A breakdown of income showed that EBITA animal nutrition increased by 22.2% and fish feed was also up by 24.6%. Strong growth, Nutreco said, was also seen in China, both in animal nutrition and fish feed and earnings per share from continuing operations in China increased by 45.9%.
A new executive board will also be in place from August 2012 and current Nutreco CEO Wout Dekker said it gave him a special satisfaction to report a record H1. He said: “The rising prices for raw feed materials are having an impact on the production costs of livestock farmers. This explains the ongoing R&D commitment of Nutreco to explore alternative and less expensive raw material options and to increase the efficiency of feed formulations.”
An extension of the company’s activities in Brazil has also seen an increase in the shareholding of Nutreco Fri-Ribe to 97%, which was helped by the purchase of Bellman Nutriçao Animal — a Brazilian supplier and producer of farm minerals and concentrates. Nutreco said it was also working on a new factory in Russia, which will produce feed for young animals and should be open by the end of 2012.
Dekker said: “The results and business developments in the first half-year show Nutreco is on track in implementing our strategy of ‘Ambition 2016 — driving sustainable growth’. We also successfully raised $250m in long-term debt from the private placement market to further diversify our funding structure and to extend our debt maturity profile in order to support our strategic objectives.”
Nutreco also said that the first half-year results had given the company confidence for the full-year performance later this year. Nutreco has also said that it expects the full year EBITA to be around €260m.
Nutreco declared H1 earnings of €103.6m, 23.9% higher than H1 earnings from 2011. The company has also reported a revenue of €2,354.5m, an increase of 10.8% compared to the first half of 2011.
