Agrana's Restructuring of Fruit Division completed

03/07/06 The AGRANA Group will complete the restructuring of its Fruit Division in mid-year. Beginning from July, this business area will consist of two newly created umbrella companies: AGRANA Fruit S.A. based in Paris and AGRANA Juice GmbH based in Gleisdorf/Austria.

AGRANA Fruit S.A. will assume strategic control of the business activities in the fruit preparations segment, and AGRANA Juice GmbH will perform the same role in the fruit juice concentrates segment. The group companies Atys, DSF, Steirerobst, VallÆ Saft and Wink – which were hitherto operating independently on the market – will contribute their operations in the fruit preparations and fruit juice concentrates segments to the umbrella companies and will merge into them.

AGRANA Fruit is the world market leader in fruit preparations for the dairy industry. AGRANA Juice is the leading producer of fruit juice concentrates in Europe and pursues an increasingly global strategy. The two new companies employ about 4,600 staff members in 37 production locations on all five continents. Revenue of the entire Fruit Division of AGRANA amounted to € 541.2 million in the 2005l06 financial year.

The CEO of AGRANA – Johann Marihart – summarizes the advantages of the new corporate structure as follows: “This restructuring creates two powerful organizations that are close to the market. Internal processes are streamlined, costs are reduced and customer service is improved further. The combination of activities that used to be conducted separately also enlarges our research and development capacities.” Another advantage would be a joint appearance on the market, both regarding raw material procurement and product sales. These steps are designed to improve purchase prices and better secure raw material supplies, among other things.

Furthermore, the new organization is structured in a way to facilitate the integration of additional operating units into the companies groups AGRANA Fruit and AGRANA Juice either via acquisitions or through organic growth. Marihart explains: “By adding ‘AGRANA’ to the company names we underline the high quality standards of our products also at the international level.”

AGRANA Fruit S.A. is managed by Michel Maupu, hitherto Chairman of the Managing Board of Atys S.A., AGRANA’s fruit preparations subsidiary. The company will be based in Paris, where the former headquarters of Atys were located. AGRANA Juice GmbH is managed by Anton Wink, who contributed the fruit juice concentrates company Wink to the AGRANA Group in 2004. The company will be based in Gleisdorf, where the headquarters of Steirerobst AG were located to date. AGRANA’s Belgian group company Dirafrost, which produces frozen specialty products, will continue to operate under the Dirafrost brand because of its special market position.