The fruit preparations business saw mild volume growth in the 2009|10 financial year across all regions. AGRANA was able to expand its overall market share. One of the crucial factors which made this possible was the single-minded further enhancement of quality and service standards. This was positive for the sales situation in Western and Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. In Russia and Ukraine, AGRANA recorded healthy growth in revenues and in profits despite the economic downturn in 2009. AGRANA’s growth also accelerated in China and South Korea. Sales volume fluctuation was registered intra-year in Latin America (specifically, in Argentina and Mexico). In highly competitive markets such as Germany and the USA, AGRANA held its own well during 2009|10 thanks to innovative products and intensified marketing.
AGRANA successfully counteracted the eff ect of the lower sales prices for fruit preparations through efficiency improvements in procurement, in the internal organisational structure and in-house processes. The ongoing standardisation of processes and raising of synergies between the business segments is expected to continue to improve the earnings situation going forward.
Since the fourth quarter of the 2009 calendar year, customers are showing renewed interest in innovations. Examples are concepts related to weight management, naturalness, functional value added and children’s products, but also new fruit preparations that are combined with chocolate products and cereals. In the USA, fruit preparations will now also be produced for baked goods.
Higher sales volumes of fruit juice concentrates more than off set the lower selling prices. In the large Western European markets (particularly Germany and the United Kingdom), AGRANA held volumes stable. The drastic fall in product sales prices followed the much-reduced raw material prices from the 2008 harvest. The prices for apple juice concentrate were on average one-third lower than one year earlier, with a stabilisation in the second half of 2009|10. From January 2010 AGRANA registered a small increase in prices that was triggered by brisk demand for and limited availability of concentrate volume. Through one-year contracts with large fruit juice bottlers, sales of most of the production of apple juice concentrate were already contractually secured during the campaign.
AGRANA expanded the size and structure of its customer base in the 2009|10 financial year and opened up new sales regions in order to reduce dependence on the very competitive Central and Western European markets and to better even out price fluctuation. By the end of 2009, reorganisation measures to implement lean production principles were successfully put in place at all European manufacturing sites. Through the tightening of production costs, competitiveness is to be assured and enhanced.
Most of the production facilities of AGRANA Juice are located in the Eastern European fruit growing areas (Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and Romania). In the 2009|10 financial year, hedging of foreign exchange rates and a strengthening in the zloty and forint against the euro helped recoup a substantial portion of the currency translation losses reported in 2008|09.