Bentley, the British luxury car brand owned by Volkswagen, said it made a record profit in the first half of this year, surpassing any full-year profit in its 102-year history. During the novel coronavirus pandemic, the company successfully avoided the shortage of semiconductor chips, overcame factory closures and solved the problem of low production efficiency through streamlining.

The company reported a profit of 178 million pounds ($211 million) in the first half of this year, surpassing the full-year record of 170 million pounds set in 2014.

Revenue in the first half reached 1.32 billion pounds, surpassing the 834.8 million pounds in the first half of 2019 before the outbreak.

Adrian Hallmark, chairman and CEO of Bentley, said: "We are benefiting from the growth of the industry, which we thought would grow at about 25 per cent, but is actually close to 40 per cent. Although our sales have increased a lot, we get more orders at the end of each month than we did at the beginning. "

Bentley's global retail sales reached 7199 in the first half of this year, up 50 per cent from 4785 for the whole of 2019 before the outbreak. The brand will launch nine new models this year, including two hybrids. Sales of second-hand Bentley rose 150% from January to May.

In addition to the strong global demand for luxury cars, Hallmark attributes Bentley's growth to restructuring within the brand. In June 2020, Bentley laid off nearly 25% of its workforce. "We made some difficult decisions," he said. Cut costs and labour-which could have taken two to three years because we knew we were top-heavy-but we had to do it decisively. "