The company overall had a 14.6% EBIT margin in 2018.
The Icelandic company said that its order book had slowed down after a good first half of the year in 2018. However, it added: “There was good geographical and product diversity in orders received in 2018, including greenfield projects and salmon sector orders in Chile, France and Norway.” The company highlighted a refit of a salmon factory in Chile as one of their big projects.
EBIT for the full year was EUR 12.6m (FY17: 5.6m) and the EBIT margin was 7.9% (FY17: 4.2%). Marel has shown operational improvements in the past few quarters but EBIT in 4Q18 was affected by lower order book and lack of large orders, resulting in EBIT of EUR 1.1.m (4Q17: 2.1m) and EBIT margin of 2.9%.
The company said that “the short-term operational margin for Marel Fish was likely to adjust downwards, however, management is targeting medium and long-term EBIT margin expansion for the industry segment.”
Marel Fish said it was focused on becoming a full-line provider for farmed salmon as well as other species. The company added that higher investments in innovation to close application gaps and a greater emphasis on standardization of the business delivered good orders and improved margins.
