Tasty Baking Co. president and CEO Charles Pizzi said today (1 November) the US baker had had a “challenging” third quarter as the company continued to get to grips with its new production facility.
The baker posted a 7.4% fall in net sales to US$40.4m for the three months to 25 September.
Tasty Baking incurred $4.4m in costs during the quarter due to the move to its Navy Yard production site. The costs meant the group recorded a net loss for the third quarter of $4.9m, against US$500,000 a year earlier.
The Navy Yard facility first started production last November but Tasty Baking has been moving from its Hunting Park facility in phases.
Pizzi said “production limitations” at the new site had hit sales. “The third quarter of 2010 proved to be challenging for us in terms of optimizing the new facility and those challenges limited our ability to drive top-line growth during the first half of the quarter.
“During the third quarter, the production limitations negatively impacted gross sales by approximately $4m. By the end of the third quarter of 2010, virtually all of these production limitations had been resolved and as of today they are having no material impact on the business. While we have removed those barriers to growing the top line, we continue to focus on completing the optimisation of the Navy Yard facility during the fourth quarter of 2010.”
