The business achieved revenue growth of 33% to €9.72bn (£8.5bn) in the period, and EBITDA growth of 43% to €1.77bn, with an EBITDA margin of 18.2%.

Group CEO Tony Smurfit said: “We continue to drive improvement across all areas of our business, consistent with the delivery of our strategy, providing the most innovative and sustainable packaging through our integrated business model, ensuring security of supply to our over 65,000 customers.

“Significant cost inflation is being recovered in corrugated box pricing as anticipated. Against strong comparisons, corrugated box volumes were flat for the first nine months.

“The investments we have made over the last number of years are making the group ever more efficient with a customer-led focus on quality, innovation and sustainability. With SKG’s scale and geographic reach across 36 countries, together with the many specialist businesses within the group, there remain many opportunities for growth.

“Our results reflect the steps we have taken and the quality of the Smurfit Kappa business. We expect to deliver EBITDA of approximately €2.3bn for the full year 2022.”

Reuters reported on Wednesday (2 November), the date of the trading update’s release and a subsequent analyst call, that Smurfit Kappa had experienced a 3% fall in volumes in its Q3 period, which it attributed to high inflation, the war in Ukraine, and shifting consumer demand.

The group’s share price dropped by over 5% upon the release of the trading update, to 2,761p.

This summer, Smurfit Kappa completed an €11.5m investment in sustainability at its Zülpich Paper Mill in Germany.

Earlier in the year it had unveiled a water-resistant sustainable paper and became the world’s first packaging company to become vegan certified.

The FTSE 100 company employs around 48,000 staff in over 350 production sites across 36 countries.