Bidcorp, the international food service group, saw record levels of trading in the four months to October 2022, despite volatile operating conditions, the group said in a trading update yesterday.
Australasia continued its strong, positive trajectory experienced in the second half of its 2022 financial year and both Australia and New Zealand delivered “excellent results”.
The UK and European businesses had a solid start, benefiting from a ‘normal’ northern hemisphere summer.
The Emerging Markets businesses, other than Angliss Greater China (China, Hong Kong and Macau), were all performing better than in the previous comparative period.
“Our business is performing very strongly despite the many challenges in the world. Our teams around the world are positive and enthusiastic, there is a pipeline of future opportunities, and our strategy is delivering,” said CEO Bernard Berson in a statement.
The Angliss Greater China business had seen no improvement in the operating environment since January due to restrictive Covid-19 policies, but it remained profitable.
The operating environment post-June 2022 remained volatile, with aggressive inflation being driven by higher labour costs and increasing energy and fuel costs, both of which manifested in higher food prices. Labour scarcity, ongoing supply chain disruptions and product shortages remained operational challenges, the group said.
However, customer demand remained strong, and “maintaining our expected high service levels is challenging.
“Our teams around the world remain flexible, nimble and highly adaptive to the environment as it evolves and continue to perform extremely well.”
Several sectors such as accommodation, workplace catering, entertainment, sports events, business travel, conventions and conferences, and the cruise line industry, were not yet fully operating at pre-Covid levels. Non-discretionary demand from institutional customers, including education, hospitals, aged care, prisons, the military and government departments, remained stable.
A strategy to “rebalance the customer portfolio” towards more appropriate business continued with a number of contracts exited as anticipated.
“Encouragingly, our cost of doing business percentage is in line with our pre-Covid efficiency. Despite the small impact on gross margins, our cost efficiency has resulted in a positive impact on trading margins.”
BUSINESS REPORT