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Graseby, the monitoring equipment group, said it was firing on all four cylinders for the first time in five years as it reported a bounce back from last year's depressed second half. Pre-tax profits slipped from pounds 5.37m to pounds 4.99m in the six months to June, but that represented a substantial improvement on the pounds 634,000 reported in the immediately preceding six months.

The defence division more than doubled profits to pounds 1.48m and the group said it was the first time in five years it was seeing growth in the business. Profits fell in the product monitoring and medical arms, but the latter will be almost doubled by the recent acquisition of 3M's drug monitoring equipment operation. The interim dividend is being held at 2.7p.