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Aug 27, 2020
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China, deals to help Givaudan keep up pace of growth

By
Reuters API
Published
Aug 27, 2020

Givaudan aims to increase its annual organic sales by 4-5% on average until 2025, mainly due to acquisitions, a focus on smaller and local customers and fast-growing China, it said on Thursday.




Givaudan has weathered the COVID-19 pandemic relatively well so far as many consumers stocked up on packaged foods and household goods containing its flavours and fragrances during lockdowns.

“I am very confident on the company’s profitability,” Chief Executive Gilles Andrier told an investor day in Zurich, adding most if not all sites were operating at full capacity.

Most of Givaudan’s business has proven resilient to the crisis, but food service products destined for restaurants and fragrances for perfumes have taken a hit. Andrier wouldn’t predict when they would fully recover, but mentioned some encouraging signs in the United States.

Shares in the company, up more than 27% so far this year, slipped 0.3% by 0840 GMT.

The Geneva-based company gave details on its growth strategy for the next five years. It wants to keep expanding beyond its current portfolio into nutrition, food ingredients and beauty, focus on the fast-growing business with smaller and local brands and keep investing in high-growth markets like China.

Andrier said the company wanted to double sales by 2030. It had sales of 6.2 billion Swiss francs ($6.8 billion) last year.

Vontobel analyst Jean-Philippe Bertschy said the new targets were “more evolution than revolution”, adding the doubling of sales over 10 years implied acquiring around 3 billion francs in sales and 4.5% organic growth.

Givaudan renamed its flavour division, which makes flavours for food and drinks, to “Taste & Wellbeing” and relabelled its fragrance unit, which makes scents for perfumes and household goods like toothpaste and soap as “Fragrance & Beauty”.

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