Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Accsys Technologies PLC preliminary results for the year ended 31 March 2024. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dr. Jelena Arsic van Os, CEO of Accsys Technologies. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our preliminary results presentation for the year ending 31 March 2024. We are here today to review our financial year 2024 results and the transformation of Accsys for its long-term success. On the slide here, you can see a Silt hotel and casino on the Belgian coast, a very harsh environment for building materials, where Accoya has an architect's choice, and our company could add another project proudly contributing to the promotion of more durable and sustainable living spaces. Next slide, please. Here is our usual disclaimer, which I will let you read in your own time. Next slide. In terms of this morning's agenda, we will start with an overview of key developments, then Hans Pauli will take you through the financials. I will then discuss our operational highlights, strategy, and outlook.
Following this, Hans and I will be happy to take any questions you may have. I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome Hans and thank him for stepping into the interim CFO role. Hans has been at Accsys for 14 years and previously held the role of CFO for the group, so we see him as a safe pair of hands for the company during the transition period. Now, coming back to the presentation. Financial year 2024 has been a transformational year for Accsys. We have successfully delivered full-year results ahead of market expectations and despite market challenges. Our journey has three parts. Firstly, we are refocusing our business, undertaking a major transformation program to become a more streamlined and performance-driven company. In the second half of the financial year 2024, we have already delivered a 19% reduction in our cost base versus the prior year.
Due to swift response to the market backdrop and action taken, financial year 2024 delivered a second-best performance in the company history in terms of revenue and underlying profitability. We have successfully raised EUR 34 million in funding, of which EUR 24 million of fresh capital, to support our existing international expansion program. We have reduced our net debt by EUR 7 million, and we have professionalized our commercial organization and invested in demand creation in anticipation of increased production capacity in financial year 2025. Secondly, we are driving a transformation. Sales for Q1 2025 are in line with expectations and continue positive momentum we saw in Q4. For the first time in company history, we have delivered an international expansion project in the largest and the most profitable wood market in the world. The successful completion of the Kingsport plant in Tennessee considerably de-risked Accsys as a company.
We have also revisited and refreshed the company strategy, and we are excited to introduce our new Accsys focus that will improve profitability and returns from the existing assets over the next three years. We will fill available capacity with the best, the most profitable, and the most sustainable business available. The company will focus on earnings. It tries to grow before we start putting the new metal in the ground. Financial year 2025 will be transitional and transformational for the company. We will transfer U.S. volume to Kingsport from Arnhem, and we plan to refill available Arnhem and Barry capacity with the new European and U.K. business opportunities. From this solid platform, the most important is that we are preparing for stronger growth. The markets are not expected to help us in what is still seen as subdued construction conditions.
Nevertheless, we will optimize our product offerings in an Accoya and an Accoya Color moving towards more finished products. We are aiming to almost double our volumes over the next three years by utilizing 100,000 cubic meters of available global capacity by the end of financial year 27. We are very excited about our future, long-term potential, and we have a plan in place to deliver on this. Next slide, please. Our new focus strategy will deliver a fundamentally strong business that is operationally efficient, customer-centric, and preferred in the marketplace, organized around a united and high-performing team to ensure a safe and sustainable future and transforming Accsys for the long-term success. In the second half of financial year 25, we will hold an investor event to update you on our new strategy.
With this, I would like to invite Hans to give us an overview on our financial performance. Next slide, please.
Thanks, Jelena. Good morning, everyone, from my side. Let's turn to the numbers on the next slide. Overall, our industry has faced significant headwinds with macroeconomic pressures impacting the demand for construction and building material across our end markets. Consequently, our financial performance did not finish where we wanted it to be at the start of the year. As Jelena has referenced, the senior leadership team and I have used this difficult backdrop to reset and begin to drive operational transformation of the group. We had two key areas of focus, both of which have had some positive impact on our performance in the second half of the year: priority driving, demand creation, and creating a leaner and more fit-for-purpose organization. Combined, this meant that our pre-close trading statement confirmed results that were better than expected. Overall, revenue was EUR 136 million, down 16% on the prior year.
5 percentage points of this was the decline in acetic acid revenues related to the lower sales volume and the lower prices of acetic acid. Our sales volume was 56,568 cubic meters, down 11% on the prior year. Gross margin was 30% at the lower end of our historical band. Underlying EBITDA was EUR 4.8 million. Free cash flow was EUR 3.7 million against an outflow of EUR 13.6 million last year, as this meant our year-end net debt was EUR 37.1 million. Please go to the next slide. I want to call out a few key numbers on this slide that expand on the story for the last financial year. Underlying operating costs increased 2% against a high inflation backdrop and an increase in Tricoya U.K.’s operating cost of EUR 0.9 million compared to the prior year.
This was due to ongoing running costs being treated as operating costs following the introduction of the hold period in H2 last year. When we break this down and look at it on a half-year basis, you can see that following the size of management actions to decrease the operational cost run rate, the H2 costs decreased 19% over the same period last year. As you will be aware, the business has worked very hard at its core base during the year, taking advantage of the difficult market condition to realign our organizational structure and remove costs. These actions triggered exceptional costs of EUR 1.2 million. We have delivered an annualized run rate of EUR 3 million of cost savings and will deliver the full EUR 3 million in the current financial year.
An increase in the Tricoya impairment of EUR 7 million was recognized in the first half of this year. This is treated as a no-cash exceptional item in the P&L. Accoya average sales price was at EUR 2,177, which was the second highest level for the group, down a modest 4% versus the prior year when the energy price surcharge was still applicable. Against a challenging market, we have maintained price discipline while we have seen our competitors reduce price. Next slide, please. Looking at these results within the context of our longer-term financial performance, as you can see on the left side of the slide, we have delivered strong and consistent revenue growth over the last five years.
FY23 was an exceptional year with higher average sales prices implemented to cover raw material inflation during the period, as well as an energy price premium surcharge of approximately EUR 4 million, which we implemented to cover the higher market for energy cost. We were able to pass these price increases on, as you can see, with significant increases in our average selling price, showing the strength of our brand and our product. Our revenue CAGR has been 8% over this period, despite several years having serious supply constraints. On an underlying basis, we saw further improvement in our price position in the last financial year, but did not repeat the energy surcharge. Hence, reported average selling price and revenues were negatively impacted. FY 2024 was our second-best year, both in terms of revenue as well as of Tricoya sales price.
As you can see on the right of the slide, we have seen gross margin consistently maintained at or above 30%. Gross margin, despite all the volatility around raw materials, energy costs, supply chain disruptions, product mix, geographic mix, etc., has maintained within the fairly stable corridor. FY23 clearly had a positive effect from very strong demand and the energy surcharge. While we believe there's upside potential on gross margin in the medium term, we would expect to be at the lower end of the gross margin corridor in the new financial year. Regarding EBITDA, we see a similar picture as with revenues, FY23 being an exceptional year. Underlying EBITDA in FY24 was slightly better than in FY22 and FY21, demonstrating our underlying business is solid. Now, I will speak about Tricoya's sales performance. Next slide, please. Tricoya is our flagship product and highly regarded across the industry.
We faced two challenges last year. First, the general malaise and weakness in demand for building materials across all our key markets. Second, excess inventory across our customer base. The combination of these was most exposed in Q3, but the aggregate impact on revenue decline of 14% and volume decline of 11%. As I mentioned on an earlier slide, we maintained pricing discipline while peers discounted. There were two bright spots for our sales. First, Tricoya showed double-digit sales growth. Both MEDITE and FINSA expanded their sales in Europe. In addition thereto, our own sales team started to sell Tricoya panels produced by MEDITE and FINSA in North America and Australia, further strengthening the commercial strength of Tricoya. Second, we saw ongoing growth momentum for Tricoya, especially in the DACH region, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
While these numbers are disappointing compared to last year's, both sales and marketing initiatives in the back end of the year had a positive impact on our sales trajectory in the last quarter, and we have taken some positive momentum into the new financial year. Our market intelligence suggests that our sales channels are predominantly clear of excess inventory, and our distributors are achieving good pass-through levels, demonstrating solid end-user demand. Now, I will speak about Tricoya's sales performance. Next slide, please. While still modest, our sales performance for Tricoya remained robust, up 14% compared to last year. Tricoya now represents 31% of group volume, an increase of 7 percentage points compared to last year. Volume and revenue growth has been achieved at a time that one of our key partners has increased its pricing of Tricoya. Turning to the EBITDA segment, next slide, please.
As you would expect, our Tricoya segment remains our strongest performance segment, and we have seen another year of strong operational performance. EBITDA of EUR 20.6 million was down on last year due to exceptional performance in the prior year for reasons covered earlier. Next, we show a pre-operating loss for Tricoya USA of EUR 3.7 million, an increased loss of EUR 3 million as we have prepared for production to start up. With commercial production on track for later this year, subject to exactly when and how smooth startup goes, we anticipate losses to reduce from here. And subject to our decision regarding Hull, the pre-operating loss of EUR 6 million for Tricoya U.K. will either decline as a bulk of these costs will be capitalized or will disappear. The aggregate impact of these is an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 4.8 million.
This does not reflect the potential of our group. Let me turn to the EBITDA bridge. Next slide, please. We are clearly not pleased with the EBITDA performance for the year, but take some comfort from the excess that we took in terms of sales and marketing stimulation and cost-out programs that led to a slightly better performance in Q4. In terms of the key movements in EBITDA, revenue had an adverse impact of just over EUR 11 million, the majority of which was volume-related. The discontinuation of the energy price premium should not be ignored either in the analysis since it amounts to approximately EUR 4 million. Cost of sales had an adverse EUR 3.2 million impact, fairly even split among increased raw material costs, in part due to the use of higher cost appearance grade wood for Tricoya production and as a manufacturing cost.
We lost some operational efficiency as we had lower volumes and also were adversely affected by higher plant maintenance cost. Other operating costs had an adverse impact of almost EUR 4 million, the majority of which was the pre-operating cost relating to Kingsport. Now that we have reached the critical hurdle of mechanical completion of Kingsport and will move to commercial operations later this summer, we will start to see sequential improvements in our EBITDA bridge from Kingsport once Tricoya is sold from Tricoya USA. Tricoya operating costs increased as all costs were accounted for through the P&L, following the decision in November 2022 to place the project on hold. In the prior year, costs were capitalized during the first half of the year. Turning to the next slide on net debt bridge.
The key message here is that we reduced our net debt by EUR 7 million during the year. We had two key cash inflows during the year. The first was Tricoya EBITDA of approximately EUR 20 million, which again made a significant contribution. The second was the net funds raised from our equity raise in November. Combined, these two items improved our net debt by over EUR 33 million. The main detractors were a series of smaller investments in the group, namely pre-operating cash flow from Hull and Kingsport, plus R&D and CapEx to support further growth and a modest working capital outflow. Working capital included the decrease in payables partially offset by a decrease in inventory, primarily raw materials, as we took action to decrease the inventory balance during the year. Thank you for your attention.
I will now hand back to Jelena, who will take you through our operational highlights, strategy, and outlook.
Thank you, Hans. Next slide, please. On this slide here, we are showcasing fantastic projects over the last year the group has delivered. We are very proud that our products have once again been selected for some of the world's most prestigious building projects. These include historical restorations like the decking for the renovation of the Caernarfon Castle in Wales and the restoration of the Bow Bridge in the Central Park, New York. The remarkable Google landscraper at King's Cross in London, a showcase for Tricoya, is set for completion in 2025. Our sustainability credentials continue to attract architects, evidenced by Tricoya being chosen for the Lidl net-zero supermarket building in Almere in the Netherlands and the Clichy Black low-carbon building in Paris, which saved over 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide compared to the originally specified aluminum. Turning now to our strategic projects. Next slide, please.
In particular, I'm delighted to report that we have made significant progress on our Kingsport plant. As a reminder, Kingsport is the joint venture between Accsys and Eastman Chemical Company, one of the world's leading producers of acetyls. Accsys owns 60% of the joint venture, and for us, North America is a hugely attractive market, and there is a considerable strategic value having local production to service this market. Accsys will be making products in America for the American market, allowing one of the largest and the most profitable wood markets in the world to fastest adopt the best and the most sustainable wood product available. We have now reached mechanical completion at Kingsport, with the first batches anticipated in the coming weeks. With the Kingsport and the fourth reactor at Arnhem that was added in September 2022, we will have doubled our production capacity in under two years.
Next slide, please. With the fourth reactor added in Arnhem, our production capacity has increased by a third to 80,000 cubic meters compared to the start of the financial year 2023. We have also started to see the benefits of our new wood stacking technology called Stack 2, which was an important CapEx project in the prior year to speed up production times. Overall, Arnhem is operationally improving. We have implemented a program called Solid Roots to create a stronger performance-driven culture with the intent to further optimize supply chain, reliability, and stability of the plant, and overall decreasing the unit cost of production. We will provide you more insights into the program as we go through the year. Barry is performing well. We are seeing fantastic growth in Tricoya's demand and plan to further expand the available capacity with the operational improvements.
As many of you know, Hull has been on hold since November 22. We've been fully exploring options in the last month to find a solution and recently announced that we had appointed a financial advisor to support us in this process. We are confirming today, as previously communicated, that we will come to the resolution before the end of the second half of financial year 2025. Next slide, please. As I said in my opening comments, we have used a difficult market backdrop to formulate the group's transformation program. Essentially, this has three core components that we have already started to execute, showing the first positive impact on the financial year. First, sales and marketing initiatives.
We stepped up investment in sales and marketing during the second half of the year, including new recruits in North America, Netherlands, and France, in addition to 10 new customers, of which 7 new distribution partners and 3 direct manufacturers across multiple territories. A new sales incentive program has been introduced that will drive a performance culture. I have already mentioned the Solid Roots in our slide on Arnhem. This program is to ensure safe and sustainable operations at our largest asset. We want to move from the scale-up mindset in Arnhem to deliver a mature manufacturing performance. Third, our organizational design reset. We made some very difficult decisions around our organizational structure, but with the objective of creating a leaner and more fit-for-purpose structure. We need leaner overhead and stronger local organizations to deliver on our ambition.
This has certainly been a very challenging time for our colleagues, and I would like to thank all of them for their resilience, hard work, professionalism, and dedication during this uncomfortable period. We are also showcasing on this slide our key deliverables in terms of operational improvements. First, we made savings of EUR 3 million on an annualized basis. Secondly, we have started to create a much stronger performance-driven culture through changes to personal targets, pay structure, and incentives. Third, discipline with our capital. We made good progress in Q4 with a reduction in our inventory of EUR 4 million. We will embed these disciplines into our ways of working as we focus on growing our business. So now, turning to our strategy and outlook. Next slide, please. I've been a CEO of Accsys for now almost a year, and I'm very excited about the future potential of the business.
This company has fantastic proprietary products positioned for global growth. We are reducing the risk on the larger CapEx projects, and the underlying business has a strong base to be built on. Many of you invested because of its significant market opportunity, unique technology, diversified market, and international operational footprint. I will now spend a few minutes on each of those drivers over the coming slide. Next slide, please. We operate in a large, attractive, structurally growing market. The global wood product market size is worth over $800 billion in 2024 and has seen structural growth over time. We have enough capacity in Europe and the U.S. to utilize the market opportunity in the coming few years, with Reaction 4 addition in Arnhem and Kingsport coming on stream in this calendar year.
Growth has two drivers: global economic development and the substitution of wood for other building materials, as government policies around the world deliver a net-zero economy. Wood materials are well-positioned to take the market share they deserve in the construction industry, as they are naturally sequestering efficiently the carbon dioxide. We are confident these trends will become more prominent in the coming years. Many of you are very familiar with the proprietary core product offering that you are seeing on the next slide. Our products are differentiated in their performance, durability, and low lifetime maintenance costs. Accoya, Accoya Color, and Tricoya are regarded as a reference in the building material industry, supported by credible, world-famous architects' firms. Going forward, we will focus on improving our customer experience with improved service and availability. We will continue working on innovation solutions, as innovation is in our company DNA. Next slide, please.
Accsys is a global business, and we have good distribution partners to champion our product and get it into market. We have a long-standing relationship with key distribution partners in our core markets, and we have added seven new distributors during financial year 2024, three in the United States and four in Europe, as well as three new direct manufacturer customers. We understand the importance of supporting the manufacturers who work directly with our products. Our approved manufacturer program provides support to our partners with sales techniques, trainings, and best practices in production. The third part of our distribution strategy is our relationship with Medite and FINSA, who produce Tricoya panels from Tricoya. We have a strong partnership with both companies, and we are continuing to develop this market potential. Next slide, please.
As I mentioned in the beginning, we have used the recent months to start to review the company strategy, reset our priorities as a business, and ensure that we have solid foundations on which to build upon. Ultimately, we believe that Accsys can be a sustainable, profitable business, cash flow generative, and creating shareholder value. A key part of this has been the transformation program that is focusing on performance culture, effective asset management, optimization of supply chain, and capital efficiency. You've seen some of the tactical activities that we have already taken, and there is more to come. We will come back to you with a specific strategy investor event in the second part of the financial year 2025 to provide more color and a full update. Now, turning to our targets. I was talking a lot about performance-driven culture in this presentation.
Performance culture starts with a clear target setting and accountability across the team, and we are introducing a series of operational targets for the year ahead: Kingsport to be commercially operational by the end of the summer. Implementation of an attractive incentive plan aligned with the double-digit sales growth objectives. Deliver on our planned in-year EUR 3 million in cost savings. Achieve 500 basis points improvement in our operational efficiency for key equipment in Arnhem. In addition, the company is expected to deliver significant growth in the coming year, and we are today providing you two growth objectives. We are targeting refilling transferred sales at Arnhem within 12 months of migrating it to Kingsport on a run rate basis. This implies an underlying double-digit growth in production volumes from Arnhem.
For the longer term, we are planning to deliver approximately 100,000 cubic meters annual run rate by the year-end of financial year 27. This means solid double-digit growth year-on-year with the ambition to keep our gross margin on a minimum of 30% and improve our returns. Next slide, please. Looking ahead, we have made a good start in the financial year 25 with performance in line with our expectations. We are confident in delivering further financial and operational progress in the coming year. Financial year 25 will see a ramp-up in volumes at Kingsport come on stream, and we seek to replace the transfer production for the plant in Arnhem. We will get the full benefit of our EUR 3 million cost savings, and we will maintain our working capital discipline.
In terms of our priorities for the year ahead, we are focused on delivering resolution to Hull as our key priority, further de-risking the company to large project exposure. CapEx for the current year will be very modest, EUR 3 million-EUR 4 million, focusing on the key operational improvements in Arnhem and Barry. We are also looking forward to providing more details in our forthcoming investor event in the second half of financial year 2025. To finalize this call today, in short, we are transforming Accsys. Good progress has been achieved this year. More is to come, and we are excited about our future, long-term potential, and we also have a plan in place to deliver on this. Thank you very much for listening, and now we will be open for all your questions. Operator, can we move to the Q&A session, please, and start with our first question?
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press Star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press Star 1 and 1 again. Please be advised that we are prioritizing questions from analysts and investors. We will now go to our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Christen Hjorth from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Morning. Thank you. Thanks both for taking my questions. I've got three this morning, if that's okay. First of all, starting with the 100,000 cubic meter target in FY27, can you just sort of work down the P&L and sort of run through what sort of EBITDA, for example, you would expect to generate on that, maybe excluding the EUR 6 million costs for Hull, because, as you mentioned, they'll be sort of going either way. The second question is just on corporate costs, which look like they've halved in FY24. Has there been some of those costs moved to other areas of the business? And then just sort of checking whether that sort of corporate cost of EUR 4.6 million is sort of the right base going forward, or are there any sort of specific numbers in there that maybe have to go back in in FY25?
And then just finally, just sort of touching on net debt trends for FY25 and, I suppose, any of the key movements. And I suppose I'm thinking there are injections into the JV, working capital, etc. Thank you.
So I would like to Hans to answer your question. Christen, thank you very much for asking.
Good morning, Christen. Yeah, taking your questions in the order you gave them, 100,000 cubic meters, that's our target for FY27. We envisage that we will stay within that 30%-34% gross margin bandwidth. And as you will appreciate, over time, when we get to better economies of scale, we will improve our EBITDA level from the current EBITDA level as a percentage taken. So I think it will be fair to assume that if you were to look at the prior years, and 2023, as I think we mentioned quite a couple of times, was an exceptional year, that if you look at a couple of years earlier, those EBITDA percentages are roughly what we're envisaging.
But it will remain difficult because we have quite some items to take into consideration: what happens to the wood price and raw wood we buy in, and also what happens to the acetic anhydride price. And as you know, both of these are the key drivers for the cost of producing Tricoya, and Tricoya, for that matter, but we're focusing here on Tricoya. Coming to your next question on corporate costs, there are two components here. There's one element we've reallocated costs to these specific units, i.e., to Arnhem, to Barry, and to Kingsport as well. So there's a little bit of cost movement there. At the same time, as part of the organization or reorganization we've done late last year, we've also reduced costs there significantly. The EUR 3 million we mentioned earlier in the presentation, a portion of that is corporate cost saving.
Not all of it, but a portion of that is corporate cost saving. So EUR 4.7 million, roughly, is a good indication of going forward, obviously, apart from inflation and some other adjustment, but that's a good indicator. Finally, turning to your net debt question, we've mentioned that we are about complete with the investments in Tricoya, USA. We are planning for some maintenance investments of a handful, EUR 3 million-EUR 4 million we mentioned earlier. However, to get from where we are, where we've got now the mechanical completion of the plant and well ahead in commissioning, we will be incurring startup costs. We will be building up our inventory, i.e., working capital for that matter, and it will also take a while until we actually enable a cash flow neutral, cash flow positive situation in the US.
So we've raised sufficient money together through all of that period, so we will have to invest some more money in the US, but there is no need to raise more money. So on that position, we'll probably increase a little bit over time, but then it will come back. That's our aim. Yeah, that's just simply our aim, and we're confident that we'll get there.
Brilliant. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ken Rumph from Goodbody. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, everybody. Hans, Jelena, thank you. I wanted to ask two questions. One is to maybe expand a little bit on kind of how U.S. production and costs and the startup costs you mentioned, kind of how that works out this year as a part year, the extent to which you can kind of replace existing sales from Arnhem and benefit from that, and sort of where we are in the year in terms of your ability to kind of capitalize on the production. So just to try and understand the kind of path to sort of normality and profitability, do things get worse in terms of losses before they get better this year? I'm trying to understand. And the second question was, as you said, things will be resolved one way or another with Hull in the next three months, I guess, given where we are. I don't know.
In the event of things not proceeding, can you quantify what the kind of cash financial impact is, or is it not possible to sort of, there's a difference in our, I guess. Anyway, you get the idea of the question. If there's anything more you can say about the kind of downside risk, if you like, on Hull. Thank you.
So I would like maybe to give you thank you very much, Kenneth, on your question. I would like to give you a little bit more color on the U.S. You do appreciate that we do not really provide a very detailed profit forecast, but let me talk you through some of the factors that are going to improve the profitability in the year ahead. So we are transferring production volume from Arnhem to Kingsport, and Arnhem is actually aiming to recover fully that volume during some months on the run rate of the transition. So if we look at Arnhem taken in isolation, we are not expecting really to improve profitability and efficiency considerably in this year because of this transition period. However, Kingsport facility is in a startup phase. As Hans already mentioned, we have enough funds to finalize the project.
Commissioning is very well on the way, and we have quite a lot of confidence that production and commercial availability of our products from Kingsport plant will start basically during this summer. So that means that the plant is going to start to generate revenues, and of course, we are going to see some losses in the period to come before we reach the break-even point. So it is very difficult for us to give you exactly how much Kingsport is going to contribute in a financial year 2025. It is still going to be transitional, but nevertheless, if you look at the moment that both plants are completely fully operational, this company is going to be in a totally different space in terms of reducing exposure to these large capital projects that actually showed that for Accsys, this was quite a big burden to have.
So in that sense, finalizing Kingsport and getting that volume ramp-up as soon as possible is one of our priorities this year, and we are confident with all the investments we are doing in marketing and sales that we are going to get there.
Thanks.
Regarding Hull, I'm going to give Hans an opportunity to comment on that.
Morning, Kenneth. Yeah, I'm happy to speak a little bit about Hull. It's a pleasant duty to me. So where we are, as you mentioned, in the May R&S, we've appointed a financial advisor to help us in seeking funding for that. That process is still underway. And yeah, before the end of this first half of our fiscal year, i.e., before the end of September, we will make a decision either we are funding and it's successful, and we continue to build it out and make it a nice operating size in Hull, or we have to take the other decision and we have to discontinue, which will be undoubtedly painful for people and also cause some pain in the heart of others. What we've done in the past is we completely ring-fenced Hull, financially ring-fenced it.
And that's a strategy which we are now saying, "Right, that was definitely the right strategy. We continue to do it that way." So apart from, yeah, an impact it has on provisions we have to take for closing Hull, just minor provisions, but still relevant to us, that's it. Our exposure is very limited to Hull if we have to decide to close the plant. Hopefully, that answers your question.
Yeah. Okay. I mean, by the end of this year, it is going to be a transformed proposition, hopefully with Hull included, but one way or another. Thanks very much.
That's correct.
Yeah, that's a correct statement. Yeah.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Johan van den Hoogen from Edison Group. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, good morning. It's Johan van den Hoogen from Edison Group. A few questions from my side. The first one is you're mentioning about your good pricing that you kept at a relatively stable against competitors. Can you tell us a bit more about which competitors you mean and to which you compare yourself? Second question is about the good start of the year and in line with expectations. You mentioned volume growth for the full year, so I guess you mean good start is higher volumes, but of course, that compares to a quite good start last year. And then just to double-check, third question about cost savings.
I thought you mentioned that you realized cost savings for EUR 3 million, but you also mentioned a target of EUR 3 million for this year. Are we talking about the same EUR 3 million, or is it two times three? Thank you.
Thank you, Johan, for your questions. So the first question was about pricing. As you can see, if you look at the pricing of Tricoya, and if you look at it over the period of time, of course, after the significant inflation in 2023, we went slightly down, 4% down this year, but we didn't, and that, of course, was related to a mixture of the effects. Some of the effect is also reduced price of acetic acid, and the second effect is that we introduced specific discounts foreseeing the new markets, like for instance, in the US. So basically, we do hold pricing of Tricoya on almost historically high level, despite that what we call our competition is usually we are talking about hardwoods because Tricoya is used as a material of choice when people are choosing between hardwoods and other modified materials.
So if you look where the hardwood prices went in the last year and a half, they considerably decreased more than 50%. Then if you looked at Tricoya, only decreased 4% and still kept basically lower, still kept a market share, then we are saying that we are certainly capable of defending that premium market position we have. So that is regarding the price and competition. You are talking about you also wanted to know about what the good start of the year means. Yeah. So the good start of the year means that since January, we do see an increase in the demand. We had 40% better demand in quarter four compared to quarter three.
We are seeing that our order book for quarter one, so the first two months of this financial year and order book for the next two months that we have visibility on, looks quite good. So that means that the order book is relatively full. Of course, that is the order book of a business that is looking together at Kingsport and Arnhem. We are going to transfer Kingsport volume, Arnhem volumes for the US as soon as Kingsport becomes operationally efficient, and both plants. So Arnhem is focusing to basically replace that volume within 12 months. And Kingsport is, of course, targeting quite a big growth because we are investing quite a lot in our commercial activities, including people in the US, given that we are going to get 2 reactors available.
We do plan to fill in both reactors within three years, as we are saying in that full year 2027 target of basically having Kingsport and Arnhem full. I hope this satisfies you.
Can I just clarify, if I understood correctly, the volumes in Q4 versus Q3, was it up 40%, 40?
Yes, but Q4 financial year 2024 versus Q3 financial year 2024. So we had quite a weak quarter three, and then quarter four improved, and then we see that trend in quarter one, not 40% on top of quarter one, but we see that stronger order book continuing into quarter one as well.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. And then cost savings, we are committing on this EUR 3 million. It's a one-time EUR 3 million cost saving. Of course, we started with our transformation program in the middle of the financial year 2024. We do see a portion of it. It's already visible in our operational expenses, but we basically are committing to deliver the full EUR 3 million saving in the financial year 2025.
Okay. Thank you. Yeah. There's an additional question about the U.S. You already mentioned a volume ramp-up in three years. I think when you extended Arnhem by another reactor, you said sort of it could be EBITDA break-even in 12 months' time. Is that the same for the U.S., or will it take a bit longer?
Johan, I think you're mixing up things, frankly speaking. When we moved from two reactors to three in Arnhem and from three to four, you were able to completely use that additional capacity within a two-year timeframe. That was just adding 20,000 cubic meters. Now we're adding 43,000 cubic meters going from Arnhem to the U.S. We would love to achieve what you sort of envisioned us achieving, but I think that's overambitious. So let us be realistic. Three years is a target we have, and what we see on demand development in the U.S. and also in Europe, as Jelena just mentioned, we've got good confidence that we can achieve that, but there's still, obviously, some uncertainty there. But three years is much more realistic than a year.
Yeah.
If I just may add, Johan, filling the plants is not difficult if you want to reduce considerably the prices. We really want to keep that premium and then build the volume actually in the plants with the most profitable business we can get. We invested a lot of money. We have a lot of metal in the ground, and we would like to focus on our returns.
Okay. Clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, so I'll hand the call back to Jelena for closing remarks.
So thank you, everyone, for attending today. And with this, I'm going to finish this call, and you will hear from us again at the end of the first half of the year results in September. Thank you very much.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.