Hilton Food Group plc
29th October 2020
TRADING UPDATE
Hilton Food Group plc (“Hilton” or the “Group”), the leading international specialist food packing business, is today providing a trading update for the period 13th July 2020 to date.
During the period, the Group's performance has been in line with the Board's expectations. We continued to grow the business through additional volumes reflecting both the ongoing shift to home consumption as well as close cooperation with our retail partners.
In Europe, we have continued to make good progress in a number of markets, benefitting from consumers eating out less often due to the ongoing impact of Covid 19. Turnover in the UK is therefore higher and driven predominantly by red meat and fish volumes. Turnover has continued to grow in both Sweden and Denmark where we have recently started to pack chicken. In Holland, we have seen higher red meat volumes and also benefitted from vegetarian and vegan products produced by Dalco, where volumes have increased. In Central Europe, volumes have remained buoyant as reported at the half year, with continued volume growth in Fresh Food across both Tesco and Zabka. We are also pleased to confirm that we have successfully started up the Belgium operation during the first week of October.
In Australia, we are now operating as a unified business covering the sites of Bunbury, Truganina (Victoria) and Queensland. The tightening of restrictions in Victoria state during the quarter led to increased home consumption and strong volume growth from our business, with the Queensland facility having also been fully rolled-out. The development of the New Zealand facility is still on track to open in the third quarter of 2021.
The Group's financial position remains strong and we continue to explore opportunities to invest in and to grow the business in both domestic and overseas markets.
The Group will announce the publication date for its results for the 53 weeks ending on 3rd January 2021 in its January Trading Update.