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Amtrak, the parcel carrier rescued from the brink of financial meltdown last month, will return to profitability by the end of the year, claims its new managing director Alan Jones.

The firm, then trading as Amtrak Express Parcels Ltd, had suffered a cash crisis in the run-up to Christmas with the collapse of major customer Farepak adding to an already difficult situation caused by falling volumes.The firm then briefly went into administration before its assets were acquired by Jones and  his partners – Gerry Ruffell, Ron Series, David Bardsley and Tom Naylor – through their company Netfold. However, it continues to trade as Amtrak.

However Jones says he wants to make Amtrak a business with a turnover of “£100m per year” and adds: “By the end of this calendar year we will be back in profit. It has to be and it will be – all the right ingredients are there to make it happen and I don’t see any reason why it won’t.”

He says the former company’s creditors – some of whom had previously been hit by the collapse of Nightspeed, which was itself rescued by Amtrak in August 2005 – have been largely supportive: “We had two or three weeks where creditors were ringing up because they were quite upset that they were not going to get paid, but apart from one or two the vast majority have been OK.”