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The past year has without a doubt been exceptional for AAK.
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of the highlights include a higher organic volume growth
compared to the underlying market, another record-high
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SODQWLQ&KLQDRXU¿UVWVDOHVRI$NRYLWD®, our product range
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contract for TROPICAO™, our chocolate solution for hot
climate markets.
Alongside these important milestones, we were saddened
when our CEO Arne Frank passed away last summer. During
his time as CEO, Arne developed AAK from good to great,
turning the company into a world-leading supplier of value-
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leaders, together with their teams, have very professionally
continued to execute the company’s strategy, and for that I’m
very proud and grateful.
The positive trend from previous years continued and
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dients, primarily driven by segments Special Nutrition and
Dairy, was a main contributor to the increase. Chocolate &
Confectionery Fats reported a double-digit year-over-year
improvement despite some production and supply chain
challenges during the second half of the year. Our smallest
business area, Technical Products & Feed, had a challenging
start to 2017 but was able to come back to expected levels
during the second half of the year.
The AAK Way and management ambition
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to expectations and we are happy with the implementation
of the program. Our key focus with The AAK Way, which will
guide us through 2019, is to enable the company to deliver
strong organic growth. This will be achieved by focusing on
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Special Focus Areas, Innovation, and People.
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of Akovita®, our product range for Senior Nutrition. We also
initiated a new Customer Innovation Center with special
focus on plant-based dairy applications in Richmond,
California, USA. The center is set to open in mid-2018.
Within Operational Excellence we among other things, made
important progress with our multi-oil sustainability as well as
coordinating our shipping activities on a global level.
For priority area People we conducted our second
Employee Engagement Survey at the end of 2017. In order
to strengthen our leadership competencies and company
values, we also developed and carried out two leadership
days globally.
When we launched The AAK Way in the beginning of 2017
we established a new management ambition for the coming
years, a 10 percent year-over-year improvement in operating
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in earnings per share. For 2017, we are proud to report an
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ambition.
Continued sustainable growth
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sustainability activities over the past year. Within palm oil
sustainability traceability to mill remains high despite a
number of new AAK factories which require time to implement
our palm oil policy and high standard of traceability.
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smallholder project in Borneo, Malaysia through Forever
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the project, which aims to prepare smallholders in the region
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same time assisting them in improving their livelihoods and
reducing environmental impact.
As for shea, an essential raw material for AAK, our
successful program with women’s groups in West Africa
continues to grow and show great progress, both in Burkina
Faso, where the program was initiated in 2009, and in
Ghana where it was established a couple of years ago.
Our efforts to continuously improve our work within
sustainability has been recognized by independent assessors.
The Stockholm School of Economics reported that AAK
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sustainability work. AAK was ranked near the top compared
with Sweden’s largest listed companies. In addition, we
recently received a gold rating for our sustainability work
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providing sustainability ratings and performance improvement
tools for global supply chains.
If you want to learn more about our sustainability work,
please refer to our annual sustainability report.
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