The supply of hotels and gastronomy as well as canteens and canteens with fresh products will pick up again after the end of the Corona rules. Schwälbchen's dairy business, on the other hand, is weakening.
Bad Schwalbach (dpa/lhe) - Hesse's largest dairy, Schwälbchen, is struggling with high cost pressure and is looking to 2023 with subdued expectations. "It was the third very difficult year in a row for the entire Schwälbchen Group," said CEO Günter Berz-List of the Germans Press agency in Bad Schwalbach on the economic development in the past year. He assumes that the imponderables in the industry with extreme fluctuations will continue well into the current year.
The two business areas of Schwälbchen with the dairy and the fresh food service developed differently in the past year 2022, said Berz-List. The demand for out-of-home items from the fresh food service with the delivery of hotels, gastronomy, canteens and canteens increased noticeably from the spring after the end of the strict corona measures.
In terms of revenue, the manager expects 110 million euros in 2022 after 72 million in the previous year. The bottom line is that he expects the fresh service to have a balanced result and a "black zero after two previous years with heavy losses". In 2021, the deficit in the business area was still 1.5 million euros.
"The fresh food service has come out of the valley. We still have to work on the dairy," said Berz-List. In this second business segment, retailers paid significantly higher prices for milk, cream, quark and yoghurt from the summer. However, the extremely high energy costs for cooling the products in the hot summer, the significantly increased expenses for transporting the goods and the enormously higher packaging costs would have completely offset this effect. The same applies to the raw material costs, with the payment prices to the farmers having been increased.
Berz-List announced that the dairy's turnover will increase from 95.5 million to around 110 million euros in 2022 due to the higher prices. The result would continue to be written in the red. In 2021, the loss in the operating result was minus 0.5 million euros. A drop of seven percent to around 130 million kilograms is to be expected in milk processing.
In the entire Schwälbchen Group, Berz-List expects sales to increase by around a third to over 200 million euros in 2022. The group result will again be negative. The loss of 1.2 million euros in 2021 will be roughly halved. A concrete outlook for the next few months is currently not possible because there are extreme fluctuations in the markets, said Berz-List. "Of course I hope that we will get back on track in the dairy business over the course of the next year."
