October 21/Atchison, Kan./MGP Ingredients Press Release -- During MGP Ingredients Inc.'s annual meeting of stockholders, a business overview was provided by Tim Newkirk, president and chief executive officer.
Newkirk said, “Over the past year, we made real progress on several fronts. As previously reported, we ended fiscal 2010 with net income of $8.7 million, an exceptionally rapid and dramatic turnaround from the net loss of $69.1 million that we experienced in fiscal 2009. We achieved this on a nearly 31% decrease in net sales, which resulted from our strategic focus on reducing commodity sales and creating a higher value mix of specialty proteins and starches and high quality food grade alcohol products. For example, we achieved profitability for every quarter in our specialty ingredients segment. The value-added mix of products was more than 80% of total sales in this segment as we phased out lower-margin categories. Growth in our distillery products segment was mainly due to increased sales of food grade alcohol for industrial applications.