Corbion has reported positive net sales and EBITDA growth in Q1 2014 despite significant negative exchange rate effects. Organic sales growth was 3.0% due to strong growth in the Biochemicals segment. EBITDA before one-off costs at constant currencies increased by €3.2 million or 13.6% compared to Q1 2013. Expenditure on R&D rose significantly.
Reported sales were €182.7m compared with the year-ago quarter’s €180.5m.
"I am pleased with our EBITDA growth versus the first quarter of last year, despite significant adverse currency effects and an increase of €2.4 million to €7.3 million in R&D costs in Q1 versus Q1 2013,” said Gerard Hoetmer, CEO. “Trading performance was mixed across our different markets: Biobased Food Ingredients volumes declined slightly, below our expectations, particularly in North America. On the other hand, Biochemicals continued its very good and broad-based performance, growing organically by 17%.”
The company said that Q1 2014 was a challenging quarter for Biobased Food Ingredients as the largest market unit, Bakery, was negatively impacted by severe adverse weather conditions in North America in the first part of the quarter. The latter part of Q1 showed a significant improvement, but this was not sufficient to achieve positive volume growth for the quarter.
Also market unit Meat & Culinary showed a slight volume decline especially in the North American market. Whilst maintaining its market position, Corbion said that its sales volume was impacted by a difficult meat market in North America. New clean label solutions are continuing to gain ground. Market unit Foods grew its volumes satisfactorily in Q1 2014.
Net sales of Biobased Food Ingredients declined from € 137.4 million to € 133.6 million; sales
were down 1.4% year-on-year on an organic basis. The EBITDA margin before one-off costs decreased from 18.2% to 17.4%. EBITDA before one-off costs declined by € 1.7 million to € 23.3 million. Adjusting for the negative currency impact, EBITDA would actually have increased, despite the higher R&D costs.
