Welcome to the Corbion half year results 2025 conference call. Following the opening remarks, there'll be an opportunity for questions. Please note that this call will be recorded. I would now like to hand over to Mr. Alex Sokolowski, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Corbion's first half 2025 results conference call. This morning, we published our half year 2025 results, press release, and presentation. These can be found on our website, www.corbion.com, relations, financial publications. Before we begin, please note that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed. Factors beyond our control, including market conditions, economic changes, and regulatory actions, can impact outcomes. Corbion does not undertake any obligation to update statements made in this call or contained in today's press release and presentation. For more details on our assumptions and estimates, please refer to our annual reports. With me on the call today are Olivier Rigaud, Chief Executive Officer, and Peter Kazius, Chief Financial Officer.
Now, I would like to hand the call over to Olivier.
Thank you, Alex, and good morning, and thank you all for joining us today for Corbion's half year 2025 earnings calls. Let's start with some key highlights from our latest results. I'm pleased to report that for the half year, we achieved an increase in sales, driven by robust demand and delivering on our strategic initiatives. We achieved an organic sales of EUR 645 million for the half-year results, corresponding to a +2.9% organic sales growth rate. As anticipated at Q1 2025 reporting back in April, phasing of sales into Q1 resulted in a lower sales level in Q2. Our volume mix growth came in at +3.3% for the half year, with a Q2 growth at -1.3%, again reflecting the phasing effect. In terms of EBITDA development, we've seen significant improvements. Our adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 106.6 million for the half year, with a Q2 number of EUR 52.2 million.
This represents an adjusted EBITDA growth of almost 24%. Our adjusted EBITDA margin improved by +300 basis points to 16.5%, demonstrating our operational efficiencies and cost management, as well as growth in higher margin product categories. Free cash flow was positive for an eighth consecutive quarter. We feel very confident and reaffirm our fiscal year 2025 outlook, which I will discuss in more detail when we cover the outlook section. Now, diving a bit deeper into our segments, and starting with our Functional Ingredients & Solutions. In this business unit, we showed positive volume mix in two of the three businesses: our specialty food ingredients and lactic acid to the PLA joint venture. The half-year volume mix growth in food ingredients was in meat, dairy, and culinary markets, as demand for Corbion's natural preservation solutions remained healthy.
Our focus on strong customer collaboration and leveraging our broad natural portfolio is paying off there, whereas in the biochemical businesses, some demand softness persists. Looking at our growth initiatives, continued success in focused areas like food ferments, natural mold inhibitors, and dairy stabilizers continues. We're also experiencing strong growth in adjacent culinary applications with our natural mold inhibitor portfolio. Another interesting growth driver has been in high-protein bread fortification in the U.S., driven by strong consumer demand for high-protein diets and also for fortified foods. As recently announced, Corbion is participating in the Ferment4Health project, a research initiative focused on understanding the health benefits of fermented foods and postbiotics, particularly their impact on gut health and inflammation. Corbion's involvement there will leverage our expertise in fermentation-based ingredients to contribute to the development of functional food solutions.
From the operational and manufacturing front, our circular lactic acid plant is ramping up gradually, and looking forward, we are confident about delivering the full value creation from this investment. Our new vinegar plant in Montgomery, Alabama, is also ramping up, bringing substantial insourcing benefits as we are back integrating this critical building block in our portfolio of natural preservatives. Nonetheless, we continue to positively impact our EBITDA with cost savings benefits from other initiatives such as operational excellence and complexity reduction and volume mix growth in higher margin categories. Now, turning to our Health & Nutrition segment and our three businesses there, starting with nutrition and omega-3. Despite quarterly fluctuations, there's been continued strong demand for algae-derived omega-3 DHA in aquaculture, pet nutrition, and we have some promising new contracts in human nutrition as well.
Additionally, there is also positive momentum in our Biomedical Polymer business, in the two important keystone markets being drug delivery and orthopedics. Our Pharma business, containing our lactic acid derivatives, has shown strong double-digit volume mix growth, mainly in the kidney dialysis market in China. As for our exciting growth initiatives, starting first with our biomedical polymers, our products are increasingly being used as a biostimulatory treatment agent to support tissue growth and natural collagen production in the aesthetics markets. This is next to the two historical subsegments of orthopedics and drug delivery. About omega-3 DHA, referencing and first contract volume in human nutrition and market will materialize in the course of the second half of the year. Finally, on omega-3, we continue to pursue opportunities to broaden our customer base in aquaculture, in pet nutrition, but also recently in some attractive new terrestrial categories.
A highlight for the nutrition business in the quarter was the recent Corbion announcement that the company successfully secured multiple regulatory approvals from the China General Administration of Customs. This is paving the way for offering Corbion's high-quality, sustainable algae-derived omega-3 DHA solutions in the Chinese fast-growing human and animal nutrition market. This is opening great opportunities for us going forward into 2026. Last but not least, on efficiencies initiatives, our investment program is delivering the expected capacity increase to secure growth into omega-3 for 2026 and beyond, also in the Biomedical Polymer business. Through the microalgae strain optimization, we can further increase yields from the existing asset in Brazil. With that, I'd like to give the stage to Peter to present our half-year results in more detail. Peter, back to you.
Thank you, Olivier. In the first half of 2025, our sales increased by 1.3% compared to H1 2024. This growth includes an organic growth of +2.9%. Currency impacts, particularly due to the depreciation of the U.S. dollar in the second quarter, resulted in a negative -1.2% impact on sales. The organic sales growth was driven by volume mix growth in Functional Ingredients & Solutions of +2.9% and in Health & Nutrition of +5%. In the second quarter, mainly due to phasing effects, organic sales growth was -1.8% for Functional Ingredients & Solutions and -0.6% for Health & Nutrition. I will come back on the dynamics when presenting the individual business units. Turning to our adjusted EBITDA, we achieved a remarkable growth of +23.8% increase versus H1, with an organic growth of +29.3%. This increase was driven by sales growth as well as cost-saving measures within Functional Ingredients & Solutions.
The adjusted EBITDA margins improved overall by 300 basis points to 16.5%. This resulted in a EUR 25 million benefit on an organic basis. The currency effect, largely driven by the depreciation of the U.S. dollar in the second quarter, impacted the EBITDA negatively by EUR 2.2 million. The non-recurring transitionary service agreement benefit last year is -EUR 2.5 million. On an adjusted EBITDA, we've seen growth both in Q1 as well as in Q2. Looking further down the line in our Profit and Loss statements, depreciation and amortization decreased year over year following the depreciation of the U.S. dollar as well as the Brazilian real. Some assets were fully depreciated, and this was partly offset by an increase of depreciation from our lactic acid plant. Adjustments were mainly driven by restructuring costs as well as some costs related to the plant settlement of a defined benefit scheme.
Financial income and expense came in higher than last year, mainly driven by translation effects of intercompany positions. The interest expense on our debt is EUR 6.5 million, which is an interest rate of around 3%. The 50% of the net results of the TotalEnergies Corbion joint venture were EUR 1.1 million negatively. The positive EBITDA of EUR 6.7 million is offset by interest paid to the shareholders as well as tax. Our effective tax rate stands at 18%, which is relatively low. This is due to tax effects related to currency results. For the full year 2025, we anticipate an effective tax rate between 23% and 25%. Finally, our results after tax have seen a positive impact of 86.8% versus H1 2024. Looking at Functional Ingredients & Solutions business units, we experienced a positive volume mix growth of 2.9% for the first half and -1.2% for Q2.
This growth was primarily driven by our food business units, particularly in meat and dairy markets, as well as growth in our key product and market adjacencies. Additionally, we observed growth in Lactic Acid volumes to our joint venture. In H1, our Biochemical business unit was down compared to last year, primarily driven by weaker demand in some categories like agrochemicals, which especially impacted Q2. This was amplified by phasing of some key customer orders into the second half of the year. Regarding pricing, we saw a negative impact of -1.1% for the first half and -0.6% for Q2, following the decline of input costs, mainly passed to the joint venture. Our EBITDA margin for H1 stood at around 12%, with Q2 at 11.7%. This represents an increase of nearly 300 basis points versus the first half of 2024.
Variable margin improved following the implementation of cost reduction measures and input cost decline, offsetting negative mix from growth in Lactic Acid to the PLA joint venture. Moving on to Health & Nutrition and starting with our organic sales growth, we achieved +6.8% for the first half of the year, with Q2 contributing -0.6%. Our volume mix growth for H1 was 5%, with Q2 showing a decline of -1.1% due to customer phasing within the nutrition part of the portfolio. The H1 growth was driven by all three business units: Nutrition, Pharma, and Biomedical Polymers. In the Pharma business, we delivered double-digit volume mix growth, mainly due to addressing the kidney dialysis market in China. In the Biomedical Polymer business, sales grew high single digit, supported by increased sales in our three key markets: orthopedic, drug delivery, and aesthetics.
Moving on to EBITDA, H1 adjusted EBITDA grew from EUR 41.5 million - EUR 47.5 million, driven by volume mix growth in all three businesses. The adjusted EBITDA margin grew 240 basis points to 32.1%, driven by leverage of fixed costs and positive pricing. In summary, our Health & Nutrition segment was impacted by some phasing in Q2, whilst having a positive momentum across the three key business areas. Finally, if we look to the results of the TotalEnergies Corbion joint venture, the joint venture achieved an organic sales growth of 5.6% for the first half year, with Q2 showing a year-over-year decline of -9.3%. The growth in the first half of 2025 was driven by volume growth, albeit at low PLA prices. The joint venture achieved a margin of 9.7% for H1, with Q2 at 11.7% in line with expectations.
We continue to expect high single-digit EBITDA margins for the full year 2025. With this, I would like to hand over back to Olivier.
Okay, thanks, Peter. Moving on to the outlook for the rest of the year, we are confident to achieve our previously given ambitious targets for the full year 2025, targeting a volume mix growth of between 2% and 6%. Moving on to organic adjusted EBITDA growth, we maintain our target growth rate of over 25%. This reflects our confidence in the strength of our business and our capacity to deliver on our cost efficiency program. We target free cash flow of over EUR 85 million and continue to anticipate a covenant-to-covenant EBITDA ratio of approximately 1.6 x by the end of the year. This reflects our commitment to maintaining a strong balance sheet. Peter and I are happy to take your questions. Operator, back to you.
Okay, before going into today's Q&A, I would also like to announce that we are planning to host the Corbion Capital Markets Day 2025 on November 20th at our Gorinchem site in the Netherlands. Email invitations to register to attend the event in person or to log into the live webcast from your computer will be sent out shortly. Please keep your eyes on your inbox. Call participants, if you'd like to ask a question on the call this morning, please press star one one on your telephone and you'll be placed in the queue. If you'd like to remove yourself from the queue, press star one one again. Also, kindly mute your line while your question is being answered. This morning, our first call comes from Setu Sharda of Barclays. Setu, please go ahead.
Q3 is expected to be negative. How confident are you that you are able to deliver the volume growth for FY 2025 of 2% - 6% range? Are there any risks we should consider? If you can give any color on how trading has been so far in Q3, that would be helpful. My second question is on the nutrition volumes. They have been quite volatile since the fish oil prices have come down. What is your outlook on nutrition volumes in H2? Have you seen any impact of lower fish oil on contracting? My third question is on the cost savings. If you can update us on the progress on cost saving and how much of the target is achieved, and if anything is pending which should be incremental in H2. Yeah.
Okay, thank you, Setu. I'll repeat the first two and I will let Peter handle the cost savings one. When looking at indeed the Q2, on your question about confidence in delivering the fiscal year, indeed we reiterate our target to 2% - 6%. We feel confident there. As we explained, we already discussed about the phasing Q1 and Q2. It's different from a business to another. If I start first with a Functional Ingredient & Solution, if I look at the current momentum starting Q3, the food ingredient continues in a nice momentum and we do not expect that really to change in the rest of the year. We have also some visibility, obviously, on lactic acid intake to the PLA joint venture where also we confirm the growth ambition of the joint venture for the full year.
I think the nutrition question, your second question around indeed the fish oil price dynamic and our look on H2 is a thing worth really diving into. We explained that indeed we had a very strong Q1 with some phasing into Q2. When we look forward, basically on volume outlook, first of all, we do not expect an outstanding Q3 just because we have a very high comparable if you compare to 2024. If you remember, we grew this business with 30% last year. Q3 will be good, but obviously we face a very strong comparable. At the same time, we have a very good visibility on our Q4 and we expect a very strong Q4 in animal nutrition.
I think it's also worth explaining a bit the dynamic in that business because when you speak about omega-3s, obviously in the three segments being aquaculture, pet nutrition, and human nutrition, they have very different dynamics. In aquaculture, basically you serve some major global accounts that are less than harmful, where you are phasing order from a quarter to another. What's important in that dynamic is that we supply, on one side, the contracted volume and that we have very good visibility. We said last time we have basically 30% of our business that is not contracted where we have lower visibility and that is more exposed to fish oil price dynamic. When we look again at H2 for our nutrition omega-3 business, we anticipate a low Q3 based on very high comparables last year and a very strong Q4. We maintain our double digit for the full year.
We also maintain our very strong EBITDA margin for that division, obviously also sustained by a good performance in the Biomedical Polymer and Pharma business on top of the omega-3. Peter, maybe you take the cost savings and all.
Yeah. Setu, thanks for the question. Overall on cost savings in our program, we are online and therefore in line and therefore also happy to see the margin delivery mainly in our fifth business unit, which increased 290 basis points versus last year. If you translate the 290 basis points, then that's roughly EUR 50 million. Therefore we are also confident and reiterating our outlook in terms of EBITDA delivery for the full year.
Thank you. That's quite helpful.
Okay, thank you, Setu. Our next question this morning comes from Robert Jan Vos from ABN AMRO ODDO BHF. Robert Jan, please go ahead.
Yes, hi, good morning all. I have a couple of questions as well. First one is on free cash flow. You delivered EUR 12 million in the first half. The target, if I'm not mistaken, is still more than EUR 85 million, reiterated today. There's a lot of phasing first half, second half. Is that purely working capital or are there any other factors that we should take into consideration? That's my first question. The second one, you talked in the prepared remarks, but also in the Q&A, you already talked a bit about the pricing of the non-contracted portion in aquaculture in H2 following the fish oil prices that are quite low. In 2025, you just said that this non-contracted part is 30%. So relatively small in the total portfolio. For 2026, I assume that all the contracts, which is 70% apparently currently, need to be renegotiated.
My question is not so much on 2025 second half, but what is your first view on new contracts for the upcoming year in this business? In other words, do you still expect to be able to achieve this 30%+ EBIT margin in the division? My third question is on PLA. What exactly was the reason that the organic sales growth dropped so much in Q2? At the same time, the EBITDA margin was much higher than in Q1. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit on this. That's it for now. Thank you.
No, thank you, Robert Jan. I will let Peter handle the free cash flow, and I will handle the other questions. Maybe we start with the free cash flow, Peter.
Yeah. So Robert Jan, you're right. If you look to the free cash flow delivery, then there is a phasing between H1 and H2. By the way, also pretty much in line with last year because last year, if you recall, we did also EUR 12 million in H1, and then in H2, we ended up in a full year of around EUR 100 million. It is really the seasonality in our working capital, which is the prime reason behind that.
Okay, let me start with the PLA and then I can elaborate more on the fish oil question. On PLA, when we look again to the phasing in the full year, we see indeed a reduction on some of the key markets, primarily China in Q2. This has been also phasing because we see till the end of the year a consistent forecast on the PLA joint venture outcome. I would say the joint venture is sticking to its target for the full year. As we've discussed many times, the portfolio is still quite widely exposed to what's happening in Asia and primarily in China. This has not changed. There are no structural changes suddenly from a quarter to another on the PLA that are leading us to say we're going to change the outlook for the joint venture for the year. As we said earlier, the pricing remained depressed.
Also, back on the fossil-based polymer competition, that is also really low right now. What we see is that the margins are being impacted by pricing. At the same time, as you know, the major input cost lactic acid, and we have a path through in terms of price formula to the joint venture, the joint venture is benefiting largely from the relaxation in input costs coming from sugar, which is also, of course, benefiting the wider Corbion, as this is one of our major input costs. You might have seen the dynamic around sugar over the last month that is trending very positively for us because to some extent, we are back to some pre-COVID level in sugar and even lower. That's a different point, but we are taking the advantage of the current situation to basically add longer-term sugar for Corbion.
Of course, we're going to start to benefit from that in the second half of the year, but really moreover, a lot more in 2026. As we are now, I can say fully covered for 2026, and our sugar needs at a much lower price. On fish oil and non-contracted questions, we've all seen the fish oil price dynamic and the strategy having indeed longer-term contract did pay off. On this 30% uncontracted, we had to adapt our pricing there in line with the fish oil trend. To your question on 2026, and this is a very critical one, let me elaborate on the current dynamic. Although it's very early, you might know that Peru just concluded the first anchovies fishing season. They put a quota target of 3 million tons, and they decided to stop at 82% of this 3 million tons last week, actually, on July 23rd.
It's also important to understand that if you look at the numbers, of course, Peru, to a large extent, is setting the price of fish oil. You have to look at the 13 countries that matter, and you have the big countries being Peru, Chile, Denmark, U.K., and U.S. They do represent roughly 50% of the global fish oil output globally. This is what's making the price trend. When you look to what's happening, obviously, they didn't match the quota. What's going to happen on price is still to be seen, but we are still very much in the balance of supply and demand where things might turn with a slight surplus or a slight deficit on pricing dynamic because this is a commodity.
There is another important element in that, at the same time, China being also an important player there in terms of fishing and what they call marine ingredients, the domestic production of marine ingredients in China continues to be limited due to really ongoing fishing bans along the coastline. We can see that, of course, in the first half of 2025, the Chinese domestic marine ingredient output has been really decreased substantially. We see some very slight signals of potential rebound in price, but it's minor. You speak about 2.5% right now on fish oil, but we cannot make any conclusion yet. What we have seen is that basically the increased stocking activity, the declining cost of feed stock, feed costs, and the more positive profitability outlook for the fish farmers suggests that the aquaculture market's demand by the end of the year may surpass the 2024 level.
That could point out to potentially a stronger demand for marine ingredients as the year progresses. We are not in a position to make any speculation for 2026 on fish oil. Back to the contract discussion, we still have contracts running till the end of 2026. For the contracts that are to be renegotiated by the MDR because we have some ending 2025, we have already initiated discussion to renew these contracts already in the course of Q2 because we are not waiting last minute, but we are in the middle of negotiation rounds on these contracts that are going to end by the end of the year. Structurally, we believe that at one point with everything that we are seeing in terms of fishing quotas and fish oil dynamic, the market is really structurally short anyhow.
Whether the quota is going to lead to, at one point, 1.2 or 1.3 million tons of fish oil, that's going to make either a shortage or a slight surplus. Structurally, we are still in this year where there is no more fish you can catch, and structurally, the fundamentals of the business remain really, really strong. Let's see how it moves over the last month. You still have a small fishing season in October, and that will tell a lot more whether 2026 is going to be really a shortage or a slight surplus, but if a surplus, it's going to be really tight. That's our current analysis of the market dynamics.
Okay, that is quite clear, but maybe if I may ask and add on, what is the general, yeah, let's say, outcome of the discussions you currently have with customers for whom the contracts end at the end of this year on the pricing?
It's difficult to disclose, of course, the detail as you understand, but basically, you know, our aim is not to align, of course, right now to the current fish oil price because, you know, when you negotiate multi-year, and that's what we are looking for, the aim is really to see what is, of course, you know, the right price to basically what we offer that fish oil cannot offer, is security of supply and zero volatility. Some customers do approach it not as fish oil being a commodity, but as a security of supply and a risk mitigation supply because they know structurally, you know, fish oil is going to be short. If you want to stay in the omega-3 market and you guarantee the omega-3 level in salmon, you have to secure a minimum amount of omega-3.
We are more keen to discuss and favor these customers that do not speculate on fish oil, but see that as a risk management and supply guarantees over the long term than the short-term players. Just to end on that topic, this is why also the diversification strategy going more to pet, moving to terrestrial, but also primarily human nutrition is crucial in our ongoing strategy for omegas.
Very clear. Thank you. I have one small question for Peter, I think. You elaborated briefly on depreciation. Is it fair to assume that depreciation will increase with lactic acid plant in Thailand now coming into stream?
Yeah, that's the right assumption, Robert Jan. Especially if you look moving forward, if currencies do not fluctuate because we've quite some assets in US dollar and Brazilian real, then you are right.
What is the step-up approximately?
If you look to the step-up, and I look a bit back, in total, if you look to the CapEx amounts, then you talk about roughly EUR 240 million. You have a depreciation between 15 to 20 years. If you calculate that back, then it is quite a significant amount which will come. The depreciation, by the way, we will do in a unit of measures, not a straight line depreciation. It's ramping up in line with the ramp-up of the lactic acid plant.
All right, thank you.
Okay, very good. We have three call participants in the Q&A queue. Participants, if you're interested in asking a question, please press star one one to be placed in the Q&A queue. Our next question this morning comes from Fernand de Boer from Degroof Petercam. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Fernand de Boer from Degroof Petercam. Two questions from my side. One, Olivier, did I hear you saying that you had again yield improvements coming in for the omega-3? That's the first question. The second one is, I remain a little bit puzzled on the pricing in the human and health because 30% of these omega-3 is non-contracts. There you should expect a big decline in the prices. The price stayed positive in the quarter. I think that if you look at fish oil prices, omega-3 prices on the spot price, that already should take this pricing down for the whole segment, but it is still positive in the second quarter. Could you explain a little bit?
Yeah. No, so first on improvements, yes, the fact is that you know this process is still relatively new. As we explained, we had two years ago this massive yield improvement in terms of getting more oil out of the biomass and then, of course, more omega-3s. Now we are benefiting from a kind of a second row of yield improvement on omega-3 content. That's a kind of trade secret. We don't disclose in terms of %, but obviously with the same asset and the same ton of sugar, we produce a lot more omega-3 and we are pricing the omega-3 % to customers, you know, not the full ton of oil. This is where the profit lies. The plant, obviously, as we are getting more experienced, is making really great efficiency progress in terms of yield improvement. Sometimes these are small bottlenecks or improvements. Sometimes they are massive.
We are really still learning as we go. The other thing is that we have a much better operational leverage because, of course, the volume is going up and it's like in many situations where we see that we can get a lot more throughput from existing assets as well just by having, you know, small improvements on various parts of the process, being, you know, refining, but also fermentation, and moreover, by reducing fermentation time. This is where the major project comes because it's really where the secret lies is also, you know, the efficiency and reducing the fermentation cycles in the plant. The team has done great progress and this has really enabled us to, first of all, get more throughput, but also get a much more operational leverage on our fixed cost there in Brazil. On pricing, Peter, do you want to comment on that?
Yeah, no, happy to take the pricing. You're right. If you look on a yearly basis, the percentage is roughly 70%-30%. In the quarters, it changes a bit, fair enough, from that perspective. If you currently see where we are in terms of contracts, there is stability of the contractor part of the business. If you look to the non-contractor part of the business, I anticipate pricing to be reduced in the second half of the year and not so much in the first half of the year. If you look to overall in the margin profile, because that I articulated, I think in a previous call, we still think we will reach margin levels of around 30% of EBITDA.
Okay. Coming back on the question on the yield improvement, Olivier, you said that you do not need capacity increases in Brazil for 2026 and beyond.
Yeah.
That's correct, yeah?
Yeah, if you recall when we presented the capital plan, we had a EUR 50 million investment over three years for omega-3s. We are really in the middle of that program, and with this EUR 50 million, we can really materialize the numbers we gave at that time to go till the end of 2027 and secure growth till the end of 2027. We are well on track there. I would say we are even ahead on this capacity because we are spot on with this EUR 50 million investment, but more throughput money debated for the EUR 50 million, actually. This is the good news on algae. Obviously, we would have to make decisions on the next step, probably in the first half of 2026, of what we need to do to grow beyond us from 2028.
As I also said previously, we've eliminated the option of building a brand new greenfield operations because with what we've learned from the process, we think that further incremental, lower CapEx options are really better than moving into a new factory, whether it is a greenfield or a brownfield.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Fernand. Our next question this morning comes from Eric Wilmer of Van Lanschot Kempen . Eric, please go ahead.
Hi, good morning all, and thanks for taking my questions. I believe you saw volumes come down in functional ingredients by a little over 1% in Q2, which seemed primarily driven by softness on the biochemical side, which I believe is around 15% of your functional ingredient sales. You also highlighted that meat and dairy was up, where bakery was slightly down. I was wondering about the sequential performance of your bakery business. Did this go down sequentially in Q2? Where does the softness come from in bakery during both Q1 and Q2? Are you seeing customers or consumers perhaps switching into synthetic potentially as a result of downtrading? Is this primarily related to a stronger focus on protecting pricing, resulting perhaps in some market share losses? Am I right to assume that the phasing that you alluded to was primarily geared to the biochemicals business within functional ingredients?
Thank you.
Yes, Eric. I think this is indeed the case. Basically, the biochem is where really we have this softness. We've seen, I mean, even further deterioration. If you look at that business, indeed, roughly 15% of fish, you have subsegments like semiconductors, agrochemicals, and animal feed, which usually, you know, are volatile by nature. There are also some underlying market trends, for instance, in agro, where these types of products are being formulated out under more stringent regulation. We have also decided to be much more disciplined on pricing there, even if we have to let some business go because these are not really within our strategic priorities. That is indeed explained the largest part of the softness in Q2 is coming from this biochemical part of the portfolio.
In terms of food, indeed, I mean, as you just said, we see meat and the adjacent categories, culinary, savory, growing nicely with natural preservatives, dairy as well. Bakery, the category is flat-ish. Now in this category, you have different dynamics. We have, of course, a strong presence in the U.S., but we have also a strong presence in LATAM. Actually, we had some downsize in LATAM just with a couple of customers and primarily one reformulating one product, which is, you know, a one-off event. At the same time, we have a good pipeline. To your questions on people moving back to synthetic, we've not seen that.
I think it's a great question in the sense that, you know, we have still to see what the new tariffs in impact are going to be in that category because obviously there is still quite a lot of ingredients being imported from outside the U.S. that might be formulated out to the benefit of products produced in the U.S. This is where, you know, we intend to leverage our manufacturing presence, primarily on natural mold inhibitors. Today, basically, the major competition we do have in the U.S. bakery market is coming from outside imports, amongst others from China. I think we have a competitive advantage if this is going to be confirmed in the next negotiation to benefit from that with our U.S. footprint, because we manufacture there. There is no move right now to synthetic, you know, in the short term.
Okay, that's very helpful. Maybe if I may squeeze in one more question.
Please do.
I'm pretty excited to hear about the Capital Markets Day on the 20th of November. The question here is regarding perhaps natural flavors. Also, given your background, your previous background at natu ex, I believe it's also, I mean, there's a pretty clear focus within the industry, within the flavors industry on natural flavors, also through fermentation. It's also something you can make lactic acid. is this something, spoiler alert, but is this something that, is this an area of growth potentially for Corbion going forward?
I would say yes, in terms of the principle, not becoming a flavor house. This is not where we are going, but you know, again, to make it simple, if you have primarily, when you look to the world of additives or ingredients and whether the additives are natural, you know, they need to be labeled as additive with numbers. Or if you have natural flavors that have more friendly, cleaner label attributes. When we look at preservatives today, we already have lactic acid derivatives that are labeled as natural flavors. This is really what I'm a strong believer is that Corbion should invest and will invest more into this avenue of cleaner label.
Partially, if you look at, you know, what you can do with natural antioxidants for preservation, quite a lot of these natural excellence could be botanical extracts or fermented products that could be labeled as natural flavors, although they bring a functionality of natural preservation. This is clearly an avenue we are really working deeply on that we will disclose more about in the upcoming CMD, Eric, for sure.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Okay, we have one more question. One more participant in the queue. Let me remind all participants, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one one. Our last question comes from Reg Watson at ING. Reg, please go ahead.
Morning all. I had a follow-up, please, Peter, on the depreciation question. Thank you for highlighting that it's based on the unit of measure on the gypsum-free plant. To help us calibrate this for the depreciation charge for this year, can you tell us where you are on the utilization of that plant, please?
I will not fully tell you where we are, but if you look to the depreciation which we have done in the early part of the year, it's a couple of million.
Okay, would that increase through the year? Is that an expectation? Because presumably the utilization is changing all the time.
That's correct. It will change during the year, running up to the amount which I indicated earlier.
Okay, thank you. My second question relates to the Q3-Q4 seasonality. Thank you for highlighting that Q3 is going to be down year on year. I'm acutely aware that Q4 is normally seasonally the weakest quarter, both from a revenue and EBITDA perspective. Do you still expect that to be the case this year with the weakness in Q3, or is Q3 still going to be stronger than Q4?
If you look overall to the seasonality impact, and if you look to Functional Ingredients & Solutions and Health & Nutrition. In Health & Nutrition, I would say the seasonality impact was really proliferated last year because we had this plus, what was it, 30% in Q3, and then it was around flattish in Q4. I assume that will turn around into in this year. Having said that, with the order pattern which we see in the contractor part of the businesses, I see some shifts from Q3 to Q4 as well. I don't anticipate Q4 being weaker. In Functional Ingredients & Solutions, you will roughly see indeed the same pattern as we have seen previously.
Okay, that's really helpful. Thank you.
Okay, as there are no more questions, this concludes our conference call this morning. Thank you all for your attendance and questions, and we look forward to discussions at upcoming roadshows and conferences in the coming weeks. The transcript of today's call will be available on the Investor Relations page of corbion.com in the next days. Also, thank you, Operator. You may end the call.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.