By Business & Finance 
Patrick Coveney, CEO, Greencore
Greencore records revenues of £986.3m for year-to-date, despite challenging UK grocery retail market remains challenging.
Greencore Group’s latest interim management statement for the period to July 28th, 2015, showed revenue was up 6.9% compared with the same time the previous year.
The Group’s Q3 revenues were up at £346.5m, an increase of 6.2% on the prior year on both a reported and a like-for-like basis.
The Convenience Foods division recorded revenue of £331.9m, 6.9% higher than the previous year on a reported basis and up 6.3% on a like-for-like basis.
In the UK, revenue was 4.0% higher than in the prior year, despite challenging market conditions. The food to go business continued to experience growth led principally by the addition of new product lines in the Northampton facility. Elsewhere in the UK, revenue performance was more subdued.
“In the US, revenue was 22.1% higher than the prior year,” the interim management statement announced. “This was driven principally by the roll out of new lines with our principal customers.”
The Group’s business remains focused on the delivery of major capacity related initiatives. The new facility in Quonset, Rhode Island, commenced production in April, the Newburyport facility was closed and the Brockton site will close later in the year.
The Ingredients and Property division, which now represents less than 5% of Group activity, recorded revenues of £14.6m in Q3, 4.4% higher on a constant currency basis and 8.2% lower in actual currency.
In addition, the Group recorded revenue of £986.3m, 4.2% ahead of the prior year on a reported basis and 4.7% ahead on a like for like basis. Year to date revenue in the Convenience Foods division was £946.6m, 5.4% higher than the previous year.
OUTLOOK
According to the statement, the core UK grocery retail market remains challenging with high levels of change. “The combination of modest deflation in ingredients and packaging costs, together with price investment by grocery retailers, has resulted in value growth lagging behind volume in a number of our product markets.
“The Group remains focused on delivering exceptional standards for its customers and on the execution of complex capacity increase projects in both the UK and US. We remain confident in our ability to deliver adjusted EPS growth for the financial year within the range of market expectations.”
About the CEO
Before joining Greencore, Patrick Coveney was managing partner at the Irish office of international management consultants McKinsey & Company, where he gained extensive knowledge and experience in Irish, UK and EU consumer food, food service and retail markets, and played a central role in the development and delivery of successful strategies for a number of major clients in these sectors.
Coveney is a former Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, where he gained a doctorate in management studies. He also holds a BComm from University College Cork (UCC) and is a former president of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.
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