Company CEO Jacques Dikansky spoke to CosmeticsDesign-Europe.com following the announcement of the company’s year half sales figures.
The French botanical extracts supplier turned in sales of €127.9m for the first half of 2011 – a 14.1 per cent rise on the first half of 2010, although this was mainly down to the larger Food & Beverage and Nutrition & Health businesses, with Personal Care contributing a much smaller amount.
“The fact it is a smaller figure is not significant,” Dikansky explained. “What it means is that the business is stable, there is no major growth but no decline either.”
“We want to grow in personal care and we are looking to, but these things take time, especially when you have started from nothing, like we have.”
Acquisitions planned in second half
At Naturex’s financial presentation earlier in the year, the company announced it was planning a number of acquisitions in various markets in the second half of the year.
Dikansky confirmed with CosmeticsDesign-Europe.com that these will definitely involve the Personal Care business as it looks to strengthen its market position.
“We are looking at acquisitions in personal care and these plans will be finalised in the coming months. It is necessary for us in order to grow in the industry,” he explained.
For the half, the Personal Care segment has brought in €1.2m, which only accounts for one per cent of the company’s sales when compared to the €78.4m and €40.4m brought in by the F&B and N&H segments respectively.
But it is growth in these other areas that allow the Avignon-based firm to raise funds for acquisitions that help grow the business in all areas, and Dikansky was pleased with the overall growth of the company.
“The strong organic growth carried out over this first half of 2011 confirms the technical know-how and the commercial dynamism of Naturex on markets that are sustainably promising,” he declared.
“Backed with this performance and our capacity to develop new projects with high value-added, we are confident in our ability to achieve another year of strong growth in revenue and in profitability over 2011, in accordance with the targets announced.”