conditions. In May 2011, De La Rue launched its strategy to cut costs by £30m a year. The UK passport producer on Wednesday said that it had stepped up this programme to hit £40m of annual savings by the end of its current financial year. There have been a small number of job cuts, I won't deny that, but we have also concentrated on eliminating waste and improving quality. I know such things don't make good headlines, but they make good business sense," said Tim Cobbold, De La Rue's chief executive. The news came as De La Rue reported a 21 per cent drop in volumes of banknote paper to 8,700 tonnes, as rivals such as Giesecke & Devrient of Germany and France's Oberthur stepped up their production, drove down prices and ate into the British group's market share. De La Rue's revenues for the 12 months to March 31 were down 8 per cent year on year to £483.7m, weighed down by delays to orders that prompted a profit warning in November. "The reason for [the revenue decline] was challenging market conditions, and the timing of receipts in particular," said Mr Cobbold. De La Rue is also involved in a battle to regain a lucrative £1bn contract to print notes for the Bank of England. The 10-year deal, which will start in 2015, is crucial to De La Rue's prospects and would entail the production of 12bn banknotes. No foreign company has ever held the right to produce Britain's banknotes, and Mr Cobbold shed little light on the situation other than an update on the likely timing of the contract. Our contract ends in March 2015. So the BoE will run its tender process. I think that you can reasonably count on them to have something like a year between the selection process and the end of our contract, so that there would be a handover process should that be required," he said. De La Rue, which produces banknotes covering more than 150 national currencies, said that its order book stood at £207m at the year-end, down from £248m a year ago. Pre-tax profit rose from £32.9m to £51.5m, skewed by higher exceptional charges in the previous year. On an underlying basis, operating profit was roughly flat at £63.2m. Diluted earnings per share rose from 32.9p to 51.5p, and the final dividend was held at 28.2p, keeping the full-year payout flat at 42.3p. "The company continues to make good underlying progress despite an order book which remains lumpy and (occasionally) illogical in order times," said Paul Jones, analyst at Panmure Gordon. We believe these figures will be taken quite well by the market, though at current levels there appears to be much of this already reflected in the share price. De La Rue shares fell 1.4 per cent to 972.5p in early trading.