Baked goods group Aryzta delivered strong growth in the third quarter, despite ongoing price hikes due to inflation.
The company said growth was broad based, with France, Switzerland, Poland and Germany performing well, and the rest of the world continuing strong trends seen in recent updates. Among the business units, growth was led by foodservice and quick service restaurants.
The increase comes despite strong comparative periods in the previous year.
Inflation continued to put pressure on the business, with volatility remaining high and costs still above long-term averages although some input costs had fallen from peak levels. Meanwhile, inflation trends for labour, purchased services, transportation, and ingredients such as sugar and eggs continued to rise and offset reductions in flour and butter.
“Our business performed strongly in Q3, achieving solid volume growth despite implementing further necessary price increases to recover persistent inflationary costs across our business,” said Aryzta chair and interim chief executive Urs Jordi.
“Our focus remains on sustaining organic growth and leveraging innovation to grow market share. We continue to control fixed costs and improve operational efficiencies to help our customers deal with the persistent cost inflation pressures and improve performance. While we face stronger organic growth comparisons in the coming quarter, we remain on track to deliver improvements across all key metrics in line with our guidance for the period ending July 2023.”
