The UK’s Robert Wiseman Dairies has reported lower first-half pre-tax profit, and said second-half results would be affected by oil, energy and plastic costs.
The company said pre-tax profit was down by 21.7% to £12.1m (US$21.0m), compared to £15.5m in the year-ago period. Results were in line with expectations.
Turnover increased by 14.7% to £281.3m, while liquid milk volumes were up 13.2% to 687 million litres. Robert Wiseman said all dairies ran at record levels during the first six months, with new supply contracts with Sainsbury’s and Tesco more than offsetting the loss of the Asda contract.
“As mentioned previously, we now envisage that there are unlikely to be significant changes in major supermarket contracts in the short term,” said chairman Alan Wiseman.
“The outlook for the year as a whole will be influenced by oil, energy and plastic costs during the second half and the extent to which we can make recovery of these increased costs. Our target is to re-build margins in the period ahead, but higher costs clearly make this more difficult.
“The business is in good shape and we remain confident about our long-term prospects,” he added.
