“In the past financial year 24/25 we navigated through a highly complex and volatile environment. During difficult market circumstances, we remained true to our purpose-driven strategy. Since our founding, we are committed to supporting our customers in bringing tasty, healthy, nutritious and sustainable foods to consumers across the world. By further strengthening our ties with growers and retailers and through continued investments in our infrastructure, we have been able to improve efficiency across our value chain, increase our volumes and ensure that our products remained available and affordable. Our focus on technology and innovation has enabled us to capture the growing demand for healthy food solutions that combine convenience with great taste and nutritional value.”

In the first half of the last financial year, many growers were confronted with extreme weather conditions – long periods of drought in some growing regions, intense rainfall and floods in other regions. These have inevitably led to extra efforts in our sourcing and higher handling costs to ensure volumes and quality remained at the same level.

By the end of 2024, industries saw the effects of declining consumer confidence due to geopolitical tensions and uncertain economic perspectives, leading to a higher price sensitivity and much more careful food spending. In some of our markets, competition amongst suppliers continued, resulting in a strong price pressure.

Despite these challenges, we further grew sales in most divisions. Fruit and vegetables remain the top driver of store traffic, more than ever drawing consumers in. The strength of this category – and our leadership within it – positions us strategically with our customers and across the food value chain. In the Fresh segment, we even outperformed the market, thanks to our Integrated Customer Relationships (ICR).

The Frozen category landed well, driven by rising demand for pure-plant and convenient options, and we were able to create a brand momentum with the introductions of small, yet disruptive brands in valuable categories.  

In the Prepared division, we have seen a decline in demand for traditional canned products, which we were able to largely offset by strong, double-digit growth in more innovative convenience categories such as sauces, soups and dips.

This resulted in steady sales growth on a like-for-like basis, with 5,1%, to € 5,3bn. Adjusted EBITDA decreased with € 3,5m to € 183,0m. Our financial result was impacted by two one-off divestments: the closing process of Greenyard Fresh France and our service centre in Munich, Germany, leading to a net negative result of € -2,9m. Nevertheless, we managed to improve our free cashflow to € 72,4m and further reduce our Net Financial Debt to € 256,5m, resulting in a leverage ratio of 1,86x.

Our Fork-to-Field approach remains the foundation of our company’s unique business model. Through integrated collaboration with growers (IGR) and retailers (ICR) we have established a demand-driven value chain that prevents food waste, ensures availability of the right produce at the right time and reduces the overall environmental impact of the entire value chain. This model enables us to remain agile in even the most challenging conditions, adapting swiftly when needed, while consistently focusing on delivering added value to all stakeholders. In a landscape defined by tight margins and high complexity, this level of integration and responsiveness is what sets us apart.

Through our ICR, we unburden our customers by helping them respond to growing demand for healthy food and adding value to the pure-plant category. We are further integrating with customers in every division, from developing new on-trend products as a private label partner in the Long Fresh division to offering the full assortment of fruit and vegetables in the Fresh division. Our new partnership with a foodservice customer in Belgium proves that our ICR model perfectly fits that sector as well, as we deliver products across all divisions: Fresh, Frozen and Prepared.

On the other side of our value chain, we are stepping up our efforts to intensify our collaboration with our growers through our Integrated Grower Relationships (IGR). The establishment of the Green Farmers Group in Italy and the exclusive negotiations with Gelagri are just two examples of how we walked the talk.

Closer collaboration with growers will be more critical than ever in the years ahead to ensure consumers have year-round access to the best nature has to offer. Our IGR approach provides a solid foundation to strengthen and expand this strategic pillar. Our grower base is incredibly diversified: producer organisations and cooperatives, local and overseas growers, large farms and small family-owned businesses. Despite their diversity, they all feel the effects of climate change, along with the impact of regulatory changes and economic challenges. It is our responsibility to help them cope with these challenges – through joint investments in mechanisation or more effective use of crop protection, introducing more sustainable ways of working, and most importantly, ensuring their hard work is rewarded.

We have also continued to invest in our infrastructure, improving efficiency and operational excellence across all our divisions. The growing demand for our convenience products not only requires extra production capacity, it also requires state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities. The new Tetra Pak line at Greenyard Prepared is an excellent example of this, providing new attractive packaging that makes our products stand out on the shelves. In our Frozen division, we continue to invest in our infrastructure and capacity, with new spinach lines in Comines (France) and a new, automated packing line in Lipno (Poland) as just two examples. With the acquisition of Crème de la Crème, we added 25 years of manufacturing knowhow in dairy-free desserts, a very promising category we entered last year with our own brand Gigi.

In the Netherlands, Bakker has started construction of a new cutting-edge service centre, a true milestone for the company, that will support future growth. The company has also taken a new state-of-the-art mango sorting line into operation to ensure the best possible quality always ends up on the shelf.