Associated British Foods (ABF) has described its bakery ingredients business AB Mauri as making a “strong turnaround” in its year-end results.
The company said strong trading from AB Mauri had driven a substantial profit recovery, resulting in adjusted operating profit of £41m, up from £5m in 2013.
It said AB Mauri had made global progress in both yeast and bakery ingredients; in January, it completed acquisition of a smaller bakery and ingredients business, which serves both craft and plant bakeries across Western Europe.
ABF said the integration of this business with existing operations would broaden AB Mauri’s product offering for customers in a range of markets.
Chief executive George Weston said: “Profit in ingredients recovered strongly this year as the new management team at AB Mauri, our yeast and bakery ingredients business, made significant progress in reducing the cost base, restructuring operations and integrating the newly acquired European bakery ingredients business.”
ABF also outlined its positive outlook for research into baking enzymes, which it said had been used by several mills to reduce costs and lessen environmental impact.
In the results for the 52 weeks ending 13 September 2014, Weston also commented that its sugar business AB Sugar had fared well, despite falling sugar prices. He said: “Operationally AB Sugar had an excellent year, with good factory performances and further substantial cost reductions from the performance improvement programmes, which are well embedded in each of the businesses.
“We expect EU prices to fall further during the coming year, but remain confident that our well-invested sugar assets position us amongst the world’s lowest-cost sugar producers.”
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