Naturex posts strong Q1 growth and highlights ‘promise’ in Personal Care

26-Apr-2011 - Last updated on 27-Apr-2011 at 15:21 GMT

Speciality ingredients supplier Naturex has posted strong growth for the first quarter and despite it remaining a small part of its operations, the company still holds out hope for its personal care business.

The naturals company published its consolidated revenues for the first quarter of the 2011 fiscal year and highlighted the positive start the company has made.

Turnover is up by 24.0 per cent at €64.0m, versus €51.6m the previous year, and with a like-to-like exchange rate, organic growth comes out at 17.5 per cent .
This puts Naturex ahead of its annual growth objectives and goal of two digit growth in sales, which was announced at the end of March 2011 at the publication of 2010 annual results.

“We are very happy with this start to the fiscal year, which gives us a significant head start over our annual objectives, ” declared Jacques Dikansky, CEO and founder of Naturex.

Wider product portfolio

Naturex believes that the performance over the first quarter of 2011 illustrate both the positive effect of a wider product portfolio and the business synergies produced by the diversity of ranges that have been beneficial in all of its three markets : food & beverage, nutrition & health and personal care.

Following this announcement Naturex stated the personal care business is still highly promising, with quarterly figures being of little significance given the very small base, and pârticularly in comparison to the other business units.

The Food & Beverage business recorded dynamic growth in sales, up by 32.4 per cent and giving revenues of €40.2m versus €30.3m for the first quarter of the previous year. Nutrition & Health business also grew, primarily in the food supplement sector, with revenues up by 6.2 per cent to reach €19.6m.

The three geographic regions in which Naturex operates have all contributed to the growth in sales over the first quarter of 2011, with the ingredients firm highlighting Europe and North America as being particularly strong.
In the Asia/Oceania zone, growth remains strong acording to Naturex, although, climatic upheavals and floods in Australia have led to a slight dip in sales over the quarter, on a like-for-like basis. Australia accounts for 61 per cent of sales in this area.

Emerging markets also promising

Naturex pointed to the emerging markets as recording a promising sales growth, particularly in Asia where the Group has opened a new sales office in Korea and strengthened the existing structure in China. The same was said for Latin America, where the Group has opened a business subsidiary in Mexico, in addition to operations in Brazil.

“Our international teams are hard at work to pursue development and achieve further business successes. The trade fairs we have attended in recent months have confirmed the quality of our positioning, this is a boost for our confidence in the years ahead,” said Dikansky.

The France-headquartered natural extracts company highlighted earlier in the year that the cosmetics sector was a new growth area, although at the time it only made up just over 1 per cent of the company’s annual sales.

In 2010, overall sales for the company totalled €226.3m compared to €186.1m in full year sales for 2009, up 26 per cent.

For the cosmetics sector sales stood at €2.7m compared to €1.6m for the prior year.

“This is still a small sector but we experienced a very good trend this year and we expect to grow quicker in the future,” Naturex contact for investor relations Carole Alexandre told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.com.

Alexandre also said the company expected to make acquisitions in the domain in the future to drive some of this growth.