The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to the Board of M.P. Evans Group PLC. Peter, good afternoon to you, sir.
Thank you, Alex, and good afternoon, and thank you very much for taking the time to join us. I'm conscious that we're competing with the Chancellor, who is just about to stand up in the House, but I hope we have some slightly more cheerful news to impart. I'm joined by my colleague, Matthew Coulson, Chief Executive, and Luke Shaw, our, our CFO, and they will be taking you through the majority of the slides of our presentation following our 2024 full year results, which were released to the market yesterday. So if we can move to the first slide. As you can see, we have some very positive results indeed, which we're delighted to be presenting, and indeed, almost all of them are record-breaking.
If we go to the bottom right part of the slide, the production was the only thing which actually remained approximately the same, but I have to say, there were some weather challenges which were experienced across the whole of Indonesia, and we did well to maintain production at similar levels to last year, which Matthew will talk about a little bit later. Moving to the pricing, we were blessed with an average price 13% higher than last year for crude palm oil, and indeed significantly higher for palm kernels.
And this, then fed into, the results themselves, with, with revenue plus 15%, a gross profit of almost 50% higher, and indeed, earnings per share of, sixty-six percent higher, which enabled us to, announce our dividend, our final dividend for the year, up 17%, on the full year, at 52.5p, and up 5p on last, year's, final dividend of 32.5-37.5p. So if we can move to the next slide. Now, these are our, I'm sure a number of you have seen these before. These are our four strategic, pillars, with the first of these, responsibility, being the most important of all.
This doesn't just pertain to sustainability, about which we are all passionate, and Matthew will be talking again, more a bit later. But in addition to that, we take our social responsibilities extremely seriously, and we build excellent quality housing, schools, and indeed, clubhouses in areas where the estates are more remote. And this, in turn, encourages our managers and staff to remain with us, and we can attract the top quality managers, which in turn feeds into the next pillar, which is that of excellence. And with our top quality agronomic team, we can produce better and better yields with more innovative agronomic techniques. We are very, we have some excellent training programs for our entire Indonesian workforce.
With all of this, this helps to produce better growth through better agronomic practices. But in addition, we get growth, the third of our strategic pillars, through the fact that we have acquired more areas recently. Again, Matthew, I think, will touch on that. But in the last year or two, we've acquired areas in both North Sumatra and indeed East Kalimantan. And we are actively seeking to acquire additional areas to add to our existing portfolio, specifically around our existing mills. And this growth, of course, feeds into the last of the pillars, that of yield, and yield in the sense of return to shareholders, both by way of the higher dividends that we've been able to produce, through the share buybacks.
And also last year, we bought out the main minority Indonesian partner, who approached us, that he wished to sell for personal reasons. But we acquired these shares from him at the equivalent of some $9,000 per hectare, which compares with the average of $18,000 per hectare, which is what our portfolio as an average is valued at. And this equates to some 1,700 hectares acquired at that level. So, without further ado, perhaps I can pass over to Matthew to talk about initially the vegetable oil market.
Thank you, Peter. As always, in our presentations, it's helpful just to take a moment to think about the wider vegetable oil market.
And perhaps some of what we share on this slide will be familiar to you, but it's in the bottom part of the chart, we show how that vegetable oil market around the world has grown over very many years. The chart starts back in 1990, and it takes all the way through, up to 2024, and you can see how there's been at least, if you like, steady growth over very many years in the size of that global vegetable oil market. It's broken down by, first of all, the major vegetable oils, so palm, soy, rapeseed, sunflower oil, and then the others making up the remainder.
And you can see that the green part of each of the bars, the element that's taken up by palm, has been increasing, and it's been increasing more rapidly than the size of the overall global market. So over this time series, palm has been taking up a larger and larger share of that growing market over very many years. And very unusually, in 2024, you can see that there's just a very slight decrease in the production of palm. The main reason for this was, there was actually a period of noticeably dry weather in Indonesia, in the latter part of 2023, and that had the delayed effect of reducing yields across the country in 2024.
It would appear that the output from Indonesia was actually down by about 6% in 2024. Now, we expect that output will resume its upward trend in 2025 and beyond, but it's important to be aware of that. It's important then to see our results in context as a very positive result, maintaining the crop yield from one year to the next. But we expect, as I say, that long-term trend to continue. You can see on the right-hand side of the chart that first of all, the main producers of palm oil, and it continues to be the case despite that small decrease, that the largest producer of palm continues to be Indonesia, producing more than half of the world's production.
And in terms of consumption, Indonesia also is the largest individual country as a consumer of palm, and indeed, the majority of palm is consumed in Asia. Obviously, as we sit here and think about palm from a European perspective, it's interesting to note that actually, Europe only consumes less than 10%, around 6%, of the world's palm output. Obviously, we've heard a lot in Europe over the last few years about changing regulations in Europe for palm. And in particular, the introduction of what's called EUDR, the EU's deforestation regulations, and how that's impacted upon palms being imported into Europe.
That's something we're aware of, something we're focused on, something that we're working in partnership with our customers on, to make sure that we can supply to them, palm that will enable them to operate within those guidelines, and then supply on to their customers, palms EUDR compliant. Moving on perhaps to the next slide, I'm thinking more specifically about palm oil. What we show in the first of the two charts there is the evolution over the last five years of palm pricing. We've spoken to you before about obviously what happened in 2022, with a big spike in pricing, and that's not unique to palm when it comes to commodity prices and how they initially reacted to the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine.
So that's a relatively short-term phenomenon. But if you focus on the piece that's shaded in darker green, which is the year in question, 2024, then you can see that pricing increased in 2024, particularly in the second half of the year. And that's really connected to what I was just talking about, as it became clearer in the second half of the year that there was going to be something of a restriction in supply of palm across Indonesia, and as it became clearer that there was going to be more of that weather effect taking hold across the country. And so we saw a very healthy price on average across the year.
The average price, CIF Rotterdam, which is what that chart represents, so delivery price in Rotterdam, which is the quoted commodity price, was over $1,000, $1,084 across the whole year. Now, again, as we've discussed with you before, we don't receive that full price when we sell our output from mill gate, we receive a lower price. Now, our average price was $823, which is still a very good price for us. And people have often asked us, "Well, how do the two relate?" And that's what we've tried to demonstrate to you in the second of the charts on this slide. And that shows, it's not a reconciliation as such, but it's an indication of how the two figures relate.
The main reason for the difference is the Indonesian tax levy that's charged to exporters when palm leaves country. That's the main reason for the difference between the two. But then, of course, also, you have to account for domestic transport, freight charges, but also then those international freight and insurance costs to move the oil. So you can see there how we've sought to illustrate the difference between the two prices. If we move on, perhaps, and in thinking, there's just a bit more detail on the next slide about how we've achieved our output in the year, and where it comes from. We have three sources of crop that go into the to the mills that we have. We have six mills operating throughout 2024.
Those three sources of crop are illustrated for 2023 and 2024, by the three parts of the tall bars here, in the dark, light green and orange parts. The dark and the light green parts are crops that we harvest ourselves, from areas that we manage, the dark green being the parts where we own the area, the light green being parts where we operate the areas on behalf of associated scheme smallholders. The orange parts being where we buy in crop from outside suppliers, to make sure we're fully utilizing our mills. One thing that's core to our strategy is to think about how we can reduce our reliance on those outside suppliers by acquiring more areas for ourselves, so we turn part of that orange bar green. We've been doing that.
We obviously made a big step forward in 2023 in doing that, when we bought some more areas, both, as Luke said, in North Sumatra and in East Kalimantan, and we're excited about the opportunity to do more of that. You can see then in both years how we turn crop into oil. And we've had a very healthy extraction rate in both years to achieve that. And in the oil parts of the bars, you can see also how we've increased the proportion of our output in the year from 2023 to 2024 to qualify as certified sustainable output. So we're now up to 69% of our output that achieves that certification.
We want to continue to push up that percentage, and we've made a big step forward in this year, particularly because we've had six mills operating throughout the year, and more on sustainability a little bit later on. But at this point, I'll pass over to Luke, and we'll discuss some more of that financial performance and analysis.
Well, thanks, Matthew. So just starting with taking a look at a couple of our key metrics, obviously revenue being one, and cost per ton being the other. So starting with revenue, you can see that revenue increased by 15% year-over-year, and that was driven really by a higher CPO price, the $823 average that you saw earlier, compared to the $729 average in 2023. And that also offset a slight reduction in volume, on shipments. Really, that's related to that lower production we talked about earlier as well.
You'll see that underneath the revenue pie chart, there's a small table which breaks down our revenue by the different products, CPO, PK, palm kernel that we sell, and then also FFB, and that's where we sell our fresh fruit bunches, where we don't have a mill. And you can see that the PK proportion jumped up considerably, and that was also driven by some really healthy pricing on the PK front. That was up 48% year-on-year, as well. So that's helped. I think a year with fantastic record results and lots of positives to talk about, maybe only slightly frustratingly, one of the downward arrows would be on sustainability premia. We saw the total income from sustainability premiums down to GBP 5.6 million from GBP 6.5 million.
Matthew touched on the fact that our actual certified volumes had gone up, so we sold more, but it was just effectively the amount that we could achieve for those premiums, saw a drop from, on average for CPO, from about $14 to $10. That's disappointing, it's driven by end demand, fundamentally, and we'd love to see our customers and customers of palm requesting more certified product, which would help drive that premium back up. But that's where we sit in today's market. If I move over to the right-hand side of this chart, these are two graphics that focus on the cost to produce our own crop. So that's our own land, where we're producing our own crop.
You can see that we were able to drive the cost per ton down from $427 to $410 in 2024. Primarily, there, that's to do with fertilizer pricing and the material costs. So at the half year, when we spoke to you, we highlighted a significant benefit of fertilizer pricing coming through, and we saw that continue in the second half. And we saw about a 30% reduction in material costs on fertilizer, as pricing starts to normalize from where it was prior to the war between Russia and Ukraine. Also, in that $410, or in the $17 reduction, 10 of that was related to FX.
So the Indonesian rupiah weakened throughout 2024, and that gave us the benefit on our costs, mainly because the labor that we employ in Indonesia is paid in rupiah, so that's cheaper to us in dollars. I always think it's important to point out as well, when we look at this number, this 410, that is an all-in cost for us. So that includes all of our operations on the ground, but it also includes our head office costs out of Jakarta. And it also includes depreciation, which is non-cash. So it's always worth sort of looking and thinking about our cost base, both from a ton perspective here, but also from a cash perspective, it's slightly lower. If you kind of knock 20% off, that gives you a feel for sort of the cash cost per ton.
Always worth thinking about that, certainly when you're thinking about breakeven levels and considering price movements. The other cost metric that we look at is the total cost per ton, so the cost for producing our own, but also we then layer in the cost of buying in fruit from scheme smallholders and independent suppliers. You can see that that was $519 per ton in 2024, up 4% from $498. The reason that goes up is because the PK price had also gone up as well. I'll comment on it in a second, but there is a linkage between the cost of supply and what we can sell our output for. If we move to the next slide. This is a gross profit walk.
So this is just explaining the movements in our gross profit that we achieved in 2023 of $78.5 million, up to the gross profit we achieved in 2024 of $116.6 million. I think it's worth just calling out the main contributors to that for such a fantastic increase at the GP level. So working from left to right, so the $78.5 is last year's gross profit. You then have the first green bar, that is our gross sales price benefit in the year. So that's the fact that we were selling at that $823 per ton, compared to $729, and also included in that would be that 48% increase in PK pricing.
We then lose a little bit of that because we have to, as I've just mentioned, buy in some fruit at elevated levels, because that pricing is linked to the commodity price. So we lose some of that. That's $15-- sorry, $15 million, back to the suppliers. So there's a net price benefit to us of just under $33 million in the year. That takes you to $111.4 million, and then there's some other factors which I'll touch on now. Volume, we lost a little bit because of, I touched on the fact that production was down and shipments were slightly down as well, so that's a volume deficit, but clearly was outweighed by the price benefit.
Then you can see, in monetary terms, that 30% reduction in the fertilizer pricing, that's what it meant for us in terms of gross dollars, just over $7 million back onto gross profit as a result of that lower price. In terms of extraction rate, that's the extraction rate where we squeeze out the oil from the fruit, and that's a key driver for us. If we can improve that extraction rate, that allows us to effectively have more product, and that drops straight through to gross profit. And where we don't quite get to the same level of extraction rate as the previous year, in this case, a minor 0.2 deficit, that resulted in a $1 million loss on gross profit. But that's something that we will continue to work on improving and hopefully see that benefit GP moving forward.
Then the final piece, I'll say, is on the GBP 2.9 million on the far right-hand side, the final green bar, that's the effect I was talking about from the weaker rupiah in the year. So if you work your way across, you get to that GBP 116.6 million of gross profit for 2024. We keep a really close, tight handle, I'd say, on the costs below the line as well. And we also have some significant other income that comes through the sale of electricity and the shell income. And that allows us to drop that gross profit improvement down to the operating profit level as well. So you can see that's up 54% year-on-year.
And then also, once you take off some tax and some net finance costs, you get to the profit for the year of $90.6 million, up 61% compared to 2023. So if I now move from profit to cash, I think this is a slide hopefully people are familiar with now; we've shared it a few times. But for those that may be new to it, this really focuses on our cash position. So what we came into the year with, the cash we generated, and then ultimately what we did with that cash throughout 2024. So if I start at the top bar, the $39.3 million blue part is what we came into the year gross cash with. And then throughout 2024, the group generated over $150 million from operations.
So it really just signifies how cash generative this company is. And that's a cash conversion of 132%. You get that by taking the operating profit to the cash from operations. We also had a very thin slice right at the end there on the top bar, with some dividends from our associates, that's our Kerasaan and Bertam Properties associates, sending us money through dividends. If I then move to the bar below, what did we do with that cash? So we did have some debt to repay throughout the year, along with some interest. We also paid our taxes as well, so cash went out the door on, on that. And then you move to the red section in the middle, and this is really where the board are focusing on the balancing of capital allocation.
And we're continuing to invest in the group organically, on planting in particular, and that's really the focus of that GBP 21.6 million of CapEx that was spent in the year. The next red bar is $6 million of acquisitions. That relates to the minority interest purchase that Peter touched on already, that we made in the first half of the year. We paid about $14 million gross consideration for that, but our partner owed us $8 million, resulting in a $6 million outflow of cash at the point of that transaction. And then the next two bars are where we continue to give returns back to shareholders. So the dividend shown here, that's the cash out for the final 2023 dividend and the interim 2024 dividend, both of which were up.
We continued with our share buyback program throughout the year, and we spent more on that in 2024 than we did in 2023. We spent just under $10 million in 2023 on share buyback, and in 2024, we spent, as you can see there, just over $13 million. So all that means that coming out of 2024, we were left with a substantial amount of gross cash on the balance sheet, and that's $79.2 million. We can touch on later, sort of, where we're focusing that firepower as we look to capital allocation in the future. Overall, we ended up with a net fund position of $46.4 million, compared to a net debt position at the end of 2023, just under $15 million. Please pop to the next slide.
So finally, really on, on dividends, as we touched on, Peter said we put the final dividend up 17%. So final dividend for the year overall was 52.5p, a significant increase, and you can see that we've been doing that now over a number of years. We also have this track record going back more than 30 years now, where we have either maintained or increased our dividend. We're very proud of that at M.P. Evans, and very proud of that as a board, and that's something we would look, as long as we can, to continue into the future. I think some of the transactions in the year, the buybacks and also the minority interest purchase, have helped drive instant value from EPS, which enables us to also consider further increases in the dividend in future.
At that point, I'll stop with the financial and pass to Matthew for some sustainability.
Great start. Thank you, Luke. Absolutely. This is a results presentation, and right that we spend the time on that, but whenever we talk to you, whenever we publish our annual results, we always want to give you an update on our sustainability journey. So just a couple of slides on that. Firstly, whenever we publish our annual financial balance sheet, so we also publish a Carbon Balance Sheet. And whilst we're always proud of the fact that we show ever-increasing strength, ever-increasing amounts in our financial balance sheet, so we're showing a decreasing carbon balance sheet, and there are four of them on this slide. The only reason there are four of them is because we started to do this, and we declared our baseline, called our baseline balance sheet in 2021.
There are really sort of two numbers to focus on on this slide. One is the proportionate reduction in 2024 from that baseline, which is 36%. So our carbon balance sheet has shrunk by over a third in the last three years, which is something we're very proud of. But then also, when you think about what we call carbon intensity, we measure that as the amount of CO2 emissions required for each ton of CPO, of crude palm we produce. So that has shrunk even more than that 36%, because of course, while that is an absolute reduction in carbon, but of course, that's an absolute reduction in carbon for a lot more CPO. So you can see an even bigger reduction in carbon intensity terms.
And that's something that we're continuing to work on, and we want to see even more of a reduction in both the absolute measure and the intensity as we continue to push forward. So just a quick look at that. And if we move on, just a couple of things to share with you in terms of action on the ground. On the left-hand side of this slide, you can see a picture of some mangrove forest, and that's the mangrove forest, very close, next door, in fact, to our projects in Bumi Mas, in the very eastern tip of East Kalimantan. We're delighted, after a lot of hard work over a number of years actually, to secure the area here and add it to our conservation areas across our estates, this year.
It's an extremely important area from an environmental and sustainability perspective, to grab a hold of this area and include it in our conservation area, which is now 8,000 hectares across all of our estates. I'm sure you all know that the mangrove forests are extremely sensitive from an environmental perspective, but we've included that now as something we're actively conserving. So that's a fantastic thing to achieve during the year. And on the right-hand side of the slide, the picture there shows some of the work that's being done by the biodiversity team that we've established at our Bangka estate. And they're doing some superb work in identifying a number of different projects, a number of different initiatives to promote biodiversity on that estate.
So just a couple of examples to share with you, about the work that's being done on the ground on environmental and sustainability matters. Lots more information is available on that, both in the annual report, on the website, and, and we will be publishing more standalone reports in this regard over the course of 2025. So that's all on that topic for now. Very important just to share some information on that for you now, and we'll, we'll move on to the outlook for 2025. Luke?
Yeah, thanks, Matthew. So I mean, you know, 2024 was a certainly was a record year for us, but, I mean, the beginning was continuing into 2025, and it's been a really strong start to the year... Both from a crop and pricing perspective. So you can see here that our own crops are up 5% compared to the start of 2024, and our scheme smallholder crops are up 16% compared to the start of 2024. The only area where it's down is our independent crops that we're purchasing, and we're still very much taking an approach there, where we're balancing the cost and quality of that input, to make sure that we're maintaining and managing our margins appropriately. But overall, we're pretty much in line with where we started 2024, just 2% down, which is a strong start.
I think gives us some further clarity maybe, that crops are starting to bounce back from that period of dry weather at the end of 2023. Pricing-wise, we've seen tenders in the first two months around $870 per ton, so very healthy pricing level, above the full year average. We may see some softening in that through Q2 and into H2, if production volumes are to pick back up again, as I anticipated. So that's something that we'll watch carefully. But if you look at what our analysts are predicting, there's a range at the moment between $750-$800 as a full year average for 2025, which I think is pretty sensible, considering where we sit today.
But, you know, worth pointing out that even at the low end of that range, that is still a fantastic price level, that offers very healthy margins for the group, particularly if we can keep control of our costs. So through to the next slide. So that's the sort of short term outlook, medium term, longer term outlook, and some of you may well be familiar with the chart on the right-hand side. For us, strategically, it's all about trying to push forward and grow the green bars on that chart, up towards the blue line. The blue line represents our milling capacity. That's been the expansion that the group has been on over the last 6-7 years, adding that milling footprint.
Really, what we're trying to do is add additional hectareage to increase the utilization of those mills, and we do best where we have our own hectareage going through our own mills. That's where we get the best margin, and that's absolutely at the forefront of what we're trying to do from a capital allocation perspective as well, as we continue to plant further hectareage at our existing estates. We're also continuing to look and focus on our returns to shareholders as well. Also, we're in active conversations around some M&A opportunities, which hopefully we can convert at some point in the future. With that, I'll pass back to Peter to round out.
Yes, thank you very much, Luke. This slide is really a summary of the points you've already heard, so I won't go through each point individually. But, perhaps, might just end with the remaking the point that we've had an excellent start to the year, to 2025, both in terms of the palm oil price and indeed, to our cropping levels, which is extremely encouraging. I'll just let you look over some of the other points there, whilst we prepare to answer one or two of your questions, which you very kindly submitted. Thank you for those.
I would also just take the opportunity to make the point that we could not have produced these absolutely stellar results without the input, the fantastic contribution of our brilliant staff, not just in Tunbridge Wells, but who I have to say do an excellent job. I say that now in my non-executive capacity as Chairman, so congratulations to the executive team and to all the staff in Tunbridge Wells. But to our brilliant 12,500-strong team in Indonesia, who have done a wonderful job for us, not least in controlling costs, under the leadership of Ravi, who is our President Director of our Jakarta office. So many thanks and congratulations to the entire team.
So, perhaps if we can now look at some of your questions, for which many, many thanks. Let me kick off with one. The first couple are actually sustainability related, so I might ask Matthew to address both of those. So the first is, I heard on the BBC farming program that dairy farmers are being discouraged from using soy as a feed because of its carbon footprint. I like to think palm oil has a smaller carbon footprint. Am I right? Matthew, what would you like to say about that?
Well, I mean, I think it's a very interesting point that's being made, and hopefully people got the point that we were seeking to make about our continuing commitment to reducing carbon intensity for our own production. I think more broadly, the point I would make is the one associated with the overall, if you like, efficiency of palm, when it comes to its ability to deliver a very high yield from a very low land footprint, if I can call it that. It's a statistic we very often share with people, that you know, palm, on average, will be able to produce 3+, quite often more, tons of oil per hectare of land used per annum.
Whereas if you wanted to compare to soy, and typically that will produce less than 1 ton, you know, around half a ton, of oil per hectare of land used per annum.
And so I think your point is a very well-made one.
Fine. The next one: Should we be celebrating the Indonesian plans for B 50, biodiesel 50 mandate, or will all the benefits of the extra demand be removed by a rise in the export levies?
Do you want to have a go at that one, Matthew, as well?
Yeah, of course. I believe Indonesia continues to sort of seek to push up its ambition for increasing the amount of palm in biodiesel. As always, the ambition perhaps runs slightly ahead of the reality. I don't think it's necessarily quite achieved its B 40 before it's announced its B 50. Yeah. But nonetheless, the objective is clear.
And of course, that is part of the reason why, you know, when we talk about that, production and consumption analysis, yeah, Indonesia is such a large consumer of palm overall. As for the question about export levies, they have been, you know, on the same basis for a long time. But whether there is a change going forward, we don't know. There have been some possible rumors about that, but there has been nothing enacted at current time. So we will wait and see what happens. Fine. The next question is in two parts again. I might have a quick second part, but Luke, if you want to have a go at: What is the minimum acceptable return for new oil palm planting projects or for acquired projects?
Yeah. I mean, I maybe don't want to get going on too much on an actual number and laying myself to that, but certainly, we do assess our potential opportunities in terms of planting projects. But that's also stuff where we already own the land. We're also assessing the return on that, as well as any inorganic M&A opportunities, and we do take that into consideration, and also look at it as part of a wider, broader capital allocation policy as well. Free to jump on there.
Yeah. Yeah. The second part is, are we running out of growth projects to invest our retained earnings in? Well, as you'll be aware, we have managed to secure additional hectare around our existing projects in the last, 2 or 3 years, and we are hopeful, if not confident, of securing by acquiring additional areas around our existing mills. There is something like the potential for acquiring up to some 10,000 hectares or even more, around our existing mills, without having to build an additional mill. And what this means is that we would then replace some of the crop that we're buying from independent suppliers, with our own crop from the additional hectares that we acquire, where a much better margin is available.
So that is very much part of our ambition, and we are cautiously confident that we will be successful in acquiring additional hectare around our existing mills. And on the sustainability, very good to know, you know, there is this interest on sustainability. Could you expand on the outlook for the sustainability premium, as Europe is a small portion of the global market? What are the demand characteristics for sustainable oil in your important markets like Indonesia and the rest of Asia? Matthew.
Yes. I mean, it's a very good question about, you know, what is the position in the Asian market, given that is the largest part of consumption for the product overall.
The reality right now is that the premiums are predominantly generated from demand in this part of the world, rather than in Asian consumption. I would like to put forward a proposal that there will be a requirement and demand for certified sustainable oil in the Asian market, and it will, and that will grow. I wish I could sit here and tell you exactly when that will really start to grow substantially. I don't know when that will be, but I'd like, I'm confident that it will happen. It's just a question of exactly when. Fine. Can you share more detail on how you assess the value accretion of the share buyback program versus reinvestment into operations or M&A?
Before perhaps asking Luke to answer that, I might just make the broad point that this is by no means a precise science. It's partly down to the opportunities that arise in terms of M&A, share buybacks and other such opportunities that, Luke, you might want to-
Yeah, I mean, I think similar to my previous answers-
Yeah.
I mean, we do have obviously hurdle rates that we're looking at when it comes to the amount that we're looking for on the returns of where we put our capital, whether that be in M&A, whether that be in capital expenditure, further planting, any investments required there, and also we do that on the share buyback program as well. So we absolutely take a sort of balanced, complete view of where a capital would ultimately result in the best return for shareholders in the medium and longer term.
Thank you. Do the carbon calculations include the benefits of the decarbonization by the palm trees and the biodiversity areas, Matthew?
No. I wish it did. We comply with all the carbon accounting rules for these things. And sadly, under the rules, you're not allowed to include that. So no, they don't. But you've given me a very good opportunity to make the point that there is a substantial amount of carbon sequestered in those areas. I mean, just to give you an example, the area of mangrove forest that we took on next to Bumi Mas, that I was showing you the picture of, our estimates indicate that there's over 500,000 tons of carbon sequestered just in that one area that we are now conserving. We can't include that as a negative.
Under the rules, we can't include that as a negative on our carbon balance sheet. Seems a bit mean, doesn't it? But there you go. But, yeah, we're very pleased that that is the case, and we'll continue to do it for all the right reasons, but we don't get to include that in our analysis, sadly. A couple of very specific questions. What is your FFB that are oil palm fresh fruit bunches per hectare from our own estates, and what is the average age of the plantations? Yeah. So our FFB per hectare is about 21 at the moment. It took a very small dip this year. It was 23 in the previous year. And it took a small dip for a couple of reasons. One, because of the climatic conditions we've spoken about.
But two, more so because we acquired, as you know, we acquired a number of hectare areas in 2023, and those areas don't produce at the same level yet as the rest of our productive areas. And so they sort of just have a slight drag on the average until we get them up to the same standard as everywhere else. In terms of average age, we're about 10.5 overall, in the sort of overall 25-year cycle, which is a great place to be, because it means that we are at the sort of top of the yield profile and have a long period of very high yields ahead of us, which is very exciting.
Next one: Will you need to build a new mill in the next couple of years as you reach existing milling capacity? The answer is no. If anything, we have, as mentioned earlier, surplus milling capacity. Obviously, that is being increasingly utilized as our crops mature, but there is still surplus available, and that is why we are seeking to acquire additional hectarage around our existing mills. How can you narrow the gap between the share price and the book value per share, perhaps the equity value per share? Yeah. We can do in terms of putting out the story and telling the facts as they are and what we do. I guess it's for the market then to do what it does. But did you want to add anything, Matthew?
No. I think that, you know, as you rightly say, Peter, we, we are committed to delivering on our strategy, and hopefully you can see that the 2024 results demonstrate that we've done another year of exactly that. And we're determined to carry on down that pathway, and, and I hope that, as you said, we don't control the market side of, of, of things, but we are also committed to delivering our message extremely clearly, to the market, and we spend a lot of time investing in doing exactly that.
But I may add that it's nice to have seen a close in that gap, certainly over the last 12 months as well. So we're working hard.
Thank you for the congratulations on our great set of results. That's kind of you. Another sustainability one. With many countries and manufacturers addressing sustainability, why has the premium for sustainable oil reduced?
I wish we had a clear answer for that. It is frustrating. Of course, it's frustrating. I think there might be a little bit of uncertainty in the marketplace on sustainability because of the impending introduction of the new sustainability criteria for EUDR, as I mentioned. And I have hope that once that is properly introduced at the beginning of next year, and that uncertainty goes away, that that will help. But let's watch this space and see what happens. Well, thank you very much. That appears to be all the questions.
Thank you so much for submitting those and all of you for tuning in. For those shareholders among you, we very much hope to see you at our AGM on the thirteenth of June. Of course, if you have any questions in the meantime, don't hesitate to be in touch, and as Matthew said, there's plenty more information about the results themselves in the annual report, and generally about M.P. Evans on our website. Thank you to IMC once again for hosting this forum for us. Thank you all so much.
Fantastic. Peter, Matthew, Luke, thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors now to close this session, as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, and also that the board can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of M.P. Evans Group PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.