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The UK’s largest crisp brand, Walkers, grew revenue by more than £60m last year despite a serious decline in volumes across its big brands.
The PepsiCo-owned business splits its UK accounts across three companies, with manufacturing arm Walkers Snack Foods posting a turnover of £359.0m for the year to 31 December 2023, up from the £309.7m the year before.
This was due to the “reimbursement of increased costs” in manufacturing, the company said. Its pre-tax profit grew from £28.3m to £31.6m over the same period.
Walkers pushed through price hikes across its major brands last year as it battled falling volumes, according to NIQ data [52 w/e 27 January 2024].
Volumes on Walker’s Crisps, its biggest brand, fell 9.2%, while Doritos were down 12.4% and Sensations 8.6%. The entire category struggled in 2023 with volumes down 1.1%.
The difficulties have continued in 2024 with Walkers Crisps shedding more sales after average prices increased 4.1%, according to The Grocer’s latest Top Products survey [52 w/e 7 September 2024].
Its sales and marketing arm, Walkers Snacks, reported a turnover of £228.2m for 2023, up from £209.8m a year earlier. However, its pre-tax profit fell from £90.8m to £56.8m, primarily due to a £40m dividend it received in 2022 which was not repeated in 2023.
At Walkers Snacks (Distribution), turnover fell from £146.4m to £141.5m as it posted a pre-tax loss of £1.6m. This decline was “primarily due to [a] decrease in reimbursable costing [in] 2023 compared to 2022 related to warehousing services and distribution,” it said.
PepsiCo continues to progress towards its goal of 50% of sales from ‘healthier’ snacks by 2025, revamping its entire Doritos range this year to make it HFSS compliant. It said it added more corn to the recipe, “fine-tuned” its cooking process, and tweaked its seasonings to deliver “the crunchiest Doritos yet”.
“I think this is a superb strategic move from PepsiCo,” says Future Food Movement business lead Louis Bedwell at the time. “We need to make it easier for everyone to make healthier choices, a huge part of this is about making the bad stuff better.”
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