Fonterra Co-operative Group has announced a 65 per cent increase in net profit after tax to NZ$834 million for the financial year ended 31 July 2016 – reflecting a stronger business despite ongoing challenges in global dairy markets.
“We’ve seen the real strength of our ingredients business this year. The money our farmers have invested in stainless steel is giving us more choice, and we have matched production to the highest value customer demand. In a difficult market, we increased ingredients normalised EBIT this year by 24 per cent to $1,204 million, Chief Executive Theo Spierings says.
“In consumer and foodservice, we converted an additional 380 million litres of liquid milk equivalents (LME) into higher returning products, bringing our total volumes in this business up from 4.5 billion LME to 4.9 billion. Increasing our consumer and foodservice volumes, and especially our foodservice growth, meant we increased our normalised EBIT in this business by 42 per cent to NZ$580 million.”