Representatives from the company auditor BDO are here and will be available to answer questions in the financial statements and in relation to the audit. The company secretary has informed me that the quorum is present. I therefore declare this Annual General Meeting of Austin Engineering open. I'm pleased to advise that the shareholders that are not able to attend physically are able to watch and to listen to a live webcast of the meeting. The webcast will be an opportunity to view the proceedings and presentations of the AGM, and for the shareholders to submit online written questions during the meeting. However, the webcast is provided for convenience only and does not replace the physical AGM. Shareholders will not be able to participate in the meeting or vote via the webcast facility.
Given the logistics and the fact that people watching over the webcast facility are not taken to be present at the meeting, we propose to address any questions that are sent through over the webcast at the end of the meeting and once the meeting formalities are concluded. I'd like to explain the format of today's meeting. Firstly, I'll give the Chair's address. I'll then invite David Singleton to give his Managing Director's address. After David's presentation, we'll consider the resolutions outlined in the notes of meeting. I'm pleased to report a decent year of progress from an operational perspective. Our Austin 2.0 strategy has created more resilient business, and I firmly believe the company is now well set up for future growth. This year hasn't been without its challenges.
Most notably, these include inflationary pressures faced by the mining equipment sector, particularly in relation to steel prices and the shortage of labor and qualified trades, especially in Australia. However, measures to put in place under Austin 2.0 strategy has seen Austin centralize some of its production and secure its supply chain to improve margins and to shield it from some of those pressures. Cost reduction initiatives and improvement in factory efficiency, together with new product launches and the integration of Mainetec, resulted in a higher full-year revenue across all of our business units, as big win rates also improved.
For the full year, we recorded a 27% increase in group revenue to AUD 258.3 million, with an 8.4% rise in the underlying NPAT to AUD 18.1 million and 9.5% rise in underlying EBITDA to AUD 31.5 million, sorry, AUD 31.3 million. We see the revenue trajectory continuing as we build the business and the impacts of revenue diversification continue to manifest. We have provided the first half 2024 guidance of an approximate 14% increase in revenue year-on-year, and of approximately 100% lift in underlying NPAT. We've also started full year 2024 with an order book covering around about 50% of forecast for the full year revenue, compared to 40% at the same time the previous year.
In his address, David will give more details on the initiatives undertaken by the company to increase orders and sales on the new products we've brought to market, supported by the integration of Mainetec into the business. I'd like to particularly highlight our achievements around the expansion of our Indonesian facility, hub in Batam, and the rollout of our offsite procurement program. These are two of the largest strategic changes we've made in the business for some years, and I believe the benefits of each will lead to growth and returns. We have doubled the size and capacity of our Indonesian facility, upgrading the fabrication capability to produce our whole suite of products. In a period of critical labor constraints in Western Australia, we have been able to redeploy some of our manufacturing to Indonesia. We have a committed and available team.
The expansion of Indonesia has coincided with very expensive increased pandemic freight rates, and we have been able to ship products from Indonesia to customers globally. We see its importance as a lower-cost manufacturing hub, and we're growing as it provides a ramp-up support to other business units. AusBuy is our global procurement program, allowing us to buy goods at volume, particularly steel, at better prices. Driving down significant business costs allow us to manufacture and deliver to customers at competitive prices. We continue to show we are a market leader in engineering and design solutions. We are meeting customers' requirements for innovative products that provide increased operational efficiency, safety, and aid in the pathway to decarbonization. Demand for mining equipment is being driven by both traditional commodities and the demand for critical minerals supply as the world moves to increase electrification and renewable energy sources.
Pleasingly, the level of recurring business has increased as existing customers look to Austin for replacement of fleets and equipment, plus repairs and maintenance. In the year, we have launched lighter weight and more efficient products designed to reduce steel requirements, increase payload, and minimize fuel and tire usage. We are exploring new markets such as India, and down markets for new products like underground specific equipment, all with potential to further diversify our revenue base. The full benefit of Mainetec is also starting to emerge. Our operations in Queensland have been complemented by establishment of a special bucket fabrication facility here in Perth, which can produce the entire range of Austin and Mainetec, mining buckets.
As we approach, the team has successfully forged a path for international sales of Mainetec buckets, with the first dipper bucket sold in the U.S., where there is a greater market opportunity to explore. The health and safety of our people remains our core focus, and we have continued to offer programs and initiatives to support the health, support, and well-being of our staff right across the globe. It's been important to attract and retain staff, especially in jurisdictions where labor shortages are being felt. We had a 35% increase in apprenticeships this year compared to 2022. All of our apprentices are offered full-time roles in the company. We want to make sure that they are given opportunities to further their careers within Austin Engineering.
We have taken on more staff in Batam, following our expansion and operations, and that has facilitated the need for more training and upskilling. Our quality control welding program has been well attended, as has our in-house welding training program, which recently employed a group of female welders. We are pleased to release our second sustainability report last month that details Austin's environmental, social, and governance credentials, and will give you a full picture of how we're creating sustainable business aligned to our core values. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I'd like to thank David Singleton for overseeing a productive year at Austin, implementing his Austin 2.0 growth strategy while navigating inflation pressures and leading labor issues, especially in WA. He has built a strong, effective team, which is ready to build a stronger, more integrated, global business.
We have a growing workforce, employees, as well as the contract and supply groups who are all committed to Austin's success. Thank you for another year of support and making sure that safety and safe work practices are priority. A great thank you also to the directors for their guidance and counsel through the year. Finally, to our shareholders that continue to show support for the company's strategy and vision. I will now hand over to David Singleton for his CEO and then directors address. Thank you.
Good afternoon, everybody. I'm conscious of these presentations are really too long into who I'm talking to. One of those is those of you who've taken the time to turn up today, just to see the board and hear people speak about our business. Thank you for taking the time for all of you here, actually, effectively, today. I want to thank you. I'm also conscious that we talk to another audience, which is the institutional, the large institutional shareholders, and the reason we have the camera and microphone here is that many I know of you are institutional shareholders on the East Coast, only, of course, on the East Coast of Australia, who will be listening in today to see whether we've got anything new to say.
So, with that in mind, a little bit of what I do will be repetitious of what people already know on the East Coast, but I, I thought it was reasonable for us to repeat that to you for taking the time to come here, and so it will be a little bit new as well. And I'm trying, but when I press this button, the right thing happens. Ah, fantastic! So, so this is, this is historically new. This is the financial results at the end of the FY 2023 period. And, if you could just give me a little bit of an oversight, and I think I'll run through it just quickly. So nothing new here, but, but we can start the main picture for us.
Group revenue was up to AUD 258 million. That was up 27% last year. In fact, our revenue in our group was kind of plateaued and stuck around AUD 200 million for several years before we got going with the Austin 2.0 strategy sign. I'm delighted that we're starting to see the sales success and the strategic success that we think we have in sight of business actually turning up in the results of the company. The numbers, of course, are at the end of the day, a lot of character, work very well in financial results, and it tells you whether or not the things that we're doing are actually delivering the results that we want to achieve. We're up 27% on sales.
Normalized EBITDA and normalized for some one-off events, we're up 9.5% on the previous financial year. And our normalized NPAT was up 8.4% on our previous year. And I think if you think about the, if you think about the relatives, top 50 companies, and they had those 9% increases in their results, that would be seen as a really exciting outcome for the business. There you go. Slide two there. So operating cash flow, this is the other big truth teller in our, in our business. It's one thing to achieve profit, but if you can match that off with operating cash flow, then that starts to tell you that the business really is truly profitable. And we had an operating cash flow of roughly AUD 15.8 million.
That's up nearly 2.5 times on the previous year. So that feels like we're now seeing results coming through as cash flow for the business. And the thing that gives us a little bit of forward confidence about how the business is traveling going forward is that this, despite the fact that the revenue is up so much, the order book is up 35% on a year-on-year basis to $143.7 million. And so there's one basis. Now, just remind on a few of you, in fact, investing in services companies as well, we're a different type of business to that. Our long-term contracts for us are typically a few months. Many of our contracts are a few hundred thousand dollars, only a few million dollars we've done.
We don't pursue multi-hundred-million-dollar contracts, and that's not our type of business. We're a fast turnover, rare products type business, and business comes in on an almost daily basis. Rare for us to be able to see more than about a month in advance, but that's what we can see, and it typically gives us the kind of data that we need for what to plan for any years going forward. Interestingly, I'll think about this a bit later, 89% of our revenue comes from long-term customers with recurring income.
I think, you know, out of many of the statistics that we use, this is one of the most interesting and most important, because it serves as reliability and consistency in our business, because we're seeing the same customers coming back and buying either on an annual basis or some annual basis. So I think from an overall point of view, you know, that's a good set of results. How do we feel about that? I don't think we feel ourselves very satisfied about that. One of the things that's important in running a business is that you never feel satisfied with the results that you've achieved, and you're always looking to do next year very much more than you've done in the previous year.
So we think there's still a lot more to be done and a lot more to get out of this business than we've had achieved so far. And so if there was a pace of change and a pace of determination last year on the back of what we achieved, I can tell you that that pace of determination, not only remains, but is even higher as we move into FY 2024. So, if you just look at that, those results on a comparative basis, left-hand side is the return on equity. And you can see that, we deploy our capital really well in this business. We've seen returns on equity go from 6%-9% on the left-hand side of that first graph, now rising consistently to around 16%.
I think, all of us who invest our own money would be very excited if we thought we could put money into an investment and achieve a return on investment of 16%. Even on a risk-adjusted basis, that's a very strong return. So we're using the funds inside our business, in a very effective way. Second graph on the right-hand side, it shows what our historical run rate, I believe, it was green for some years, around the early 20s, and we've now looked back to the sort of early 3s, but with an aspiration to improve that significantly from that position. So when we look at it on that basis, it's been a good step. It's good enough, but it's not enough, and we have much more to do in that.
So I'll talk now a little bit about the strategy of the business and changes that... Well, the like of that strategy, what underpins all of the things that we've been doing over the last year or so. Our strategy is really guided by three things. It's interesting, actually. I've spent my career working in strategic parts of the business, and many businesses with strong strategies. It's the first time I've ever managed to boil down the strategy of the business to three points. I think it's because I'm getting older, and my memory is not as good, and therefore, I only need three points, not thirteen points. But it's a very clear and guiding strategy for us.
It's complex in terms of the way that we have to implement that, but it's very clear about what we're trying to do. The first two steps are creating a foundation in the business on which we build this business. And the first one of those is to have manufacturing reach. So what this is about is creating a differentiator in this business, strong differentiator to this business, that makes it hard for others to compete directly with. And every time I think about strategy, and when we talk to our business units about strategy, we're trying to create a situation where we open up a gap between what we are capable of doing and what our competitors are capable of doing. I think this is fundamental to well-developed strategy in any business.
It's not about one year businesses and achieve what you're trying to do and simply do that, because eventually someone will come up with a better solution than you've got. What you have to do is come up with better solutions up front, so you maximize your position. What we've done in manufacturing, I will talk about one of the things a little bit later, is a couple of really important things. First of all, we realized that we were buying major materials, particularly steel. We buy a particular type of specialist steel for our products, a high, hard quenching temperature steel, but we were buying it around the world locally. In the U.S., we bought it locally from stockists, in Australia, in Indonesia, in Chile, we buy it from stockists.
That's a pretty easy and straightforward thing to do. You want to order a couple of things, you go out and you buy some steel, and you convert that steel into a car. Anyone can do that. That's pretty straightforward to do that. You're a small shop, fabrication shop, you go out and buy some steel, and you can fabricate. Maybe you haven't got the design, but, but nonetheless, you can go out and fabricate. What we've now done, and Jim mentioned this in his speech, is we worked through the AusBuy program. The AusBuy program does is it takes the total demand of the business across all of those regions, such that we now buy around about AUD 100 million plus of steel per annum, centrally, and then we allocate that through to the businesses.
That's created a significant cost advantage in our business that can only come from scale. So if you don't have the scale of our business, and nobody else does, around the world, the business that what we're doing custom on products, then if you don't have that scale, it's hard to replicate the financial benefit. And we're buying steel anywhere around about 30% cheaper than we used to pay for it before we put the AusBuy program in place. So you think about, you know, half, roughly, if you look at our results, you'll see about half of our cost base is in materials, and we're buying those materials, significantly cheaper than we were able before. And that starts to create different change.
The second thing that comes on with manufacturing is something that Jim also talked about, which is manufacturing and our focus more on Indonesia and on, and on our resources in Vietnam. Because the reality is that here in Australia, we are heavily labor constrained. It's our single most significant issue here in Australia. That applies all the way through the manufacturing chain and all the way through, including remaining labor. And that situation is also now true broadly in the United States as well. We've got the same issues in the United States. So by going to a hub-and-spoke manufacturing process, which is to build more of our products in Indonesia, it's allowed us to create capacity around the world, to build up business capacity.
But previously, like, everybody in the industry was struggling for capacity, but we have been creating brand new capacity in the business to allow the business to grow. I'm pretty clear in my own mind that we would never have got to AUD 258 million of revenue last year without the extra capacity we put on. We got clients, just wouldn't have been able to do that, and we wouldn't have been able to grow in this year. So the two really important parts of manufacturing, lots of other things as well, but two really important parts of the manufacturing business. The other key to the strategy is to have product leadership.
I'll talk about this a little bit later, but, you know, it's great to have low cost and capacity on your side, but you also need to have the best products, so people actually want to buy your product. The kind of, you know, the dream ticket for any manufacturing person, I've been manufacturing most of my life, the dream ticket is to be able to build the products at the cheapest price, but people will actually put in a higher premium because you've got the best product. If you can get into that area, you know, Porsche cars probably fit into that, into that kind of category. You know, if you can get into that kind of environment, then you can really open up, you know, good margins in business, and I think we're still moving, you know, in that direction.
The next element where we have just updated our strategy, we had on here before about cost leadership. That's not important anymore, but that's essentially done. Our driving down that cost base in our business has been done. It's been pulled inside the business now. So we think about how do we involve ourselves with our customers much more effectively than we have done before. And as part of that, I've authorized an increase in expenditure in Australia, an increase in the sales force dramatically, an increase in the United States in the sales force, and in Chile as well. So we can start to engage more effectively with our customers.
As we've seen the success of that changing what we do, and we may allocate more funds to that, to that program as well, and we'll take a look at that program so that we do that more effectively. It's the new front bit, but we've really started in the last few months. I'll talk a little bit now about the business units around the world... particularly about the headline point. First of all, one of the difficulties that we did have last year was that our Australian business was not profitable for a whole number of reasons that we've gone through before, and I won't go through again now. The simple news is that in the first half of this year we are profitable in our Australian business, and that's that's been successful.
I have to say we have been very profitable in Australian business in the past. And so it's been a point of concern to us that we've not been able to repeat that, recently. But the business has now returned to profitability. What you can see on the screen right there on the left-hand side is an aerial shot of our business in Kewdale, here in Perth. In the middle is business in Mackay, in Queensland, which is the Mainetec business, and we cleaned up in October of last year. And then another business that we have in Mackay is in the tool shop, which was for nearly three operating years.
I think the change in Australia for our side, and this is, this is a kind of a big factor, in that if you go back to around about 2022, we bought it, you know, the year before we bought Mainetec, we had a very small mining bucket business. In fact, I think in Australia, we built five or six buckets in that year, so it's a quite small, you know, part of our business. What Mainetec was intended to do is to help us to change the nature of this business so that we had another sort of manufacturing product in our marketing side of the business other than our truck tray business. We invested in Mainetec on that, on that basis. I think this acquisition has been phenomenal on the impact that it has had here.
I'll give you an example of that. We have moved our truck tray manufacturing line out of Australia up to New Zealand because we just did not have enough capacity to run that line here in Australia. Just couldn't get enough workforce for it. That took about 85% of our manufacturing into that, out of today and up to the top. Now, due to mining buckets, that shop is full again, and we're still struggling to get one. We took 85% of the work out of the shop, and now the shop is full again, but this time with Austin buckets and the Mainetec range of buckets again.
So we've created this kind of vacuum inside the Australian business, and what's happened is, that's been filled with new product, which is, is mining buckets, an area where there is limited numbers of customized, very limited numbers of customized, builds here in Australia. So that's been successful, and it's allowed us into new markets. This product on the right-hand side is a dipper bucket. These are $2 million a piece. That's by far our most expensive single product. And we've sold now our first one of those. So this Mainetec design in the United States recently. I think we had one back in the last calendar year, and that's going into production now.
It's a really interesting example of the strategy that exists in the business, in that this, the concept was done by Mainetec. The detailed design was done by Austin in Perth. The manufacture will be done in Batam, Indonesia, and it will be delivered into the West Coast of the United States. I don't know that we've ever really joined up our business in quite that way, before. It's had quite an impact. If you go back to FY 2022, you look at the yellow segment of, that pie chart there, that was the percentage of buckets and associated products, in our business in FY 2022. We go to FY 2023, and 16% is now turned to 29%. So the result of that acquisition of Mainetec is now seeing much better diversity, across the board.
I don't think it's really got going yet because we're pushing hard to get those sales into North America and into South America by the Chilean business as well. I think there's even more opportunity in North America and South America than we have seen in Australia. Lots of potential there as well. Now, these are a couple of shots from our business in Casper in Wyoming. This is real cowboy country. This is your walk down the high street, Casper, and you can buy yourself a leather saddle and a pair of hand-tooled boots and a Stetson hat. This is when you watch the Wild West, which you do. Like, this is absolutely mainstream Wild West. It's a great business for us.
Their core part of their business is building these ultra size truck bodies, as well as other things as well. Ultra size, this is the biggest one. This is actually a picture of the largest truck body on a truck ever built anywhere in the world. It's actually a picture that's in the Guinness Book of Records. If you want, have a look at it. This business has been growing quite dramatically over the last few years. If I go back, 2 years ago, it had modest profitability, modest, very modest growth. They have really surged over the last, 2-3 years. Part of that is, the cost-cutting program, business improvements, but a lot of that is the, the US-...
Beginning to convert more rapidly towards the Australian model, which is driven by the ability to sort of manage labor on their mine sites. They've lost a lot of that kind of labor in the same way that we have here in Australia. They want to reduce the builders on the mine sites. They need much more efficient equipment because they want to reduce their fuel burns, and they want to be more efficient about the logistics of their business. And so they're moving away from OEM-style equipment and moving towards customized equipment. And every time we convert a mine, a big mine in the United States, to customized equipment, they stick with it. It stays. That 89% conversion rate that I talked about before gives you an example.
New news that we announced recently is that the Wyoming State, through the Wyoming Business Council, has advised us of the $20 million grant and loan facility that we've been made in order for us to build a new facility in Wyoming, on the Casper site that we have in the States. That facility will allow us to not only modernize what we've got at the moment, so try and reduce the labor content for more automation, perhaps, than we previously had, but also to increase capacity because that business is growing. It's now got to the point where it is starting to capacity limits.
This investment is subject to our board approval, and the reason why that position is in place is we're very keen to make sure that the investment we do in Wyoming is a future-looking investment, not just replicating the way that we have done things in the past. I would sort of, I'd like to think that we will be ready to really kick this off in the early part of next year. It shows a great confidence in the United States, and I think it shows confidence in us, in our determination to invest in our U.S. business. Vietnam has grown at an enormous rate over the last two years.
I've been saying publicly that I think this business will very soon be about 5 times the size it was 3 years ago, and we're well on our way to that target. If you remember, the people who designated that the business would essentially be a hub-and-spoke style business with the hub of manufacturing. What that actually means is we've retained our businesses in Chile, the United States, and Australia. That business continued, but where we get our capacity expansion from is from Indonesia. We are already delivering from Indonesia into the port of Western Australia, directly into the Pilbara for Rio Tinto and other customers. We're delivering onto the East Coast for Glencore, Yancoal, and other companies in Mackay, directly out of Indonesia into those northern ports.
Delivering into Europe, we've completed some deliveries into Europe recently. Africa, quite regularly, typically North Africa. And we have made, started to make deliveries now to Canada, the United States, and even into Mexico, which is kind of interesting because you would imagine that they have a pretty low-cost, center, but we've been delivering into, Mexico as well. And I think what you can expect to see as we go through the following months, that this, this style of manufacturing, this ability to increase capacity, will just grow and grow and grow.
We would expect to see something defined between Vietnam and Chile in the future, as well as some of those products that get sold down there may well get built in, picked up in buckets, and then built in Vietnam and then sent down to Chile or support the market in Chile. P-30 expansion refers to a target to get to 30 trays a month out of Vietnam, and very closely in that same target for 20,000. South America, this is our business in Antofagasta in Chile. We actually have a general manager and head of sales and op here in Chile, in Sudan, and we've got a sales complete down in Australia. The China business is also seeing a transformation in that business over the last couple of years.
It's a perennial loss-making business up until two years ago. They had a beautiful year last year, sorry, a beautiful last good year last year, and it got off to a really good start this year financially. And so I think, I think that business is really starting to improve and develop. But the positive news that we've got in Chile is that we have been awarded a first, very small part of what I think will be a long-term, multi-year contract with one of the major truck OEMs around the world to build the truck frames and backs to build on their behalf.
We're building the back, the first order now, small, but it's the beginning of what I think will be a major increase in the Chilean business that will start this year and then really grow into that lifetime supply. Now, these sorts of things are really important because you saw that our repeat business level is at 89%. If we can win these big programs, multi-year large programs in our business that they will do, they will continue to underpin the business as they go forward.
And I think in FY 25, I think we'll be standing here in FY 25, we'll be saying this contract that started in, we won the contract, I think it was back in September or the very early part of October, which we've been pursuing for 12 months now, landed finally at the end of September, beginning of October. I think when we're looking at this in a year's time, we're gonna say this is a major strategic acquisition that we have achieved control the business and it's really compelling growth down the track. So I'm really excited about it. These are the customers that we've been winning across the market. You can see that it's kind of like a blue-chip list of customers around the world.
Rio Tinto, Komatsu, we deliver directly to, particularly North America, but also Australia as well, deliver directly into Komatsu. Rio into Glencore. With Hitachi, we've done a lot of trade with Hitachi, where a customer says, "I wanna buy a Hitachi truck, but I want an Austin truck on the back." And you can see some of the major miners on the left-hand side, Barrick, Newmont, Caterpillar, Suncor, Nevada Gold Mines. These are major mining companies in North America who are just buying every year, buy significant quantities of truck trays, from us, and we hope, significant quantities of buckets, into the future. So I talked about 89% of our revenue, comes from repeat customers.
The way that's made up is, that 56% of our revenue is from customers who buy on a regular basis, normalized basis, year after year after year. An example of that would be Rio Tinto. Every year, we sit down with Rio Tinto and say, "This is our demand for next year. Tell us what their future demand is," and they start placing purchase orders as they go through. We have several contracts like that, both in North America, in Chile, and in Australia as well. So these are annual recurring contracts. We have another bunch of customers who, may be a little bit smaller, and they regularly buy from us. Don't necessarily buy every single year, but regularly buy from us. When they buy, they pretty well always, buy from us.
That's what makes up our 89%, and then there's just that little bit of, kind of, in and out type business that go with that category. This is what tells us that putting more work into the sales function is so important, because if we can win a new customer, bring a new client on board, the chances are we're going to keep them for many years after. That's what the data tells us. Right, so this is the bit that those people who are online are interested in. So all the rest of it care about, this is the bit everybody online is focused on, and you know, the market will be, will be thinking about. And this is our outlook and guidance.
We gave an outlook and guidance for the first half of the year, and I will go through it here. The first thing I will say is that the market conditions across all of the jurisdictions remain very strong. You might ask yourself, "Well, why is that?" Because, you know, usually if interest rates are going up, the demand being strangled by central banks, but actually, we would see demand come back. For years, I think most people have been in the industry, you know, this is one of the few times we've seen commodities across the board being relatively strong on historic levels.
So it doesn't matter whether it's energy, whether it's oil, which is important to our oil sands business in Canada, for instance, whether it's hard rock, like nickel or copper or new age sort of materials like lithium, iron ore, even coal, you know, most of these resources stay very strong. And although you'll hear people talk about, you know, iron ore is down $10 or $5, the reality is it's up and down on a relatively high level compared to their long-term averages. That means that most of the mining companies take a lot cash, good cash flow, and therefore the focus on investing, making sure their logistics work effectively, and that means make sure they replace products well. We are seeing very solid position here in Australia.
I wouldn't say it's stronger than last year. I think it's kind of flat, compared to last year. Where we are seeing a lot of growth is in the United States and Canada, where I think we're getting more mining companies who've perhaps in the past used only OEM equipment, starting to convert across more rapidly into customized equipment. So, it may be easy that the market is itself not growing that far, but the market share for customized builders such as ourselves has grown quite rapidly, and we are by far the biggest customized producer of truck trays in the United States. And Chile, probably a little bit softer than that. Some economic conditions in Chile, perhaps not quite so strong. So a little bit of softening that Katina was alluding to the other day.
But again, you know, Chile is dominated by copper, which is one of those, metals that will be strong in the new, market and, electrification market for the moment, and therefore it's, it's impacted into, areas. So I think we're going back as well. So we've seen good demand. I wouldn't say it's significantly stronger than last year, but I think it's still very strong and creates the very continuing and very speculative of what we're seeing in the, in the broader, markets, around the world. Our order book, which I reported was up, is up, another 7%, from the year-end. So I think I reported earlier that AUD 142 million. Our order book is up 7% since then.
As revenue goes through, the revenue is doing good. We've replaced that revenue more quickly than we have consumed it. That's good. Nine percent year-on-year since this time last year, with the 9% better than this time last year. The order book, the data, if you like, is supporting what I said earlier, that the markets have remained strong because our market share is continuing to grow. Australia, I think a key feature is that we're confident, yeah, very confident that we will see a profit with Australian Business Financial on February 24. We've had it. We've planned it. We've carried out a major repositioning of that business away from what it used to do to what we've done now. It's much more online bucket.
That's been a pretty intense and difficult period, I can tell you. But I think it's really improving now in Australia. It's really improved. We've got lots of things to do, but we're starting to see the profit going through that business. And that's really, that's really important to what comes next, which is we see revenue up. If I take the average of that, AUD 140 million, it's up about 14% from AUD 114 million that we did in the first half last year. AUD 114 million, well, I went midway between that number, we're up about 14%. And it's pretty dramatic when you think about what's going on in the world in terms of, as I said, central banks slowing down demand, and yet we're seeing demand up by 14%.
I think, you know, if my phone apps, I want to go up 14% on revenue year-over-year, I think Martin would be pretty, pretty surprised and very pleased. I think that despite all the headwinds, we're seeing revenue increase. The result of that is we expect to see our first half revenue up about double from the first half of last year to AUD 10 million-AUD 12 million impact. The same number that we pointed out just a couple of months ago. This is a dramatic increase because I've been showing you how much competitors have increased in the past, but it's been up 100% in the first half. It's been really good.
Four, I have to say that, this is really stretching for our management team, and these kind of increases are, you know, require a whole lot of management focus and management to the management process in order to bring them through. They don't just happen, but we are seeing that the business is now beginning to perform. And, continuing to say that we are going, we're on track to be debt-free, in February 2024. And the message here really is that we're seeing good EBITDA conversion, good conversion of, revenue margin into cash flow.
Of course, at the end of the day, as I said earlier, our numbers speak loudly, and if we can convert, we can see that amount of growth, and we can turn that growth into cash flow, then we have a very strong business building during that, during this period of time. A couple of things I'm just gonna follow up from last time, and this is the end of the presentation. I put this slide up last year about a couple of new product launches. We talked about product launches earlier on, but on the left is the new HP truck body. We've sold over 150 of these truck body now, and most of what we sell is now converting from the older truck body to this new lighter weight HP truck.
In fact, it's been crucial to us winning a number of headline contracts, particularly here in Australia, but also in Asia as well, things that we wouldn't have won without investing in the new truck body . You know, that's been a delighted, delighted with the outcome there. Also the HP Ex, or the high performance bucket excavator, and with a series of buckets that we launched just over a year ago, 15 months ago. When I said that our Australian business is full of buckets now, a big number of them, of course, new, new high-performance buckets that we're producing. We're keeping developing. Very quickly before I finish, what can we expect next? Well, I think the U.S. is going to be a great leader in terms of revenue and margin in our business going forward.
That's that conversion from OEM consumers to customized products and consumers. I think they're going to, they're gonna headline in terms of growth, the growth across the group, I think. But this step forward is going to be in the USA, and that's good because they deliver a good margin on the products as well. Off-highway will continue to grow, and our next big target is to get off-highway products into the United States. It's a little bit more difficult in the United States because they have tariffs on steel going in, so that makes it a little bit challenging. But it also means the opportunity in the United States is much bigger as you get steel into there. They get a $10 million benefit to the business if we can replace... We can replace all of-...
U.S. Steel, tomorrow we locally buy steel , which is, it's not straightforward, but if it could do that, deliver a $10 million benefit. That's what we're chasing, and how quickly we get there will depend on how we come up with good ideas to make that work. We've also seen into a bit of a logistics business, which is not something we've had to face before. Got a lot of stuff coming out of Indonesia now going around the world, and we hope our people start to focus on the logistics and a lot of opportunities for us to start to happen because of logistics. We'll talk about that a little bit more in the future.
Australia's rapid expansion into the mining bucket area, I think it will be the future of what we will talk about over the next 12 months, and also going to lead to the continued expansion of the manufacturing hub in the time frame, too. Whatever we have done so far in good time, our determination is to go so much further than we have seen already, and our aspirations for that business are much greater than what we've achieved. What we've achieved really is quite dramatic. I think, again, this will be a big part of what we talk about over the next 12 months or so. You know, it's a bit more of the same. Was it more of the same? I think it-- I think the strategy is right. I think it's playing out well in business.
We just need to keep it going. Don't need to do a lot of new stuff. We just need to do what we're doing, do it more normally, do it more effectively, and there's a lot more benefit for us to get out of those same strategies. And that's it. I think there's a Q&A.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you, David. This now brings us to the formal part of the meeting, and the items of business have been taken to this meeting, have been listed in the notice of meeting. The notice of meeting has been made available to shareholders on the eighth of September 2023, and I'll take it read. Before we consider the items of business, there are a number of procedural matters I'd like to draw your attention to. In the interest of transparency, I intend to call a poll on all meeting resolutions. I'll discuss each of the resolutions in turn and conduct a poll after the last resolution. Each resolution and proxy count for each resolution will be displayed on the screen when the resolution is being considered.
I'm holding undirected proxies in my capacity as chair, and it's my intention to vote all such proxies in favor of all resolutions. Any directed proxies that have not been voted at the meeting will automatically default to me as chair of the meeting, and I'm required to vote these proxies as directed. Kassy Athanasiou from Computershare has agreed to act as Returning Officer. At the completion of the poll, Computershare staff will collect all voting cards and tally the votes. The persons entitled to vote on the poll are all shareholders, representatives, and attorneys of shareholders and proxy holders who hold green admission cards. On the reverse of your admission card is your voting paper and instructions. Yellow admission cards have been issued to non-voting shareholders who are entitled to speak at the meeting, but are not entitled to vote on the poll.
White admission cards have been issued to visitors who are not entitled to speak at the meeting or vote on the poll. If there's any person present, they believe they are entitled to vote, but have not registered to vote, please raise your hand, and a representative of Computershare will assist you now. I shall now proceed with the business in order it is listed in the notice of meeting. Questions on any item may be raised during the consideration of that item. Please state your name when asking a question. The first item of business deals with the financial statements and reports. These have been released publicly and brought to the shareholders who requested them and are now laid before the meeting. These financial statements are reported after the last financial year, ended 30 June 2023.
This is not a resolution, and no vote is required on it. On that note, I invite questions or comments from the shareholders in relating to the financial statements and reports, and more generally, about the management of the company. As I advise, representatives from the company's auditors are in attendance to answer any questions shareholders may wish to direct to them in relation to the conduct of their audit or in relation to the preparation of the financial statements. Are there any questions? Okay. As there are no questions, we move to the second item of business. The next item of business are shareholders to adopt the company's remuneration report for the year ended 3rd of June, 2023. The remuneration report is included on pages 33 to 41 of the annual report that has been made available to shareholders.
Unless there's any objection, I will take the motion as being read and refer you to the screen for details of proxies received for this resolution. While this is a non-binding advisory vote of shareholders, the views and comments of shareholders will certainly be taken into account by directors when further considering remuneration matters. I note that voting exclusion applies to this resolution, as set out in the notice of motion. The board recommends that all shareholders vote in favor of this resolution, and as I mentioned earlier, voting on this resolution will be by way of poll and conducted after the last resolution. Are there any questions on the remuneration report? No, I'll now move to resolution number two. This next item of business is resolution of Sybrandt Van Dyk.
Details of Sybrandt's qualifications and experience are set out in the notice of meeting in the company's 2023 annual report. Sybrandt has been a non-executive director of the company since February 2018. Unless there is an objection, I will take the motion as read and refer you to the screen for the details of proxies received for this resolution. The board recommends that all shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. Voting in this resolution will be by a poll. Are there any questions on this resolution? I thought there was one, and so I moved to send, but thanks. This resolution is the last item on the agenda, so if there are no questions, we will now conduct a poll on the resolution.
Please complete your voting card and ensure that you print your name and sign where indicated. When you have finished, please lodge it in the ballot box being circulated by Computershare. Please let the returning officer or any Computershare representative present know if anyone has any queries or requires assistance to complete their voting cards. Okay, it appears that the voting process has been completed. If there's any individual present who has not yet had their completed voting card collected from them by Computershare staff, would you please raise your hand? I now declare the poll closed. As mentioned earlier, the results of the poll will be available shortly and will be announced on the ASX and on the company's website. A recording of the webcast will be also available on Austin's website following the AGM.
Thanks for your attendance, and as the meeting is coming, on behalf of the board, we thank you for your continued support. I now declare this meeting closed. We now have time for questions. I'll go to the board first off. The board would like to answer any? No. All right, Jane, I'll give Bob, got one here.
Yes.
Just take your time.
Alan Walden. Last year you said that you'd consider paying dividends. You've had a pretty good year. When are we going to get some benefits from being a loyal shareholder?
You know, I hate it when people turn up to remember what I said. We're very conscious of the issue around dividends, I can assure you, and it's been a matter of some debate on the minority's mind. Can you hear me?
Absolutely. You're online. You're just online.
We're very conscious and alive to the issue of dividends. We stopped paying dividends because we were keen to recycle that money into potential acquisition-type activities that we were working on. Hasn't come through to date, I know, but it's still something that's in our thoughts. Having said that, you know, we're expecting the cash position to continue to improve, and that should create environment where we'll actually manage the device.
Thank you. I am getting old, and I don't...
You're not that old, Alan. All right, no questions from the board. Jane, have we got any online?
There's one for David that come through from Ian Davies. How is Austin going to counter the increased market share that's going to Schlam Engineering one truck by the week?
Okay, thank you. So, that question, so we have one major competitor here in Australia, a company called Schlam, it's quite a young business. And, I think that there was a period of time up to probably a couple of years ago where Schlam were doing very well against us. They're a formidable competitor and very well tuned and do it very effectively. I think up to a couple of years ago, we were taking some market share away from us. I think with I believe and the data supports that we have absolutely turned the corner on that particular competitive environment. We've been moving, we've been rolling the competition back in the opposite way. We've been winning work back from our competition in that area.
That's a product of us being more motivated, I think, in the market, but also as the new products that are coming through.