The European arm of Kimberly-Clark, which is behind brands such as Huggies, Andrex and Kleenex, has predicted a return to profit despite it slumping to a loss of €120.3m (£100.2m) in 2023.
The division, which is headquartered in Surrey, posted the pre-tax loss after also being €26.7m (£22.2m) in the red during 2022.
Kimberly-Clark also made a pre-tax loss of €82.7m (£68.9m) in 2021 and last made a pre-tax profit in 2020 when it achieved a total of €47.9m (£39.9m).
According to newly-filed accounts with Companies House, the firm’s turnover also dropped from €1.67bn (£1.39bn) to €1.61bn (£1.34bn) over the 12-month period.
The business added that its sales fell as a result of inflationary pressures beginning to subside.
Kimberly-Clark’s European sales fell from €1.53bn (£1.27bn) to €1.47bn (£1.22bn) in the year while its turnover in Africa went from €39.9m (£33.2m) to €36.8m (£30.6m) and its sales in the Middle East fell from €62.3m (£51.9m) to €59.5m (£49.6m).
Huggies owner expecting ‘normalised’ profit level
A statement signed off by the board said: “The directors expect the company to continue to trade in its current form, despite incurring losses because of global economic conditions which resulted in an increase in the input prices for manufacturing products associated with the distribution to European limited risk distributors.
“These impacts are expected to soften due to various commodity price risk strategies in place, whereby the European limited risk distributors are engaged in hedging commodity prices and the procurement of renewable energy.
“As a result, we expect to return to normalised profit levels in the future.”
The wider Kimblery-Clark group is headquartered in the USA and was founded in 1872.
For the same financial year, the group posted sales of $20.4bn (£15.2bn), up one per cent compared to 2022.
However, its full-year operating profit fell to $2.34bn (£1.7bn) from $2.68bn (£2bn) in the prior 12. months.