Record results for listed chemicals business
East Yorkshire-based chemicals business, Croda International, has reported an “outstanding” performance in its results for the year ended 31 December 2021.
It recorded sales of £1.9bn (2020: £1.4bn) and pre-tax profits of £411.5m (2020: £269.5m).
Croda says all its geographic regions delivered good sales and profit growth. Consumer recovery was strongest in North America, with Asia and Europe also seeing double digit percentage growth in underlying Consumer Care sales.
Steve Foots, chief executive officer, said: “2021 has been an outstanding year for Croda, with record financial results and excellent strategic progress.
“All parts of the business have delivered underlying growth, ahead of 2019 pre-pandemic levels, with strong cost recovery in a high inflation environment.
“Our Health Care business delivered an exceptional performance as a result of the work we have done to support the global roll out of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and therapeutic drugs, and a rapidly building pipeline of non-COVID applications.
“Our excellent strategic progress during the pandemic has included progressing our transition to a pure-play Consumer Care and Life Sciences company, with our agreement to sell the majority of our industrial businesses.”
Croda says it saw significant benefits from recent acquisitions in Consumer Care and Life Sciences, delivering £58m of additional adjusted operating profit within the first year post-acquisition.
It adds its 2020 acquisition of Avanti has helped to establish the lipid systems platform in its Health Care business, with approximately US$200m of sales in 2021, primarily to Croda’s principal vaccine customers.
Croda says it deployed more capital and resources to scale its consumer, health and crop care technologies and increased innovation spending by over 50% on 2020.
The business notes its growth is expected to continue in 2022 in line with its medium-term expectations.
It says this should be supported by robust consumer demand, inflation cost recovery and the benefit of the company’s recent investments offsetting moderation in customer restocking.
