Sligro Food Group performed well in the third quarter. There had already been strong performance in the second quarter and the trend continued. Furthermore, in July the company benefited from the fine summer weather.

While sales declined organically by 0.8% in the first half of the year, there was organic growth of 3.5% in the third quarter. The food service and food retail activities saw similar improvement. Inversco, which was acquired in May 2006, also made a contribution to the group’s turnover and result. Inversco continued its buoyant performance.

In general, the market is recovering gradually, although it is still putting pressure on margins. Sligro Food Group’s expense trend is still benefiting from the structural efficiency measures taken in 2005. Both business units are currently working hard on a new logistics infrastructure. This will ultimately lead to specialised self-service and delivery service operations within food service and a merger of EM-TÉ and Prisma’s logistics in food retail.

An extensive operation to convert the purchased Edah stores to the EM-TÉ and Golff supermarket formats has also started. The third new EM-TÉ supermarket has now opened. Overall, twelve new supermarkets will be opened in the fourth quarter. Although sales at the recently opened stores support our confidence in the success of this mega-operation, we believe it is still too early to comment specifically. We will address developments at the new sales outlets and further plans for 2007 extensively on the publication of the full-year figures.

As noted previously, opening new stores will involve some start-up costs, mainly as a result of launch activities. Financing costs have also increased as a result of our €80 million contribution to S&S Winkels. S&S Winkels has now started disposing of stores which do not fit the Sperwer and Sligro Food Group service formats and has been pleasantly surprised by the considerable interest.
 
Despite these conversion and start-up costs, Sligro Food Group expects to close 2006 with a record net profit of some €60 million. The net profit in 2005 was €50.9 million.

The turnover figures for 2006 will be released on 3 January 2007 and the full results for 2006 will be published on 25 January.

Sligro Food Group N.V. encompasses food service and food retail companies selling directly and indirectly to the entire Dutch food and beverage market. Sligro Food Group aims to be a dependable, high-quality company achieving managed growth in all its activities and for all its stakeholders. In 2005, the company achieved a turnover of €1,546 million and had over 3,500 employees, on a full-time equivalent basis.

Veghel, 19 October 2006

On behalf of the Executive Board of Sligro Food Group N.V.

A.J.L. Slippens
H.L. van Rozendaal
Tel: +31 413 34 35 00
www.sligrofoodgroup.com