Irish ingredients and cheese products group Glanbia has said it is on-target to achieve double-digit growth for the year.
In a mid-year trading update ahead of its interim results, due to be published on 27 August, the company reported a “good first half-year performance”, with all its divisions performing broadly in-line with expectations.
The company also said market conditions remained “relatively positive”. Glanbia said that global dairy prices and demand were somewhat weaker compared with 2007 but looked set to remain above historical trends.
“A good first-half performance and a relatively positive market environment supports the outlook for the remainder of the year for Glanbia,” said group managing director John Moloney. “As a group we are on-target to meet current full-year market expectations and look forward to delivering another year of double-digit growth in 2008.”
Glanbia said in the first six months, its Consumer Foods Ireland division benefited from margin recovery, redressing the impact of significant raw material cost increases seen in the second half of 2007. Its Agribusiness division delivered “a satisfactory result”, the company said, in spite of record increases in feed prices and fertiliser input costs.
The company’s Food Ingredients & Nutritionals arm had a strong first half relative to 2007, Glanbia reported. It also stated that international joint ventures had recovered well in the first half of the year and delivered significantly improved performances. These operations are also expected deliver a significantly improved full-year contribution, the company said.
However, Glanbia added that for the full year, the time lag between market price and milk price movements is expected to result in a weaker margin in its Food Ingredients Ireland division compared with 2007.
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However, it said Food Ingredients USA “is benefiting from strong demand and volume growth”, and is expected to deliver a good result for the full year.
