Purecircle (LON:PURE) announced yesterday its results for the second half of 2009. The world's leading producer of natural high intensity sweeteners, including Reb A, revealed today that the demand for their sweetener product, Stevia, is accelerating. The company reported 200 new Stevia sweetened product launches during 2009, and 60 in the first two months of 2010. In total, Stevia sweetened sales make up over 12% of the total US market - reportedly close to the levels of Aspartame and Saccharine.
At the end of 2009, reported sales revenues were $272million, cash stood at $80million and debt at $20m. This is an improvement on H1 2009 figures of $152m, $27m and $31m respectively. The company's balance sheet was further strengthened by the placing last November, where they raised $65million net. PureCircle also reported that it plans to increase its market sales velocity, which it is well positioned to do given it has the only mass volume supply chain in the industry, the report said. The company continues to scale this supply chain to support their industry position.
In terms of production, capacity has grown more than 200% since H1 2009. The report said that the actual H1 FY 2010 production of 230 tonnes of Reb A was double actual production in H1 FY 2009, but still represented less than 25 per cent of available capacity. Going forward, the company are looking to develop their Natural Sweet Ventures partnership with Imperial Sugar. Paul Selway-Swift, Chairman of PureCircle, commented:
"We are pleased to report a strong first half performance. With widespread regulatory clearances and many product launches across numerous categories and in many regions, we believe stevia is continuing to develop towards being a major global industry. Our strategy remains one of being a leading player in this developing global industry that did not exist a few years ago. We continue to see strong interest from the largest Food & Beverage companies, but product launches on a mass scale require planning and executing over an extended period. So, our sales will remain volatile and it will take time for the true long term sales velocity of our unique products to become apparent. Our business model is based on global mass volume supply. We have demonstrated that we can scale our supply chain and…
