Barry Callebaut debt must come down, CEO says

ZURICH (Reuters) -The world’s top chocolatier Barry Callebaut must reduce its debt and is working to achieve this, CEO Peter Feld was quoted as saying in an interview published on Thursday.

Barry Callebaut in July cut its volume guidance for the third time this year as high cocoa prices and uncertainty over U.S. tariffs prompted customers to buy less of its products.

In an interview with Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung, Feld said the Zurich-based company had had to raise its prices by 63% in its current business year while its sales volume had gone down by about 6.3% over that period.

Feld was asked about the company’s rising debt in relation to profits and how ratings agencies including Moody’s and S&P Global earlier this year revised down its outlook to negative.

The CEO said warehousing costs for cocoa beans were proving expensive, adding: “we need to reduce our debt to a reasonable level. We’re in talks with the banks about this and have already announced concrete measures.”

The company’s ongoing investment programme was helping on that front, enabling it to estimate how many products it would sell group-wide and how many cocoa beans it would need, he said.

“We’ve also adjusted the financing of our current assets and are on the right track,” Feld said.

(Reporting by Dave GrahamEditing by Ludwig Burger)