ZURICH, SWITZERLAND — Despite halting production at its Wieze plant in Belgium after discovering salmonella in a production lot on June 27, Barry Callebaut AG achieved volume growth of 5.3% in the 2021-22 fiscal year.
“I’m very happy also that we could share two weeks ago that the world’s largest chocolate factory is running again at its normal capacity,” Peter Boone, chief executive officer, said during a Nov. 1 conference call with analysts to discuss the company’s financial performance.
“We were on a very, very strong growth trajectory in the first nine months, which was impacted by the Wieze incident in the fourth quarter,” Mr. Boone said. “Despite this, we still achieved a strong volume growth of 5.3%, and mainly driven by a strong [trade] performance of 5.9%. This is well ahead of the flat underlying chocolate confectionery market according to Nielsen.”
In fiscal 2021-22, sales volume of 2.31 million tonnes…
