Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to welcome you here to Bapcor's distribution center here in Redbank in Brisbane. I genuinely appreciate those of you that have been able to get into the room turning up. I know many of you have jumped off aeroplanes from holidays and other things, or even jumped the train up from the Gold Coast, so it's fantastic you're being in the room with us. Before outlining the events of today, let me just start by an acknowledgement to country. I would like to acknowledge the Yuggera and the Ugarapul people as the traditional owners of the land and custodians upon which we're meeting today. I would pay my respects to elders both past and present. We recognize the continued connection of all First Nations people across Australia, but in particular those lands where Bapcor operates.
Before I walk you through the agenda for today, I'd like to introduce you to Abdul Jaafar. Abdul is the GM for Supply Chain and Procurement here at Bapcor. Abdul is going to step us through the emergency procedures that are associated with this site, and he's going to make a repeat appearance in just a short while to talk to you a bit about our supply chain before we take you around the distribution center. Abdul, with that.
Thank you, everyone. If you do hear the EVAC siren, which is the whoop, whoop, whoop, there are two exits throughout the facility. There is a set of stairs on this side and the stairs that you all walked up over here. You'll just follow the stairs down out to the emergency areas, which one is over there at the start of the car park and one over here next to the water tanks. You will be directed where to go post that by the fire wardens on site. We also have the facilities on site, which are straight out of here as well. First doors to your left. I'll see you again soon. Thank you.
Okay, the formal part of the meeting is now officially over, and hopefully we do not hear any of those noises. Thank you, Abdul. I look forward to welcoming you back soon. Excellent. We are a finely tuned machine here. On the screen behind me is the agenda for today. All things going to plan, I am going to spend roughly 40 minutes talking to you about the way Bapcor is going to move forward. There is circa 30 minutes after that for any questions and answers from in the room, but equally across the webinar. Abdul is then going to spend a few minutes with you just talking a bit about our supply chain, where we have come from and importantly where we are going to.
We're going to break those of you who are here into three groups, and we'll head around the facility. You'll actually get to see the things that actually send product out to those people that pay the bills. After that, for anyone who wants to indulge, there will be proper food and some light refreshments to get you started before you make your way back to wherever next is. Now, two weeks ago, I introduced several changes to the Bapcor leadership team. Those changes were focused on where Bapcor needs to go, our future. In short, Bapcor needs to change, and that's the change that we've now made.
The change, the way we work, the way we deal with our customers, and in particular the way we operate day to day, the way we develop the people we have in our organisation, and importantly, but one of our bigger journeys here, the culture, and if you like, the way we behave as individuals within Bapcor. All those things have been done for one reason, and that's all around performance and the outcomes that we expect from this particular business. In the room today, I'm pleased to say that I have George Saoud with us, Merryl Dooley, Abdul Jaafar, Megan Foster, George Sakoufakis, and Martin Storey, members of the leadership team. I am delighted to have Simon Bromell down here in the front row, who's the GM of trade, who is our latest addition to the business. Please go easy on Simon today.
I can literally say he knows nothing at this point in time, and I do not want that to change. It is fantastic to have you here. Thanks, Simon, for coming on day one. The balance of the leadership team, Craig Magill and Morris Lieberman, are down in Melbourne, and they are leading a small group there listening into the webcast down there. Our aspiration is to drive sustainable growth. We recognize this requires us to be different from an attitude and action basis. Our customers need to be at the center of that aspiration, being able to not only service their needs, but being able to add value to their businesses, their hobbies, and their passions. Our purpose is one that was actually created by the wider Bapcor team in 2023.
It strikes at the heart of being relevant and being present for our customers, our employees, and also our supply partners. Underpinning our business is a set of values that, when linked to the behaviors that drive them, are the foundational levels of what we want our culture to be. These values must be more than just words on a wall. For those of you that are in this facility, you are literally saying they are words on a wall, but they need to be the fabric of the organization. Given the silos and the fragmented history of the Bapcor business, we actually have a great deal of work to do in that space. Bapcor, at the close of the fiscal 2024 year, was a AUD 2 billion revenue business.
We presented ourselves to you in four segments: trade, representing 36% of our revenue, and being split across the Burson, Precision, and our smaller Asian businesses. These businesses are entirely externally customer-facing. The Burson business is our core operating asset. It's operated for over 50 years and has expanded both organically and inorganically by extending into independent mechanic, national chain, and service markets. Specialist wholesale represents 36% of our revenue. This segment is the sum of multiple parts. The first, specialist networks, being both auto electrical or AEG and commercial vehicles CBG, embracing a collection of brands that include Baxters, JAS, Federal Batteries, Truckline, and WANO, just to name a few. This business is circa 25% of the total segment. The second, specialist wholesale, comprised of many individual brands that include PAT, AAD, Bearing Wholesalers, and Roadsafe, just to name a few. This business is around 11% of the revenues.
The complication with that part of the business is that it sells both internally and externally. More on that a little later. Retail represents approximately 20% of our revenue. This segment is made up of retail brands that are both franchised and corporate. It includes household brands like Autobarn, Autopro, Opposite Lock, and Midas. Finally, our fourth segment is New Zealand, which represents about 8% of our revenue. This segment houses our New Zealand operating brands, which include BNT, HCB, and Battery Town. Our New Zealand operations service the independent mechanic, national chains, and service centers. Our customers are a valued collection of independent automotive mechanics, truck and commercial vehicle mechanics, DIYers, car enthusiasts, car carers, and specialized automotive mechanics and parts resellers. Now, before diving into the strategy, let me talk about the characteristics of the market in which we play. Our market is advantaged.
We have two major markets. Our two major markets share several common characteristics. The Australian car park and the New Zealand car parks have been growing for the past decade. The forecast for both is to continue to grow at 2% and 1% respectively. The Australian car park is circa 11 years old, and the New Zealand car park at around 14 years of age. In both cases, they continue to grow. The drivers of growth are both population and the cost of new motor vehicles. New cars consistently move from the OEM warranty programs into the aftermarket, steadily building our available marketplace. The demands for servicing and parts remain positive as both age and the complexity of the engine continues to drive the need for repairs. Now, our market has been subject to much speculation regarding the impact and the associated development and sale of EVs.
Whilst imports are growing, their size and penetration is overstated. The EVs are only 0.8% of the Australian park. Now, whilst EVs continue to grow, they do not pose a threat in the medium term. Frankly, with the increasing skew towards hybrids and PHE vehicles, market conditions for Bapcor look relatively favorable. At the 2024 results announcement, we committed to conduct reviews on our retail segment and our wholesale business unit. In the case of wholesale, we examined the role played by the brands within this business unit. Again, those brands include PAT, Bearing Wholesalers, Roadsafe, and AAD. Let me address the outcomes of those reviews in turn. I will start with retail. Our retail business is perhaps our most challenging. There is a real value to be delivered, but it requires work. We must stabilize the business and then initiate growth. To be clear, retail is in fact multiple businesses.
We are split between franchise and corporate operations. Keeping it simple, our franchisees are in the main good operators, and this part of the business is performing well. At a brand level, our Midas stores, who are overwhelmingly franchisees, are also performing strongly. Our Autopro stores, that skew to regional areas, are also performing. Autobarn, which is approximately 80% corporately operated and 20% franchise operated, is where our challenges lie. In the main, that is on the corporate side of the network. I stand by the words on the chart. This business has not been historically well managed. I'm delighted with the way the current team front up each day and drive the business. They're making real progress and are doing so in the backdrop of what is a continually challenged retail environment. Why do we want to persist? The brands are healthy.
We've asked the consumer, and they each play quite a distinct role and can remain quite distinct. Whilst the retail environment is challenging, our issues are more of our own making and therefore solvable by ourselves. These solutions are about our offer, the range, store capability, and management. Before today, the team had been making changes to shift performance. These efforts go directly to value delivery. Across Bapcor, there is also leverage available in both procurement, technology, supply chain, and e-commerce. Now, the changes are already underway. Store management changes have already started to occur. We've been closing and relocating refurbishing stores as required. Network planning for the future. Where do we want to be? Noting that we're not going to add stores to our retail network, specifically Autobarn, until we've got the retail offer right.
Changing the cadence and the style of the language we promote inside of our business and shifting our mix away from those items that we consider discretionary. We've undertaken work on the Autobarn brand specifically. I have to admit I was positively surprised by the resilience of the brand and the position it holds. It skews more to women and is less price-focused than we'd expected, and has a clear knowledge and service-based positioning. Our Achilles heel at present is the variability of the store experience. This directly goes to capability in store and the presentation of our offer. All very fixable and all underway. We've been changing and upgrading our store capability. This has seen an almost complete refresh of our regional management team and the proactive turnover at store manager and assistant manager level.
Retail is about execution, and therefore the right store-based teams is essential to that execution. We are refining our sales mix and our assortment, standardizing our layouts and displays, and ensuring that the new store leaders adopt common processes and disciplines at that store level. Private label represents a real opportunity for us today and into the future. For instance, expanding our assortment into the paint and panel category and leveraging the wider group as we do so. The brand relaunched its e-commerce platform in November of 2024, and we're already enjoying the benefits of these changes, but there is even more opportunity in that space. Our loyalty platform has over 1.4 million registered customers, but we recognize that we need to look at the way it works and make sure we truly recognize the customer and the value they add to us.
That is what customer loyalty really adds to Bapcor, or specifically our retail assets. This includes the use of data and the relationship we want to have with those loyalists. There are unfortunately no silver bullets in this space, but there is real value at stake, and we intend to drive after it. Now, turning to our wholesale business unit. For clarity, this is a slice of the segment that we report to yourselves. The other aspect of the segment is specialist networks, AEG and CBG. The wholesale business unit is a product of our acquisitive past. Businesses we have acquired, like PAT, Bearing Wholesalers, Roadsafe, have simply been added to the overall group without integration. They came as trading businesses with third-party relationships as well as core trading relationships with Bapcor. For instance, Burson or our retail business.
They also came with warehouses, the inventory that goes in those warehouses, ERPs, support teams, and quite unique and distinct supply chains. Until recently, this siloed approach had been maintained. Given the lack of integration, they are complex and separate parts of our business. Over the past 10 months, we've been busy with the beginnings of the consolidation of warehouses across the business unit. These consolidations, which form part of the promised AUD 20 million-AUD 30 million in savings, are either into each other, so consolidating one PAT site into one PAT site, or into our centralised DC system, like the one that you'll see a little later. This drives both efficiency and equally cost-effectiveness across Bapcor. Operating teams have been moved into shared locations and are now integrating with the wider Bapcor operations.
The movement of stock holdings into these centralised systems has provided greater selling scope to those businesses because they now have access to the full range of Bapcor products. One of the core complexities of our past and present is that these separate businesses also trade inter-company, selling products into the wider Bapcor. Today, they are measured and managed on internal and external revenues and gain an internal margin on all internal sales. Behind the scenes, we have teams managing the categories, brands, and the administration associated with the internal and external sales. The internal sales are focused on our own brand portfolio, but are really constructed only of the inter-company relationships. Many of these own brands do not get the focus that they require and that they deserve. The internal sales complicates our business.
They do not add value to the external performance as they involve non-value-added inter-company invoicing and, believe it or not, even cash settlement. They facilitate poor ranging decisions and leave margin in suboptimal segments. Overall, whilst our internal partners are important, it's the end customer that counts and needs to be our singular focus. Going forward, we will value the role of the wholesale business, but we'll focus solely on the external relationships and external customers, specifically the reseller market. We will shift category management activities closest to the end customer, and we will redirect internal margins to the business units that sell externally, e.g., Burson. The wholesale business must be aligned and cohesive. It must be an integral part of our single supply chain and be both skilled and capable of servicing the customers that it plays with.
Let me turn to our future, starting with the question of why we think we will win. There are four areas we see as critical to our future success. Today, we have a favorable starting position, but we need to ensure that we build upon these positions. The four areas are focusing on our premium brands, including both owned and exclusive brands. Secondly, an unmatched customer knowledge across all of our categories. Thirdly, nationwide supply chains delivering to stores and customers as required. Finally, an extensive and optimized network. Let me deal with each of those in turn. Our portfolio of brands is an asset. Our own brand portfolio is also an asset, but we need to expand this portfolio into the relevant white space. We have excellent relationships with our suppliers, but I'd be the first to say that we can always be better.
We are known today for our extensive range and the quality of our service. Tomorrow, we want to be known not only for our range, but its relevance to the car park and the opportunity it provides for our customers with a continued level of service excellence. The words on the front page have been obsessed by our customers. Knowledge of them, for the purpose of being more relevant and helping them serve their end customer, is paramount. Our knowledge needs to be deep and shared across our business units. Our team members today have an outstanding knowledge of parts and the auto product that they serve. The development of the product range to help customers is both a skill and an advantage.
Coupling that product knowledge with deep direct customer knowledge has the potential to shape our service proposition, enhance service levels, and unlock efficiencies right the way through our supply chain. Now, speaking of supply chains, after a rocky start, or at least here in Australia, our distribution center network is clearly already proving a game changer. Abdul will speak later this morning on the evolution of the network, but we've come a long way. From Preston, which was Burson's key site, or Nunawading, Autobarn's key warehouse, we have shifted to centers in Tullamarine, here in Redbank, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, and of course, Auckland. Our DC network can now cater for the whole business. Decentralized DC services our branches and the balance of the holdings to ensure efficiency and customer service. Now, to be clear, we've still got some way to go. DCV is fully operational, as is Auckland.
DCQ, I guess we'd be about 70%. Sydney, Perth, and Adelaide are only new to the network. We will continue to consolidate our core holdings into these DCs and efficiently move stock closer to the customer as required. In addition, our e-commerce platforms can avail themselves of this entire network to seamlessly move product into the hands of customers and into the hand of end consumers as required. Finally, our fourth area of advantage is our network. We have over 900 sites across Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. Our proximity to our customers is excellent, but we can add to that network. These additions can and will be replicas of the existing sites, but also, importantly, can be different and reflect our ability to bring new sites and types of stores to our customers: satellite stores, store within a store, or even super sites.
We'll actively experiment to determine what's best for our customer and equally what is an economically rational execution for Bapcor. We'll go to market in four segments that align to the way in which we operate internally. The first, trade, which includes Burson, Precision, Blacktown Spares, and Asia. The second, networks, which includes AEG, CBG, and the slimmed-down wholesale world. The third, retail, including Autobarn, Autopro, Midas, and Opposite Lock. Finally, New Zealand, including BNT and HCB. The different business units will line up against our core customer groups: the generalist mechanic, truck and commercial mechanics, DIYers, enthusiasts, car carers, the specialised auto mechanic, and parts resellers. Now, our operating model needs to be a function of the customer-facing arms of our business and an integrated back-end service model that is leveraged right throughout the business.
The customer-facing businesses and all the brands are outlined on the left-hand side of this chart. These are well established in their customer-facing roles, but they must leverage the back-end. Now, this is a change from today. Our history was going to market and operating quite independently. More recently, we tried to adopt a one Bapcor approach. What is envisaged is a logical and sensible approach that leverages our customer-facing strengths but seeks to obtain efficiency and effectiveness right across that back-end. It's not a new thing. We've already started to do that in a substantial way. We just need to go further and faster. We've already started to align our core functions and our supply chain. We need to harmonize and standardize processes and tools. A longer-term prospect, but will be well worth the cause. Now, we see six areas across the group from where we can organically grow.
To be clear, our near-term priority is organic growth. With a strong balance sheet and inorganic options available, each would be assessed and, as they arise, potentially executed. The six organic opportunities are: firstly, building on our Australian strengths and growing our market share. Secondly, closing and then eclipsing the gap in New Zealand. Thirdly, retail stabilisation and then growth. This is both in franchise and corporate operations right across our core brands. Fourthly, it's about network expansion. We are a network business, and that means we need to grow that network in net terms. Fifth, we need to streamline our core systems, consolidating appropriately. We'll also invest strategically in systems that transform the base and enhance our digital tools and enhance our ability to directly talk to our consumers and customers. Finally, we'll maximise our value to our shareholders by consistently increasing our returns.
The slide outlines across our four segments the allocation of these opportunities or the application of these opportunities. These align to the way in which we want to win. The underpinning foundation for all activity is our team and the capability that we have within all our brands within Bapcor. Firstly, within our all-important trade segment, the cornerstones of growth are network expansion, investing and growing in our equipment business, the development of our own brand portfolio, and finally, growing our margins. Within the new network segment, it is network expansion. It is continued consolidation of warehousing, plus, and importantly, leveraging what we have already completed to date, and it is expansion of our CBG offer into the European truck space.
Within retail, it's the continued capability change at a store level, a continued focus on our own brands, the expansion of the Midas footprint, the reignition of investment in our core brand properties, and it's improving store-level profitability. Finally, inside of New Zealand, it is about optimising the existing network, its investment in our selling capability and the contact centers we operate, its core brand focus in that market, its investing and growing in our equipment penetration, and finally, it's about our supply chain optimisation. Now, we must be set up for growth. Gone are 300-plus initiatives. We have a focused approach that should align to our wider business. It needs to be specific to the customer's needs, and it needs to leverage commonality right across the group.
The left-hand side of this slide repeats what has been said to you consistently in our FY2024 results, at the AGM, and most recently, at the half 125 results. We've been consistent in that execution and delivery, and that's a trait we can tend to own. For what is to come, the six imperatives on the right-hand side will guide the business, and they are: optimise the network, a single supply chain, a relentless focus on the customer, digitising the business, making all our stores fit the demands of the customer, and last, but certainly by no means least, simplifying the business for the benefit of our employees and our customers. Let me turn to each of these in turn. Our network is an ideal platform from which we can drive growth. Whilst we have more than 900 sites across our operations, there is plenty of white space.
Our job is to access that white space in an effective and capital-efficient manner. Whether that's a replica site, a satellite site, or a super site, each will be taken for the unique needs it needs to provide to the customers. We have a firm belief we can add 12 sites per annum to our trade business and between four and six sites to our network business per annum. Retail will see us stabilise the base, closing stores as required, and then grow only once we have the optimal model to follow. Our supply chain will be the glue between these sites. Abdul will talk in a short while about what that means, but in conjunction with that distributed network, we'll optimise service to our customer and, importantly, optimise the inventory that we hold across our entire network. Now, a brief comment on inventory.
We, I, am the first to acknowledge we have a lot of work to do in this space. It is a focus for us, and over the medium term, we intend to address it pretty significantly. Right now, that's a balance of the service we need to provide to our customers and optimizing both our stock turns and the GMROI we derive from each of the SKUs within our range. The chart mentions a multi-brand potential. In New Zealand, we already successfully operate multi-brand sites, and we intend to explore that potential here in Australia. Turning to the right-hand side of the chart, we believe a single supply chain is an advantage that we have yet to fully exploit. We have already laid down the foundations with the DCs of varying sizes in each capital city.
I've already talked to you around the various stages of evolution of those sites, but clearly, those smaller sites in Sydney, Adelaide, and Perth have yet to show the potential that we truly believe they have. These sites will cater for all of our businesses, being the focal point of distribution to our store and branch network, along with direct deliveries to store and customers where the economics work. Efficiency and cost-effectiveness are paramount. Therefore, the way stores are positioned, where they are positioned, will combine with the optimization and the dispatch routines to make them fundamental to customers' needs. We have plenty of opportunity drive space across all this world. Now, I've used the word experiment. Let me give you a real-time example. The chart refers to a micro-fulfillment center.
This is a single small warehouse experiment in Dandenong that looks to break the inventory span across the congested eastern suburb of Melbourne. It utilizes a larger footprint to allow smaller stores to pull from that site rather than from the Tullamarine D.C. It's early days. It is an experiment, but it's already showing promise. Now, moving through to customers. They certainly count, and they need to be at the core of what we do. I'm pleased to say we actually have an excellent customer ethos, but we have to learn more. We have to do more, and we have to do more with the information that we have and ultimately help our customers be better and more profitable at what they do.
Having a clear customer value proposition for each of our businesses, rewarding loyalty in a manner that is important to the customer but that also delivers value to ourselves. Being able to recognize that customers, as they trade across the Bapcor Group, are equally important, and we need to help them trade all the way across the Bapcor Group. Customers trade with us in all forms: professionals, amateur mechanics, DIYers, enthusiasts, etc. They all count, and we want them to continue to play in each of those roles all the way through their trading lifetimes. We don't know enough about our customer to do that today. A specific investment that we'll be making is in a CRM platform, but one that services the entire organization. We've got plenty of place to digitalize our business.
Given our decentralized origins, we have the opportunity to drive both efficiency in our business but equally to reduce the friction that some of our customers do experience with us as they deal with our different operating units or to harmonize the back-end operations of our two e-commerce platforms. I mentioned that in November 2024, we went live with changes to our broader buying systems or e-commerce platforms. We've rolled these changes already into the Autopro business over the past couple of months, and we're about to address Midas in the months to come, improving customer service, enhancing stocking, and the delivery options for small and bulky items that are on the list of improvements for things that we can do.
EasyParts, the online parts catalogue in our trade segment, has made excellent progress after a standing start about three years ago, and there is more to come on that world. Linking these tools with customers directly, enhancing the loyalty aspects of both systems, and continuing to improve the customer's journey as they interact with us digitally are front of mind. We need to optimize the location of our stock. Today, we carry an extensive range, but it's generic. That is a common range across most of our stores. We can match that range carried in each store with the car park that surrounds that store. Requirements outside of that basic range can then be met through the centralized distribution network around the country. Now, to be clear, we are not there yet, but we can move to that space. Bapcor needs to rediscover its performance ethic.
This is throughout the organization: at a store level, a regional level, a state level, business unit, and group. Having a clear linkage between our group outcomes all the way through to the businesses that drive them, a clear line of sight on performance, and importantly, the drivers of performance. I said earlier we had a positive customer ethos, but this needs to be more balanced. The value exchange needs to be balanced between ourselves and the customer. Customer service across all business units will continue to be a driver based upon knowledge and the expertise we offer directly to those customers. As such, we need to invest behind some core capabilities, strengthening those that we have and enabling them to move into the 21st century. These include selling, category, and merchandising skills. Knowledge management will be a core capability for us going forward.
Our parts interpreters are our core employees that face many of our customers. We need to find ways to enhance their skills and their abilities. This includes the use of AI. A critical ingredient for managing our, dare I say, fulsome inventory levels will be machine-based learning and AI, with the introduction of credible but fit-for-purpose sales and operation planning tools across our organisation. Many of our stores are tired. We will invest appropriately to bring the look and feel of the networks to a current state. Not only the outside of the stores, we'll invest in appropriate processes and technology to standardize operations to provide a consistent customer feel and, importantly, an employee experience. Finally, whilst the last of these imperatives, simplifying our business is fundamental, we'll apply focus, courage to our employees, and facilitate the best possible outcomes for our customers.
Today, we spend too much time trading with ourselves. This will stop. No more internal transactions, margins, or shadow teams. Critical resources will go as close to the customer as possible, and where investment is required, it will be made. We will align our pricing to ensure we do not compete against ourselves. By realigning margin structures to the selling entity, we will ensure optimal revenue decisions are made in each of our business units. Finally, we will be clear on the role of Bapcor compared to the business unit. Our business units face the customer, supported by a common back end. An example: safety. There is only one way we do safety, and that is a Bapcor way. Another example would be our values. There are only four values, and they are the Bapcor values.
Now, before I move on, I want to briefly touch on the, dare I say, the complicated technology world we live with at Bapcor. I'm often asked, and I'm looking at faces in the room of asking this question, will we be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in technology? I've consistently said no, and I stand by the no. We will invest behind the best breed of tools that enhance our operating capabilities, and we'll continue to consolidate our ERPs from many into smaller numbers. In recent years, we've eliminated or consolidated from 42 ERPs down to 19 as of the end of 2024 fiscal year. 19 will become 17 by the end of this fiscal year, and 17 will become 15 by the time we get to the end of 2026 fiscal. Now, don't get me wrong, 15 is still too many.
The process to get to a state of, let's say, one per business unit will take several more years. We'll take a very sensible and logical approach as we simplify the infrastructure of our technology across the business. We've taken the opportunity to refresh our ESG position. The refreshments have been not radical. They're not a departure from what we've previously talked about, but they have been informed by our 2024 materiality assessment. Governance has moved from a single pillar to being a foundation, and we now have four pillars: our supply chain, the communities with which we play, our environment, and our team members. The measurement of success and progress will align to our strategic imperatives. We are well progressed for climate reporting under ASRS, and we'll move in on time in 2026.
In parallel, we're going to continue to make the good progress already in train under our modern slavery initiatives and our packaging requirements. Now, Bapcor has a robust and a relatively conservative balance sheet. This is underpinned by our strong cash flows. We have ample lines of debt facilities, and we intend to maintain those. Our gearing is conservative at a net leverage ratio of about 1.65 times as of the half year just reported, and we intend to maintain that conservative regime. We must focus on working capital, especially our inventory. Our dividend guidance remains appropriate at between 50%-60% of statutory net pat. The recently introduced investment committee is providing us with both discipline and, importantly, structure in our project management and our capital investments.
We intend to maintain not only the committee, but that structure and that discipline, and we'll introduce all our new products through that process. Now, we need to provide a picture of what success looks like, both internally and externally. The outcomes have to be a product of our strategy and be reflective of both the financial and non-financial requirements of the business. We're continuing to develop an internal balance scorecard, one that tracks the KPIs and one that we feel is essential to both monitor the outcomes in the near term to what we do and where we trade, but equally those things that actually drive our longer-term strategy. The left-hand side of this slide carries forward the six imperatives. The right-hand side outlines some of the core KPIs we see for Bapcor.
As mentioned just the slide before, this list remains a work in progress, but we will land the final list over the months to come, and we'll produce a scorecard at our full year 2025 results. We'll stick with those measures that we've chosen, and we'll report at each half year following. To be clear, our internal KPIs will be far more extensive than those that we share publicly, but it's our intention to be consistent with what we share to the external world. On this next slide, we display the indicative scorecard in five years' time. Why five years? It is appropriate for the horizon for a business of this scale, but it is also appropriate for a business that needs to undergo the change that we're going through.
By publishing our actual performance each half year, you'll be able to assess our progress against the goals that we've prescribed, but it allows us the ability to drive change and momentum over that time horizon. It is just simply impossible for us to define precise annual or even biannual outcomes. The FY2024 column is our base where it exists. In some cases, we've yet to determine the answer, but we intend to do so as soon as we can. The FY2030 column represents our indicative view of the direction and trajectory we expect to achieve. I would stress that these are a mix of absolute outcomes, but also expectations that we have over that five-year trajectory. Our revenue aspiration shows that we have a strong view that we can outpace inflation and growth in the car park. By implication, we want to grow market share.
I made this clear when we spoke about our growth opportunities. We have the real ability to drive positive leverage at a profit level. We have demonstrated in the current year that we're able to generate cost savings and intend to keep that keen focus. We also intend to appropriately reinvest in the base of our business, as you well know it needs it. I've spoken about inventory being a core focus. It hasn't been in many years. Given the breadth of our range and the long lead times associated with our range, getting a firm grip on this space will take time, but it is a must-do. The inventory measure, so inventory as a percentage of revenue, is our current thinking and aligns with external benchmarks.
We'll combine that with the notion of stock terms and GMROI to formulate what we think our inventory should be in a business like ours here in Australia. A quick word on cash flow. The focus on inventory is self-evident, but cash flow and, importantly, conversion remain fundamental. At our half 125 results, we spoke of the need for a consistent level of conversion in that 80%-90% level. Nothing has changed. The scorecard must include a measure of safety. This has been a focus for us over the last 10 months, and I'm delighted to say we're making great progress. In the world of safety, there is always more to be done. We have just conducted an engagement survey in March of 2025. The outcome at 52% engagement is nowhere close to what we want it to be.
Our target will be to move to within the top quartile within Oceania. We do not underestimate that task, but it is simply a must-do activity. Again, the work has begun in that space. If we are faithful to our customer focus, we must find a measure of health and, importantly, understand the drivers of those outcomes. I have a preference to NPS and net promoter score, as it is a trend over time that demonstrates our focus on the things that are important to these stakeholders. NPS also allows us to measure customer sentiment across what is a vastly different assortment of business units. We do not, as yet, have that measurement in place, but we will. Diversity is an opportunity, and it's one that we historically have been in need to take in what is a very male-dominated workforce. We have landed on the macro female-to-male ratio.
It's a massive opportunity for us to shape Bapcor, particularly for us to take a leadership position in the industry. Internally, we'll closely manage the more specific opportunities, for instance, increasing the levels of female senior leadership and continuing to drive the closure of our gender pay gap. Our focus on digital will give light to the required level of digital transactions. The target will be set based upon the business units that are playing in that space and encouraging and facilitating a frictionless journey for our customers who choose to play with us in a digital environment. ESG also features, but it requires us to land a single measure for the purpose of this scorecard rather than the multiple ones that we have within our current ESG framework. With that, let me open up to questions and answers in the room.
Please wait for a microphone to come your way if you want to ask a question, and we'll spend the next sort of 20- 30 minutes trying to answer the questions you might have.
Thanks, Angus. Am I good to go?
You're good to go.
All right. Thank you. Just in terms of the presentation, a lot of discussion around the store refresh, training of staff, investment in ERP, like a lot of investment. Is it expected that you have a significant rise in your CapEx over the five years, or is it largely self-funding through the costs out that you'll be able to deliver during that same period?
I'll probably go to, yes, there is an investment we've got to make here. I wouldn't characterize it as literally all out with limited in, which can be sometimes the view of investment, maybe even sometimes the investment view in Bapcor core. The capability changes we're making, particularly in the retail world, if I use that as an example, it is actually by bringing retailers in to run the store. So we are hiring for people who actually know what a customer needs and expects at that level. From a technology perspective, yes. Is that CapEx? I'll let the accountants determine what that ultimately becomes, just given the way the accounting rules today work. But the way we'll fund it is out of our cash flows. I'm not saying to you that you can expect our CapEx levels to macroly increase in the years to come. We will look to fund it from within our existing resources.
I think bear in mind a lot of the capability we need is actually where we need to buy it into the businesses, part of our full-time staff.
Morning. Morning, Angus. Craig Wolff of Rehman's Team Arcade. Just I'd like to focus on the retail business. It's not the biggest revenue generator, but it does look like the weakest return on capital. It'd be great in future to get some sort of measure of return on capital by segment. Is there some simple low-hanging fruit that can improve margins in that business, or does it need to grow market share and improve through leverage, operating leverage to improve margins? Because it does look incredibly weak on the margin profile.
Yeah, I think all two observations. So what was that? Margins will grow in a couple of ways. Firstly, it is around we have multiple stores that just aren't performing at the level that they need to be. The way we'll deal with those stores is to either close them or to improve them pretty dramatically and pretty quickly. Second component will be around the way we promote. Many of you have heard me say, as we went through the half-on results approach, that our historic basis of trading was five to six all-store sales in a year. That's what we've been doing for many years. We've changed that promotional rotation to now category-specific promotions that are in the main funded by our good suppliers who want us to support their products in that particular promotion. Two core changes occur. Firstly, you're not giving 20%-25% off everything in the store, even though customers weren't necessarily wanting to buy that everything.
Second component, obviously, is where our good suppliers fund that margin differential. We get the benefit of traffic, the attach, hopefully, of things that are not on pro, and secondly, a supplier funding that margin. Those would be two basic examples. You use the word sort of low-hanging fruit. I think in the world of our retail business, nothing is easy right now. I think that would be an honest reflection, but there is low-hanging fruit that we're going after. Megan, who you'll no doubt catch up with later on today, the amount of retail, Bapcor retail-generated staff turnover is large, all because we know when we take someone out of the business who doesn't know what they're doing and put someone in who does know what they're doing, we get an immediate lift at the store level.
That's hard work, and you don't get the benefit day one because, obviously, they need to learn our peculiarities. The reality is, by making that change, having someone in the business who knows what they're doing, you get valuable uplift that is quite sustainable. No. How are you curing them? I'm going to be quite facetious and flippant here. We're looking for more than the pulse. I can't say any more bluntly than that. I mean, I've been surprised when I walk into stores. For me, just I'm not an old-time retailer. I've spent a bit of time running around a retail environment, but the very first thing you do is you walk to a shelf, and the second thing you do is you reach in behind the first thing on display, and you just look at the dust. I didn't need white gloves to find the dust.
We have stock that we just don't need in the store, and the team have been doing a great job of getting rid of that stock. Yes, that's hurt our margins in the short term, but at least we're getting rid of that stock. When you ask people how they deal with customers, what they do, you then sit there and watch, and I'm now at a place where I can't do it anymore. My face is, unfortunately, a little known, but I used to be able to walk into most stores and just watch. A customer walks in the front door. How long before a retail assistant walks up and actually says, "Can I help you?" Just the most basic things of retail service, we're now making sure we have in place, and they don't cost any more than the others we used to have.
Just a second question, if I can, Angus, just on private label. It's sort of weaved into the presentation, but just want to maybe, if we can just firstly level set where that opportunity is across the different business segments, probably more retail-centric. Is it an opportunity of higher private label penetration or just better sourcing and margin outcomes on those private labels?
Something right across the business, we have an opportunity for greater penetration into our portfolio, so whether that be at a retail level or even a trade level. We have some great private label brands. It amuses me when you go to a new organization trying to define what private label is versus own label versus exclusive versus white label.
I mean, I can see the looks on your faces, but we have many good brands in our portfolio that we own, and we, in some cases, have allowed our brands to be traded out relative to third-party brands. The reason that we've done that is, at times, because of the margin split. If I use an example, we have a braking brand, predominantly sold through the Burson world. It's an entry-level braking brand. Because of the way in which we've allocated margin on that braking brand, the Burson team do not want to focus on it because they make more money selling a third-party brand. Yet, we've got a very large part of that entry-level to the brake world that we should be using to help customers navigate that brand range hierarchy.
Tim Piper from UBS. First, I wanted to start on network expansion. I think the last few years, the group's probably struggled for growth with no network expansion. You've kind of outlined 12 in trade per year. Maybe just broad brush strokes, 12 trade stores per year. What kind of investment would that require? And then what would your expectation be on an EBITDA payback timeframe per year on those new stores?
Yeah, thanks, Tim. Firstly, this will be the first year that we, I suppose, truly add net stores to Burson. We had six to seven, six, I think, in the first half. I know in many conversations, we said you could expect the same in the second half. In our current year, we expect to do 12 in Burson. I'm not going to give you a payback. My view would be it's okay. It certainly pays back over the inside of that plan horizon.
The question for us is how we can do it faster. With all respect to our Burson network, I mean, it's not like a retail store where you're spending a lot of money on, call it the look and feel and the fit-out. Most of the investment in a Burson store would be racking and then inventory. I think I've spoken a lot during this presentation on inventory. We don't need to hold that. If you sort of think about a Burson store today, to put the full range into that store, we probably don't get change from a cash-out layer, probably AUD 600,000, just in terms of the value of the inventory that gets put in that store. I sort of think of that as part of the payback criteria on a store. It doesn't need to hold AUD 600,000. Could we do it with AUD 300,000?
Let's go for it and feed it out of a shed like this and just turn the stock faster inside of that store. That's the part that we've got to get right. In fairness to the business today, of the 12 that come going today, I think crude numbers, nine will be called what I describe as almost replica sites, sort of big 600 sq m kind of sites. There are a couple of satellite sites in there that we're beginning to experiment. We'll find a better halfway house so that we end up with, call it 12 new sites that are capable of servicing the mechanics in the area that they play with at that time. I've got the same view on retail around we need a network plan. We need to know where we want to go.
We need to know when we can get access to that site. We need to know the mathematics associated with, call it the build and the return criteria on that. They should be quite formulaic. Even in that network kind of experience, you do not get them all right, but you get 80% of them right.
Right. AUD 600,000 in working capital and then rough idea on CapEx per store?
I have not got a number off the top of my head. It is not a huge amount. You just put your head around a Burson site. There is one on the way through here as you leave. They are not particularly sophisticated. It's a thing from a retail site where, yes, the investment in inventory at times is too big in that retail site, but a lot of the investment goes into your furniture and fixtures and the lease out of the store.
Yeah, got it. Within the framework of those five-year targets of revenue growth and EBITDA growth, have you kind of mapped out or thought about what the contribution from network expansion is in those five-year plans versus what is just a like-for-like improvement in the underlying core business driving growth?
I have given you total. I have not given you a like-for-like there. We have got that internally, yes.
Okay. Just maybe one more around sort of costs. You have kind of talked a lot about optimization and things like that. Does it seem unlikely that you'll come out with another quantified sort of cost-out target or cost-out range to be put through the business?
It seems unlikely. It is unlikely. I don't want to put another cost target out. To be clear, you can pretty clearly say we know that there's cost that's got to come out.
Morning, Angus. Lars Mann here from Goldmans. Just a couple, maybe on retail. Whereabouts are you at with the journey, I guess, in the store, the actual products that you store layout and the products that you're actually showcasing? Are there any stores you can point to as an example that are at where you want them to be, and how far are you at sort of rolling that out across the network?
Lars, a good question. Let me probably take that one on notice to come back and talk to you about a bit more around the direction we want. Our stores are not very different. When I look at the regional footprints that we operate, and regional does not have to be the back of nowhere. I mean, it can be Campsie, but we have some big stores that are up there, and they fulfill the role. It is very, very wide. Everything from car seat covers, polishes, all the way through to, in some cases, marine equipment, as in batteries, etc. They are a full service store based upon the demography of the customer in that space, and they work really, really well. Probably fair to say the stores I am least happy with are barn and city stores.
What we want more of is to capitalize on the knowledge and service statement that customers would attach, particularly to the Autobarn brand. In many cases, those in-your-city stores can't do the fitment work that's required there. Whether that be a set of roof racks or even a bunch of wiper blades, they just don't have the space available. That is what we want to find the right model around, which is how do we truly service the customer when they come in, not just to buy something off the shelf, but if they want it fitted, to be able to find the opportunity to actually get that product fitted to them in the appropriate amount of time. Equally, how we think about the inventory management around those things. Megan's already at the place.
We don't need to be carrying bullbar ranges, roof rack ranges, etc., etc. in every single store. We need to make sure that those products are available for when the customer wants them fitted. They are fitted on time for the customer. They drive away with a successful purchase, not an instantaneous decision.
Maybe just on the FY2030 targets, obviously noting that it's a KGAR, but are these the sort of growth rates you would expect going into sort of FY2026, or is this going to be sort of back-end weighted or no specific guidance?
I haven't. Obviously, I'm Steve Wellman from SKUs, as in the SKU of the line here.
Do those targets include any sort of bolt-on acquisitions, or is this sort of purely organic from your perspective?
Right now, if we think about the year that we're in, this example, we've done little bolt-ons. We did one in the ACT that we announced as of the half year. Those things are all in our contemplation. Am I talking 70-80 site acquisitions? Nothing on our minds right now, but Wednesdays and Tuesdays we'll keep doing and keep doing well.
Thanks. Jared Gillsparrow from MorganSys. A question on the retail. I guess piggyback on the network expansion a little bit. You obviously touched on the site growth for specialists as well as trade, but I guess retail is not going anywhere until you get it right. I guess just interested on how many locations are unprofitable that you need to sort of exit before things are actually ready to go and look to growth again?
Yes, you've summarized pretty well with one exception which you said we look to expand the Midas footprint, so continue growing that franchise network. There's a good legacy of that over certainly the last 12- 24 months. We do have unprofitable sites, and Megan and the team are working through which ones we need to be smoking some drugs on, frankly, to believe that we can get them profitable. That's distinct from others where, frankly, we just need to shut the doors on them. That's work we're doing, but there's a commercial position that goes around that as well. We have clearly got those stores in sight.
All right. I guess what would a right-sized retail offering look like before you can actually grow the network, I guess?
I don't have that number in mind, but yeah.
Maybe just a real quick one on the employee engagements. Obviously, quite low, and it's not easy to turn those things around. I guess maybe if you just speak to sort of what initiatives you are going to put in place to drive towards that target of 75%.
Yeah, look, I think 52 is not a number that we're happy with. It's not a number that we were surprised by. I think many of the messages that I would get is, as an employee, what am I looking for? I'm looking for clarity of where I'm going as part of my business. This is part of that, just being very clear around where we're going and why we believe we can get there. It's being clear that my boss is going to be in play.
There's members of the leadership team here who would have probably had a really weird answer to that question because I'm number four in four years. You could argue maybe three, given one thing in front. That clarity around who's leading the organization is what employees are wanting. They're wanting to understand this question of Bapcor's future. Just describe that to me and execute against it. There's a lot of churn going on in the organization. Whilst it's the right thing to be doing around consolidating sites, at an individual level, that's pretty disconcerting.
If you've been left by yourself for five, 10 years, and then all of a sudden you're being bundled up, and even with the best change management and well on the way, if you've been left by yourself, and now all of a sudden you're finding you have to play with a whole lot of other people, that's a lot sometimes for an employee to take in. They are wanting that kind of stability. Those would be those things. We have started that process. As a start, we communicated the results literally within three days of getting the results. That is a first. Feedback call. Just being really transparent around what's going on, what needs to be done. The feedback we're getting from people is, "That's great. Please keep it coming." A long way to go, but some pretty good starting points.
We may have this change where the day of the day is going to change. You want people coming in and doing stuff slightly different. Does it go backwards before it goes forwards? Look, in some cases, that's true.
Yeah, we'll go backwards before it goes forward. In other cases, with the right communication, we haven't lost a beat. I was talking earlier outside to one change we made in Melbourne, one of the first and probably one of our bigger consolidations that we did. Because of the way in which the two sides of the equation partnered, that business literally didn't miss a beat. Two days later, the acceleration was stunning. We had, I'll start with the people, happy employees, because they actually went from a place where the carpet wasn't—well, actually, there was carpet on the floor. You could simply say that.
Two, all of a sudden, they went in. Their customers were getting the same, if not better, service levels. All of a sudden, they had a range that they couldn't have played with beforehand, all because of the way in which they lent into the conversation. In other places, there was change resistance, and I get that. That's, call it, quite natural. Our job is to find ways to bring people with us on that journey. Where we do it well, the acceleration is incredibly positive.
You've mentioned sort of change and lots of change and inertia, etc. It feels like better than before struggled to get momentum in lots of different categories. What were the learnings from what didn't work in the past that you need to change as you go forward to generate the targets you've got for 2030?
I sort of talked a bit about trying to never use those words again in a public forum. I will probably say the first thing is you haven't seen 300 initiatives. That would be the starting. That would be part one. Part two is being really clear by business unit what we expect from them. Part three, what we expect to do to a business unit in order to help them be successful, and then how we go about engendering that change. The starting point is what I put up here. I'm not trying to make this complex. None of us are. It's pretty simple in terms of the articulation. The doing is hard. Don't get me wrong. Therefore, the doing then comes back to what are you going to do? When is it going to get done? Where in the sequence does it get done?
It's not trying to sequence 300 things. It's sequence a smaller number of things and just do that once so you don't have to come back. We're not underestimating the degree of change here by any means, but we're trying to make sure that we just don't confuse a whole lot of people, including ourselves, frankly.
I guess probably a follow-up, different sort of way of attacking a similar issue just around the risks. Ultimately, your margin target, implicit margin target for 2030 is quite high, higher than where it was pre-COVID. It may have just beaten that during the peaks of COVID. What do you see as your internal risk to achieving that outcome? Externally, what sort of competitive environment do you need to see? On the retail side, we've got Bunnings entering the market. We're seeing Repco taking market share as well. Interested in your comments on that side.
Yeah. Ultimately, we need four and a half thousand people to sort of push in, call it a common direction. That is probably the hardest part about the whole process. I mean, it is just no amount of technology, no amount of smarts. If you cannot actually get the hearts and minds of people pointing in the right direction, then this will not work. Therefore, our job is to help those people get to that place. We are not underestimating one competitor. We do compete against good competitors. I will publicly talk to this question around market share. I mean, Craig U. Rosa, I have not seen any data that says we are losing share to Repco. I would really love to have that conversation. Given we are knee-deep in that data, I would love to see that. Retail, definitely, we are number three in the market.
We understand that the people we play against there are very, very good retailers in that space. We need to make sure we're fit to fight there. We're acutely aware of where others are getting into the category and where they're playing and where we will win and where we won't. Well before Bunnings made its announcement the other day, we were well and truly aware of what they were doing. They're good retailers. I take that back. They're very good retailers. We know what we stand for. We know where we think we'll win in that particular game. We're not assuming all of a sudden the Australian market conditions turn to a raging gale behind our backs as we head into the space, nor are we assuming that the economy will suddenly turn to the betterment.
We're trying to take a fairly pragmatic approach to where we are today. Yeah, we don't go into this with a fair bit of humility.
Just the, I guess, almost housekeeping, but this internal sales piece, should we be conscious of how that might impact the segment reporting? What is the impact? Also, are there any significant items that we should be cognizant of with the new strategy of Unveil?
Yeah. We don't have any market announcement today. You will get a revised segment view. We'll do that as part of our 2025 full year reporting. When you see, obviously, our external result doesn't change, but when you see our segment of results, that includes internal and external margin, particularly in that wholesale world. We'll pull that back and give you the clean four segments with comparatives when we do the full year for 2025.
Just variation on that same thing. I know you don't want to be drawn on the skew of the targets and how they sort of plan out, but can you just talk about actually how you derived them and came up with the end result for FY2030 or the aspiration for FY2030?
We've gone away and looked at, but we've modeled the business based upon what we do today and what we need to do in the future. Quite an intricate process to, I suppose, assemble the mathematics, but just make sure we're really clear that McKinsey will know any of the wrong.
When you modeled it, how did you work out when your stuff starts to come through and what comes through?
Good try.
Thanks, Angus. Peter Marks from Barrenj oey. Just a quick follow-up on, I guess, the retail review. Just interested in, I guess, what else you considered for this business. Did you consider divesting it? It sounds like a lot of the issues are in the corporate stores rather than the franchise stores. Did you consider shifting to a fully franchised model? I guess maybe if you could compare what the franchisees are doing that you think might be some easy wins to get into the corporate stores?
Look, I think we looked at all the alternatives that are around, and that's probably all I'll say there. Look, I've come from a world that was, well, I was 100% franchised and moved into a corporate because we had to. Going back requires a whole lot of things to be possible.
I think once you've actually moved to the corporate store world, you can't go back, unfortunately. Financially, it would be awful, put it that way. Franchisees that perform well, and we have many of them, have got some pretty blessed locations. No difference franchising to corporate ownership. Location, location, location is important, but many of those franchise operations have got territories for which they are, call it the auto parts player in that space. Therefore, as I said a bit earlier, they get to trade across not just car seat covers, but all the way through parts and other things, including marine. Therefore, the side of our corporate stores needs to be the best. My view, personal view, we made some bad decisions when we corporatized. We naively thought, how hard is it to be a corporate store operator when you're a franchise? Incredibly difficult.
Franchisees provide a lot of skill inside of their store that if you do not have that skill corporately, you probably end up with a little bit of what we have got today. The other part was, I use the word humility, but we certainly did not have any and certainly lacked, I think, plenty of hubris around. We sort of thought, "Oh, that is a great franchise store. How hard could this be?" We then went and bought their franchise store with none of the back-end skills. Even worse, we went and saw a poorly run franchise store and thought, "Hey, how hard could this be? We can turn it around." We paid lots of money for a store that we had no skill or capability capable of turning around.
That's the legacy that Megan and the team have picked up, and we're now working our way through how to make those stores work. In some cases, we won't, and we'll close them. Others, we are turning them around. A lot of what goes on in a store, I said it before in our corporate stuff, the franchisee is on the ground orchestrating that. When a customer walks into a store and one of their employees hasn't within about 10 seconds gone and said, "Can I help you, ma'am, sir, whatever it might be?" the franchisee is the person making that occur. If we don't have the right retail managers in there making sure that occurs, there's just a simple example of basic retail execution that just falls flat.
Can you give us a sense of how many you think might be closing, I guess, if you?
That question was asked before. I said no. Thanks. Looks like we might be done. I think nothing else. With that, thank you for your time. I appreciate that. Let me again ask Abdul to come back to the podium and just give you a bit of an overview on our supply chain before we head out.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Bapcor's Distribution Centre here in Queensland, officially known to us as DCQ. My name is Abdul Jaafar, the Executive General Manager of Supply Chain and Procurement, and it's a real pleasure to have you all here with us today. Today, I'll be taking you through Bapcor's supply chain evolution, which is a journey of improvement. Let's start with where we were three years ago. At that time, Bapcor operated a decentralized supply chain with each business unit managing its own stock and warehousing.
Stock visibility was siloed, limited to individual business units. The structure created fragmentation and inefficiencies. Although we had opened a brand new state-of-the-art distribution center in Victoria with high expectations, it did not deliver the results we needed. We had major challenges. Orders were frequently incorrect. Our layout was inefficient. The network could not get the stock where it needed it. Ironically, instead of centralizing supply, our store network relied heavily on our external suppliers to deliver directly to them, essentially bypassing the very infrastructure we had built. We did not stay in that place. We took accountability and used that experience to spark real change. On the next slide, I will talk to you about our current state. Fast forwarding to today, and while we are not at the finish line yet, we have made significant progress. Our supply chain has evolved into a more centralized, scale-leveraged network.
We're in the process of becoming fully efficient. There's still work to do, but we're well on our way. So far, we have optimized operations in our major DCs, being Melbourne and Brisbane, supporting smoother, more reliable stock movement. Smaller distribution centers in Perth, Sydney, and Adelaide, bringing product closer to the customer, cutting down lead times and touchpoints. Our inventory approach is also evolving. While we're not yet operating with full enterprise-wide demand planning, we now have much clearer view of total inventory across the network. That visibility is allowing us to make smarter decisions. We're currently leveraging those insights to better position stock and reduce our inefficiencies. Through Project Nexus, which is the project name we've given to review our network, looking for opportunities in fulfillment. We're actively removing duplication in the network, ensuring the right inventory is in the right location without unnecessary overlap.
Project Nexus itself has been a key enabler of this transformation. Over 25 non-core sites have been closed. Key businesses impacted are within the wholesale segment. Fulfillment has been streamlined. Customers are gaining greater access to group-wide stock with many of the changes. Service levels continue to improve while also reducing operational complexity. Our experimental micro-fulfillment center that Angus McKay touched on earlier in Dandenong is a step forward to a more responsive and efficient supply chain. It enables faster dispatch of higher turnover product, centralized management of slower-moving inventory, and it helps optimize our store footprint to better service high-demand areas. Dandenong was selected due to its strong trade presence, over 240 mechanics, and significant revenue. Because the site was surplus to need with an existing lease, this made for an ideal location to test and learn.
Early signs are encouraging, with improved stock positioning already helping enhance the customer experience. The insights we gain here will guide the future design of our network, including where micro-fulfillment centers can add the most value alongside our store network. Finally, our offshore consolidation center pilot is helping us rethink how we source product. We're consolidating stock overseas and shipping directly to high-demand states, cutting lead time, costs, and supply chain complexity. It's clear the transformation is underway and we're not done, but we're moving in the right direction with greater visibility, smarter positioning, and a stronger foundation for the future. Our future state supply chain looks much like this. Looking ahead, we're not just optimizing our operations. We're positioning Bapcor's supply chain as a true competitive advantage. We're looking at greater levels of consolidation in FY2025.
We're taking a holistic view, reassessing our entire network from purchase order to last-mile delivery. What might this future state look like? Greater use of our larger distribution centers where multiple businesses can share both space and inventory, increased stock visibility, and broader product ranges available to our customers, smarter delivery models with micro-fulfillment centers seamlessly integrated into our network, a fully optimized offshore consolidation network enabling vendor-managed inventory and more direct, efficient shipping. A key shift here is the way we handle inbound freight. We'll be bringing in more full containers directly into our larger distribution centers. These containers will then be broken down as part of the fulfillment process, allowing us to better position stock across the network based on demand before it even reaches the store.
This approach reduces handling, cuts down lead time, and ensures the right stock is in the right place at the right time. The goal is clear: to build a best-in-class supply chain, one that delivers faster fulfillment, higher accuracy, leaner inventory, and an enhanced experience for every customer, every time. In closing, from where we started, fragmented and reactive, to where we are today, confident, efficient, and forward-looking, we've made remarkable progress. We're proud of the transformation, but even more excited about the road ahead. Thank you for your time, and I am looking forward to hosting you with some key team members from our supply chain leadership team for a tour around the facility. We'll actually walk you through the way we operate in our distribution center in Queensland. Thank you. Back to you, Angus.
That concludes this part of it. What I'm probably suggesting is take a bathroom break, go grab some water. Abdul then ended up breaking us into three separate groups to head around the DC. I said their plan is to take around the DC. Abdul, what, half an hour, max? Yeah, half an hour. And then some food, some refreshment before you head off to wherever you need to go to next. For those of you that have turned up at the facility, thank you so much for coming today. I do appreciate it. Do appreciate the questions. For those of you listening in, I hope you got the same out of it. For those of you that tried to get here but couldn't because the airlines didn't avail themselves of that this morning, thank you for participating.