Carr's Milling expects '08 pretax profit to double

Sept 4 (Reuters) - Agriculture, food and engineering group Carr's Milling Industries Plc (CARS.L: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday it expected to more than double its full-year pretax profit, and said it had placed shares to raise about 2.7 million pounds.

The company said 2008 pretax profit would be not less than 12.5 million pounds, up from 5.5 million pounds, due to very strong trading across all divisions and regions.

Carr's said it expected revenue of about 350 million pounds against 253 million pounds year ago.

On Aug. 8, the company said it expected full-year pretax profit to substantially exceed 9.2 million pounds on revenue of at least 330 million pounds.

Carr's also said it intended to pay a final dividend of 17 pence a share, lifting the total dividend to 23 pence from 19 pence year ago.

The company said it has also benefited from "significant" one-off inventory and foreign-exchange gains totalling 4 million pounds in its agriculture division.

Carr's said it had placed 410,000 new shares at 660 pence each per share to raise about 2.7 million to fund, in part, the additional working capital requirements of the increased levels of revenues and profits and to widen the institutional shareholder base of the company. (Reporting by Ramkumar in Bangalore, editing by Will Waterman)