Naturex Announces Continued Growth in Q3

05 Nov 2015 - Naturex, the global leader in speciality plant-based natural ingredients, announced its consolidated revenue for the first nine months of 2015.

"Solid organic growth of 6.1% in the 2015 third-quarter confirms the positive effects of a gradual and sustainable shift towards a business model for optimising growth and creating value", commented Olivier Rigaud, Chief Executive Officer and Director of Naturex. "By pursuing our strategy for business development in all regions where we operate and optimising our product portfolio, we have been successful in getting back on track with sustained growth for the first nine months, despite continuing volatility in selected markets. We are confident that this momentum will lead to quality growth for the full-year and be accompanied by an improvement in profitability in the second half. The adoption of new governance for the Sales Division and the reinforcing of management with the recruitment of experienced Senior Vice Presidents, General Managers for the four redefined geographic regions, will 3 allow us to accelerate our growth in the months ahead in emerging markets and bolster our positions in North America and Europe, in line with the targets for growth and profitability of our BRIGHT2020 strategic plan." 

Vegetable Juices Inc. was consolidated by the Group as from June 2014. The consolidation scope effect concerns only sales from January to May 2015 as, starting from June 2015, this entity's sales were included within the historical Group structure. 

The Food & Beverage division had revenue of €189.8 million, up 22.2% for the first nine months of 2015. This included a consolidation scope effect of €18.5 million from sales in the first five months of Vegetable Juices Inc. As we continue to optimise our product ranges to increase the value generated by our product mix and integrate Vegetable Juices Inc. within the historical Group structure of consolidated operations, third quarter sales rose 5.1% to €59.5 million. Vegetable Juices Inc. experienced a slowdown in this period as customers postponed the launch of new products and concepts.

Nutrition & Health achieved very strong growth of 29.8% with revenue of €91.1 million for the first nine months of 2015. Revenue in the third quarter was up 44.5% from the same period in 2014 to €30.5 million. This growth was driven in particular by the repositioning the nutraceutical offering initiated at the end of 2014 in favour of plant extracts with clinically-substantiated benefits and innovative fruit and vegetable-based concepts for example. 

Personal Care grew 53.3% over the first nine months, with sales reaching €7.4 million The third quarter maintained the momentum of the first two quarters with growth in sales of 36.6%. – 

Toll Manufacturing revenue of €6.6 million was largely steady over the first nine months and derived primarily from krill toll manufacturing. As previously reported, this activity is now carried out at the Houston plant created in connection with the Aker BioMarine joint venture. Positive trends spread across all three regions 

The Europe/Africa region had €110.1 million in revenue, up 3.0%, for the first nine months of the year. Sales in the third quarter were up 5.8%, highlighting this region's gradual return to growth, despite uneven performances from one country to the next. 

The Americas region had nine-month revenue of €152.1 million (including the consolidation scope effect from VJI), up 50.4% for the period. In the third quarter, sales rose 33.6% to €49.7 million, driven primarily by strong growth in the United States. 

The Asia/Pacific region had growth of 14.4% for the first nine months of 2015 with revenue of €34.8 million. Measures taken to rationalise the product lines of the Food & Beverage business adversely impacted third-quarter sales that amounted to €11.5 million whereas it continued to actively make strong inroads into the nutraceutical market.