A contract to cleanse Beijing of its creepy-crawlies ahead of the Olympic Games next year has lifted Rentokil to a 21 per cent increase in underlying profit.

The company said that its contract to supply the Clean Beijing campaign was powering its Asia-Pacific operations, which is one of its fastest-growing divisions.

Pre-tax profit from continuing operations reached £59.1 million in the three months to September 30, up from £48.8 million last year.

Revenue from its Asia-Pacific division rose nearly 60 per cent to £41.4 million.

Doug Flynn, the Rentokil chief executive, said: “The business in Beijing is mostly around crawling and flying insects.”

He added that there was a particular problem with German cockroaches.

“If you had an apartment in Beijing, trust me, you’d notice it.”

The deal, with the Beijing Patriotic Health Committee (BPHC), follows Rentokil's buy-out earlier this year of Rentokil Tai Ming, a local pest control company.

The BPHC have long struggled with insects. In 2000 it implored the city's 14 million residents to kill as many cockroaches as possible.

But Rentokil intends to utilise patented fogging machines to fumigate buildings, sparing Beijingers the arduous task of killing the creatures manually.

The UN recently praised Bejing's huge drive to clean-up in time for the Olympics, which includes shutting factories, but pointed out that improvements in air quality may not meet targets in time for the games.

City Link, Rentokil's parcel delivery service, that provided the strongest growth, following the acquisition of Target Express.

It recorded a 146 per cent increase in revenues to £107.6 million and an operating profit of £11.4 million, up 68 per cent.

The figures were calculated at constant exchange rates, so some of the improvements will have been eroded by the depreciation in the dollar.

A pre-tax profit increase of 21 per cent was based on present exchange rates.

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