Moy Park expects to recover ‘good portion’ of coronavirus financial impact

Moy Park has reported a “strong financial performance” last year, with growing revenues and profits.

The Craigavon-headquartered company’s latest accounts showed operating profit up 2% to £74.8m off the back of a 1% rise in revenues to £1.6bn for the year ending 31 December 2019.

The business attributed the positive performance to “unrelenting focus on cost control, excellent customer relationships and a culture of constant innovation”, despite operating in what it described as a “changing competitive landscape”.

Moy Park also invested £54m into its infrastructure during the year to support its growth as a “leading European food business”. This was enabled by the generation of a “positive underlying free cashflow”, the company explained.

With regards to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in March, Moy Park said it experienced an increase in retail sales as consumers were eating more at home but saw foodservice sales reduced.

The business implemented a “broad range of actions” to mitigate the effect of the virus, including social distancing measures, reallocating resources to ensure continued supply and protecting profitability by suspending non-essential costs and temporarily suspending certain production lines.

These lines were now starting to reopen, the business added, as the country comes out of lockdown.

“With all the mitigating plans and actions in place, and despite the uncertainty of the duration of the pandemic and its economic and social consequences, we are optimistic we can recover a good portion of the financial impact of the challenges we are currently facing, and our results may not be significantly impacted when compared to the prior year,” Moy Park added.