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The Lippens family records more turnover due to Australian nuts

The Finasucre holding of the Lippens business family achieved a higher turnover last financial year, mainly due to the increased nut production in Australia. The dividend for the family remains stable.

When you say Lippens and business, you usually think of Knokke and the real estate company Compagnie Het Zoute. But that would make you forget that the family, with its Brussels industrial holding company Finasucre, is active in many other sectors. Primarily, as the name suggests, with sugar. Finasucre, with its subsidiary Iscal Sugar, is the second most important sugar player in our country after the Raffinerie Tirlemontoise. There is also sugar production in Congo and Australia.

The essence

  • Finasucre is the holding company of the Lippens business family and is mainly active in the sugar sector.
  • At the end of March last financial year, the group achieved a turnover of almost 400 million euros.
  • The loss of the previous year was converted back into profit.


With Galactic, Finasucre also produces lactic acid and derivatives that are used in food and industry, for example for bioplastics. Galactic is active as far as Brazil and Japan. A relatively recent activity is the production of macadamia nuts in Australia. Finally, there are smaller ancillary activities such as brick making, sugar factory installations and even rum. Finasucre also diversifies in real estate, including as a shareholder in the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert in Brussels and Compagnie Het Zoute.

The whole accounts for almost 2,300 employees (plus as many seasonal workers) and a consolidated turnover at the end of March last financial year of 382.4 million euros. That is the highest figure in the past four years and more than 14 percent more than in 2019-2020.

The increase is largely attributable to macadamia production down under. After two years of drought and a poor harvest, the orchards could count on a more favorable climate, which increased the yield. But the fact that the figures of the new branch included an entire financial year for the first time also plays a role.

Sale

Galactic also accounted for a large part of the revenue growth, partly due to the start-up of Chinese and Japanese activities. Iscal was only able to partially convert the increased sales volumes into more turnover because Finasucre sold part of the Dutch sugar activities to the German sector competitor Pfeifer & Langen. As a result, part of the income from the group results disappeared.

A year earlier, the group already recorded a capital loss on the partly sold Dutch sugar branch because the retail activities of that division are not profitable due to too high costs and too much competition in Europe. Joining forces with the Germans should rectify that.

To spread

At the same time, Finasucre becomes slightly less dependent on its historical core activity. The nuts and other recent investments should better spread the resources. In recent years, the holding company has also invested in Global Baby (a French producer of infant and toddler nutrition), Ynsect (insects for human consumption), two Australian companies producing macadamia nut products and JAB Consumer Fund. That is an investment fund of the wealthy German Reimann family.

JAB Consumer Fund even delivered a small capital gain in the past financial year. In net terms, the whole of Finasucre had a group profit of 7.3 million euros, a big difference with the loss of more than 31 million euros the year before. At the time, the figures were weighed down, among other things, by a significant write-down on the Australian sugar activities, under the influence of the lower market prices for cane and brown sugar.

The Lippens family maintains the dividend and for the second year in a row will pay out 90 euros net per share or 7.2 million euros in total. Something can be done: Finasucre has almost half a billion euros in reserves on its balance sheet.

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