Barry Callebaut with essential sales growth

European chocolate specialist Barry Callebaut reports a sales revenue growth of 8.8% to 6.7b CHFfor the fiscal year 2015/16. Sales volume grew 2.2%. The operation profit grew 0.1% in local currencies and went down 3.2% in CHF. Barry Callebaut also reports a cash flow of 404m CHF. Antoine de Saint-Affrique, CEO of the Barry Callebaut Group, said: “I am pleased to see that our focus on “smart growth”, which is a balance between volume growth, enhanced profitability and free cash flow generation, starts to get traction. We delivered strong growth in our chocolate business across all Regions, supported by our three key growth drivers and despite a sluggish global chocolate confectionery market2. In our Global Cocoa business, we deliberately phased out less profitable contracts. Good profitability in our chocolate business was offset by a challenging cocoa products market, as anticipated. We also see the results of our increasing focus on free cash flow generation.”