Kerry Group on cusp of Pinnacle sale
The announcement came this morning in Kerry Group’s preliminary full-year earnings where sales totted up to €5.8bn ($6.5bn) for the full-year and profits rose 4.1%.
“Since the year end, the group has commenced negotiations, which are now at an advanced stage, in relation to the sale of the Pinnacle lifestyle bakery business in Australia,” Kerry Group said in its financial statement.
Kerry Pinnacle, headquartered in Newington, supplies a range of bakery ingredients and frozen products across Australia, including donut, cake and muffin mixes, frozen cakes and profiteroles as well as flavors, fillings and fondants.
The firm distributes to Australia’s major retailers, franchise bakery groups, plant bakeries and independent cake and bread shops via ten distribution centers and pulls in annual revenues of €160m ($181.28m).
The move to sell the business comes soon after Kerry’s decision to dispose of its UK chilled savory pastry business. It sold the business to Pork Farms Group in August, 2014 for an undisclosed sum.
Still strong amid ‘intense competition’
Kerry said that despite “intense competition due to retail pressures and industry profitability issues” in Australia and New Zealand, business in Asia-Pacific’s developing markets continued to fare well.
In Australia, Kerry Pinnacle had also managed to continue expanding technologies for sweet product development for the country’s lifestyle bakery sector, it said.
Group revenues for Asia-Pacific were €807m ($912m), up 11.8% in volume terms.
The firm said it expected a strong growth in 2015 for the group globally.
“In the rapidly changing consumer and geopolitical environment across developed and developing markets, Kerry is well placed to maximize our global grow opportunities through strong innovation in partnership with our customers… Kerry Foods has made good progress to-date in repositioning its business portfolio and ‘go-to-market’ structures for today’s consumer markets and channel requirements.”
