Madeta’s operating profit was 252.4 million, roughly a fifth lower year-on-year. The company described last year as very difficult. This follows from the annual report published in the Collection of Documents. The dairy’s sales profitability dropped significantly, by almost 30 percent, Madeta said in a press release on Friday.
“A very difficult economic year. The difficulty of the economic year lay in the effects of the energy crisis and the abnormal increase in all costs in all areas. The final account, if we consider it successful, underlines the stability of the company and the correctness of the investments. At the same time, it creates a promising business perspective for the following year as well,” stated Madeta CEO Milan Teplý in the annual report. The dairy’s net turnover reached 7.37 billion last year, a year-on-year increase of 21.8 percent. Profit before tax fell by 13.4 percent to 266.3 million.
Last year, the prices of virtually all company inputs rose unpredictably and “enormously”, Teplý said. “It was mainly about packaging material, energy, fuel, but also labor costs, services, and above all raw cow’s milk,” said Teplý in a press release.
Madeta therefore focused on effective cost management, looking for solutions to minimize the impact of more expensive inputs on results. It has implemented a number of cost-saving measures and invested to be more efficient and achieve energy savings. “But even the increasing price of our output at the output could not fully compensate for the increase in the prices of our inputs, and again there was a year-on-year decrease in profit,” said Teplý. In 2021, the company had a profit after taxation of CZK 247.6 million, compared to 2020, it fell by a fifth.
The economic result of 2022 ended below the expectations of the company’s management. “However, with regard to a very turbulent period, the result can still be described as satisfactory,” added Teplý.
Madeta modernized the production of Niva mold cheese in Český Krumlov last year. The plant’s capacity has been expanded by almost half, it can produce up to 21 tons of cheese from 180,000 liters of milk per day. The company invested 250 million CZK in the changes there, in the future it planned robotically tipping the cheese loaves out of the molds.
At the end of 2021, Madeta announced that it would invest 500 million crowns in the Pelhřimov plant. By the middle of this year, she wanted to modernize the production of shelf-stable milk and increase the warehouses. In terms of scope, it is the largest investment in the plant since 1989, the then plant director Jaroslav Štípek told ČTK in November 2021. The work there is not over yet, the company said today.
Madeta has four production plants: in Planá nad Lužnicí, Český Krumlov, Jindřichov Hradec and Pelhřimov. It employs 1,500 people and processes almost a million liters of milk daily. According to older information, it has 170 milk suppliers, offers over 250 types of products, produces around 350 million pieces of products annually. According to the company’s website, it exports roughly a fifth of its production to Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, EU countries, Asia, Africa and America. From African countries, these are, for example, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gabon or Senegal.
Sales also grew for competing dairies. The profit of the French dairy group Lactalis Group, which owns the Kunín and Klatovy dairies in the Czech Republic and is number two on the Czech market for dairy products, rose by 12.7 percent to 115.7 million crowns in the Czech Republic last year. The company’s turnover increased by 14.7 percent year-on-year to 5.6 billion crowns. Last year, the Olma dairy from the Agrofert group had a fifth year-on-year increase in sales, rising to a record 4.4 billion CZK. The net profit of this dairy rose by four percent to 215.8 million crowns. Valašské Meziříčí Dairy’s sales last year rose to 1.11 billion crowns from the previous 932 million, profit after tax fell to 6.8 million from 18.5 million crowns.
