Jerome A. Peribere
Analyst
Okay, so what have we observed in Food Packaging? First of all is that when you exclude currency, our sales have been going up 2% and our operating income has been going up slightly less than 1%. We had, in fact, an unfavorable geographical mix. But we have some very interesting things happening. We had volume increase overall 2%, with 8% volume growth in Latin America, double-digit growth in Asia and a stable North America, with a negative product mix there. But we have also growth in Europe. That is for our Food Packaging business. Sequentially, we had suffered from quarter -- Q1 also in the second quarter, so no surprise that we're back on track with our kind of historical profitability in that segment. On Food Solutions, we've been doing quite well and we had our volume grow in North America by over 7% or almost 8%; Latin America, double digit; Europe, slightly negative; but Asia, Middle East, Turkey has been growing 20%. So how did that happen? Let me remind you that the Food Packaging is our traditional protein industrial packaging and our Food Solution is mostly [indiscernible] ready, our fluid high-barrier voucher that were microwavable type of products, so more consumer-driven. In North America, we have benefited from a very good growth in our pouches business for an exceptionally -- added by an exceptionally favorable tomato crop. But this is a very good new solution, which is a very strong alternative with lots of customer benefits versus can and for tomato, for example. So that's a very good type of new growth, which has been accelerated by a good agriculture tomato crop. But it's just a solution which is imposing itself. In Latin America, we try -- we're taking pricing actions in Brazil and in Argentina. The only negative spot is in Australia and New Zealand. Actually in Australia where we had a lot of rigid turbo foaming tubs [ph] and we lost to it on price also against competition. So generally speaking, this Food Packaging sector is starting to -- is somewhat tied to what's going on in the meat market. And again, we'd go on and talk about red fresh meat versus poultry and versus pork, but also we have innovation in different sectors, and this goes to a 50 [ph] type of products, which we are working strongly on, freshness, case-ready, multiple bags. The new consumer benefit packaging, which is our FoldLOK, as I mentioned earlier in -- as it were, specialty retail, which is actually pretty successful, and high-powered protein. So I think that this is going well. And what I'd like to mention is that our people internally are now working by leveraging this food packaging presence with our hygiene solutions where we have growth synergies and we're starting to see some benefits there of the former Diversey business in sanitation.