Aryzta completes sale of Brazil business ahead of time

Swiss-Irish food group Aryzta has successfully concluded the sale of its Brazil business to Grupo Bimbo SAB de CV.

Welcoming the early completion of the disposal, Aryzta chairman and interim CEO Urs Jordi said the deal would allow the company to agree new lending facilities.

“The sale of the Brazil business concludes our planned disposal programme,” he said. “The disposals plan enabled Aryzta to agree new lending facilities, pay deferred and current hybrid interest and improve the group’s financial profile.

“Our focus now is to deliver sequential quarterly positive organic growth supported by positive volume and pricing. We are working with our customers on inflation price recovery and also focusing on further operational efficiencies to offset the inflation trends.”

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Aryzta made a loss of €235.8 million for the year to the end of July, down from €1.09 billion the previous year, as it battles to reverse the company’s financial fortunes.

The par-baked goods specialist, which owns the Cuisine de France label here and supplies the likes of McDonalds and Subway, saw revenue fall by 8.6 per cent to €1.5 billion as Covid-19 impacted sales across its food service and QSR (quick service restaurant) markets.

Nonetheless, the company said the results exceeded expectations and that an ongoing process of cost reduction and asset disposal had successfully “de-risked the financial profile” of the group.