VION has published its 2012 Annual Report. This follows several important decisions taken in 2012 and 2013 leading to material changes to the company’s size and composition. The far-reaching strategic restructuring, which included such measures as the sale of VION Ingredients as announced in October, was necessary due to the fact that the results of VION Food in its key countries of the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom had fallen far below expectations.
As previously reported, the net result for 2012 is a loss of € 830 million due to significant non-recurring write-offs on participating interests.
The revised strategy led to a large number of measures and divestments. The sale of Banner Pharmacaps was completed successfully in December 2012. All the VION Food operations in the United Kingdom were sold. The VION Pork UK business unit was sold in late 2012, and the VION Poultry UK and VION Red Meat UK business units in March 2013. On October 7, 2013, it was announced that an agreement to sell VION Ingredients for approximately € 1.6 billion had been reached with US based Darling International.
After the sale of VION Ingredients has been completed, equity will be approximately € 500 million. The total debt burden will be lowered to a normalised level in early 2014. The new financing of VION Food is currently being finalised.
The remainder of 2013 and a portion of 2014 will be devoted to finalising the restructuring of the Food activities and to implementing the new strategy and plans. The focus of VION Food will be on the continued development of market-oriented production and on the further processing of fresh pork and beef for retail, meat industry and food service customers.
