Okay. Welcome everyone to the Cobram Estate Olives Limited Financial Year 2024 Results Presentation. And thank you to everyone for joining us. My name's Sam Beeton. I'm one of the joint CEOs of Cobram Estate Olives Limited. I'm also joined by Leandro Rivetti, who's the other joint CEO. In terms of agenda for today, I'll be taking you through the financial and commercial highlights of the year. I'll then hand to Leandro. Leandro will take you through the operational highlights and an update on our growth strategies. And then we'll have plenty of time for questions. To ask a question when we get to that point, there's an icon at the bottom of your screen which has got a raised hand symbol.
Please press on that button, and then when it comes time for questions, we'll ask you to verbally ask the question, and also unmute your screen. This year's been a very pleasing year for Cobram Estate Olives. A year in which we've seen continued strong demand for high quality extra virgin olive oil. We saw sales growth in both Australia and in the USA, growth in profitability, growth in operating cash flow, and our asset base continued to grow as we invested in growth assets in both Australia and in the USA. The business is very well positioned to take advantage of growing supply from our olive groves in both Australia and the USA as the trees mature, and we believe that this will increase or continue to drive an increase in sales, profitability, and cash flow. Moving to the highlights of the financial results.
Our sales-
I think you have to share that screen. There, there's no share in the presentation.
Sorry, I'll start again. Excuse me. Is that working, Leandro?
Yeah.
Apologies to everyone on that. So moving to the highlights of the financial results. During the year, we saw sales growth of 34.6%. We sold up to AUD 220 million in for olive oil sales. This was largely driven by our packaged goods sales, where we saw growth in both Australia and in the USA. Australian packaged goods sales were up 28.1% to AUD 142 million, and USA packaged goods sales up 78.9% to $50.5 million. Pleasingly for the business, our EBITDA was AUD 66.7 million, which was up 63.4%. This was a really pleasing result, especially given that this year was an off cropping year in Australia, and I'll explain more about the profit in the coming slides.
Net profit after tax was AUD 18.5 million, and we reported a operating cash flow of AUD 64.1 million, which was a record operating cash flow for the company and up 18.4% on last year. Moving to the detailed profit and loss, and just a reminder to participants that in terms of the accounting for our olive crop, under accounting standards, you're required to measure the majority of the profit relating to the crop in the year of harvest, not in the year of sale, and we do this by taking the fair value of the crop or the expected net selling price. We then deduct the actual cost of selling, and then that increment is taken to our profit and loss as a net change in fair value.
That inventory is then recorded on our balance sheet at that higher value and then taken through our cost of goods sold as we sell the product. Now, importantly, this year being an off year, it was as a very pleasing result to see an increase in EBITDA in Australia. And this was really driven by the terrific trading during the year and increased margin, and also the increased expected net selling price of the 2024 crop. EBITDA in Australia grew to AUD 60.1. The U.S. business, EBITDA grew to $5.8 million, up from $2.9 million. The growth in EBITDA, driven by an increased sales and also an increased, a better product mix, where a higher percentage of our sales came through packaged goods as opposed to bulk.
And our innovation and value add business, where we reported a small profit of AUD 800,000, up from a small loss, as we continue to focus on value-adding our waste streams. Moving to the next slide, in terms of our balance sheet. Our net assets grew from AUD 287 million to AUD 322 million. A couple of items I'd like to point out on our balance sheet. The first item is that our trees and irrigation infrastructure carry on our balance sheet at written down cost. So this year we had our groves valued in Australia and in the USA, and our industrial plants, and there's AUD 166 million worth of value over and above book value that is not on our balance sheet.
That relates to our trees and irrigation infrastructure. In addition to that, our brands are carried at cost, so just under AUD 6.7 million relates to the value of our brands, Red Island and Cobram, when we purchased them, so they're not fair value. We can't change the valuation on our balance sheet to fair value under accounting standards, and the other item I'd just like to point out is the tax liability, so we have a AUD 90 million tax liability. The majority of that relates to an historical asset write-up, so it's a deferred tax liability. We'd only ever pay that tax if we sold the assets outside of the group. This next slide really demonstrates the real asset backing of the company.
If I look at the bar on the left-hand side, this is the balance sheet assets, and adding on to that, the green part of that bar is the land, sorry, the trees and irrigation infrastructure over and above book value. So we call it on this slide, the adjusted asset value, which takes into account the real asset value of those trees and irrigation infrastructure. And that is sitting at AUD 845 million, up from AUD 718 million in the prior year. Our borrowings in aggregate did go up, but our debt ratio, so our debt divided by our adjusted asset value, stayed relatively similar, so up slightly from AUD 24.8 million-AUD 25.3 million. Moving on to cash flow.
Cash flow across the group was AUD 64.1 million before interest and tax, up from AUD 54 million. Just a reminder that cash flow is a lot more consistent than reported profit, and that's because of the way we manage our oil in both Australia and in the USA. We manage our oil over a two-year cycle. A lower cropping year, like we've just gone through in Australia, we'll sell that oil typically over around 9 months, and then a higher cropping year, like we're expecting in FY 2025 in Australia, we'll sell that over as much as 15 months. What that means is we can sell oil to our customers who buy oil very consistently month in, month out without having the highs and the lows.
It also means that our, as a result, our operating cash flow is much more consistent year on year. We continue to invest in growth capital projects, both in Australia and in the USA, AUD 66.2 million. And of course, we paid a dividend during the year net of DRP, which was AUD 11.5 million. The company is well positioned to fund future growth. We have AUD 42.9 million of cash and available debt facilities. Moving on to the next slide. This chart shows the group's operating cash flow, both pre-tax and interest, and post-tax and interest, which is the darker green line, over the last five years. As you can see, we're seeing steady growth in this chart.
We're expecting that the operating cash flow of the business will continue to grow over the medium term, particularly as the Australian groves mature, and also the U.S. business continues on with its sustainable growth. In addition to this, from a CapEx perspective, we're expecting our Australian CapEx to reduce in the medium term to more of a maintenance CapEx, and our growth will be focused in the USA in terms of capital projects. We have talked about our two-year rolling average EBITDA, which takes into account both a high and a low cropping year. It's still a very good measure of the business's performance, but we also encourage investors to look at our business on an operating cash flow basis. It's a very effective measure and also very straightforward. This next slide, we're showing the expected growth.
This is just our Australian growth and 1,000 hectares of third-party growth, which we contract long-term market and process their fruit and oil. If you look at it over the last two years, the average yield from our groves and the third-party grove was AUD 11.5 million. If all those trees today were at full maturity, which we expect, in 8 years' time, progressively, then that yield would be between 19 and 23 million L. So, significant growth expected from a supply perspective, over the medium term. The chart on the right just maps the growth in yield, the bottom line over an 8-year period, and the top line is the progressive increase in cost per hectare as you reach that year eight point.
As you can see from that chart, when a tree gets to around year five, the incremental costs are very minimal, yet the yields keep increasing progressively through to year eight, which in turn will increase- or will decrease the cost per liter of olive oil. Now, moving to the U.S., just a reminder that we now have growth assets in the USA of just under $190 million. This year, we've reported our second consecutive year of EBITDA profit, and we still have just under 60% of our groves, which are yet to produce a crop. And so we certainly expect the maturation of these groves, the continued investment in grove assets in the USA, to continue to drive this business forward in the USA. Moving on to marketing.
I'll take you through some more detail on marketing in the coming slides, and of course, sales. From a group perspective, our sales, our olive oil sales were up 34.6% for the year. The majority of our oil is sold in package format. When I say package format, I mean Cobram Estate, Red Island, and private label, predominantly in bottles and tins. Sixty-five percent of our sales are still in Australia in packaged goods, 23% in the USA, and the balance is bulk. Most of the bulk is our lower value oil, which is sold business to business. From an Australian perspective, so this is just Australian sales. Our sales are up 28.3% to AUD 156 million.
The chart at the bottom just shows packaged good sales, so in purple, branded sales, and then private label in green. And during the year, we saw these sales increase to AUD 142 million, which is up 28%, which was very pleasing. From a market share perspective, so this is supermarket data. Our market share between Cobram and Red Island of the olive oil category is now just under 38%, and that compares to 34.8% this time a year ago. We did see an increase in household penetration during the year, which certainly should set us up for future growth. But in value terms, our sales at supermarket were up 34% at the scan, and 17% in units.
Cobram Estate remains the number one olive oil brand, and Red Island, the number two Australian olive oil brand. From a marketing perspective, we continue to focus all our marketing messages around, promoting the superior quality of our oil, the terrific health benefits, and particularly the usage occasions. During the year, we entered a partnership, with the Melbourne Mavericks that play in the Super Netball league. We're very proud to be a brand partner with Olympic champion, Kaylee McKeown, and we continue on our partnership with Neil Perry. In addition to that, we also invest a lot in marketing our brand and our oil through our social media assets. Moving to the USA. So this is USA sales specifically. The chart on the bottom shows the growth over the last 10 years.
The purple bar is branded sales, green is private label, and then bulk on top. It's all in AUD. We saw terrific growth, particularly in packaged goods sales, up 78.9%, for the year. We're now the number 8 brand in the USA, in supermarkets and supermarket sales. That excludes private label SKUs. And we're in just over 18,400 stores, which was a growth of 16.6%, compared to this time last year. Marketing in the USA really, where our marketing messages are very similar to what we've done in Australia for the last 15 years, and really promoting high quality, fresh olive oil, the amazing health benefits.
We've entered into a partnership with Curtis Stone, who has a large presence in the USA, and we've also launched our infused oils, which are in selective supermarkets already. So moving on to the financial outlook. The sales outlook certainly remains very strong, and we continue to see strong demand for high quality extra virgin olive oil. And we've had a good start to the year with sales in Australia and the USA exceeding budget. Our Australian crops despite have been slightly lower than what we'd hoped in two thousand and twenty-four, FY two thousand and twenty-four, we will have sufficient oil for our package good sales plan right through to the commencement of the FY 2025 or the two thousand and twenty-five Australian harvest.
We've previously announced that our USA crop we were expecting similar to or above this last year's crop of 3.2 million L. This is very pleasing given it, it's supposed to be an off year in the USA, but due to the favorable growing conditions and also the maturing profile of our groves, we're expecting a strong yield in the USA. Pricing, we didn't move on price in the USA during FY 2024. We are putting through a 15% price rise, and that will be effective in September 2024, so next month. From a cost perspective, major costs being the Australian input costs, they have certainly stabilized, and we're seeing water. As a reminder, we buy most of our water on the temporary market. Water is trading well below long-term average.
Looking forward in terms of cash flows, we're expecting our operating cash flow to remain very strong, and really combined with our existing debt facilities, we expect this to fully fund our planned U.S. expansion of growth, development, and land purchases. The last one on outlook, this year, FY 2025, is an on year in Australia. As a result, we're expecting materially higher EBITDA than FY 2024, and of course, that's subject to the normal risks of agricultural production. Our dividend, we'll maintain our dividend rate of AUD 0.033. The board anticipates that this will be a fully franked dividend. Last year it was 70% franked.
We will be paying this in December, but full details around that dividend will be announced at our AGM on the first of November, two thousand and twenty-four. Before I hand to Leandro, I'd just like to thank our amazing employees. They're so dedicated and hardworking. We really appreciate all the effort. None of this is possible without you. So thank you, and I'd like to hand over to Leandro.
Thank you, Sam, and thank you very much to all of you for joining us today. I'll provide you now with a brief update on our operations in Australia and in the USA, and how we continue to make progress strengthening, you know, our company's four growth pillars. You know, I won't go. If we move to the next slide, I won't go through the details of this slide in, you know, in detail, because we'll cover that, you know, throughout the presentation. But fundamentally, they show the consolidation of our company as one of, if not the largest, fully vertically integrated olive oil company in the world, when we combine the geographical reach, the area planted, the level of production, and the strength of our brands. Move to the next slide.
From the operational point of view, our Australian olive harvest was successfully completed on time by the end of 2024, with a total production of 10.1 million L of olive oil, so that was 3% higher than the 2022, which was our previous off year. We, we feel that it is valuable to understand this result in the context of the entire industry. Although very difficult to measure and predict beforehand, as harvest progressed, it became quite evident that the colder and shorter than average growing season in FY 2023 had a widespread negative impact on the Australian olive industry's 2024 harvest. This estimate indicate that excluding government-led olive growers, the Australian production in 2024 was down 43% versus 2023. That sheds a different light, you know, over the previous result.
As Sam said, it's also important to point out that twenty twenty-five is an on year on our Australian growers, and we expect our crop to be significantly higher than in twenty twenty-four, subject to the usual, you know, risks. Moving to the U.S., California growers are typically harvested between October and November, with the growers having been through peak flowering period and having already started the oil accumulation phase. Winter and spring weather conditions were beneficial for flower induction and fruit set. In fact, the photo that you're gonna see on the screen is an actual shot of the very nice levels of flowering observed in one of our ranches this past night.
Based on current observations, we expect the 2024 California olive production, as Sam said, to be similar to or slightly above the 3.2 million L produced in 2023 harvest. Which is quite pleasing, considering that initially we projected this to be an off year for most of the industry over there. And this is a consequence of our maturing orchards performing very well, more acres under contract, and the fact that many third-party growers responded well to the positive weather conditions. Now, we move to the next slide. Just to finalize the presentation, we always like to touch on the key developments related to our four growth pillars. The pillars are quite simple, and stay the same. They focus on producing more olive oil from our Australian olive groves through maturing trees and efficiency gains.
Growing our fully vertically integrated business in the United States. Growing the branded product sales, with a focus on improving the net price per liter for our oil, which some cover at length, so I won't touch on that one. And capitalizing on the sustainable position and upcycling of our by-product. Let's start with the first one, with the growing production in Australia. With our modern production system, olive trees reach maturity and maximum production when they are approximately eight years old, and we can see that, you know, on the line, on the red line of yields on the graph.
Given the significant investment that the company has done over the past decade in new groves, our mature area in Australia is set to increase by 53% over the next eight years, as 25% of our trees are still immature, so they're between three and eight years old, and 10% are not yet productive. You know, for more details specifically on that, you can see the area and the current, tree ages in Australia in the graph of this slide. When all that area... It is when all that area reaches maturity, and assuming that no further replanting or new developments occur, they should reach the potential production figures that Sam mentioned before. This is extremely regular in terms of the future, as it, you know, Sam has shown many of our production costs are fixed.
This growth pillar is directly related to the improvement of the company's financial performance, with the value of the additional oil mostly flowing directly as profit. This is also relevant, considering that the Australian grown olive oil still accounts for less than 50% of the total domestic consumption. Moving to the next slide, we see that the main capital project that took place in this past financial year, in relationship with this very important pillar, has been the 271-hectare redevelopment of our Wilman Grove. This is the last block of underperforming trees of the Barnea variety, that require replanting across all our farms, concluding a 14-year replanting program.
No other significant capital project, apart from the additional processing line that will be rolled out at Boort, is required in Australia in the near future to support the organic growth of production expected from the maturing orchards that I explained before. Moving to the U.S., as we've heard many times, oil supply continues to be our main growth limitation in the U.S. side, so I just wanted to highlight the key investments linked to this. As you can see from a similar graph and the table here, the chart here, we're expecting a significant boost to our Californian supply from the maturing profile of our groves, given that nearly 30% of our groves are immature and a massive 59% are yet to start bearing fruit because they are too young.
Almost equally important in terms of securing future olive oil supply, we have increased our third party growing area under contract to two and a half - two point one thousand hectares, up from less than 1,300 hectares in FY 2021, and we're talking about domestic supply in Australian market. In the case of American-grown olive oil, it barely accounts for less than 5% of the total domestic market, so plenty of growth over there. Move to the next slide, and we certainly have several key capital projects on the go relating to this second growth pillar. Firstly, we have completed our phase two of the Dunnigan Hills Ranch and the Hungry Hollow Ranch developments, with a total of 179 hectares of olives planted between November 2023 and July 2024.
And you can see an image of our Dunnigan Hills ranch here on the screen. We are also actively working on the projects for this current financial year, with an additional 178 hectares of olives to be planted in the Northern Hemisphere's autumn in 2024, so just a few months away. Additionally, we've got a pretty strong pipeline of new properties, are currently being considered for acquisition and future development. Second, we have completed the much needed expansion of our mill and oil storage, moving now to revamping of the bottling and warehousing operations in Woodland. The expansion that you can see in these photos double our milling capability and increase our olive oil storage capacity from 2.9 million- 4.5 million L .
Now, the expansion of the finished goods warehouse and the installation of a new bottling line are underway, and once completed, we will have the infrastructure in place to meet its projected increase in throughput over the next five to 10 years. Moving to the sustainability side, another very active year in this pillar. We are very pleased with the results of the strategic change that we adopted regarding this area of the business a couple of years ago. The lean cost structure for this division, and the focus on selling our byproducts directly to other agribusinesses, food manufacturers, hospitals, and nurseries, particularly as ingredients and as renewable energy sources for heat and electricity production, delivered the first year of net profit for this division with a record total of 11.4 million kg of biomass sold to external parties in this past financial year.
Moving to the next slide, and still on sustainability, after becoming a publicly listed entity in 2021, we recognized the need to implement a more formal approach to sustainability that is in line with mainstream expectations and corporate best practice. As a result of this, we have identified a list of priority topics that have been clustered into the pillars of people, planet, and business, and are integrated in our recently adopted 2030 sustainability strategy. Now, this strategy is the first step in formalizing the company's achievements and the ambitions in this space. Moving to the next slide. In the body of our financial year 2024 report, you can read in more detail about all our formal commitments and targets across a wide range of topics, from safety to healthcare, professional education, and from protection of biodiversity to quality and diversity and inclusion.
Given the time constraint of this presentation, I cannot go through all of them in detail, but to those of you with particular interest in those areas, I would encourage you to read it, and we will certainly welcome any feedback that you might have. There's one important aspect worth highlighting in this list, is that we have done in FY 2024, our first greenhouse gas assessment company-wide, including Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. Pleasingly, for this past financial year, the total CO₂ sequestered from our groves alone, not counting the native vegetation, the native vegetation component, neutralized all our Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions with excess sinking capacity.
This is actually a very encouraging result, given the inclusion in these calculations of a fully comprehensive list of Scope 3 emissions and the still maturing profile of our growth, particularly in the USA, which also has been included in the study. Then the last slide or the last sustainability area that I want to highlight is related to increasing the resilience of our operations regarding water usage. After several years working with government agencies and water authorities and undergoing extensive scientific testing, our company has just been granted, a couple of months ago, a 5 GL annual license to sustainably extract and use underground water at expansion and growth, improving clearly our water position, particularly in periods of drought or extreme market volatility. This aquifer contains saline water when the company considers it appropriate.
A modular desalination plant would need to be installed to convert the water to quality levels suitable for irrigation. Fortunately for us, and this is probably a first one for us, we won't be reinventing the wheel, with this, as similar technology is currently being utilized to successfully treat water from the same aquifer to irrigate horticultural crops in the area. We haven't only been working on this area for Australia. Moving to the U.S., we funded a $1 million installation of a 4 km pipeline to the Hungry Hollow district in California. This pipeline services our growers and some neighboring farms, covering almost eight hundred hectares with surface water from the Indian and Clear Lake reservoirs.
The important thing here is that irrigation, irrigating with surface water improves groundwater recharge in this area and that allows for a more sustainable management of the regional aquifer during years of reduced district water allocation. And now we on the last slide, I think we just wanted to highlight that pleasingly all these efforts were independently recognized by several organizations, including our key retail partners, Coles and Woolworths, here in Australia. And also wanted to highlight that all those sustainability efforts are not only linked locally with our USA operations, also achieving the certification to the Leading Harvest Farm Management Standard. That is all what I have for today, so happy now to ask Sam to join me back for any questions that you may have. Sam,
Thanks, Leandro.
Are there any questions?
Sarah, have we got any questions?
Yes, first we've got Larry Gandler's got a question, Sam.
Hi, Larry.
You have to unmute yourself, Larry. That's it.
Okay, great. Thanks, guys, for the question. Congrats on the excellent year. I really am excited about those long-term projections you have for olive oil production in Australia, Sam. It made me think, you know, as you have to look out eight, 10 years when you're planting your trees, when do you sort of think about the need to plant, start planting again? I know you've got CapEx to sort of harvest at the moment. And then, I guess, one of the comments I think I recall you guys talking to was that you'll be able to make use of third-party growers and leverage your existing milling infrastructure in Australia. So can you talk to maybe that sort of capital outlook for the Australian business?
Yeah, no, certainly. I think most of our capital will be allocated to growing U.S. supply, and we've said that before, and I said that during the presentation. In terms of your specific question, you're right, we've got significant supply coming on progressively over the next eight years. We also are working with several parties on planting their own groves on their balance sheet, similar to what we've got with the existing thousand hectares, where they plant groves, we contract with them long-term, process their olives, and market their oil. So yeah, we are continuing to work on that and we're likely to see some of those contracts in the next couple of years.
That will really continue to grow supply beyond that eight-year timeframe, and also utilize some of our excess capacity, particularly at our Boort mill.
To the question regarding the replanting, the yields per hectare that are on the graph, where you see the chart of different age of the trees.
Mm.
that maximum yield is considering a discount, assuming a 2.5% replant per year. Olive trees will typically commercially live for 40 years. But that varies a bit. So in our assumptions, we expect a 2.5% replanting per year, which means that you're gonna have 5% of your trees not productive, and then a larger amount in that sort of growing period. Having said that, we have actually replanted a much more aggressive program, largely forced to try to remove the underperforming Barnea variety trees, which means that we are not anticipating a large replanting program at least for a number of years, because we sort of accelerated that 2.5% per year until now.
So, lastly, is led by tree age, but also by underperforming of the varieties, and certainly that has been done so far.
Okay. And that range of 19 million-23 million L is that the top end and bottom end of that range, is that on your off year, or is that just giving us an average of the average?
That is an average of three years.
Yeah.
That's why we decided to work-
Yeah
... on the average of the two years.
Yep. Okay, great. All right, fantastic, and one other question from me on private label in the USA. It looks like bulk really expanded in the USA, and sorry, not bulk. Private label really expanded in the USA, and branded expanded. Not to take anything away, but I'm just wondering why the emphasis is more on private label. Is that opportunistic? What's happening there?
No, it's a good point. We certainly, a lot of that private label oil went to a key strategic customer.
Mm-hmm.
In hindsight, we overcommitted allocation before harvest. You know, if we had it a time again, we wouldn't have committed as much, which meant we didn't have as much for our brand. Now, what we're expecting in FY 2025 is a much higher proportion of our growth will come from branded sales.
I imagine that will have a positive mix effect on the revenue line.
Yeah, that's right, that's right. Branded supplies is still very important for us. You know, it's been strategically a really important way to work with some of our key customers. So we will continue to supply a private label going forward, and it also allows us to give our cobrand customers the very best of our extra virgin oil, similar to what we've done in Australia over time.
Great. Thanks. I'll leave it to the next question, guys.
Thank you. Now, we've got Charles.
Hi, Sam. Hi, Leandro.
Hi.
Great result. Well done. My question is just on the water, that water license. So should I think of that as a tool that will immediately start to reduce water input costs, or as a tool that just, I suppose, narrows the impact of price volatility for water?
Essentially to narrow or tone down the potential impact of extreme high water prices, you know, when that eventuate.
Okay. No worries. And I've just got one other question. So you put out a long-term number there for your Australian groves, and I'm just wondering about your U.S. groves, and I know you might not want to put out a number, but, you know, you're producing x amount of liters now at 11% maturity. How should I think of the long-term number for those groves in the U.S.?
From the U.S. perspective, we are not really seeing any significant difference between Australia and the U.S.. Although the profile of the growers in the U.S. is clearly younger, we have, let's say, our main of the younger ranches, the whole ranch, about to reach maturity-
Mm-hmm
... and the yield profile. So the way that the yields have increased, you know, from year three to year eight, or is about to move into year eight, has been very consistent and quite similar to Australia. So on a per hectare basis, I would not expect much of a difference in terms of the liters per hectare, over there.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Charles. We've got Mark Tobin.
I guess on the results, just the first question, just around the domestic, the market share gains are impressive. I think, you know, given what's going on and the price increases you've had domestically, just wondering how you see that, going forward, that mix, and does it suggest you put more product into the bottles as opposed to, if you like, the tins? And maybe in context of what's happening globally, like we saw global shortages last year. Sam, did that impact the domestic market, and do you see that changing, going forward as well?
Yeah, I'll talk a little bit about domestic, and then I might throw to Leandro for what's happening from a global perspective. But yeah, we certainly did see a growth in share and really driven by household penetration. The shortage of olive oil on shelf in parts of the year certainly helped us. We wish we had more oil to supply. But yeah, it's really pleasing given the pricing environment. Certainly the work we do around continually educating all our consumers and new consumers around the health benefits and the quality of Australian extra virgin oil; our customers have remained very loyal to us, and what we're by increasing our customer base or household penetration, yeah, we expecting that to really, really set us up in the medium term.
'Cause what we've seen in the past, that consumers that grab our product and try it, that haven't before, are reasonably sticky, and we're certainly seeing evidence of that. In terms of global supply, Leandro, perhaps touch on, you know, your view on global supply and the impact on the Australian market.
Before I explain the global supply, I just always like to clarify that, you know, for all the reasons that Sam stated, you know, how much we invested in educating our consumers over the past 10 years, I think we've done a very good job, teaching them about the unique value proposition behind locally produced, you know, healthy, high quality extra virgin olive oil, to separate that a fair bit from commodity pricing. But I'm not gonna shy away from talking a little bit about Spain. I refer it to Spain to make it simpler, because Spain produces 50% of the oil in the world and a large amount of what gets exported.
Most recent forecast, you know, if you talk about the combination of some of the government and private forecasts, there is a consensus in general terms, that the country is likely to have only a slightly above average crop in this coming twenty twenty-four harvest, about 1.4 million tons. Remember that the Spanish average over the past 10, 11 years has been around 1.25 million tons, so it's only just a little bit more above. Considering the amount of out-of-stocks that the industry has at the moment, certainly pipeline filling is likely to soak up a fair bit of that, and also to rebuild the carryover stocks, which currently have been mined down to, you know, virtually zero.
So when you consider all that, it's gonna be good to have more availability of oil worldwide, but it won't be significantly higher on a month-to-month basis than what we have seen until now. And what we expect that to show is that we are likely to move back to a normal cycle of promotional activities, which, as Sam said, is actually a positive for the industry, because promotional activities help to, you know, reward consumers, you know, drive, you know, trials and penetration. And probably, if I have to throw a couple more things about the international context that I think that are worth considering. On one side, you know, for the past three years, during the drought period in Spain, and not related to the drought, related to other things, the cost of production in Europe had increased by some 30%.
These are sort of official figures. We also know that for two years in a row, large trading companies that publicly present their results have been operating at significant losses, and then on top of that, you throw the climatic thing, where this outlook currently sitting at La Niña watch, which means potentially new dry cycle for the Mediterranean, are all perhaps contributing as well that the situation is gonna remain relatively stable, but we're certainly not in the business of forecasting prices, but we expect that to be the case.
Would it be fair to say then, that if there was shortages in the prior years, that the internal consumption will probably soak up the current year's crop then to a larger extent in Europe?
Certainly when you look at the world situation, the most significant drop of consumption occurred in the producing countries, so Spain, Italy, Greece, experienced a double figure drop in consumption. We haven't seen that in Australia, or the U.S., or Japan. None of those countries, you know, consumption was relatively flat, you know, with increasing prices. In Europe was a drop, and certainly there's a lot of pressure, even political pressure, to lift those consumption levels back again. You know, to the extent that you've probably heard that Spain have removed, the government have removed GST from olive oil on the supermarket level, to try to encourage more consumption and tone down the price rises, so certainly we expect a bit of focus from the company to try to lift back the their domestic consumption.
You got it. And just on the U.S., just two points. Just I'm wondering, with the success of the strategy, attracting more third-party growers, is there potential for that? And maybe in terms of strategy, just talk about the points of presence that you're building in the U.S. as well.
Yeah, certainly, in relation to third-party growers, we're continually working with existing olive growers to put them under contract. There's certainly some. We're seeing a little bit of conversion into olive oil and also farmers that are greenfield planting. So yes, we're actively pursuing more third-party growers, along with the development of our own growth.
And just the points of presence in the U.S., can you maybe expand on that a little bit?
Can you... Sorry, I...
The retail sort of points of presence that you're building in the U.S., in terms of retailers. I thought you alluded to.
Oh, yeah. Okay.
In terms of-
In terms of distribution. Yes.
Yeah.
We've really focused on a couple of things or a few things really in the U.S. Distribution points, so growing distribution points absolutely is our focus. There's a number of retailers and regions we're not even in yet. Also increasing our presence within existing supermarkets, so increasing the number of facings, you know, putting in things like infused lines, so you've got bigger brand blocking, which attracts ... And also, of course, we've through marketing, and we do a lot of in-store marketing in the U.S., which is one of big differences to Australia, trying to promote increased consumption, so increased turn rates within existing supermarkets. A combination of all those three, we expect to continue to drive sales going forward.
Great. And just lastly, so domestically, I know it's early days, but I think the almond blossom's gone pretty well. Just wondering, any comments at this stage? The weather's been benign and not too many frosts. How's it looking in the olive groves?
Yeah, we're certainly not out of the woods yet regarding frost, but certainly so far so good. Olive trees have a much, much delayed development in comparison with almonds. Yes, you're right, it is full bloom in almonds. I was at the groves a couple of days ago, and full bloom in almonds is almost right there, and olives are just starting to move, just starting to wake, you know, from the winter period, and so far, everything is looking on track for that higher expected growth. We certainly hope that that continues, but yeah, there's a long process, but we haven't seen anything yet that could negatively affect the 2025 harvest.
Great. All right. Thank you for your time there.
Thanks, Mark.
No, thank you, Mark. I'm not seeing any more raised hands.
No? Just give it a bit. Yeah, thank you to everyone for joining us. It's great to see so many people on the call, and please reach out, you know, directly if there's any further questions or clarifications. I can't see any more, Leandro.
No, I think it's fine.
There are no more? No.
Thank you very much to all of you for joining us today.
Thank you very much.