Nestlé sees double-digit growth for confectionery, despite sales headwinds impacting revenues
For its latest nine-month trading update, Nestlé has confirmed that the business has recorded double-digit growth within its confectionery categories, despite sales figures slowing marginally in the wake of inflation-related price increases this year, reports Neill Barston.
According to its latest figures, the group experienced headwinds in delivered a performance of 68.82 billion revenues for the first three quarters of the year, down against 69.1bn for the period in 2022, though it reported organic growth of 7.8% in its overall operations across the business.
Among its key highlights for the period was a decision to acquire a controlling stake in Brazilian confectionery company, CRM, as well as seeing high single-digit growth in Europe for its flagship KitKat brand, which was also mirrored by high growth in other areas for the brand, including within India.
Nestlé was represented this month at our World Confectionery Conference, in Harrogate Yorkshire, where cocoa ingredient specialist John Newell, offered a key breakdown on how the company approaches its flavour development, including for the creation of some especially innovative launches around the world, including a recent whiskey-infused KitKat launch in Brazil and Japan. You can see our exclusive video review of the 2023 World Confectionery Conference here.
Speaking on the company’s latest results, Mark Schneider, Nestlé CEO, commented: “Our diversified portfolio and differentiated offerings helped us deliver strong organic growth in the first nine months of the year. Growth was driven by pricing as we continued to navigate historic inflation levels. The recovery of our volume and mix is underway. We are seeing the benefits of our portfolio optimisation initiatives and increasing marketing investments behind our billionaire brands. These steps underpin our confidence that real internal growth, the sum of volume and mix, will turn positive in the second half of the year and again become the main driver of growth going forward.
“At the same time, Nestlé has further strengthened its nutrition strategy and stepped-up its efforts to guide people towards a balanced diet. Actions include providing clear, front-of-pack portion guidance, transparency on the nutritional value of our products and leading marketing-to-children policies. We also set an ambitious target to grow the sales of our more nutritious products by CHF 20-25 billion by 2030.”
