Nestle records strong growth

The Nestle Group reports strong organic growth of 7.4% with a positive contribution from all regions and businesses due to higher demand ahead of expected price increases.

Food and beverage confirms momentum with 7.1% organic growth, fuelled by move towards nutrition, health and wellness.
Nestle Nutrition on a like for like basis reached its 10% target organic growth. Sales were up 6.4% to CHF 24.3 billion (from CHF 22.8 billion in 2006.)
Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman and CEO said,“Nestle is off to a strong start, not least with an excellent performance of our food and beverage business.These encouraging figures reflect the acceleration of our move towards nutrition, health and wellness across our main food and beverage brands, as well as the strong performance of our globally-managed Nestle Nutrition unit which achieved its long-term target of ten per cent organic growth. Input costs remain high, but our strong brands enable us to continue to adjust prices. We therefore expect the group to reach its objectives of organic growth between five and six per cent. The acquisition of Gerber has further accelerated the transformation process and will give Nestle undisputed global leadership in nutrition, health and wellness.
In the first quarter of 2007, the organic growth of Nestle’s total food, beverage and nutrition business such as Nestle Waters. Nutrition and Nespresso, amounted to 3.4% in Europe, 8.6% in the Americas and 10.8% in Asia, Oceania and Africa. Western Europe continued to be weak although Nescafe Dolce Gusto launch is showing promising early results and the recovery of the UK confectionery business was reflected in market share gains. Eastern Europe delivered double-digit organic growth with Russia doing particularly well. There were good performances in confectionery, soluble coffee, ice cream and chilled culinary products.