The extraordinary administration of troubled Croatian retail and food conglomerate Agrokor has issued its latest monthly report on the group's progress, in which it states that retail side of the business 'has started to stabilise, with the customer numbers recovering and nearing the levels recorded in previous years'.
In addition, 'optimisation of cost and restructuring measures continue with the objective of further improving the results'.
As a result of new financing arrangements, the group's Food and Agri businesses have also posted a more positive performance, the administrators said.
The Food sector, 'which is mostly seasonal, has achieved solid results in the six- month period,' they said. 'After the petition and with the liquidity assured, the food companies normalized production and business processes which had been disrupted in the pre- petition period.'
In the Agri business, while the first months of 2017 were 'marked with low liquidity, worsening of the suppliers’ conditions and challenges to the normal functioning of the supply chain, the new financing significantly increased liquidity and stability of the companies, with adequate liquidity improving raw material purchasing conditions and positively affecting profitability.'
Future Viability
The administrators also report that 'significant progress' has been made on the group's future viability plans, with draft viability plans now drawn up for its five divisions, Agrokor Group including Agrokor d.d., retail, food, agri-business, and Agrokor Portfolio Holdings.
In addition, as of 10 August, some 10,782 claim applications from creditors have been 'fully processed', and 1,269 are still to be processed.
For the first half of 2017 (January to June), Agrokor posted revenue of HRK 7.29 billion (€0.99 billion) in its retail and wholesale business, HRK 3.98 billion (€540 million) in its food operations and HRK 1.35 billion (€180 million) in its agri businesses.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
