Bega Cheese releases 2019-20 financial year figures

Bega has achieved a remarkable feat amid the coronavirus pandemic, its just-released full-year results reveal.

Now-former Mondelez president Amanda Banfield with Bega Cheese CEO Barry Irvin at the Vegemite factory in Melbourne, after the sale of Mondelez's grocery business, including Vegemite, to Bega Cheese. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

BEGA has matched its pre-coronavirus earnings guidance in full-year results, which defy the overall Australian Securities Exchange trend.

The major processor’s full-year results released shortly before the market opened this morning showed its normalised Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation figure of $103 million was at the top of its guidance released last year — a range of $95 to $105 million.

Bega’s total revenue lifted five per cent, of $73 million to $1.49 billion, due primarily to significant growth in its grocery brand businesses.

Vegemite sales grew almost five per cent while company-branded peanut butter sales grew by more than 14 per cent.

Bega executive chairman Barry Irvin said the diversification of its milk and food business helped the corporation deal with the South Coast and Gippsland bushfires, which hit its supply chain over the 2019-20 summer.

“It has been a year like no other, we began the year in the grips of drought which contributed to a very competitive milk procurement environment and then managed never before seen bushfires,” he said.

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