Australian food group Goodman Fielder is looking at domestic acquisitions in the bakery and dairy sector, the company said today (26 August).
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Speaking on Goodman’s earnings conference call today (26 August), managing director Peter Margin said the company would look at categories where consolidation is achievable and would also consider buying liquid grocery brands if the opportunity arose.
He added: “We are also exploring opportunities around geographic expansion and organically building the Meadow Fresh brand into other markets. We’re doing a little bit of that into Hong Kong and Singapore at the moment and we’re exploring some other regions to aggressively build that business.”
Margin said that the challenge the company has in the dairy business is to build Meadow Fresh into a ‘power brand’.
“Our FY09 revenue was around US$190m and our challenge is really to significantly increase the revenue from the Meadow Fresh brand. Much of our marketing investment that you’ll see in the next 12 months will be very much focused around building the Meadow Fresh franchise. We’ve got an extensive product and packaging innovation programme, which starts to go into the market in the next couple of months.”
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By GlobalDataThe company this morning posted a jump in net post-tax profit on the back of sales gains and lower input costs.
Profit climbed from A$27.7m (US$23.1m) to A$177.1m, while sales increased 6.5% to A$2.85bn as Goodman upped its focus on building brands through product innovation and “robust” brand support.
In a regulatory filing, the company said that the sale of its edible fats and oils business was progressing, with a “number of parties” expressing “keen interest” in the potential acquisition.
Margin told analysts today that the company will either “sell or hold” with the divestment, and that it also has a number of other brands that “would probably be in better hands elsewhere”. “We will progressively work through that,” Margin said.
Goodman said the company’s outlook for the next fiscal year was “very encouraging” and that it was looking to increase its investment in market and innovation.
“We’re very pleased with the business fundamentals during a period of unparalleled commodity market volatility,” Margin said. “Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be opening a new R&D facility in Sydney and we’ve got an outstanding pipeline of products that will be introduced into the market in the next three years.”
