One of East Anglia’s largest companies has said it has no regrets about how it navigated the coronavirus pandemic as it published revenue results of £302million for the six months to June 30.

Midwich, a specialist audio visual and documents solution distributor, reported growth of 4.1pc on the same period last year. The Diss-based business highlighted positive and negative factors the pandemic had had as well as their implication across the group.

MORE: Teens launch pizza business to beat lockdown jobs slumpManaging director Stephen Fenby said: “The negatives did outweigh the positives. We saw an increase in some areas of demand because people needed to have meetings over video chat instead of in person.

“We also saw an increase in demand for technology which could be used remotely instead of by touch, for example projectors which can be controlled from your mobile phone.”

He went on: “I don’t really have any regrets about how we handled the crisis. There was no way anyone could have seen it coming and our teams handled the transition to working from home extraordinarily well.”

The business also purchased Starin, a US-based, specialist value-added distributor of AV products in February of 2020.

“That was a very timely purchase because we had looked at moving into the US market for a number of years and we managed to do so before lockdown hit,” said Mr Fenby.

“The business is particularly strong in the unified communications (UC) sector so that was a benefit to have under our belt as we went into lockdown.”

The company has also predicted its full recovery will take up to two years in some sectors – with the venues industry potentially taking longer.

“I think you can expect to see more of the same from us. We’re pleased with our strategy and how we’ve been performing so we will continue to look at more specialised offerings and new territories,” Mr Fenby said.

“In recent weeks, whilst we continue to monitor the pandemic, we have increasingly shifted our focus to the future – bringing back our teams, reopening offices and resuming some face to face customer interactions. Our acquisition programme has also recommenced with a number of exciting opportunities in the pipeline. Group revenues have improved month on month since April.”