Swedish-Danish company and producer of vegetable oils and fats AAK has reported an all-time high operating profit for the first quarter 2017 which reached SEK 431 million (US$48 million), up 13% on last year. The company says how total volumes continued to grow and were 10% up, while organic volume growth was 5%, against a backdro of strong demand for speciality and semi-speciality products which also generated a volume growth of 6%.

Food Ingredients improved 9%, reaching SEK 249 million (US$277 million). 

“We are happy and proud to see that our determined, targeted and hard work based upon our clear strategy is yielding good results. Again, a record-high operating profit was achieved with a double-digit year-on-year improvement for the Group, a trend since 2010. This is despite parts of the world markets experiencing material challenges,” says AAK CEO Arne Frank.

"based on AAKs customer value propositions for health and reduced costs, and our customer product co-development and solutions approach, we continue to remain prudently optimistic about the future. The main drivers are the continued positive underlying development in Food Ingredients and the continued improvement in Chocolate & Confectionery Fats.”

In Dairy, the segment continued the strong trend from 2016 and reported high double-digit organic volume growth, wher North Latin America, Asia, and the US showed particularly strong growth.

After some challenges, the Bakery segment was back to organic growth in several important regions, however the European market remained a challenge, while Special Nutrition reported medium single-digit volume growth, but with a significantly better product mix compared to the corresponding quarter last year. This was driven by a continued volume growth for our Infant Nutrition product range Akonino, building on exceptionally strong volume growth last year.

Our other Infant Nutrition product range InFat®, sold through Advanced Lipids AB, a joint venture of AAK and Enzymotec, had a strong volume growth in the quarter.

The Foodservice segment reported declining volumes in the quarter. This was mainly due to more challenging market conditions in Europe. 

Chocolate & Confectionery Fats reported a result of SEK 196 million (US$218 million), an improvement of 23%. Both total volume growth and organic volume growth was 17% in the quarter. There was continued strong organic volume growth for both speciality and semi-speciality products, with several showing exceptional volume growth – in mature as well as in emerging markets.