The global group, which has its headquarters in Ireland, has reported overall sales of €4.6bn for the year ended December 31 – an increase of five per cent on the previous year. Operating profit was up one per cent to €371m. Of these, ingredients accounted for €3.1bn of sales and €257m of operating profits.
The increase in trading profits came in spite of increases in energy costs in 2006. The second half of the year was particularly promising for food ingredients, with trading margin improvement of 20 basis points cancelling out equivalent basis point reduction in the first six months.
"This performance was assisted by the continued development of nutritional and functional food and beverage ingredient systems, in addition to cost recovery and savings programmes," said Kerry.
In Europe, the Bio-Science division, which includes emulsifiers, stabilizers, specialty proteins and enzymes, was said to have made "encouraging progress in the dairy sector as processors seek product differentiation through innovative health offerings."
However the greatest gains for nutrition were seen in the US and Asia Pacific market.
In Asia Pacific, the group improved its sales revenue by 9.2 per cent to €363m – and nutrition technologies recorded double digit growth in Asia, particularly fuelled by Kerry's San-A-Crème nutritional lipids.
Healthy eating was also a factor in the Asian consumer markets. Kerry has tackled the trans-fat issue in Asia with reformulations, and the savoury biscuit sector outperformed sales in the sweet sector thanks to the growth of health/functional lines.
In the US, the group said growth was achieved by meeting market demands for new nutritional and functional food and beverage offerings, assisted by the Proteins and Nutritionals range of dairy and soy technologies.
Last April Kerry acquired Custom Industries and Nuvex Ingredients for a combined $83m (€63m). The latter included an organically certified production facility in Blue Earth, Minnesota. This manoeuvre is said to have strengthened Kerry's extrusion technology, and enhanced its market position in the cereal and nutritional sectors.
In nutritional beverages, the group developed spray-dried pharma-grade nutritional formulas and shelf-stable nutritional beverages, both of which were said to have achieved strong market positioning.
