Italian dairy firm Parmalat has posted a 6.9% decrease in net revenue in full-year 2018, to €6.23 billion, while EBITDA was down 11.5% to €401.3 million.
However, the group said that if taken at constant exchange rates (and if the group's Venezuela operations are excluded), net revenue was largely in line with the previous year (-0.1%), with all regions except North America reporting a positive performance.
'The year 2018 was characterised by some external challenging situations deriving from high price volatility in the raw milk market, difficulties in managing listed sales prices and an unfavuorable trend in the market for powdered products,' the company said in a statement, adding that some of the markets in which it operates were adversely affected by logistics costs dynamics.
'Against this backdrop, the Group is implementing organisational changes and defining action plans for the procurement of raw milk and regarding the industrial, commercial and logistic areas, aimed at overcoming those challenges.'
Divisional Performance
In the group's Europe division, sales were up 0.8% to €1.15 billion, however North America saw a revenue decline of 6.1% to €2.44 billion.
Africa was down 2.7% to €426 million, Oceania was down 5.9% to €1.03 billion and Latin America was down 15.6% to €1.136 billion.
Net financial assets grew to €468.9 million, for an increase of €213.6 million, compared with €255.3 euros at December 31, 2017, the company said.
© 2019 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
