FDBusiness.com

Specialty bakery group Aryzta has reported an 8.5% rise in revenue to Eur4.21 billion with EBITA up by 12.9% to Eur444.1 million for the year ended July 31st 2012. Aryzta’s core food group business increased EBITA by 16.3% to Eur374.8 million on revenue up by 11.3% to Eur2.87 billion. EBITA and revenue increased by 13.7% and 7.5% respectively at the Food Europe business. Based in Switzerland, Aryzta also has operations in North America, South America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Aryzta is the majority shareholder (68.8%) in Origin Enterprises, the Irish agri-services group, which increased revenue by 3.1% to Eur1.34 billion during the year.

Owen Killian, chief executive of Aryzta, comments: “Aryzta’s performance in FY 2012 was satisfactory given the challenging macro environment. Weak consumer spending affected our customers and the impact of government austerity measures was particularly noticeable in Europe. The business performance reflects the benefits of good progress on implementing internal transformation measures designed to better support our customers. This will continue throughout FY 2013.”

He adds: “We remain focused on working closely with our customers to manage inflationary pressures in order to maintain affordability without compromising quality or service. We have no great expectation of any recovery in consumer behaviour during FY 2013 to support revenue growth and therefore expect underlying fully diluted EPS growth to broadly mirror FY 2012 with an increase of 5%-10%.”