Oceana Group Ltd

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Oceania Interim Results for 2024 presentation on this beautiful Cape Town winter's morning. I think winter's finally arrived. 10 days ago, two weeks ago, we had elections. Interesting. Going back to 1994, we're now at 2024, 30 years later. We are really living in hope, and from all the indication that we've had in the last few days, it looks that our politicians will come to some reasonable conclusion that will help all of us. On behalf of the board, I would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you. Before we dive into the details of our financial performance, I want to take a moment to express our gratitude to our shareholders, stakeholders, employers, partners for their continued dedication and support. And I see many bankers in here as well. I should maybe say thank you to the bankers as well. Your collective efforts that have contributed to our company's success and resilience. Undoubtedly, we find ourselves operating in a dynamic and ever-evolving business landscape. Despite this, Oceana remains steadfast in its pursuit of growth and innovation. I must take a moment to commend the dedicated team for their hard work, creativity, and unwavering commitment to our shared goals, which have been instrumental in driving Oceana forward. Just a simple example again. When our management team came to us and said, there's 120 jobs at risk in Grafrenet of all places. Can you believe it? They've gone and our management will talk to you about what they've done later. And in that way, they've saved 120 important jobs in an area where unemployment is very, very high. As you will soon see, this has enabled another strong performance, increased investment in our South African operations, following the certainty provided by the foundation of FRAP, the fishing rights allocation process. Now that we've got that behind us, now that we've got the fact that we've got 15-year rights, management can come up with proposals to the board to say how they're going to spend the money, how they're going to renew the factories, renew their fleet, update their fleet and all that. So certainly now that we've got that certainty, it does help management and the board to do the job very, very well. With that, I will now hand over to the CEO, Neville Brink, and our CFO, Zaf Mohamed, to provide a more detailed overview of the financial results. Thank you very much. And thanks very much once again for being here.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us. When I was looking at that video, I need to teach Imitar Silliman what a large boat means, because that wasn't a large boat, but it's... Anyway, welcome. Yeah, it's nice to see all your faces. Always nicer to talk to a live audience than talk to a screen, so thank you for joining us. The format today is I'll give a very high-level overview of what drove the performance, and I'm sure most of you have seen the scenes this morning. It's a very pleasing performance, so I'll give you a very high key components of what drove that performance. And then I will go into the business divisions and unpack a little bit about obviously what drove that performance and a little bit about going forward. Obviously we're two months into the second half, so there's some elements of the April and May performance that I'll highlight to give you some indications of where we're gonna go for the full year. And then I'll ask Zaf to come in and do the financials. And then I'll end with a kind of overview of the balance of this year and some indications of where we're going to go forward in terms of it. Just when I was preparing for this presentation, I was looking at the vessel, and I'm a fisherman, and when I see a picture like that, it's pleasing. It's a pelagic vessel fishing somewhere off the west coast in the setting sun there. Obviously, with the birds there, it means it's setting, so it's hopefully catching lots of pilchards, and that's what I like to see. That to me means profit, money, performance. Okay, so very pleasing performance. And there are different components to that performance. The first one obviously is Daybrook, and that's been the driver between the first half. And it was really driven by us having the ability to take advantage of a very, very favorable price. And when I was thinking about this, you know, obviously, price, I can't do anything. I can't call it. It's a commodity, and it's driven by supply and demand. And with the Peruvian catch being so poor over the last two years, the availability of fish oil was very, very short. And we foresaw in 2023 that there was going to be a massive shortage of oil. So... What we did is we were able to take advantage of a future price that we knew was coming. And that's exactly what we did. I mean, the factory in 23 and the early parts of 24 has been performing at exceptional levels, minimal downtime, maximizing output. And we went into this year with very high stock levels, unusually high stock levels of oil in anticipation of the price. It already had started to move up at the latter part of this year. And that's driven performance. You'll see some of the details later. On the Lucky Star side, a very pleasing performance from Lucky Star in a very tough environment. Consumers, as we all know, are under pressure, in particular the consumers that buy Lucky Star. The volume that we achieved in the six-month period was very pleasing, just short of our record of 5 million cartons in the same period last year. Interesting that the performance, we were expecting a strong performance in December, and it didn't happen, and that was very... prevalent in all of the FMCG companies that operated in that space over the December. December wasn't a great period, but what came through for us in particular was the February-March period. Strong graph of volume, and in fact we had the second quarter, January to March, was a record for us in terms of volume increase. And you'll see there's two lucky stars there. And the second part is, remember, lucky stars is one business in terms of the factories, the two canneries, and the two fish and oil businesses that kind of supplement the margins of that business. And we've invested quite heavily in those businesses. And you'll see when I present the figures. We closed both those businesses much earlier than we've done in the past. Normally we close both canneries and fish mill plants in late November, early December for a normal maintenance period, which is about two months. This year we effectively closed the Felter factory, which is the light black factory on the Berg River, for almost a six-month period on the fish mill and oil. In fact, it only opened a couple of weeks ago. And the canneries, we closed both of them for an extra month. So from our cover of overheads, and it was a planned investment because we're upgrading those factories. So those things started to come through in the second part of this year and enhanced margin, despite the fact that they were closed. So very pleasing performance in terms of volume and margin from both of those businesses. Wild caught business had a tough year. I don't know where Inna is. She's somewhere around here, but she's taken strain this year. It's been extremely difficult here. A combination of very poor catch rates, very variable catch rates across all the species, and you'll see just now about that. And unfortunately, it had a major breakdown in the flagship horse mackerel vessel in SA, the Desert Diamond. Desert Diamond is the largest fishing vessel in the Southern Hemisphere, and I'll talk about what happened there. But it... it has really made this business very tough. But what we have done is we are investing for the going forward. So the market is extremely strong. And then lastly on our balance sheet, I mean we've got a very strong balance sheet, very healthy balance sheet. We are investing over the next three years 1.2 billion in both upgrades and in maintenance and compliance. And the reason we can do that is because of our balance sheet. And a lot of the investment is coming through this year. Approximately 700 million between the two, both in US and in USA in investment in upgrades, vessels, factories, fish meal plants. So that kind of drove the performance, and I'll go into some more detail now. And I'm gonna start off on the wild-caught side. As you know, we operate in the horse mackerel fishery, both in Namibia and South Africa. We have three vessels. In Namibia, we've got two, and in South Africa, one. The Desert Diamond, as you can see, catch rates and sea days. And we measure, you know, I always say, a fishing vessel makes no money when it's alongside the quayside. It makes money when it's fishing. Unfortunately, the Desert Diamond is a large... Midwater trawler, very complicated, has a crew of 120, a size of 110 meters, two main engines, very complex business, very complex vessel to run. And we had a stern tube seal breakdown in the latter part of December. And a seal, this is right at the back end of the vessel between the gearbox and the propeller. And we simply couldn't stop the oil coming out. Very sad. And unfortunately, when you have to replace that kind of seal or any machinery, it is not stock shelf that you can go buy off the shelf. You have to have to manufacture it. And the manufacturing time is essentially three to four months. So currently the vessel is in dry dock. It's been out of operation for almost seven months. It will go back to sea, we hope, in about mid-July. Unfortunately, that has affected this division's business quite badly because not only it will make a sizable operating loss as opposed to an operating profit, so that swing is quite massive. But what we have done in this six-month period is we've pulled everything forward. So all of the both main engines, we put new auxiliaries in, we've upgraded all the steel work in the vessel. It's on dry dock now, so all the underwater stuff has been done. So effectively, this vessel won't have to go back into any kind of maintenance or dry dock for at least another year and a half. So the next time it'll go dry dock is 2026. So this... Unfortunate circumstances, but it puts us in a very good strong position for the second half and in next year. The Namibian side on the horseback, again, and it's a function, interesting, you'll see the theme come across in all of the species. The function of catch rates is a function of climate change and this El Nino-La Nina effect, and it definitely has affected this division more so than any other divisions. The catch rates, the resource seems to be in very, very good state. The scientists in Namibia are confident that the resource is in a good state, but catch rates have been up and down. As you can see, catch rates dropped off 69, and that drives performance in a fishing business. When you're out there, you're chewing up the same sort of fuel, the same sort of cost base, and it's all about how much you can put onto the vessel. If you can fill the vessel up in 10 days as opposed to 20 days, your fixed costs will remain the same, your revenue and your bottom line just increases. So reasonable performance from Namibia, but really driven by SA Diamond being out of the business. Acres had a reasonable year. Catch rates, again, up and down. Remember, we catch the full coastline from east to west. Traditionally, in the second half of the year, going in now, we start moving more east. We catch up in the P area. And in the last couple of weeks, in the last couple of months, catch rates have definitely started to improve. But in the first six months, catch rates were all over the place. Much better than last year. Last year we had a very poor year when the La Nina was really affecting the east coast. We had massive warming of water. It is now starting to improve. In fact, one of these vessels in the last three weeks managed to, remember the horse mackerel vessel is not fishing, but these vessels can catch horse mackerel as a bycatch. The Beatrice Marine, which is the vessel that we spent a considerable amount of money last year upgrading, caught a substantial amount of horse mackerel, which is a very pleasing sign for the diamond going back. So I'm cautiously optimistic that we're seeing an improvement in catch rates in both horse mackerel and hake in the second half of this year and going forward to the next year. Again, market is very, very strong. We sell hake in both the Western European market and the SA market. Both those markets, the pricing is strong. People are looking for wild-caught fish. And unfortunately, worldwide, that is a finite number. So there isn't more wild-caught fish being caught. So as population growth comes and as people become more health-conscious and looking for sustainable wild-caught, demand will increase. So this business is in a good position, and we are spending a lot of money over the next couple of years in upgrading that fleet. We did the Beatrice last year. We're doing the Relica this year, and we'll do the Compass and the Sundeli going forward. So those vessels are not only being upgraded in terms of maintenance and maintenance, you know, preventing breakdowns, but in terms of enhancing capacity, increased factory capacity, increased throughput and volume that we can put through those vessels. So a pleasing performance from Hake. Not as good as I would hope, but certainly going forward, if catch rates improve, we'll see that business come through. This is an interesting, smaller parts of the business, but also very interesting indications of what's happening from a phishing point of view. And I'm gonna start off with Squid on that bottom left hand graph. Squid is a short-lived species, two years. And then they lay their eggs every year, and it goes up and down. And we've seen a very simple fishing technique. It's a small vessel. It's not got high fixed costs. But when the fishery performs, it does extremely well. Up to March, we were well below. And remember, when we fish, this is a seven-month fishery, and most of the fish is caught from November to January. And that's when you catch 80% of your annual catch is in that period, when the spawning and the animals start congregating and collecting, and we can catch them. We were way behind the previous year's catch. The department agreed to give us an extra month. Normally, we close in March. They gave us an extra month to catch. And we went out to sea in April. In April, we made up the full year's catch in one month. And that's a sign of what's happening in the East Coast. Remember, you've seen the vessels, if you've ever been to P, the vessels with the lights on that sit out at sea at night and do hand jigging. That's those vessels. So a very pleasing performance from squid. It wouldn't affect this year's half-year results, but certainly going forward to the second half, very strong catches. But what's more pleasing for me is the sign of what's happening in that East Coast fishery. And it'll affect hake, it'll affect horse mackerel, and it'll affect squid. On the lobster side, a very small fishery. But again, lobster is also on the east coast. And you can see, this is the catch rates that we've seen over the last year. Also, now remember, lobster, unlike a swimming fish, can move away. If there's warm water, they move into a deeper water. They move shallow in where there's colder water. The lobsters are fairly sedentary. They don't move a lot. They do swim, but they don't move far off their grounds. They've stayed, and certainly our catch rates are very good, but you can see the upward performance. So very good signs for the wild caught businesses across the board in terms of fishing rate. What we've got to do is make sure those assets can perform when fishing is right, and that's what we're doing. We're spending in all of those assets going forward. In line with this, just to give you an update, so one of the things we have done, and it was concluded on the first of June, so post the results, we have effectively acquired the INJ squid rights. We've bought, they have five vessels, 77 permits, and we acquired those, and that will be incorporated in our cells, our cells in a joint venture part in the Eastern Cape. So we are actually growing our squid business. As you can see, we've got 89 permits. Our partner is an Eastern Cape small-scale fisherman who's very, he's a true fisherman, he understands the business, he understands the squid business, has joined with us, and we are forming, and jointly we've bought the INJ Squid business. So we now own 10% of the permits, and this certainly is something that we're gonna drive. I believe in this business. It is a very simple business to run, and when that fishery performs, it performs extremely well. All of our squid, I don't know if you know, any of the calamari you eat in South Africa is not South African calamari. It's all imported, cheap calamari that comes from Falklands or Denmark, and it's all treated, so it's softened. All of our squid goes to Western Europe. It is probably the second highest valuable species in the world outside of Morocco. And the Italians and the Spanish and the French all enjoy our squid, and there simply isn't enough. So it's a business that has long-term ability to grow. We will be investing in this business, and certainly that's a new acquisition that we've just made that we'll start bedding down over the next month. So overall performance, a very poor performance. Not great, 17 million operating profit against 108 million. Now remember, in that 17 million is a business called the Desert Diamond that could make anything between 50 and 100 million per year. This year it will probably lose 50 to 100 million. So that swing is massive in this business. And then with the hake vessels and the Namibian horse mackerels and the squid coming through, it's been a tough journey for that team. But certainly the signs are certainly looking a lot better going forward. Then our lucky star business. And again, I always talk about lucky star business. This is the fish meal and fish oil business and the can business and the FMCG business. And I want to stop here because Lucky Star this year was voted the number one brand in the country, the iconic brand. And this is not a small survey. Now, I think this is an important – so this survey is done annually, and it's done by approximately half the population, 25 million, 20 – I think it says 28 million adult consumers worldwide. are involved in this survey. It crosses all of the various categories, banks and the banks sitting here, the liquor businesses, the Coca Colas of this world, the coups, the KFCs, and across the board, and it's 195 categories. They picked 52 category winners. And out of that 52 category winners, one brand is nominated the leading iconic brand in the country. And that is about emotional connection. How does the consumers emotionally connect with the brand? And Lucky Star, for the first time, has actually been the number one brand, which is a phenomenal performance. And this doesn't happen overnight. This takes a lot of time and effort And the young lady there, Anshan Lombard, who's in charge of the Lucky Star for many years, lives, dreams, eats, sleeps Lucky Star. And Anshan, a fantastic performance. This is credit to you and the Lucky Star team, Lawrence and his team. So fantastic performance. And it just shows the humble Lucky Star culture, the number one brand in the country. Fantastic. How did Lucky Star do this year? As you can see, as I spoke about earlier, the performance, 4.8 million cartons in the half, a very good performance. But more particularly, that second half, that yellow section, 2.4 million cartons sold in the quarter. So definitely strong demand for it. In a very tough environment, consumers are under pressure. And the difficulty with this business is always how do we balance margin growth or margin stability with volume growth. We can't always recover all of our input costs, and a large portion of the input costs are dollar-driven, therefore the RAND and the depreciation of the RAND affects this business quite hard, and we try and manage that business so we're not putting too much pressure on the consumer in terms of pricing. At the same time, as you'll see at the bottom, that was the production figures. Now that, you see, we only produced 1.5 million cartons in the half, and that was a plan. That was as a result of us closing both canneries early to put some major enhancements in both canneries in terms of things like which is an automated packing system that puts the fish into the can. Not only is it speeds the process up so we can push faster throughput, but it also improves yields. You don't have some, it's much more controlled. So all of these things are to try and improve the margin of the Lucky Star business. A combination of margin at the cannery and at the retail side. So a good performance across the board. What is more pleasing is what the state of the resource is. As I said to you that, you know, pilchards has been over many, many years and going back in my history when I was part of Federal Marine, 100% of all canned fish was produced from local catch. The TAC in those days was 120, 130,000 tons. This year, or last year, it was 30,000 tonnes. This year, it is 65,000 tonnes. So a massive increase, which is a good sign for the resource improving. You remember in Lucky Star, at about 10% of the production that goes into Lucky Star is from own catch. About 90% is imported. With this massive increase, it allows us to catch more fish that will go in the can. And remember, fish that we catch is free fish. It's not bought fish. Obviously, there's a cost to it, but it's margin-enhancing in the sense that the fish that we catch ourselves are a lot cheaper than buying frozen fish from all over the world. It's a very positive sign from the resource point of view, almost double. On the catch rates, again, similar to what we saw in squid. So this is comparing the monthly catches last year versus this year. As you can see, the dark blue is last year. In October, November, just February period, we caught a lot of fish last year, but very little fish this year. Suddenly, in the March period, it suddenly picked up. So again, as those sea conditions are improving, and over the last two weeks, catches have been extremely good on both pilchards and anchovies. So very pleasing sign from a resource point of view. And that obviously enhances our own factory production through the two canneries, and enhances Lucky Star's margin. So very positive sign coming out of those resources. Just some information on the protein market. This is a defined protein market. This covers the major protein producers in the South African retail market. And with one small exception, Lucky Star is the only business that is actually showing volume growth. So this compares... volume, 12-month moving average versus the previous year. So you can see across all of the categories last year, including IQ of chicken, which is the number one protein in the market. Last year, they showed a volume decline. This year, they've shown a small volume increase, 2.7%, but as a pilchard category and as... And remember, we dominate the pilchard category. So this is not only Lucky Starts, all pilchards. Last year, we showed a volume growth of 12.8. This year, on top of that volume growth, we're still showing a volume growth of 3.5%. So very positive. More importantly, we've taken some share away. And that's what we are. We don't play in the pilchard market. Who do we compete to? We don't compete with Saldana and Glenrick and Koo. We compete in the protein market. From everything from IQF chicken to offal to chicken heads and feet to sheep head. That's where we compete. And if you go into the market, that's where we compete. Consumers are looking and they are very conscious about pricing. When they go and look at the price, they compare the pricing of those products. So pleasing performance in terms of what we're doing and that's a fine line because We could, if the RAN bombs out, it will affect us in terms of where our imported and the cost of our imported material will be. And we could push it back to the consumers. There's no harm in putting it, but it will affect off day. So that fine line in terms of taking where we want to see the improvement is in our own factories, trying to enhance our production and our efficiencies in our own factory to ward off the potential effect of a weakening RAN. So it's a tough business, but it is, and I put this defensive product, the reason why Lucky Star and canned pilchards in particular is so strong is because it is a product that you can put into the shelf, you can put into your cupboard, you can hold it there, it's not subject to load shedding or power, you don't need a fridge, you don't need to cook it, it can be eaten cold. So it is a very defensive product, and it's certainly a product that we see as a long-term, and it is not reliant on phishing. If there was zero phishing in South Africa, we'd still have a brand because we could import it. So it's a very defensive product. This is our range of products. I just wanted to give you an indication of what it is. And top left there is the pilchard range. That's the traditional pilchard range. We are launching a new flavor in a couple of weeks' time, which will go out to enhance the chili and the tomato and the sweet chili. The mince pilchards have been around. Those four have been around for a long time. We're going with a new brand, a new flavor. These are the imported ones that we don't produce locally. That's mackerel. It's a true mackerel that goes into that can. Tuna and the Moroccan type sardines in oil, which you all know. High margin, low volume product that's on the retail shelves. And then our new range, which we built and we bought the IP for bought the machinery from Joburg and built a factory in one of our old lobster factories. That started production late last year in November, December. It really only hit the shelves a couple of months ago March, April, and has done extremely well in the short term. So we were building our production, and we see that. So you see the two flavors on the left-hand side. And then, well, when we bought this machinery and this business, we acquired two brands, being Top One and Preemie, which were existing brands that we bought for very little. very strong in the cross-border markets, very strong in Namibia, in Botswana. So we're certainly going to be looking at rolling that out. So that business is really starting to gather momentum now. But I'm excited about it. And then I'll come back to the last one now. And then this is the vegetable range. Again, a combination of low-margin baked beans, which really enhances the brand in terms of visibility on the shelf. It annoys Tiger immensely. But it's a brand that we like, and we'll do it. Not very high margin. And the other brands, the Soya and the Chocoloco, are very nice brands. We contract packet with a company called Giant, and they do reasonably well. But as a shelf, when you go into and you see in a supermarket, and obviously these are packed all very closely, when you see Lucky Star and you walk into it down an aisle, you just see Lucky Star. It looks phenomenal. And that's part of the brand enhancement we're talking about. And then on the right-hand side, bottom right there, under meat, we've just acquired a new business. This is the one that our chairman was talking about. It's a chicken livers business. We bought 75% stake. The existing owners, who was a pioneer in the business, is staying in with 25%. It's a business, a cannery in ,, employs 120 people. And the Lucky Star is not their brand. It's called Pashash was their brand name. But it was predominantly in and is only in school feeding schemes. And it is very, very popular in the school feeding schemes. It's currently in Gauteng and the Western Cape. So we've got a base load through that factory that basically, but key for them is they just didn't have the balance sheet to scale it. And this lends itself so perfectly to scaling. So we've gone, we will change the label to Lucky Star Chicken Livers. It will continue in the school feeding schemes. We believe we can grow the school feeding schemes. Currently the state feed 10 and a half million kids every single day, and they need protein. Now they can't only get protein from chicken or pilchards, they need an alternate protein, and this is where this fits in. So it's very, very popular. It's priced very, very competitively. The Department of Basic Education are looking for us to expand into the other parts that we're not in. But more importantly, this brand lends itself to the lucky star consumer. So we will go into the brand there under the lucky star. We'll start expanding that both into retail and wholesale. And I think there's a huge opportunity for us to grow. And certainly that is not factored in in any of the figures going forward. I think this is a whole... plan to grow this, whether we grow it only in Coughlinet or put another factory somewhere else, we'll see. But it is an exciting development for the Lucky Star business. So there's the factory, just to give you some idea. And it just started. And I really believe this is going to be both margin and volume enhancing range for Lucky Star. Fish oil, and again, I talk about this as one business because you remember that when you can pilchards, you cut the head off and you cut the tail off and you take the guts out. You have to put it somewhere. You put it into the fish oil. So those businesses cannot be separated. They are one and the same staff work on both sides. Your engineering staff, your logistics staff, all are part of this thing. So it's enhancing to Lucky Star. What is pleasing to see is, again, the pricing. Obviously, this business sells into the oil market, which has been very good for us. But at the end of last year, we didn't open with any oil or fish meal. Because of the poor catches last year out of the industrial side, our opening stock on this side, unlike Daybrook, was very low. So we've had very little production to enhance this year's first half margin. But what we're seeing on the resource point of view, it's actually very strong again, coming through in the second half. So, give you some ideas of, now this is catch rates. Top left is the anchovy biomass. And you can see it's also a very short-lived species, lives anything between two and four years. Very cyclical, it has lows and highs and bounces back very quickly. As you can see, we've just come out of a low 2023, and the biomass has been increased. Anchovy catches at the moment are very, very strong. But I always say to Salaman, the head of our Lucky Star business, is when anchovy takes a while to come down. Anchovy starts up north near Lamberts Bay up there and then we start catching and it moves down the now on the coastline during the year. If it stays further north for longer, it almost predicates a better season. Because at the moment it gets down fast, it dissipates. And right now we're catching a lot of fish near St. Lena Bay in the middle of the coast. So very positive. The last couple of weeks, very good catches of chovy. Gain that... Hasn't affected the first half because we were closed in terms of the two fish mill and oil factories, but it will certainly enhance the second half. And that is margin enhancing to the Lucky Star business overall. As you can see, the bottom graph there, the blue one is the catch rate, so we're well ahead of last year, and then it dropped off a bit in May. We had quite bad weather in May. In June, we've seen some nice pickups, so we expect that to continue. And then the other positive is we catch a species called red-eye, South Atlantic herring, which is not a TAC species. It's called a puckle. upper catch limit, so the DEF give us an amount to catch that is a bycatch to anchovy and pilchards. And we can catch, and it's not given to any individual company, it's given as a collective, and it's in our Olympic system. The first to catch, you can go out and catch it. Now normally that disappears, it's caught in the early part of the season, then slowly starts disappearing. This year, we've seen strong catches of anchovy, and you can see they've increased the TAC to 165,000 tons, which is very, very positive, or their puckle to 165,000 tons. So all good signs for the resources in South Africa, in all of the species. All of this, obviously, is margin enhancing because I get asked the question every year, where's your volume going to come from, Lucky Star? And obviously, we want to continue driving volume, but the volume is a fine line between price and consumer acceptance, affordability. So we've got to balance that affordability. So if the RAND depreciates and we have to hold the price, this is where we get the margin enhancement, through our two canneries and through our two fish mill plants. We've spent on the fish mill plants over the last year and this year, we're upgrading all of the boilers. There's a new boiler plant in Lieplach, which basically creates the power, the coal-fired boilers. Those boilers were almost 82 years old, certainly not old. sustainable, and we invested $100 million putting those boilers in. They started going in last year. I was up at the LIHPAC factory last week, and all of that factory is now up and running with the boilers. And it's not just replacement of oil. It's not just replacement capex. Our power consumption has gone down by 30% in that in that area. So it's enhancing in terms of margin and obviously reliability and sustainability. And I've been in a lot of fish meal factories in my life across the world, and certainly walking through that factory is one of the cleanest factories. Normally when you walk through a fish meal plant, there's pieces of fish all over the place, and it smells like hell. This was a really good... We've used the lessons that we've got from Daybrook and put it into... into LIPLAC. And we're doing the same, we've enhanced the factory in Sintlina Bay, we haven't obviously there, the boilers are newer, but we've put new dryers in, and there's some pictures here. So that's, those pieces of machinery you see are the new boilers. We've got new fish mill dryers, so it's not only on the power point of view, we put across the board, we put new dryers, new purifiers, new separators, just to give you some pictures. So it's a sizable investment. It's just over nearly $300 million that's going to be invested in these businesses over the next two years. So the performance of Lucky Star. pleasing, but remember, this is almost a one-third, two-third business. It's not, because of the impact of the fish meal and fish oil and the canneries, a large portion of their profitability only comes in the second half. So although 13% up and a good performance, I certainly believe that the second half, the Lucky Star volume sales is more static in terms of averages throughout the year. The Lucky Star Fish, Mill and Oil is really a second half business. When you close and you do maintenance in the first half, you start catching in the second half and you start selling in the second half. So that's the nature of this business. But still a very pleasing performance across the board and looking good for the second half of the year and going forward. And then our star performer, Daybrook. Very simple business. A simple business, but not simple to keep going effectively. And that's what that management team has done over the last two years. That factory really, really performed in 2023. Hence the closing stock of 8,800 tons of oil. And that was in anticipation of the pricing gap. And that oil has gone into the market now. And that's what has effectively made this phenomenal performance, where oil prices went from, and you'll see just now. So a very good performance. And I will make this point a couple of times over this week. There's an element of luck. We couldn't manage the oil price. But we could manage, we certainly did manage taking advantage of it, putting ourselves in a position that when the price, and we anticipated that we could take advantage. So that certainly was pleasing. This is just the oil sales. Again, you can see that first half there, 9,600 tons of oil sold in the first half at a price in around $5,000, $5,500 a ton, relative to two years ago when the pricing was $2,000 a ton. It's a massive increase, and that cascades all the way through to margin. So very good performance. In the second half, just to give you an indication, we have fixed most of our orders for the balance of this calendar year with our customers. And the one big difference in this business going back a few years, we were really a commodity company. seller in both oil and meal. We sold to the highest bidder. We sold where there would be aquaculture in China or the Scandinavian salmon farmers or the pet food. What we've changed now is we have existing steady customers that know exactly what they need in terms of production. They forecast their production for an annual period and we try and match that. So we are very much aligned with that customer and we get a slight enhancement in terms of pricing because of the reliability we offer those customers. So we supply oil to the Scandinavian salmon farmers, and they know exactly what they want, and we plan our production accordingly. And we certainly have got enough production to carry them for the balance this year. That 9,600 tons, we'll probably take them to about June, July. We'll have one small order, so that won't be repeated in the second half. The second order will come through, but not at that size. And we will try and... obviously depending on catch rates, hold enough stock for them to carry them through until our new season starts in April of next year. So the strategy is really about working with our customers there and understanding their production requirements and their needs and balancing that. Same on the fish mill side. And there on the left-hand side, you can see the massive enhancement of price. Going from... from kind of $2,000 level at 2020 up to $6,000 a ton. Now, and I'll get to Peruvian catch. Pricing is going to come down. There's no doubt. It's an exceptional price that we've seen. The question is, what price will it settle again? Our belief is that what has proved to the salmon farmers, there isn't an alternative to higher mega fish oils out there. They can't replace the oil component of their feed with something else. One, because it enhances the growth rates of the fish, and two, from a health point of view. So when this price went down, they went and they were looking at all sorts of things. Black fly protein. There were a number of seaweed protein. All of these proteins to see if it could supplement because of the high price. And they haven't managed. They may do in the future, but certainly we're not going to see a price going to $7,000 and then back down to $2,000. Where it'll settle, I don't know. My gut feel is somewhere between $3,000 and $4,000, but we'll see. And that does depend on Peruvian catch and what the oil production. It is supply and demand, but we do know that there isn't a natural substitute to high omega-3 oils. Our catch rates this year, just to give you an indication, have been not dismal, but rather disappointing. And you can see the blue graph there is this current year. So we are a lot down versus last year at the same time. And it's not interesting enough talking to the team there. It's not because the fish are not there. There are plenty of fish. The problem is they're not congregating. There's constant winds, which we haven't seen before, that is dissipating the fish. So we're seeing the fish, and we're catching every day, but we're just not catching the volumes of it. Now, the key season for us is from mid-June through to August. That's when we catch most of the product. So it'll be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of months. What is pleasing about our catch rates at the moment is last year when we started the season, our oil yield average started around 4% and it moved up to 8%. This year, our current oil yield is over 10%. So although we're not catching the fish, the oil content in the fish is very, very high. So we did some measurements, but if we catch around 550 million fish, last year we caught 680, the equivalent of 500 will give us the same sort of oil output as it did last year. Hopefully I will catch a lot more than 550 million. So even though the catch rates are slow, it is a very pleasing oil output for this business. Obviously the unknown is the hurricane season. Remember in 2019 we had Hurricane Ida, that affected this business badly. I think we're in a far better position in terms of what we've done. And it's not that the hurricane destroys our vessels or our factory. Our vessels and our factory are fairly well positioned and well structured, they don't get damaged. What it affects is our ability to get back to sea. The shorter we can make that period in terms of having water on site, having power on site, having accommodation for the staff on site, having the roads clear, those are the things that... So we've done a lot of work in putting those things in place. So if there is a hurricane, it doesn't take us four weeks to get back to sea, it takes us one week to get back to sea. And that will make a huge difference. Touch wood, I hope we don't have hurricanes, but certainly the signs are because of the... I don't know if you've read, the Atlantic has had record... water temperature records being set over the last couple of months. That does lend itself to more weather condition. And I think part of this wind is part of that. So, you know, this business, you've got to, what you can control, you need to control. What you can't control, you put things in place that you can manage the output. So very pleasing performance in the business. Just in terms of supply and demand, remember both fish mill and fish oil are commodities. We sell in the commodity market and it's based on supply and demand. The demand for oil is mainly driven by the salmon industry, the farm salmon industry. Strong growth over the last years and the indications we got from them was that salmon farming will continue to grow because of the finite wild catch of salmon. There's limited catch, the whole, sushi and health aspects of salmon is growing, so the demand for salmon will continue, and hence why I believe that the pricing won't go down to the $2,000 level. On the fish mill side, our main customers are the U.S. pet food manufacturers, and as you can see, they're one of the largest in the world. And one of the positives that came out of COVID was the enhancement of pets across the world. People invested in additional pests, nothing else to do, buying another dog. After COVID, you don't get rid of the dog, you keep the dog, and hopefully feed the dog. So it's certainly... lends itself to continued demand for our products. And our current customers in the US, we've got committed orders for them right until the end of the calendar year. So a positive sign. I just want to talk a bit about the Peruvian catch. The Peruvian catch has been extremely good. Anthony Clark is not here because he writes a report and he follows the Biomar report which comes out biweekly. And it's showing very, very positive catch rates from the Peruvian. They have two catch seasons, first season and second season, and normally catch between four and five million tons a year. The first season was two and a half, and they've already caught that two and a half. So very strong recovery. Like our anchovy, it's a species that bounces back very quickly. It's going to take them a while to fill up the shortfall of both oil and meal, because there's a massive shortfall in particular of oil. And that will probably only fill up, depending on their second season, by the early part of the year. And then we'll see what's going to happen to pricing. So it is... It is a barometer that we're going to have to watch very carefully. So performance, phenomenal performance, $848 million for the year, half year, 130% up, $44 million. That's the dollars and rand. Obviously, the weakening rand also helped us in that business. And we certainly won't repeat that in the second half because of the planned sales of oil in particular. But when you look at the performance, and Zaf will talk about it just now, it just shows the strength of the diversity of Oceania. We're not one species. We're not one currency. We're not one geography. We're across the board. And unfortunately, in fishing, we are a volatile business. We can't control weather. We can't control fishing. If I put a net in the water, it doesn't mean I'm going to catch fish. And vessels traditionally are difficult to keep out at sea. They tend to break down because it's the nature of being out there. So our diversity in terms of where we are, we're in FMCG, we're in multiple species across the world, we're in multiple geographies, and I will not disinvest in other fishing businesses like the squid. I believe in the squid, and I'm going to grow that squid business. And then Lucky Star is... is almost protected in terms of fishing. So it has the ability to continue whether we catch our own fish or not, because it can buy fish. So that gives you a view of our business across the board. Second thing, and I'll talk after Zaf about investments, organic investments in our business, because that's where I think the growth will come through. So let me hand over to Zaf, and he can talk, and then I'll come back and finish off.

Thank you, Neville. Good morning, everyone. Welcome. Just to talk about coalitions, we've got two coalitions, one with the chicken liver business at 75% and another with the squid business at 51%. So if somebody wants to learn about coalitions, they can talk to us. Just a shout out to the people in the room. Some of our management team is here. Neville and I would like to extend our gratitude to the management team, finance team, the comms team for putting this day together and for making it really easy for us to be able to present a set of results. So the group delivered a record first-half performance following a strong performance in the 2023 financial year. Operating profit from continuing operations increased by 57% to R1 billion, while revenue increased by 12% to R5 billion. The growth in profit was primarily driven by Daybrook delivering record first-half earnings at a higher margin. A solid performance by Lucky Star was offset by poor results from the wild-caught seafood business. Headline earnings per share was up 85% to $0.578 a share, supported by higher U.S. earnings, which is taxed at a lower rate. An interim dividend of $0.195 per share has been declared, which is an increase of 50% on the $0.130 per share paid last year. The increase in the dividend is in recognition of the exceptional first half performance and take into consideration the group's capital expansion program. Net debt reduced by 17% to 2.5 billion rand compared to 3 billion rand at the end of March 2023. So the benefit Neville spoke earlier, the benefit of having a diversified business across species, geographies, and currencies is evident in the consistent and substantial operating profit growth that you can see over the past three years. The record first half operating profit and margin was driven by Daybrook's exceptional performance, which benefited from higher opening stock carried through from the end of financial year 2023. This enabled Daybrook to capitalize on high fish oil sales volumes at record US dollar prices during the period. Lucky Star's strong value offering to consumers resulted in improved sales volumes in the second quarter. A total of 4.8 million cartons were sold for the half year, off the back of a record 5 million cartons sold in the comparative six-month period, which is a very pleasing performance in what is a very, very tough trading environment. To put that in perspective, South Africans consume 800,000 cans a day of Lucky Star. Africa fish meal and fish oil was negatively impacted by lower opening stock, offset by strong US dollar pricing for fish oil. Wild caught seafood was impacted by poor catch rates and vessel reliability. However, this is being addressed through our CapEx program, which I'll talk to a bit later. Demand and pricing for products remain firm. On average, over the past four years, we've had an approximate 40-60 split in earnings first half to the second half, which is the graph on the left. Daybrook's exceptional performance contributed 848 million rand towards operating profit in the past six months, which is higher than the 810 million that it made in the previous 12 months, to put it in perspective. Having contributed 80% towards first half operating profit, as Minneville mentioned, it is unlikely that this level of contribution will be repeated in the second half. Double-digit revenue growth of 12% to 5 billion rand was characterized by strong pricing across all our products, particularly fish oil, as well as the demand for affordable protein. The impact of the weak rand exchange rate on export and US dollar translated revenue was offset by lower sales volumes in wild-caught seafood. Net interest expense decreased to 93 million rand. In the US, the net interest expense in dollar terms decreased by 56%, due to term debt repayments and high interest income received on money market investments. High borrowings in South Africa to fund capital expenditure and working capital requirements resulted in net interest expense increasing by 16%. Gross margin from continuing operations increased by 700 basis points to 34% due mainly to higher fish oil pricing, together with a higher proportion of fish oil sales volumes. Margins were moderated by lower wild caught volumes and the impact of the weaker RAN exchange rate on the cost of frozen fish imports. The decrease in the effective tax rate from 25.5% to 22.5% was due mainly to the mix of higher U.S. earnings, which is taxed at a lower rate than South African earnings. Cash generated from operations increased by 12.6% to R634 million attributable to the exceptional performance in the U.S. and mitigated by higher working capital requirements in South Africa. Capital expenditure increased by 45% to 297 million, and Neville spoke to the components of that. This included 132 million rand related to the upgrade of the West Coast canned foods and fish meal plants. Following the successful completion of Daybrook's upgrades, we are applying those learnings to the South African business as we expand capacity in our West Coast fish meal and fish oil business. Our financial year 2024 capex focus will see approximately 580 million rand being spent in South Africa, which represents more than 80% of our capex in the current financial year. The upgrade of the St. Helena Bay fish meal facility was completed in mid-January, while the major upgrade to the Laiplek fish meal facility was completed in April 2024. Both South African facilities are operational for the peak anchovy and red-eye fishing period. The horse mackerel vessel Desert Diamond and the hake vessel Rialeka are due to return to sea in the second half of this year. The group is planning to spend a further R400 million for the remainder of the 2024 financial year. Gross debt reduced by 1.2 billion rand over the past five years, the focus on reducing debt last year, and the group's solid financial performance set the foundation for us to commence our CapEx expansion program. This is particularly pertinent given the current high interest rate environment and gives us the capacity to grow and fund future CapEx. The South African net debt to EBITDA ratio was impacted by lower earnings, an increase in short-term facilities to fund capital expenditure, and working capital requirements. A portion of the South African debt that related to the capital expansion program will be refinanced on a five-year basis. The US ratio reduced due to settlement of term debt, higher cash balances, and substantial increase in earnings in H2 2023 and H1 2024. Our US debt levels have reduced substantially, and excess cash on end has been earning higher returns. Indications are that interest rates are likely to remain higher for longer in the US. As a result, we took the opportunity during the period to blend and extend our interest rate hedge that was due to mature in September 2024 to reduce the impact of higher rates on interest costs going forward. The group complied with all lender covenant requirements in both South Africa and the U.S., which is why we have quite a few bankers in the room. Our diversified business model, as Neville mentioned earlier, together with our cash generation and strong balance sheet has allowed us to reinvest throughout the business and to benefit from the continued strong demand and pricing across our product range. The group remains on track with its three-year capital investment program to upgrade its processing facilities and vessels to deliver direct efficiency gains and benefit future operational performance. The certainty provided by the recent 15-year renewal of fishing rights, as well as the focus on ESG, created the opportunity for investment in our fleet for the long term while reducing the impact of breakdowns. While a fair proportion of the capex is sustainability and compliance related, we have taken the opportunity to improve production capability, increase reliability, and improve yields and efficiencies. The successful completion and commissioning of the new boilers and canned meat facility were major milestones in our capex program. The LIPEC boiler upgrade also positively impacts the cannery and de-risks both facilities from the effects of load shedding. We are expecting to spend approximately 650 million rand on incremental capex in the period from financial year 2024 through to financial year 2026. Phase two of the FMO plant upgrade will extract further efficiencies, throughput and yield. The significant capital investment by the group also has the impact of creating jobs and substantially increasing economic activity in the areas in which we operate. As you know, CCS was sold for R760 million in April 2023, and the proceeds were used to pay down debt prior to the commencement of the group's capital expansion program. Lucky Star concluded a transaction to acquire 75% stake in a canned chicken liver business, while its new canned meat factory was commissioned during the period and successfully commenced production. These two expansions will enable Lucky Star to deliver further on its strategy of leveraging both its brand strength and depth of distribution. In partnership with an Eastern Cape-based empowerment partner, Wild Caught Seafood acquired a 51% stake in a squid business, earning five vessels and 77 fishing licenses. The group returned dividends of 563 million to shareholders in 2023. The 50% increase in the 2024 interim dividend represents a balanced approach of returning capital to shareholders while investing in our business to create long-term value for all stakeholders and position Oceana for sustained growth. Crudent cash and capital management will continue to remain a key focus as we continue with our strategy of creating balance sheet capacity for growth. Thank you and I hand over to Neville who will cover Outlook for the second half.

Okay, just a couple of slides to finish off with. Just really what are we focusing on the second six months of this year? Obviously, on the Lucky side, the four new factories that we've spent a lot of money over the last couple of months and continue to spend, we'll focus on that in terms of product efficiencies and enhancements. Brand extension, that Lucky Star brand has got some additional... Add-ons that we will focus on. I still think Lucky Star has the ability to extend outside of our current product range, and we'll constantly be looking at that. But certainly in the second, the next couple of months, it'll be bedding down the chicken livers and the corn meat business and the new flavor. The pilchard, obviously the pilchard recovery. Catch rates are good now. Fishing is fishing, so we've got to watch that very carefully. I would hope that fishing continues for the balance of the year, but certainly will be a strong sign of additional margin and the sign of the resource in particular pilchards. On the fish and oil side in the US, the focus really could be watching obviously where the Peruvian catch and what it is and focusing on stock management. What kind of vessels can operate and what kind of stock levels we can build up. Talking to our partner in West Bank in the U.S., the one area that we will focus on is weekend fishing. Up to now, our fishing has always been only during the week. We've had difficulty getting the skippers and the crew to fish on the weekends. We've certainly, over the last couple of months, given that the catches have been fairly sporadic, have opened the door to catching on weekends. So the focus will be to bring in, so that will give us additional capacity over the weekends going forward. If that mindset changes, and it's a difficult one, but if we can get that mindset changed, it will enhance the ability for us to fish a little bit longer. So certainly, and I don't know if you've read in the press, I've had some comments from some of the analysts about this legislation change in the U.S. And this is, it's been put to bed now, but just to give you some background, the recreational fishery in the Gulf of Mexico have always been at log heads with the commercial industry about what the buffer zone is between the coast and where we can fish. And they were quite vocal about They had a quarter mile limit and they were very vocal and tried to put a bill through to increase that to a mile, which would have affected our fishing quite badly if it was legislated that that was the zone that we couldn't fish. There's been a new governor installed in Louisiana, and he's very pro-business. And to his credit, he didn't force either way. He basically forced us to get together. And the compromise is a half a mile buffer zone, which has now been put into a bill and has been signed into legislation. And it gives us comfort. And we've done some history data analysis of how much we caught in that quarter mile, and it's less than 5%. So it's not a major... in our view, a major deterrent to our catching. And what we can't factor is, and if we were restricted to that half mile, could we have fished somewhere else? But what is pleasing, it's now being put to bed, because it was always an unknown about where this thing would end up. So very positive from that point of view. And then on the wild caught, we've invested heavily in the vessels. That's really going to be fleet investment and the two vessels, the Diamond and the Relica, getting back to sea. to enhance the performance. Catch rates on the squid, obviously the season's closed, but it opens again in July. It'll be interesting to see what the catch, we have a two-month period, July and August, July to September where we can catch and to see where we can, how we can, how that resource performs. And then from a demand point of view, very, very strong. So I think we've got a, second off, I'm, cautiously optimistic we're going to have a good second half. The signs are certainly there that we'll deliver in the second half, not at the same levels as we deliver in the first half, but it's certainly a very pleasing performance and some good prospects going forward. Longer term, and again, I spoke about where's growth come from, and people always talk about acquisitions, and I must admit, the amount of acquisitions, potential acquisitions that come across Trevor's desk on a regular basis from international fishing companies, large international fishing companies, and I'm being very cautious about looking at them because they either are in trouble or they're overpriced. or they're in fisheries that I'm not confident have long-term sustainability, both from a sustainable and from a market point of view. So our concentration will really be, and if they do come along, we certainly are looking at that, but it'll be, rather than one big silver bullet, it'll be many small organic growth within our own business, and we are concentrating, and you've seen the CapEx plan we've got for the next four years in spending in our own business, and small bolt-on acquisitions, which I think will be the focus, another squid business, another... lucky star enhancement brand that we could bring onto our business. We're spending a lot of money on upgrading those vessels so that when the vessels are, when the fishing is there, that we can optimally utilize them. And then looking at some additional innovation in our businesses. How do we make our businesses smarter? So I think Ocean is in a very good space at the moment. within the context of being a volatile type of business. We are diverse. We are across many, many geographies. We're across many currencies and many species. So within that context, I think this company is in a very good space. And I'd like to just end off with saying thank you to the management team and the people. And I know there are a couple of them online for what they've put in this first six months. It's a true testament to them. We've come through A difficult couple of years, and you know we're going through a culture assessment in terms of trying to bring a new way of interacting with each other through innovation, through respect, through trust, through teamwork, and that is starting to bear fruit. We're all going through a process of, it's not a training process, it's a way of treating each other and a way of creating a relationship an environment that stimulates innovation and new ways of thinking and talking to each other. So I'm in a very good space. I think our company's in a very good space. And I'm very proud of the performance we've delivered for the first six months. And happy to take any questions. Thanks very much.

Trevor. Okay, we've got one question online, which we'll start with, from Vessel Jebe Oyster Catcher. Congratulations on a good set of results. Where was the average fish oil price received in the second half of 2023 relative to where it is now? And is it fair to assume that if catch rates were equal to that of the second half in 2023, that your results would be higher year on year?

Didn't the second part of the question repeat that second part?

So assuming the official prices are at the same levels they were for the second half last year, is it fair to assume that our second half performance will be higher year on year?

I think I've answered the first question in terms of where the pricing is. The pricing ranged 2022 around $2,000 a tonne, and it slowly moved up in 2023 to around $3,000, $3,500, and ended the year... anywhere between $5,000 and $6,000 a ton. So that's the kind of pricing that we've seen. The question will be how soon they can fill the hole in the market. Again, I think I've answered the question. I don't know exactly where pricing is. I don't believe it'll get down to the old little pre-2023, but it'll be somewhere in between. So I think I've answered the question in the, okay.

Yeah, they're not the questions online. Some sort of question. I mean, if we assume that Daybrook goes back to sort of long-term margins of sort of 20%, 22% operating, do you think the rest of the business, Wildcourt and Lucky Star, would be able to offset some of those losses in earnings with what you've spent in the business now in terms of CapEx and all the rest of it? I mean, is there a potential offset? And I'm not talking about the second half. I'm talking about over the next 18 months. And how are you thinking about that?

I think the traditional margins will be slightly higher. I don't think 22%, 23% is sustainable. I think the margin for Daybrook will be somewhere around 28% to 30%. That's a long-term sustainable, given the enhancement we've made in the factories and the ability to catch fish, because it's a combination of margin and volume. So I think that'll be the level. Again, I think oil prices won't come down to that level, so we'll see that moderate. Certainly the Wildcourt is a business where I think there's a lot of opportunity given what we spent. When you see an operating profit of 17 million when that business traditionally has made anywhere between 300 and 400 million. So there's lots of upside on the Wildcourt side. And certainly if these enhancements in the Lucky Star canneries, and that really is yield and quality. And one of the things that we've done in both fish meal plants, it's not just... the ability to process more volume. It's the ability to process volume at a higher quality. And there's quite a big range in terms of the spec that you produce, both the fish meal and oil, in terms of the free fatty acids, the digestibility. With these new plants that we've put in, That gives a far better quality. We've seen it coming through now in this last couple of months as we produced. And that is margin enhancing. So to answer your question a long way, will they make up for the difference that we're going to lose in Daybrook? I would certainly hope so. Whether it'll make up in the short term, but certainly long term, I do believe it can. It can make up some of that. And that is the question that this management team is asking ourselves. How do we... Certainly I believe we're gonna have a good year this year. Next year when we see a fall off in price, and we don't know exactly how much of that fall off is, can those two businesses make up the difference? And that's what the drive is. So bolt-ons, added chicken livers, added corn meat, enhancement of the two factories, growth in volume, demand for product. The RAND has a big factor, and remember the RAND, we're not, people say we're naturally heads, we export and import, but timing is a big factor for us. When we buy fish, canned pilchards, I mean frozen pilchards, we buy them not equally throughout the year because there are fishing seasons that happen overseas. And when the fishing season, we have to buy so we speed up production. And yet our exports are predominantly in the second half. So it's that balance. I think the RAND at its current level is reasonable. If it blows out to 2,000, it'll enhance the export business. It will majorly affect the lucky star business, and will the consumer be able to afford an increase of 30% on price? That'll be the difficult. So we've got to manage our Forex cover and our management of Forex very carefully throughout here. It's not just, you know, we've got 50-50. There you go. Trevor?

Hi, thanks. Great results.

Thank you.

You mentioned that your power consumption in one of your factories has improved by 30%, right? Yes. And was that a case of just better or improved efficiencies? Or was there any improvement coming through from the reduced load shedding, which I doubt would have been... Nothing to do with load shedding.

This is... comparing apples and apples. The old boilers were highly inefficient, coal boilers. We had 12 of them, no, 10 of them. We've got much more efficient. Obviously, the installer of the coal boil, the machinery, we've contracted them to manage those. They're specialists in managing, and we've seen a massive drop in power. So it's apples and apples. And I think that can be announced. We're not in full production yet, so as we see full production coming through, hopefully that improves.

Sure. And then, I mean, we've had improved load shedding over the recent weeks. What savings have you seen in trading post your results now? Because I doubt that would have filtered. Have you seen any improvement in terms of operations and savings?

Remember we, in the previous presentation when load shedding was a huge issue, Oceania is not a major, remember our vessels are not affected by load shedding, they're not on the grid at all. And our factories have boilers, and we do have generators, but we're not a, unlike the chicken guys that, you know, when load shedding comes up, there's massive costs. So it's not a big component in our business. I mean, Trevor, if you could remember the figures, but it's not a big component. So in the second half, there hasn't been a massive saving, but nor was there a massive increase in costs. So it's not, in the overall context of our numbers, load shedding doesn't have a major effect on our business. Hopefully it is a thing of the past, but we'll see. But we are investing in solar panels in our factories. Currently, the corn meat plant, there's a solar panel system going in right now. Panels have arrived. On the two canneries and the fishmonger plants, we are investigating putting solar panels on those farms as well, on those factories as well. So again, we are looking at power enhancement, but it's not... It's not something that, you know, it's more in terms of sustainability and environment that we're looking at rather than a cost-saving. I mean, there's an element of cost-saving, but it's not the prime driver behind our investment in solar panels.

Then last question for me is just to understand the acquisition of those squid vessels and Pashash, sorry, the chicken livers business.

Chicken livers, yes.

How big are those, I mean, how big are they in your lives? Just maybe frame them in terms of how much they're likely to contribute so we can get a sense of what we are looking at.

I would be reluctant to give you a number, and certainly that, you know, in terms of the investment case that we spent, it's certainly going to return a cost of capital, enhancing to cost of capital. We spent on the one business $50 million and the other business $30 million. So that gives you a kind of idea of the size of the business. The squid business, it depends on catch rates, and there's a huge range. You catch nothing useful, you'll lose money. If you catch a lot, it makes a big difference. So that is really about the catch rates and the ability to be at sea. On the chicken livers, I'm really excited about that business. I really believe that it has so much lucky star advancement in retail and wholesale. Now, that hasn't been tested at all. So just on the school feeding schemes, I think there's potential to grow into the other regions which we're not in. That business makes money as it stands right now, as we bought it, with the two only supply gouting and the Western Cape. If we go into other schools, there's an enhancement. We haven't tested the Lucky Star into the retail, and that's something we'll have to test. Pricing, you know, obviously the raw material that goes into that product is imported chicken livers. We will be talking to local producers, but most of the product is Brazilian imported chicken livers that goes into that business. So it's watched the space, but I am excited about the business.

There's one more question online from at Oyster Catcher. There have been reports of higher number of juveniles in the Peruvian catch. Does this threaten date book catch or biomass quality?

No, so obviously two different biomass is two different resources, got nothing to do with each other. Peruvian catch is not, the Peruvian biomass is nowhere near, but that report was earlier in the season that there was quite a high, but that has dissipated now. They've effectively finished their season already. They've caught two and a half million tons, and their season is over now. The question is, is the second season, normally is around a million to a million and a half tons that gets allocated in the latter part of this calendar year and then they start catching it. Funny enough, even though they've caught two and a half million tons, have an oil yield that is better than last year, 2% to 4%, so there's a reasonable amount of oil available. Pricing on the market hasn't moved yet. So pricing is somewhere between $6,000 and $7,000. So the interesting thing to see is when that starts moving. But right now, it hasn't. So they've had a very good catch. It hasn't affected oil. The second season will start in about October, and then we'll see what happens from there onwards.

Thanks, Neville. Do we have any other questions online?

We've got one here. I just wanted to ask, in terms of the 1.2 billion capex that you guys are spending, what sorts of returns you guys are expecting to earn on that capital?

Zaf, you want to share? Remember that capital is split between replacement capex and enhancement capex. Zaf, you want to talk?

Yeah. So there's a fair proportion of compliance, and it's very difficult to split between compliance and expansion. But we expect to return greater than our working weighted average cost of capital on average across the four years. So we use just under 13% as a WAC. That's our current cost of capital. Of course, with compliance spend, we took the opportunity to expand some of our production facilities on the vessels in particular. The real return comes from lower breakdowns. So if you exclude catch rates, which can be anything, we focus more on the stuff that we can control. which is about increasing production facilities. So, for example, in Beatrice, we expanded production by 25%, which is significant. So when the fish are there, we can really ramp up production. So that's the one. And the second one is gas conversion. So ESG plays a big part in our lives and being able to convert away from harmful gases. So we did ammonia conversion on the one and gas on the other. And we've got three more vessels, like I showed in my slide. And all of those have, as I said, a compliance element, also a production element.

Yeah, they're not one or the other. Even the boiler conversion, spending 100 million on boilers. I mean... From a compliance point of view, we had to do it. Those boilers were past their sell-by date. But we're really seeing this nice positive of reduction in power consumption. And based on the throughput so far that we've seen through that factory, certainly both quality and throughput has improved substantially. So that should come through in terms of returns.

In terms of, it's a lot better to have certainty of fishing rights. So in the period leading up to the fishing rights, it's very difficult to spend significant capital because you're not sure what your fishing rights are going to be. And once those fishing rights are awarded, you can invest with confidence. And understand that for 15 years, some of these assets were tired and required significant investment. So with the fish meal and fish oil prices where they are, we are a lot more confident in terms of our ability to generate a return.

And then just the second question was, I saw in your commentary that the JV losses increased from 17 to 25. I'm just wondering what's driving that. Obviously, it's the off-season, so I understand losses, but just the increase from the $17 to the $25. I'm trying to think what that was.

That's West Bank. That's West Bank. We own 25% of West Bank, which is the business in the U.S., and that's where those losses come from. It's been the off-season for them. Remember, they only start making their money in the second half.

I'm more worried about the change from 17 to 25 than the fact that it's losses.

Yeah, so that's mostly catches.

It's only one month of catches, which is October. So I think those catches were slightly lower than the previous year. So that's a main impact. Yeah.

Any other questions?

I think that's it. Nothing else.

Thank you for joining us. Thank you. And join us for a get-together afterwards. Thank you, everybody.