Shipbuilder group Harland and Wolff has reported a widened pre-tax loss of £25.5m as expenses swelled during its Covid-19 recovery.

The maritime engineering company is known for the famous Belfast shipyard where the Titanic was built, and its parent company InfraStrata plc bought Devon’s Appledore shipyard in August 2020 in a £7m deal.

The group published detailed accounts of its financial performance for the 17 months to December 31, 2021, in its latest annual report.

Revenue swung to £18.5m by the end of last year - up from £1.4m for the 12 months ending July 31, 2020.

During this time, in addition to its purchase of Appledore, the group also took over two steel fabrication sites in Scotland and secured a major contract to build foundations for offshore wind turbines for Italian firm Saipem.

The group said between the middle of 2020 and the end of 2021 its workforce had grown from 105 people to 410.

It added that it had £20m in future contracted revenue. More recently, outside of the reported period, Harland and Wolff has struck two deals - worth £8.5m and £10m - with waste management company Cory Group and its subsidiary Riverside Energy Park to build barges for transporting waste on the River Thames.

More from BusinessLive on the group which secured a £55m contract to refit a former Royal Navy mine-hunting vessel HMS Quorn.