Irish produce multinational Total Produce has announced a slight drop in both revenue and profit for 2014, in a year marked by several acquisitions, an abundant European crop and Russia's ban on EU imports.

In a preliminary announcement, the group said total revenue was down 1.4% at €3.129 billion, while EBITA fell 3.4% to €56.7 million.

"The warmer weather in Spring caused the European domestic growing season to begin earlier leading to greater production and over supply resulting in downward pressure on prices particularly in some product categories in Europe," the group said.

"Whilst the Group does not have any operations in Russia, and Group sales to Russia are modest at less than 2% of revenue, there was an impact on the market generally for certain categories, particularly apples and pears.

"Currency translation had a marginally adverse impact on reported results in the year."

Click here for a Q&A with CEO Rory Byrne, who recently discussed some of these matters in greater depth with www.freshfruitportal.com.

Despite the lower performance, the Total Produce board chose to increase dividends for shareholders by 5.7%.

In line with the company's segment descriptions, the Eurozone was the hardest hit with a 12.5% decline in EBITA to €20.2 million, but non-Eurozone European operations actually registered an uptick of 7.8% with an EBITA of €32.2 million; the latter was attributed to benefits from acquisitions made in late 2013.

The year was marked by several investments and acquisitions, including Dutch soft fruit company All Seasons Fruit (ASF), Californian avocado grower Eco Farms, Canadian greenhouse company Gambles Group and the trading assets of Gaspari Nutrition.

On the other hand, results did not include operations the Capespan Group which was divested in April.

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