Leipnik-Lundenburger: flour and coffee are crisis-proof

A sharp increase in demand for branded flours provided Leipnik-Lundenburger Invest (LLI) with a significant increase in pre-tax earnings of nearly 30 percent (%) to € 48.3 million in the final financial year 2019 /twenty. At just over 1 billion euros (1,078 million), total sales were 3.8% lower than the previous year.

According to LLI CEO DI Josef Pröll, the company, with its two operational pillars, Mühlen and café + co, but above all with an intelligently differentiated brand strategy, is widely positioned and therefore sustainable and resilient to crises. Pröll: “Overall, despite an extremely challenging year, fortunately we were able to significantly increase the result.”

Greater demand for plot flour in the running of the bulls

The GoodMills Group accounted for the majority of total sales in 2019/20 with around 868 million euros. While the total amount of milling was slightly reduced due to lower demand in the large bakery area, for example, there was overcompensation due to a massive increase in demand for branded and packaged flour and durum wheat (pasta) . The GoodMills Group was able to significantly increase its pre-tax earnings by 15.8% to just over € 30 million. Pröll: “The decision to target the end consumer with a brand strategy in parallel to the so-called industrial flour has paid off.” The Vienna-based GoodMills Group operates 24 mills in seven country organizations and is the market leader in Europe in terms of mill volume.

Coffee makers were used less

In the vending machine segment (hot drinks and vending machines), containment measures imposed in the wake of the corona pandemic held back business development. Vending machine consumption has been affected by limited private and professional travel, as well as from the home office. Overall, the LLI café + co group generated sales of around 210 million euros in 2019/20, which corresponds to a decrease of 12.3% compared to the previous year. Profit before tax also fell to 8.39 million euros. café + co responded to the demanding situation with cost saving and efficiency improvement measures, for example, by installing telemetry units for remote monitoring and maintenance of devices. In terms of customer convenience and payment security, they responded by introducing a new payment application via smartphone, which now enables contactless and cashless payment via SmartPay. In total, the café + co group operates around 70,000 beverage and snack machines in ten countries.

– Advertising –