Greencore Group has announced that trading during the third quarter met expectations, with a 2.6% increase in revenue compared to Q3 2012.
Releasing its interim management statement today, the group recorded revenues of £305.8m in the 13 weeks to 28 June 2013. The convenience foods division recorded revenues of £285.7m, 2.8% higher than last year.
On a like-for-like basis, UK revenue was 1.3% lower than the previous year. Due to continued poor weather impacting business, UK market conditions were difficult during Q3, said Greencore.
The group said that despite recent UK macro-economic data being more positive and more favourable weather in recent weeks, conditions are expected to remain challenging.
While the overall chilled ready meals market recovered steadily from the impact of the horsemeat scandal earlier this year, Italian ready meals remained in year-on-year decline impacting the prepared meals division.
To counter this, the group said that it had “continued to focus on delivery of operating efficiencies”, as well as maintaining “tight cost controls across the UK business to mitigate these impacts”.
In contrast, in the US, revenues were more than 50% higher than during the same period last year. According to the interim management statement, this growth reflected the impact of the acquisitions of MarketFare Foods and Schau, both of which are performing well.
The ingredients and property division recorded revenues of £20.1m in Q3, similar to the prior year in reported currency, and 3.6% lower on a constant currency basis. The molasses business continued to perform very strongly, assisted by poor weather.
In the 39 weeks to 28 June 2013, the group recorded revenues of £878.7m, 1.5% ahead of the prior year, while the convenience foods division reported revenues of £827.8m year-to-date, 2.1% higher than the prior year.
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