Danone sales grow by 5.9% in Q3

Danone, France's largest food manufacturer, reported on Tuesday a 5.9-percent increase in its sales during July-September period this year from a year earlier on expanded sales of child and medical nutrition businesses. Sales of the food processing firm stood at 4.81 billion euros (6.57 billion U.S. dollars) over the third quarter of 2011 compared to 4.35 billion euros (5.94 billion dollars) in 2010. Baby food activity posted the strongest growth of 10.5 percent to 906 million euros (1.24 billion U.S. dollars) thanks to "favorable growth mix and price increases applied since the beginning of the year in most regions," Danone's quarterly report showed. As to medical nutrition division, high demand in emerging markets mainly in China and Brazil drove up sales by 9.8 percent to 298 million euros (407.3 million dollars). Asian markets absorbed 19.6 percent of the company's sales while those in Europe were almost unchanged at 2.66 billion euros (3.64 billion dollars). Danone said it was confident about its growth target in 2011 despite "the steep increase in commodity prices at the beginning of the year." The French group eyed to expand sales up to 8 percent this year and set free cash flow target at 2 billion euros (2.73 billion dollars) for next year.