While dairy farmers continued to curb spending, PGW was boosted by a buoyant year for horticulture.

PGG Wrightson is hailing its after-tax profit of $39.6 million following what it describes as a tough year.

Chief executive Mark Dewdney said the dairy slump resulted in less spending by dairy clients and was the main reason for the small reduction in group revenue. However the company's diversified portfolio had helped benefit the business.

"While New Zealand dairy and South America have had extremely tough years, for example, horticulture in New Zealand has continued to grow strongly," Dewdney said.

The seed and grain group increased 10 per cent, retail was up 7 per cent, while livestock fell  1 per cent.

The Christchurch-based agriculture company improved its profit for the year to the end of June 2016, from $32.8m in 2015.

Dewdney said the higher after-tax profit was due to a number of non-operating items that reduced the effective tax rate, such as gains on sale of property.

Operating earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation were $70.2m, up from $69.6m from the year before.

Net cash flow from operating activities improved $6m to $35.2m. After spending $44m on capital expenditure and investments, and realising $31m from the sale of non-strategic assets, net debt increased $7m to $127m.

PGW, controlled by China's Agria Corp, has grown its EBITDA by about 50 per cent over the past three years.

It will pay a fully imputed dividend of 2c per share on October 4. This will bring the total fully-imputed dividends paid for the year to 3.75c per share.

Dewdney predicted the 2017 financial year would continue to be tough for the primary sector, with many dairy farmers facing their third season of cash losses in succession, and that repeating the operating EBITDA result would be a "stretch".

 - Stuff