Milk and juice consumption hike stimulates growth, claims Tetra Pak

The company’s CEO Dennis Jönsson, in announcing net sales of €8.8 billion for 2008, said that consumption of basic nutritional food products such as milk and juice continues to grow, which in turn is fuelling the packaging business.

“With our current strategy, investments to meet market needs and drive to continuously improve quality and operational efficiency we are well positioned to support our customers to remain competitive,“​ he continued.

He said the group’s sales were up five per cent from 2007 in comparable terms, with the packaging side achieving €7.8bn worth of sales last year - an increase of 4.5 per cent over 2007 – and he added that the sales of processing systems reached €949m, up 9.3 per cent over the previous year.

The company said that continuing growth in Central and South America, the Middle East, China, South and Southeast Asia and also in North America and Southern Europe drove the increase on the packaging front, while the processing side of its business benefited from new sales generated by the acquisition of two specialist food processing firms as well as sales growth in virtually all regions.

However, Tetra Pak also announced that sales growth declined during the last quarter of 2008 due to a slow down in capital equipment investment and lower demand caused by stalling economies and the global credit crunch.

Tetra Pak said it supplied a record 141 billion individual packages to leading food and beverage companies last year, which it claims represents a three per cent rise over the number of beverages consumed in its cartons in 2007.

According to the company it also supplied an additional 503 packaging machines, 1,838 processing units and 1,372 pieces of distribution equipment in 2008.