Increased chocolate demand benefits Barry Callebaut

Swiss chocolate giant Barry Callebaut claims doing “significantly better than the market” as sales went up by 4.4 %. Nevertheless, the group will have to say goodbye to its financial director next year.

Lower cocoa price, higher demand

The demand for chocolate is on the rise again: the world’s largest chocolate manufacturer, Barry Callebaut, has experienced a 9.2 % volume increase in the June – August period after a 5.5 % increase in the quarter before that. American demand continued to soar, just like in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Europe lags behind, but CEO Antoine de Saint-Afrique says the “increased demand in the chocolate market is widely supported.” This is thanks to a significantly lower cocoa price, since it dropped 23 % in the past year.

Barry Callebaut’s broken fiscal year yielded 6.8 billion Swiss francs (5.9 billion euro) in turnover, up 1.9 %. Meanwhile, net profit jumped 38.8 % to 302.9 million Swiss francs (260 million euro).

New CFO hails from Philips

The company also stated that it will say goodbye to its financial director Victor Bailli, who will retire next year after a successful 11-year stint. Remco Steenbergen will succeed Bailli on 1 March 2018, coming over from Philips where he has worked for twenty years. He is in charge of the Dutch company’s HealthTech Businesses, Innovation & Group Functions division since 2015.