THE Tanfield Group is in a prime position to lead the electric vehicle revolution after taking an £88m hit to put the business on a straight footing, its chief executive said yesterday.

The North-East electric vehicle company, which recently announced a major partnership with Ford in the US, has reported losses of £88.5m for last year.

However, Washingtonbased Tanfield would have made a pre-tax profit of £1.7m had it not been for a one-off £89.6m impairment charge, particularly arising from the acquisition of US firm Snorkel International Inc in 2007.

Chief executive Darren Kell said it was the “prudent”

thing to do and left the company well positioned to take advantage of the growing interest in electric vehicles.

Tanfield has announced a partnership with US investors to establish Smith Electric Vehicles US Corp, with the Smith Newton battery-electric- powered truck due to start production at its Kansas plant in the autumn. Plus, Tanfield is to partner car producer Ford in developing an electric Ford Transit Connect van for the US market.

Mr Kell said: “There is a renewed interest and support by government, not just the British Government but in North America and Europe as well. We make these vehicles now – it is not conceptual.”

It has been a challenging year for the company. Even if it had not paid the impairment charge its pre-tax profits would have been down compared to £12.8m a year previously. In recent months it has shed about 170 jobs in two rounds of redundancies, and put staff a short working week, reducing its wage bill by about £11m.

But its turnover was up by 18 per cent at £146m and Mr Kell was fairly confident there would be no more job cuts.

Impairment refers to the level of goodwill that comes with a business, alongside the tangible physical assets.

When buying a company it means having clients and customers for that firm rather than starting from scratch.

However, that goodwill has to be written off at some point.