UAE-based Agthia Group, a leading F&B group, has posted a net profit of Dh92 million ($25 million) for the first nine months of 2012, marking a rise 54 per cent as against the same period last year.

The sales during the period reached Dh983 million ($267.5 million) – an increase of 17 per cent.

Agthia’s strong sales growth was driven by the solid 24 per cent sales growth achieved by the Consumer Business Division and strong 13 per cent growth delivered by the Agri Business Division, a company statement said.

Growth was driven by continued strong performance of Agthia’s core businesses of bottled water, flour and animal feed, while priorities for the recently launched Yoplait fresh dairy products and Chiquita natural juices continues to be building strong in-store presence and visibility by driving distribution and penetration across all the retail segments.

Yoplait and Chiquita volumes are growing progressively, and further market mix improvements and other initiatives are being implemented to accelerate this volume growth.  In Turkey, rebranding of the recently acquired spring water company is close to completion, while plans to expand regional distribution in Turkey and launch ‘natural spring’ drinking water in the UAE and wider GCC are underway.

The new initiative of frozen baked product launch is now planned for second half of 2013, while poultry feed production capacity expansion is on track for completion in the last quarter of 2012 and flour milling capacity increase is planned for the last quarter of 2013.

Rashed Mubarak Al Hajeri, chairman of Agthia Group said, “We are pleased with Agthia’s strong overall performance and have had a great year so far. Although the commodity market volatility and regional unrest are certainly challenging, yet we are progressing on our long term strategy. We remain optimistic and expect another year of good business performance in 2012.”

Ilias Assimakopoulos, chief executive officer of Agthia, added, “Over the past few months, we have focused on both growing our core businesses while driving penetration and distribution of our recently launched brands.”

“Various marketing activities have been initiated to address the softer than expected consumer off-take of the newly introduced Yoplait and Chiquita products.

“The Company’s strategic focus for the period has been to maintain growth momentum and to consolidate newly introduced products, driving the core businesses, expanding geographically into key markets while addressing the challenge of higher input cost by pursuing cost saving initiatives. We have a very strong and healthy balance sheet and we are optimistic and expect another year of good business performance in 2012,” he added.

“Although the commodity market volatility and regional unrest are certainly challenging, yet we are progressing on our long term strategy. We remain optimistic and expect another year of good business performance in 2012,” he concluded. – TradeArabia News Service