Evans & Tate breaking results

…Meanwhile Evans & Tate celebrate record breaking results

IN SHARP CONTRAST to Southcorp’s latest trading figures, Australia’s eighth largest wine producer, Evans & Tate, has released recordbreaking results, establishing itself among the country’s top performing public companies.

For the financial year 2002/2003 the firm sold A$63.1m of wine in Australasia, the UK, continental Europe and North America with a pre-tax operating profit of A$6.4m (A$4.4m after tax and A$4.4m after self-generating and regenerating assets – SGARA).

The board of directors has recommended a fully franked final dividend of A2 cents per share to be paid on October 15 this year.  Surpassing its recently released forecast of A$4.3m, the result has set records for the group in terms of all key performance measures.

Sales of the Evans & Tate Wine Group’s core brands continue to grow in both domestic and export markets with a 45% increase to A$47.2m, reflecting strong growth of the Evans & Tate products and three and a half months of Cranswick trading.

"This is a tremendous result for the goup," said Evans & Tate chairman and chief executive officer, Franklin Tate.  "We have delivered on the integration of new business assets from our acquisition in March of Cranswick Premium Wines, but the management team has also risen to the challenge of difficult conditions encountered in all our key markets.

"Producers everywhere have experienced the combination of strong supply, increased concentration in retail ownership, extensive pricebased competition and influx of new and improved products at all price points from both New and Old World wine regions," he added.

As for Cranswick, integration into the Evans & Tate Group is nearing completion and initiatives for next year include relaunching the Salisbury brand in the UK and Europe, the sale of various assets and the introduction of new Barramundi packaging in the UK.