Innscor Africa Limited (Innscor) recorded a 167 percent increase in profit to $64,011 million for the six months ended December 31, 2018 compared to a $23,963 million recorded in prior period driven by double-digit volume growth across all categories.
Addington Chinake, Innscor’s chairperson, said revenue was up 61 percent to $489,893 million for the period under review compared to $304,806 recorded in prior period. He said during the review period, foreign currency supply to support both working capital and capital expenditure requirements difficulties led to production constraints and delays in a number of capital projects although policy changes worked for the better.
“These policy changes also sparked a wave of increased consumer demand, and volumes were generally very firm across the group’s entire portfolio during the period,” he said. Chinake said consolidation of both Prodairy and Probottlers, following restructures, also added to the growth in revenue, as did the improvement in the Irvine’s business as it continued its recovery from the Avian Influenza epidemic encountered in 2017.
“Group’s well-priced raw materials pipeline, distortions in margins arising from stock replacement policies, an improved sales mix, continually improving factory efficiencies, volume-driven conversion and distribution efficiencies, and the lag in inflation on operating expenditure, translated to improved margins and a satisfactory growth in operating profit over the comparative period,” he said.
The listed group’s capital expenditure was at $27,801 million, driven by significant increases in costs of imported items and deployed towards improving efficiencies, innovations and new capacity at National Foods, Natpak and Irvine’s. Assets increased to $712,636 million during the review period compared to $565,143 million reported in prior period.
Chinake said availability of foreign currency will continue to dictate the pace at which Innscor executes its capital expenditure projects.
He said the firm welcomes the recent Monetary Policy Statement as it is a large user of foreign currency and said this seeks to provide a transparent mechanism for importers to access currency from the market, whilst providing exporters value for their foreign currency earnings. Daily News.
