Australia’s Codan has announced record sales and profit for the half year ended December 31, 2009. Managing Director, Mike Heard, said the exceptional demand for, Codan subsidiary, Minelab’s metal detection equipment saw its sales revenue more than double in the latest half year, accounting for 50% of the group’s record total revenue. Heard: “With the continuing high gold price, sales of detectors to gold prospectors in Australia and overseas were excellent.”

Heard said the current second half had commenced strongly across the Codan group operations. “While demand for all Minelab products is good, it remains extremely strong for gold detectors and the business has a very high level of orders on hand…Second half sales for Minelab products will most likely be limited by the extent to which the company can even further increase production capacity, rather than by demand.”

He continued: “Meeting the dramatic increase in demand for Minelab products was a very significant challenge for our group manufacturing team and would not have been possible without the very successful restructuring activities undertaken to integrate Minelab into the Codan business.”