Crown invests in new production facilities in China
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- Published on Monday, 06 February 2012 15:42
GLOBAL – Crown Holdings Inc has announced investments in three new beverage plants and production lines each in China, and beverage can expansion in Vietnam.
Making the announcement during its FY2011 financial results report, company chairman and CEO John W. Conway said, "Our emerging market expansion program remains on schedule and budget. We are in the process of constructing three new beverage can plants in China which are expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter of 2012.
“We have also announced three additional beverage can lines in China for completion in 2013. Additional beverage can capacity expansion in Vietnam is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2012.”
Conway noted that all of these investments are being made to meet local demand: “We continue to evaluate many new and exciting opportunities but remain committed to conservative deployment of capital by growing with our customers to meet long term demand in promising emerging markets."
FY2011 financial results
For the year ended 31 December 2011, Crown posted a 9% net sales increase to US$8.6 billion, over the US$7.94 billion earned in the previous year.
Crown attributed this to the pass-through of higher material costs, US$197 million of favourable foreign currency translation, and high global sales unit volumes – about 73% of net sales were generated outside the US in 2011, compared to 72& in 2010.
Gross profit for the year increased by 7.8% to US$1.34 billion.
However, net profit fell to US$282 million compared to US$324 million in 2010, due to US$328 million of US pension prefunding, the US$202 million purchase of non-controlling partners’ interests in several operations and a US$312 million repurchase by Crown of about 8 million company common shares. Before certain items, net income increased 19.3% to US$433 million over the US$363 million in 2010
