Margins and earnings per share were up, however, in the first full year since the sale of the relatively lower margin Irish dairy business to Kerry Co-op.

Kerry’s shares in Dublin were down sharply in early trading – falling 3.8pc to €75.50 a share, the biggest faller in a generally weak start for shares on Dublin’s Euronext.

Commenting on the results themselves Kerry CEO, Edmond Scanlon, said it had been a year of strong end market volume outperformance and margin expansion.

“Volume growth was driven by a strong performance in the Americas throughout the year. This was led by foodservice innovation and increased nutritional renovation across a broad range of customers, given our positioning as a leader in sustainable nutrition, with customers looking to address nutrition, taste, cost or sustainability aspects,” he said.

In 2026, Kerry is “well positioned for strong market outperformance,” he said.

“We expect to deliver continued volume growth and margin expansion, resulting in constant currency adjusted earnings per share growth of 6pc to 10pc.”

Even so, Kerry said results for food and beverage markets in the year reflected “soft overall consumer demand, given macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty”.

Preliminary full year results for 2025 record revenue of €6.758bn, earnings (EBITDA) of €1.208bn with EBITDA margin up +80bps to 17.9pc.

Adjusted earnings per share rose 7.5pc to 481.5 cent. The business generated free cash flow of €643m reflecting 81pc cash conversion.

Kerry announced a new chair, Dubliner Fiona Dawson, a 33 year-veteran of Mars International and non executive director at Marks & Spencer, Reckitt and Lego, as its new chair to replace the retiring Tom Moran.

He’s due to retire as chair at the end of the Annual General Meeting on April 30th 2026. Dawson has been a non executive director at Kerry Group since 2022.

The group has launched a new €300m share buyback programme and a final dividend of 98 cent per share.

Davy Stockbroker’s Cathal Kenny said Kerry Group had delivered a solid 2025 result with good progress on volume and margin, against a subdued demand environment.

“Volume growth was ahead of end-markets, driven by strong execution in the foodservice channel. EPS was in line. The 2026 outlook calls for 6-10pc constant currency EPS growth with FX a c.4% headwind. Adjusting for FX, we anticipate an EPS forecast in the zone of 501c (from 514c),” he said.