The underlying operations of Egg Packaging Europe continued to improve. However, the division was, as expected, strongly affected by unfavourable fluctuations in several exchange rates. The North American business showed a positive trend, whereas Industrial Packaging saw an expected sharp decline.
Peter Arndrup Poulsen, CEO of Brødrene Hartmann A/S, comments on the Interim Report for Q1 2009:
On the first three months of 2009
Group performance was in line with expectations. We were severely hit by exchange rate movements, but we are pleased that underlying operations continued to improve in our largest and most important business area – egg packaging in Europe. The underlying results of this business area grew by DKK 5 million relative to the otherwise strong first quarter of 2008.
On investments
We have launched a planned investment programme in Europe, focusing on automation and efficiency optimisation, and we expect these investments to have a gradual positive impact on our profit in the course of 2009.
On Hartmann North America
We are also pleased to see that the profit before special items for our North American business increased by DKK 7 million against the first quarter of 2008. We have observed that growing environmental awareness has taken hold in the US, resulting in increased demand for environmentally friendly packaging such as Hartmann’s products. Our customers take an interest in supporting and profiling sustainability efforts; a trend we have successfully addressed by providing sustainability advice and training to retail chains such as Wal-Mart and Topco.
On Industrial Packaging
Our business area for industrial packaging saw an expected sharp decline due to our largest customer of this business area phasing out its purchases of Hartmann’s moulded-fibre packaging during 2009. Active efforts are still being made to generate compensating sales.
On full-year outlook
We maintain our full-year forecast of revenue of approximately DKK 1,400 million and an EBIT margin of 5–6%. We still consider our goal to achieve an EBIT margin of approximately 10% in 2010 to be realistic, albeit no less challenging in the light of the unfavourable exchange rate fluctuations.