Yerevan brandy company maintains last year output and increases profit
by 14% in 2008/2009

YEREVAN, September 12. /ARKA/. Yerevan Brandy Company managed to
maintain last production output of 4 million liters and to increase its
profit by 14% up to 17 billion drams in 2008/2009 financial year
despite financial and economic crisis, Executive Director of the
company Ara Grigoryan said.

Export activities have been also maintained from the last year and even
a negligible increase has been recorded, Grigoryan said.

Increase in profits along with unchanged production activities was
recorded mainly due to change in foreign currency rate. Product cost
and sales of profitable brandy kinds also had some small contribution
to the increase.

Yet, the company also experienced the crisis effects: it failed to
reach the ambitious 18% growth panned in the beginning of the year,
Grigoryan said.

Even a 50% decline was recorded in production as of the end of
July-August of 2009/2010 financial year as compared with the last year
level.

The problem is that Russian market is the main one for Yerevan Brandy
Company and it is not know when it will start stabilizing, Grigoryan
said.

He also reported that no staff reduction was recorded in the company in
2008/2009 financial year. The company continues providing a full social
security package to its employees, including health insurance, life
insurance and insurance against ac
cidents.

As a result of the audit carried out by a prestigious international
audit company, Yerevan Brandy Company received ISO 14001 environment
management system certificate and OHSAS 18001 human health and safety
certificate.

Yerevan Brandy Company was founded in 1887. The modern factory complex
was put in operation in 1953.

In June 1998 the company joined the Pernod Ricard group, an
international corporation owning a number of famous alcoholic drink
trademark and ranking the second in the world in production and sales
of alcoholic drinks. Pernod Ricard purchased the Yerevan Brandy Company
for $30mln at an international tender. ($1=377.11drams). `0–