Good morning, and welcome everyone. For those online and those in the room, who don't know me, my name's Ed Alexander. I joined Inghams 11 years ago. The reason I joined Inghams wasn't necessarily to join a poultry company, but rather it was to join or be part of a private equity-backed turnaround at the time. We were obviously owned by TPG. For all sense and purposes, my intention at that point in time was to leave the business at the point in time at which, you know, TPG ultimately sold, whether privately or publicly, the business. I came to really enjoy what it is that Inghams has to offer. You know, Inghams offers a very real product that delivers very real value to very real Australians and Kiwis, right across Australia and New Zealand.
It's for that reason that I subsequently stayed on for the next 11 years. You know, obviously the last three roles as Group Strategy Officer, Chief Executive of the New Zealand business, and then very humbled to take on the role of CEO and Managing Director as of the beginning of this financial year. Look, that's me. I'm genuinely excited to be here today and to be provided with the opportunity to present to you, our shareholders, a view of how I think about the business, as well as a view as it relates to the opportunities that are ultimately available to us. I know many of you, I actually saw a few of you have ultimately skipped straight forward to the trading update, I might hit that on the head from the get-go.
We're reaffirming guidance of between AUD 180 million and AUD 200 million pre-AASB 16 EBITDA. I'm incredibly pleased with the way in which the business is responding to the crisis brought about by the Middle East. The impact is certainly material. What we call out in our guidance is a net impact of between AUD 7 million-AUD 10 million brought about namely through increases to cost of fuel. Certainly we're seeing increases to packaging starting to flow through. Whilst we're covered on feed through the end of FY 2026 and into FY 2027, as I'm sure you'd be aware, there's no doubt that that will impact us throughout the course of financial year 2027. At the same time, I'm incredibly encouraged by the response of the business. We're operating according to three pretty clear principles.
The first being that we neither win nor lose through way of price increase. The second being that we ensure adequate labor to run our operations efficiently. I think it's fair to say we've learned through the experience of COVID that labor and having adequate labor to run efficiently is key to this business creating value. Finally, that we never waste a crisis. I know there was significant disappointment as it related to our downgrade at the half, we're using this as an opportunity to significantly address our distribution costs. How do we increase minimum order quantities? How do we redirect transport? How do we optimize routes and ultimately reduce the number of transport miles that our product is going to deliver to tens of millions of Aussies and Kiwis?
Specifically, I suppose, the big levers are being pulled with discipline. We're seeing pricing pass through. We're seeing transport costs net of fuel increases reduced, and we're seeing SKU rationalization improve production efficiency. It's a good example, I think, of an organization which does show time and time again that it's resilient, and it's also able to focus and execute when asked to do so. Outside of the impacts of the Middle East, I'm very pleased to also report that we're growing across both segments. If you look at the latest, we're talking an Australian business that's now growing 1.2% in the nine months through to the end of March. We're also talking about a New Zealand business that's growing 0.5% for a group total of 1.1%.
I think given the impacts of the Woolworths, given that we're lapping in the first quarter, you know, full supply into Woolworths, I think that's extraordinary. I think it goes to show that this business absolutely knows how to grow and can compete effectively within the market. Demand for chicken remains strong, notably brought around by, you know, obviously cost of living crisis increasingly starting to bear its head again. Ultimately, if we're seeing strong demand through retail, that usually results in relatively buoyant trading through wholesale. We're seeing a wholesale channel whose economics have remained relatively robust. Now that I've covered the day, I'm more than happy to take questions as part of the Q&A, as Helen rightly mentioned upfront. Today is really about talking about our future, or certainly the next sort of couple of years.
The last 24 months have certainly been difficult for the business as a result of the changes to the Woolworths contract. We've reflected. I think it's fair to say we've learned. We've changed, as Helen referenced, a lot. We're now starting to see positive results flow through. In terms of essential question that we are trying to answer today is this. It's that, how does Inghams become a structurally stronger business that consistently delivers higher earnings and higher returns? My view is pretty clear. That is that Inghams is not a broken business. It's a high-quality business that has not consistently captured the true value that's available to it. What you will hear from myself and the team is a strategy that deliberately seeks to address this question. It's deliberately sequenced.
As Helen referenced, we stabilize the business first, we optimize the asset second. We grow value from a much stronger foundation. You will see all of that reflected in today's agenda, which we've kept relatively simple and pretty pragmatic. In effect, Clair's going to talk about how we're planning on winning with customers. Susy will talk about cost and the significant value upside that comes from a new approach to operational excellence. Adrian's going to talk about planning, the critical spine of the business, the thing that ensures that the left hand's talking to the right. Matt's going to talk about New Zealand and the continued journey towards NZD 100 million pre-royalty, pre-AASB 16 EBITDA. Caroline is going to talk about growth.
We obviously introduced a new growth function this year, specifically with a view of how do we ultimately start to extract new value from our business, both close to core and beyond it. Then Andrew's gonna talk about our technology strategy. I'm sure many of you would know that three years ago we went down the path of an ERP program. What we will be presenting today is an alternative path, which I think is far less risky and creates the opportunity for far more value as well. Then I'll talk about capital allocation and finish it off with some rounded thoughts. Across the way, we've plenty of time for questions and answers, you'll see that we've also got 25 minutes or so set aside for morning tea, and we should make sure we're all out of here by 12:30.
As I said up front, I spent three years in New Zealand and one of the things that I always admired about the All Blacks, and probably less admired about the Wallabies, was the ability of the All Blacks to play based on the context in front of them. I think what they do incredibly tightly is when they need to, they play it tight and they earn the right to spin it outside. That, at the crux of it, or that concept, sits at the heart of this sequencing. We ultimately earn the right to play it out wide. FY 2026 has been turbulent, our focus for the last 12 months has been on stabilization. That means bringing stability to the executive team. It means balancing supply-demand. It means balancing our product portfolio. It means reducing inventory.
It means returning to normal operating settings, and it ultimately means a return to growth. The second phase has been on optimization, and this is where margins start to expand. We'll be talking about our plan to improve mix. We'll be talking about how we're going about reducing our cost to serve. We'll be talking about the role of stronger planning to deliver that, and we'll be talking about extracting more value from our existing assets and our network. Then on to growth. Growth for us is not about undifferentiated incremental value. Growth for us is about expanding into areas where Inghams has a genuine right to win. It's where consumer insights ultimately suggest, point to significant opportunity. It's where those opportunities are scalable, and it's where ideally we control the raw material input.
I've said on many calls, up until this point in time that it's a frustration of mine, the number of businesses who ultimately rely entirely on our supply chain for their mere existence and who get a better return on capital than we do. At some point in time, I think that Inghams rightly deserves to be playing in those areas of the market. You all would've seen this kind of slide presented many times before through our other strategy updates and/or as part of our, mid or full-year results. Poultry is an incredibly attractive and resilient category. You know, demand continues to grow. It's the most affordable animal protein, we're seeing that expand even further as a result of red meat taking off due to supply shortages over in the U.S.
It's versatile, it's healthy, and it offered high protein before high protein became a significant trend. As a result, consumption is incredible. Right now, within the Australian market, we're seeing consumption per capita sitting roughly 55 kilos per capita and then slightly shy of 50 kilos per capita over in New Zealand. We're also fundamentally a domestic business. I think that at a point in time when across the globe there's significant volatility and uncertainty, that offers value in and of itself. Inghams obviously holds this enviable position within the attractive market, within a category that we have clear strategic advantages. We're firstly the only operator across Australia, New Zealand, and Matt and Kaz will talk about how we intend to create more value through that reality. We've got an integrated national network.
I think if you think about what's happening in the market at the moment across poultry, you're seeing consolidation driving unit cost reduction. We think that there's a better and alternative play to that. It's about how we leverage a national footprint to provide the best, most local, freshest supply into the market, which also provides product and mix optionality. We have deep customer relationships. Clair will point to it shortly. Whilst awards are certainly not everything, over the last six months, we have won Supplier of the Year into Woolworths Fresh. Last week, we were appointed Supplier of the Year, both fresh and frozen into Metcash, and we were finalists with Coles. I'm not saying, as I think Ben quite rightly pointed out, was it a courtesy appointment from Woolworths?
I don't think that's the case. I think if nothing else, I can point to one clear correlation, that's that when you get a prize, it's likely that you're projecting some level of downside as it relates to the business. I'm very proud of the way that the team has turned us into a very customer-centric culture, the prizes have somewhat reflected that. We've got an incredibly trusted household name. You know, you talk to any Aussie or Kiwi across Australia, New Zealand, they all know who Inghams is and what we stand for. My point is simply this, that the question's not whether or not demand exists. The question's not whether or not we have competitive advantage. The question is, how can Inghams leverage its inherent strengths to create and extract as much value as possible from the available demand?
That all makes sense. It's not as simple as that. Despite all this good stuff, we should be very honest about performance and where, ever since listing, it's fair to say we've fallen short. That is the returns on capital have declined, earnings have been inconsistent, and understandably, that has impacted investor confidence. These trends are through to the end of financial year 2025, and obviously they continue to deteriorate as we look at financial year 2026. This is not an easy business to operate, and there are very real and valid reasons for the trends that you see. Complexity and external factors cannot become an excuse for how we think about the performance of this business.
If these trends tell us anything, it's that we need to bring more clarity over time as to what drives positive returns. They tell us that we need to bring more levers, as Helen alluded to, within our control. Finally, we need to improve our approach to capital allocation. The opportunity and starting hypothesis is that over many years, the issue has not necessarily been strategy, but rather on execution. As I reflected on this, I thought, why is it that we as a business have ultimately struggled to execute? I probably landed on three things. The first is the sheer nature of the business. On any given week across Australia and New Zealand, we're tasked with processing almost 5 million birds.
We're tasked with doing it with 8,203 employees, we're tasked with achieving customer service levels north of 98%. That in itself creates complexity. When you then throw in that we didn't go down the ERP path three years ago and therefore we are very reliant on humans as a basis for how we run that system, it creates even further complexity. The second is that ever since listing, I think there's been significant events that have disrupted this business. I'll go back to my first principle. The way in which this business creates value is through stability. Things such as COVID, things such as bird shortages or as Reevesy used to affectionately call it, the lazy roosters, things such as the loss of the Woolworths contract significantly destabilize this business.
As a result, because of the complexity and because of these destabilizing events, all the gravitational pull of the business comes back to today, and you can't then focus on what you're gonna do differently tomorrow. Then finally, I'd say that there's the element of structure as well. Once I get to how I think about our operating model and how I think about how we've segmented the team, it's very clear that we're trying to depict between those who are running the business and those who are ultimately improving the business. I think over time, that will be the key to how we think about change over the medium long term. As a result of these things, you know, we've been focused on the short term, we're responding to crises and we've struggled to really execute and to change how we do things.
Of course, that's probably not sufficient in a world and a market that has changed more than ever. The business has become definitely more complex through a wave of customer diversification. Customer expectations have increased significantly, certainly across the last 11 years that I've been here, and the market has fundamentally become more competitive, with obviously the call-out being Baiada and the new Tamworth facility that's gonna be coming online within a matter of months. The resulting symptoms then, which is what's shown in front of you, are very clear to see. That is operational inconsistency. It's increased capital deployed for lower returns and its competitors who have ultimately moved ahead with the obvious reference point being Baiada and the Tamworth facility.
When I talk about execution, I'm gonna talk about a strategy that's fundamentally different to what else is being executed within the market. We're not gonna be pursuing a commodity scale-it-all cost model. To do so would be an absolute race to the bottom within the Australian market. We're building a structurally more resilient and higher quality earnings model. That means firstly, we're planning to grow at market. We're not planning to take material share, nor are we planning to lose it. Secondly, we're gonna focus on value per bird, and that's not just lifting price. Value per bird the whole way across the supply chain. How do we think about extracting more yield? How do we think about reducing wastage? How do we think about ensuring the right product, right place, right time? How do we think about mix?
How do we think about revenue price management? How do we think about the role of innovation to extract further value? How do we think about things that have historically been seen as waste streams and ingredients and ultimately move them up the value curve? We're gonna compete not just through price alone, but through customer partnerships as well as category leadership. It's fair to say that our consumer insights and category function are a big reason for the awards that I referenced earlier. Finally, we're gonna be directing more capital towards capabilities that don't just take cost out of the business, but ultimately drive better revenue-generating capability. You know, one of my favorite things I keep telling the team is over a very long period of time, you see that 70% of return on capital comes from revenue-generating investments.
Over time, the intention is that we need to direct more of our available envelope towards those areas. This is the kind of strategy house I suppose that we end up landing upon. Everything that's on here is what the team will be talking to you today. It really ultimately, as I said, comes back to this idea of maximizing the value per bird to drive sustainable earnings and growth. It's about reducing waste, improving yield, improving mix, optimizing the network, unlocking value through perceived waste streams, driving innovation, and improving planning discipline. The strategy is also very sequenced. We need to stabilize the business first, which we've largely spent the last 10 months doing our Value for Money audit. We need to optimize the network. Finally, we need to grow new value.
We have three pillars that ultimately underpin the delivery of this ambition. Winning with customers improves mix and improves revenue quality. Unlocking trapped value improves margin and improves cash generation. That creates the capacity to invest in new spaces and invest in future growth opportunities. Supporting all of these are four critical and enabling capabilities. Firstly, our network. As I said, I think it is a latent advantage at the moment, but it's something that we intend on taking advantage of. Secondly is planning, which I'll come back to in a second. Third is digital that Andrew will talk to, and finally, our people. Increasingly, we've come to believe that planning in particular is not just a support function. Planning is the operating system of the business. It connects the farms with processing.
It connects processing with good customer service, good customer service with inventory, with logistics and working capital. It's the spine of the system that needs to make sure that the left hand's talking to the right. To execute this strategy, again, as Helen alluded to up front, we've significantly reshaped the leadership team as well as the operating model of the organization. This has been a genuine reset. We've reduced layers, we've focused accountabilities, and we've built a team that I believe have a pretty strong bias towards execution. I'm incredibly excited by what this team brings and what they're capable of delivering. You'll hear from many of them today, and I'd ask that they briefly introduce themselves as they step up on the stage.
In terms of who you won't be hearing from, Amanda Green joined us two weeks ago as Chief People Officer. Amanda comes from Reece, having spent three years there. Prior to that, she's had multiple roles across various industries and businesses, notably PwC, NAB, and Australia Post. Perhaps the most informative is that she was GM of People, Culture, and Performance at the Richmond Football Club through the years where culture transformed and ultimately Richmond as well as Dusty Martin were completely unstoppable. Secondly, I just want to introduce David West. I did introduce Dave at our AGM this year. Dave has been with Inghams for the last eight years. He previously worked at Simplot, and he's responsible for our further processing turkey and value-add operations. Then we're well-progressed with the recruitment of a new Group Executive Supply Chain Excellence.
Now, this person is gonna be looking after planning, warehousing and distribution, continuous improvement, and engineering. When I talked about we need to delineate between people who work on the business and work in the business, this is the person who needs to be doing that. It's fundamentally about optimizing the business and thinking about how we extract more value from our existing assets. Finally, I do want to acknowledge Gary Mallett, who's decided to step down as of the end of September this year after seven years with the company. Gary's built some great foundations for us to build on, and he's been enormously helpful with my transition on a personal note. As we announced last week, I'm also super excited for Grant Douglas to be joining sometime in mid-October of this calendar year. Grant comes with good ASX experience from Brickworks.
Whilst FY 2026 has been a difficult year and, quite frankly, continues to throw spanners, we're increasingly encouraged by the results that we're seeing. Underlying earnings momentum is improving. I think if nothing else, if you look at that graph of underlying EBITDA pre-AASB 16 for Australia only, you can see the rate of improvement that we're talking about. It's why notwithstanding obviously the December-January period, why I had confidence in us being able to deliver the full-year number and then ultimately felt the need to downgrade. You can see that rate of improvement. I often say to the team, "This is a momentum business." If you've got momentum going in your favor, then you can expect that it's gonna continue for a period longer. If you don't have momentum going in your favor, then it's gonna take a while to turn around.
Operational performance is improving, and the team will reference many data points today for you to take home with you. Inventory is reduced by AUD 25 million from the beginning of this financial year, then new business wins have been secured. As I said, outside of Woolworths, we're growing across every single channel in quite significant way. I think the prizes are reflective, whilst not everything, of where we stand in the business relative to customer partnership as well as relative to customer centricity. Importantly, these are not theoretical improvements. They are tangible signs that the business is stabilizing and that the strategy is beginning to work. We believe that Inghams can become a materially stronger business with better earnings, better returns, and better resilience without needing to become a fundamentally different company.
We should give confidence that there is materially more value still to be unlocked from here. In terms of the key messages that I want you to take away from this opening, the first is that this is an incredible category. We're an incredible category, and we're an incredible business that operates within that category. Secondly is that past returns do not reflect the quality of this business. Thirdly is that execution is the opportunity. Fourth, what we'll be presenting today is a strategy to fundamentally focus on how we extract more value per bird. Finally, that this is a sequence strategy. Near-term stabilization ultimately creates the foundations on which we can achieve future growth. Without further ado, I'd like to invite our Chief Customer Officer, Clair Stevenson, to the stage to talk about our approach to winning with customers. Thanks, Clair.
Lovely. Thank you, Ed. Way of introduction, although Ed has just done that for me, I'm Clair, and I lead our customer team here at Inghams. I've been with Inghams now for three and a half years, and over the last nine months I've stepped into this role. My experience is largely retail, customer, FMCG for the last 20 years, and I'm really looking forward to bringing some of that into my new role. Over the last 12 months, we have continued to diversify our customer base, and there's been some great progress made. Ed has alluded to other retail growth, but I'm pleased to share that our other retail growth is actually at 18% versus last year, which is great considering we were also growing the year prior. We've also had other wins across our QSR customers.
While price has formed part of that conversation, it's just one part of many criteria that our customers look at when they're choosing who they partner with. Over the next 15 minutes or so I'm gonna share with you how do we win with our customers, how does that translate to value for Inghams, and then I'm going to bring some real-life examples so you can see through data how that's going to help us grow. Let's start with how we win with our customers. Through this process of diversifying our customer base, we've got really close to our customers, and we've listened to them. They've been really clear with us what it takes for us to earn their trust and keep their business. Price is just one element of that.
I'm going to share with you the three pillars that we know makes a difference to our customers and we know creates value for not only Inghams, the consumer, but also the customer. It's incredibly important that we get this value equation right because we need to grow value, not just for Inghams but for our customers. Let's talk about this first pillar, which is this idea of freshest. I want to share with you why that's important to a customer. For any of you who've ever walked into a retailer or certainly a QSR, if you're shopping for fresh, you need that to be fresh, and you're probably hunting around for the best shelf life on the shelf. This matters not just for the consumer, but it matters for our retailer.
If you don't get freshness right, it creates incredible waste in the supply chain. That waste erodes value for not only the retailer, the consumer, and of course us. We have a privileged network which enables us to be close to our the customer's DCs. It enables us to give our customers the freshest product. That's what we'll be focused on when we think about partnering with our retailers and our QSR partners. They've told us this matters. Equally, our customers, you would have seen this, whether that's on a QSR menu or if you walk through a retailer, poultry is becoming the center of their strategy. Every retailer is looking at how do we win with fresh, how does poultry play up in that space? Every QSR is looking at how does poultry form a bigger part of their menu.
They need to have partners that can support them on delivering that product at its freshest. Secondly, this idea of most trusted. You need to be able to supply that product on time in full. If there's a QSR out there that only has poultry on the menu and it doesn't receive poultry, it loses value. It's only going to be partnering with people that can support them in making sure that the supply is there on time in full. To do that, we need to make sure that our planning is right, and you'll hear more from that from Adrian later on. A key enabler for us being the most trusted is about making sure that we deliver on time. It's also about ease of business. It's also about making sure we do what we say we're going to do. Lastly, this idea of differentiation.
Each retailer, each QSR partner, each food service customer, they're all competing with their own competition. They need products on shelf or on their menu that are different to their competitors. Whilst freshness and supply will be part of that, offering propositions that are different to our competitors is what's gonna set us apart, and Caroline will share more about that later. The key here is category partnerships are what creates more value in the relationship. The number one thing I want you to take away from this slide is that our goal here is to shift from supplier to growth partner, and we are already making progress on that, and I'll share some data points with you in a moment. None of this can be done without great execution, and that's execution on our consumer insights.
That's execution on our commercial excellence, which I'll share with you in a moment. We have to be disciplined in how we go to market with these customers. Then lastly, our planning discipline. That's where we create the most value. Let me bring to life with you some of the value we think we can create by getting this right. We've reviewed our channels, our customers, and our products, and we've identified where is the most value for us, which channels can we partner with where we create value as well as get value for us and our customers. Equally within that channel, who are the customers that we can partner with? Who can we leverage our network to give them what they need and ensure that we're elevating the conversation beyond price into a category partnership?
Lastly, within those customers, what's the right product mix and portfolio that's gonna drive the best outcome for everybody? The key here, it has to create value for everyone in that equation to ensure it's sustainable. We've identified an AUD 30 million opportunity by getting that mix right. That's reviewing our trade spend. It's making sure we're putting promotions on the right products that get consumers to trade up into product formats that create more value. It's about making sure we're focused on channels that create more value and moving material into those channels. I'm gonna give you a live example of one product that's created a significant incremental net net sales. Lastly, we must embed pricing discipline as we do this. We've got a great stabilized customer base.
We now need to optimize the value that comes from those customers, and then we can move into the growth phase, which Caroline will share more on how we differentiate. Let me bring this to life for you with a couple of data points. Unashamedly, I will always start with what the customers told us, and I'm not going to talk about awards. I'm going to talk about what they've told us in verbatim. Many of you will be aware there's an Advantage survey, which is an industry survey. It's done annually. Three years ago, we were in the bottom quartile.
Our customers were telling us, "You are not hearing us, that you're not delivering to our needs." Pleasingly, I can stand here today and say that we're in the top quartile when it comes to protein, and we're actually rated number one when it comes to the poultry supplier of choice. That's incredibly important lead indicator for us that we must keep an eye on, and that forms and stabilizes our relationships. We've introduced a voice of customer program that we'll be running every quarter to ensure that we're delivering and doing what we said we would. Even more pleasingly, I've told you how important category is so that we can drive the category. Our customers have told us that Inghams are the number one choice when it comes to category partnership. Let's talk about some numbers.
When we talk about optimizing that stable customer base, I want to share with you two things. One, we've actually just launched our Commercial Excellence function. That's now up and running. It's been going now for about six-nine months. That function is there to centralize how do we go to market, how do we make sure we don't leak value, how do we create value by moving material into the highest value channels, customers, and products. We've already started that journey. The AUD 30 million is where we see the opportunity. I'm really pleased to say that with one product, and I want to take you through this example, it was in a lower value channel.
We partnered with a key channel and a customer within that space to move that material into a value-added product, and that was an incremental AUD 3 million net sales on that one SKU. There is so much opportunity if we can optimize and execute brilliantly. Then just to show you how we're going to continue to grow, I just wanted to bring to life for you how much headroom there is in this category. What you can see there on the right-hand side is, as we trade up the value chain, what consumers are looking for, they're all growing faster than category. We start with tray pack packaged breast, which is growing at 10%. That's also the highest value versus some of those more commodity lower value channels. Then there's a significant 47% premium if we move it into a free-range breast fillet.
Equally, if you combine that with a value add, there's a 74% premium just by getting consumers to trade up into value add. This requires mix, trade planning, discipline, but it also requires great category insight to show the retailers how can they range these products, how can they go to market, and how do we maximize value when we're working on those categories. Caroline will share more later about how we're gonna innovate in the space even further. A couple of key message I'd like to leave you with. One, we are shifting, and we've already started this journey from volume-led to value-led growth. I want to be clear, we will still care about volume, but we'll care far more about mix and price. Category partnerships absolutely unlock superior economics. They ensure that we've got a stable base and ensure that we can partner to create value together.
We have a network that enables us to deliver to a differentiated customer proposition. We have a unique network that enables us to do that at a national scale. Commercial discipline is improving earnings already, that will continue to be something that helps us grow. Lastly, innovation and formats will expand value per bird simply by ensuring we move the consumer up the value curve. Now, I'll hand over in a moment to Susy and Adrian, who'll share with you how do we pull more value from our operations. It's not just with the customer. Equally, how do we make sure that we embed our planning? To win with our customers, we don't have to be the cheapest, we do need to create value. To win, we must be the partner of choice. Our customers are telling us that we are. Thank you.
Thanks, Clair. Good morning, everybody. My name's Susy Klein. I'm heading up our agribusiness and primary processing and ingredients operations. I've been with the business for 30 years, about 20 years in the technical services space, looking after food safety and quality, animal health and productivity and R&D. The last 10 years in our operations space across primary, further processing, and also in our agribusiness space again. What we've just learned from Clair this morning is how we're changing the way we win with customers to unlock more value out of every bird that we process within our organization. What I would like to take you through now is what will happen within the four walls of operations. The message is quite clear. There's more value in this business than we are currently capturing. Over the last three years, we know that our business has changed rapidly.
The Unlock Trapped Value strategy is grounded in realigning our operational execution to that change in our business and our new business model, extracting full value from the network, assets, and footprint that we already have in place. In operations, inconsistent execution across the network has been suppressing the value of our business. Removing that variation through executional stability, standardized sites, site performance, and realization of our capital investments present significant levers to create value within our organization. It's important to note that this is an evolution of a base up continuous improvement program by combining site-led improvement with operational execution and a systemized enterprise-wide operating model. Scaling our capabilities to utilize the whole bird through harvesting of high-value ingredients and optimizing assets such as our turkey operation are other levers that we will pull to extract value from the business. The economic logic is quite straightforward.
Unlocking trapped value is under our control, and it doesn't rely on external tailwinds. The identified opportunities present a pathway to deliver an EBITDA uplift of AUD 100 million over the next three years. What does unlocking trapped value look in practice? Primary processing meat yield is a clear example of this, demonstrating a steady return to baseline throughout H1 FY 2026 and a sharp uptick throughout H2 FY 2026. As we identify best practice, we stabilize our operations across the network, and we maintain disciplined execution. This is delivering an AUD 10 million annualized benefit to our bottom line. Similarly, implementation of a standardized labor tool, in particular, in its first iteration for management of overtime has created the right visibility and accountability at site level, removing variance before it becomes cost. This is a different operating rhythm, and it's already delivering marked savings.
Transport efficiency is another good example of how we're realigning the operating model to the new business model. When we actually map our network flows, we look at what we're producing, we look at where it needs to go. We identify that there are significant cost to serve inefficiencies that have become embedded in our business, particularly over the last couple of years. In addressing these inefficiencies and using tools such as AI-enabled route planning, we can unlock those inefficiencies and you can see that savings are immediate and they are growing. Across transport, labor, network efficiency, packaging and waste, the pipeline of savings continues to grow. The important thing is that these examples validate that the approach we're taking is systematic, it's effective, and we're pulling multiple levers at the same time. It's gaining momentum to deliver a AUD 20 million value to the bottom line.
Capital. We've deployed significant capital across the business in the last two years. Some examples are here. An automated cut-up line and single line processing flow at Osborne Park, which we're calling Osborne Park One Touch. We have a new fully cooked processing capability at Lisarow, which is unlocking AUD 4.6 million per annum in benefit and, more importantly, further strengthening our partnerships with key retail and QSR customers. Automated tray packing in South Australia and Queensland, delivering significant efficiency and labor improvements. These assets will be fully operational by the end of FY 2026. The opportunity now is to realize their full potential. The work that I've already talked about that's already underway in scheduling, labor planning, for example, this builds a robust operating model around which we can unlock the benefits of these automation opportunities. They are best-in-class assets.
They have long-term strategic importance to the business, very importantly, they are clearly aligned to our customer partnerships. The opportunity now is to fully monetize them. This is a low risk, low capital, fast payback path to earnings improvement, it is entirely within our control. Finally, ingredients. Ingredients harvesting is a direct expression of the Value for Bird strategy. We're extracting more material from exactly the same bird without requiring incremental increases in volume or more capital spend. There's two connected levers here. The first is harvesting more usable material from the existing bird. The second is redirecting that material, which has historically flowed into lower value markets, into higher value customer channels. Project Pluto is proof of this approach, delivering an AUD 5 million incremental EBITDA impact against an AUD 8.5 million investment within the first year.
Investment in plate freezing capability allows us to develop strategic partnerships with pet food manufacturers, demonstrating that we have an effective model in place and then allowing us to upscale. The growth in harvesting volume that you can see on the slide, up 15% year- on- year, underpins this opportunity, and it's the starting point for the growth platform. As primary processing continues to improve, volume flowing into the ingredients platform grows and earning upside scales accordingly with that. This is exactly the kind of mix shift that we're talking about that will improve the quality of our earnings as we move into higher value markets from lower value commodity channels. In closing this section, the message I would like you to take away is very straightforward. The value was always there.
What has changed is that our business move quickly and our operational model needs to catch up. In that process, our inherent value became trapped. In identifying that gap, putting the right focus across it and discipline of execution, you can see that early results demonstrate that the opportunity is real, the approach is working, and that momentum continues to build. Stable, disciplined execution is how we rebuild our earnings quality, improve returns on capital already invested, and create the platform for what comes next. Over to Adrian, who will take you through how planning sits at the center of all of this.
Good morning. I'm Adrian Wilson. My title is Group Executive, Enterprise Alignment and Corporate Affairs. My job is creating and embedding the performance systems inside the business that ultimately determine how we run the business more effectively, how we grow, and making sure that our stakeholders outside the business, our 8,203 people inside the business, understand where we're going, what our strategy is, and how to align to it. I'm gonna talk to you this morning about planning, which you've heard already referenced a number of times. We're referencing it because it is one of the most significant and controllable value levers that we have inside the business. I just want to touch on what we mean by planning. Ed's described, I think, the challenge of a short shelf life perishable supply chain that we operate with.
Every week across Australia and New Zealand, we process almost 5 million birds. The birds come in different shapes and sizes. The birds were set against a variable demand signal that we determined about 13 weeks prior. We take these birds, we turn them into over 1,000 SKUs, and once processed, they have about 12-18 days of shelf life. They must get to customers with a minimum of eight-nine days of shelf life with 98% customer service level. Essentially, 98% of orders received are fulfilled within these terms. That's the challenge of operating this business. To coordinate this, as Ed's indicated, we have established planning processes and analytical tools to help us do this, but the system is still too dependent on expert judgment and manual coordination.
Ultimately, we end up with too much focus concentrated on short-term execution and often optimization against a narrow set of objectives. Nothing this looks like we wanna make sure the birds are balanced, we wanna make sure the plants are utilized. While this supports localized performance, it sometimes creates system costs and missed opportunities that aren't always fully accounted for. These impacts were amplified in the aftereffects of the Woolworths supply chain. As you've heard from Clair, we've made really significant progress diversifying our customer base. The changes to the product mix we serve, the geographical distribution of our demand, they drive complexity. We have more orders, more SKUs, more deliveries, and our planning processes were not well-equipped to optimize these.
In this context, in a nutshell, the opportunity we're pursuing is to build a stronger planning capability that acts as an effective control tower for the business with a longer horizon of focus and a greater ability to integrate and optimize all the variables that sit across the full supply chain. This means joining up decisions across demand, supply, cut balance, inventory, network flow and utilization that you just heard about from Susy. Freight, customer service, all of which ultimately flow into our cost position, our revenue position, and our service results. In doing so, you've heard Ed use the language this morning that planning has to be the spine of our business. This ambition is complementary to all the things that you heard about this morning from the team. Elevating planning in this way will support the operational stability that Susy's just described.
That is what lets us unlock track value from the network. It's critical to creating the consistency of delivery that Clair's talked about to deliver customer trust. It's essential to help us realize the full value of the bird and leverage the full utility of the distributed network that Ed's talked about as well. We believe that getting it right will unlock AUD 30 million of direct EBITDA upside, I'll take you through the basis for that in a second, as well as support working capital release. The plan is to unlock this progressively over the next three years. To do it, there's three parts. Pardon me. Give everybody a chance to catch up on the slide. Three parts to do it. The first thing we've got to do is extend our horizon of focus.
I talked before, and Ed's talked as well, about a lot of our attention gets absorbed in the executional window. By that we mean kind of the two weeks before we end up with the birds and have to turn them into something. What we need is to push our focus to what we call the tactical timeframe. That's the 13 weeks, the two- 13 weeks time in which we're putting birds into production. Beyond that, 13 weeks out to 18 months, which is the time where we can really do the kind of optimization that Clair's talked about in terms of shaping our mix and ultimately improving outcomes. Extending our focus, that's a process of org structure, ultimately, and process improvement.
The second part is creating greater visibility of the key variables that we have in the business further out, so that we've got more opportunity to optimize supply chain performance. This means bringing together more joined up and granular data so that we can model constraints, test scenarios, identify and make more informed trade-offs, and do this with more time and better levers available. This part's fundamentally a data capture and data integration challenge. The third part over time is improving the speed and accuracy and the quality of decisions. This is something that technology and systems improvement can help us with, and you're gonna hear more from Andrew this morning about how our forward-looking technology platform will help to enable this. As you can see on the screen, a number of changes we've made are already in place that support this program.
We've reorganized the planning organization around a horizon-based operating model. We've elevated executive focus through the creation of the group executive supply chain role. We're in the process of developing a machine learning-based demand planning solution. Sits at the heart of a refreshed demand planning process. It's an example of the modular way we can deploy these improvements over time. We've also made improvements in the way our technical planning levers are deployed, and you can see the results of that in the first half improvement in frozen inventory that Ed's also talked about this morning. By delivering this program, we believe there's approximately AUD 30 million of EBITDA available that can be progressively unlocked over the next three years. This happens in four ways.
Firstly, better mix and margin realization, particularly through part-level optimization of how, what we turn those birds into and how we put them in the marketplace. It's completely complementary to the commercial excellence and revenue management upside that Clair's talked to. The second is lower waste, making sure that we're matching demand, supply, and inventory to reduce the amount of product we have to clear or discount. The third is working capital, reducing excess inventory and making sure stock's held in the right place across the network. The fourth is lowering our network cost, reducing avoidable freight, handling, storage, and rebalancing activity across the network. To sum that up, planning is one of the biggest controllable value levers we have in the business.
Our intent is to make planning the spine of the business, looking across a longer horizon with better visibility so that we can optimize for and control critical business outcomes. The improvement to unlock this is underway, and the prize directly is AUD 30 million of EBITDA over the next three years. To conclude on our outlook for unlocking trapped value, the key messages to take away from this is our belief that the fastest path to earnings recovery is already embedded in the business. We've sized AUD 130 million of EBITDA improvement phased from these operational improvement activities, that in the course of bringing those to life, planning will become the spine of the business. There is significant overlooked value in value streams like ingredients and byproducts. Critical to what Susy and I have demonstrated, momentum is building inside the year behind this.
You're seeing those results flow through. With that, I'll hand over to Matt Easton, from our Chief Executive of New Zealand.
Thanks, Adrian and Susy. Good morning, everyone. I'm Matt Easton, Chief Exec of our New Zealand business. I've been with Inghams for almost 11 years, the first half of that in Australia and the second half back in New Zealand. Prior to this role, I was General Manager of Operations in New Zealand. As many of you who follow Inghams would already know, New Zealand's a strategic market for the Group. Today, I'll share why that's the case, what our key priorities are, how we're progressing, and what to expect from the New Zealand business as we move forward. In New Zealand, Inghams provides over 8 million servings of chicken each week through our diversified customer base, which spans all major channels. Retail is our largest channel, where we have long-running supplier relationships with each of the major banners across butchery, deli, and frozen departments.
We've been ranked number two, sorry, number one poultry supplier in New Zealand for the last two years. We also enjoy higher share into Tier 1 QSRs, which is enabled by our strengths in quality, product development, and higher animal welfare. Across our fantastic set of brands, Inghams SPCA Barn Raised, Waitoa Carbon Zero Free Range, and Bostock Brothers Organic Chicken, we have distinct propositions and products, leading volume and margin growth for the category. These brands give us pricing power, generating around 50% higher margins than equivalent non-branded product. The market we operate in is favorable and balanced. There are four processors, and Inghams is one of only two that are completely vertically integrated. By that I mean with feed mill, breeder farms, and hatchery providing the upstream farming needs to the rest of our operation.
Inghams is number two by market share, with approximately a third of the volume. We have the largest processing site in the country, affording us significant operational advantages that gives us economies of scale. Importantly, half of New Zealand's population live within three hours of our primary processing site. Our scale and location give us a structural cost advantage that compounds over time, and one we'll continue to expand. I'll touch a bit more on that soon. Two important acquisitions over the last 2.5 years have fundamentally strengthened the market position we enjoy in New Zealand. Through the 2023 acquisition of Bromley Park Hatcheries and Hatchery, we became self-sufficient in our day-old chick supply. The acquisition also increased the resiliency of our network by adding a second hatchery and additional breeder farms.
Pleasingly, after implementing the Inghams farming system here, our key performance metric of chicks per hen has increased by 30%. This shows the value of our global best practice farming system and the capabilities of our farming team. The 2024 acquisition of Bostock Brothers, New Zealand's only organic chicken brand, extended our branded portfolio, bringing with it thousands of loyal consumers both domestically and internationally, who connect with the brand and align with what it stands for. This acquisition also improved our operation resilience by adding a second primary processing site to our network. Both acquisitions are delivering in line with our investment case. One final differentiator for our New Zealand business is our position within the Inghams Group.
We're the only company operating across both Australia and New Zealand. Recent changes to our operating model are helping us take advantage of this to generate additional value for our customers. We have a strong value, valuable position in New Zealand. The market's favorable. We have the largest site giving us cost advantage. We also have the best portfolio of brands which give us pricing power. This gives us conviction and future opportunities. Our strategic priorities for New Zealand align with the same three pillars that you're hearing about today across the Group, albeit applied to the New Zealand context. Unlocking trapped value. Opportunities exist to unlock further value within our network. As I said, we have the largest processing site. At that site, we have a five-year automation program to extend those cost advantages further.
The roadmap was significantly informed by a European study tour in 2023. That gives us a clear perspective of where we can take the Te Aroha plant and the moves we need to make to get there. Processing yields, which is harvesting more of the meat already grown into higher value streams, and labor, our second-largest cost after feed, are the most significant and directly controllable levers at our disposal. The same execution discipline, which Susie spoke to earlier, applies in New Zealand too. We're implementing it with the same rigor. I'll shortly share what we've already delivered. We've identified key areas to improve how we move products throughout our network and deliver to our customers. These include removing non-value-added steps between us and the customer and improving our customers' visibility of product movements.
This will improve our ease of doing business for our customers and our customer relationships and reduce our cost to serve. Winning with customers. To create greater partnership value going forward, we're focusing on three things. Category leadership, bringing the richest and most valuable, actionable insights from Australia and New Zealand. Recent changes to our operating model, which Ed's touched on, and the establishment of the group-wide growth function, which Caroline will speak to some of these insights generated soon. Brand. We're investing further behind the Inghams, Waitoa, and Bostock Brothers brands to ensure each brand keeps earning and growing space with consumers and retailers. Continued marketing investment paired with consumer-led innovation will ensure our branded portfolio remains at the front of category and margin growth.
In customer partnerships, we're deepening our relationships with customers founded on the principle that a partnership approach will deliver more value than a transactional approach, than a transactional one. We intend to continually raise the bar with our customers and what matters most to them across reliable service levels, consistent quality, animal welfare credentials, ease of doing business or product development that helps them grow their categories. Finally, innovating for growth. We've expanded the Bostock Brothers farming capacity with the construction of five new sheds, which will drive an increase of around 20%. That will help us meet growing New Zealand demand, growth into export markets and the launch into Australia. Every additional organic or free-range bird that we grow lifts our value per bird.
There's also a sizable opportunity in ingredients and pet food, so I won't repeat the business case, which Susy's already shared, but I do want to repeat that opportunity exists in New Zealand too, and there's also an opportunity to tap into New Zealand provenance, particularly with our pet food customers who export into the global market. Let's take a look now at some of the progress we've made. As you can see here, our branded products are showing double-digit volume growth. In calendar year 2025, our branded revenue was up more than 20% on 2024. Our brands are delivering growth for our customers and improving our overall mix and expanding our margins. Our structural cost advantage. As I alluded to earlier, our automation program is delivering returns ahead of the original business case.
Through these investments, we've expanded capacity, supporting both growth and higher-value mix. We've lifted yield by between 1-3 percentage points, improving our revenue per bird. This is a very capital-light way of adding capacity into our network. We've also lifted our labor productivity, lowering unit cost and improving operational resilience. In total, we've delivered AUD 3 million to AUD 4 million of annualized run rate cost reduction. We have that favorable roadmap ahead of projects, which will follow our capital framework and continue to grow our revenue, lift capacity, and improve productivity. Putting these together, our pathway to a NZD 100 million EBITDA, I should add that we're measuring that's New Zealand dollar EBITDA, is built on the three-phase plan Ed introduced: stabilize, optimize, and grow.
We've made good progress on stabilization over the last couple of years, now our focus is on optimizing the network and growing value to close the gap of the 100%. The key points I'd like you to take from today are, the New Zealand market is structurally attractive, we occupy number two position out of four players. With these market conditions, we believe outperformance will come from lifting our value per bird, not just chasing volume. Our distinct portfolio of brands spanning good, better, best, are performing well and bringing growth to the category and delivering mix and margin improvement. We're well-positioned having the largest site, 50% of New Zealand is within a three-hour drive. These cost advantages are being extended through the automation program underway.
With the revenue growth, cost programs, and identified areas of new value, we have a pathway to AUD 100 million EBITDA in 2030. Thanks for your time. I'll now pass on to Caroline.
Hi, everyone. For those that I haven't met, my name is Caroline Hayes. I'm the Chief Growth Officer for Inghams. Before I joined the Inghams business over almost seven years ago, I spent a lot of my career in supply chain and procurement before moving into sales and marketing, and worked for some well-known brands like Mars and Blast Masters here in Australia and New Zealand. As Matt has shared, New Zealand has had the pleasure of very strong success over the last few years. Before stepping into the Chief Growth Officer role 10 months ago, I led sales and marketing for the New Zealand business. We obviously had a lot of strength around our branded portfolio and the growth that we saw, double-digit growth, revenue and margin.
When, when I reflect on that period and the strong success that we had, I think there was one key learning, which is it's not the strength of the brands alone that allow that growth over time. It's very much we understood what was the consumer insight, what were the key consumer drivers, what's missing in the category or channels that aren't delivering on that need, and then how do we bring the right propositions that are delivering on an unmet consumer need. I think a lot of that learning over the last few years has given us some really good foundation to understand how do we grow the business ahead over the coming years. What I'm hoping to take you through today is how we will build a more repeatable value creation model over the coming years at Inghams.
There's three key distinct earning streams that we're looking at and that you would have heard over the course of today. I think importantly, whilst they're distinct, they're also very interconnected when you look from consumer-led demand through to ingredients and how we plan to extend into the future. I think when we look at consumer-led demand, there's a lot of examples today, not just on our branded portfolio and how we've grown value over time. I think as Clair has shown, there's been a lot of very good benefit around how we've shifted mix over the last 12 months. When we look and we step back and we say we've had good success across changing our mix and growing margin, we still feel that there's a lot of untapped opportunity for us to go after.
When we look at consumer-led demand, there's insights, there's drivers, there's companies around us that are very focused on these needs of the consumer, whether it's through convenience, protein plus, the high protein demand, and we already see opportunities that we're starting to build over the coming months. When we look at ingredients, I think that's a very good example whereas Ed has shared how do we maximize the value of the bird that we already have. It's not necessarily about processing more volumes, but the volumes that we already have, how do we extract more margin? Susy has shared Project Pluto. How do we take and make sure that we're moving further down the supply chain and extracting more margin, which has had a lot of success investing AUD 8.5 million and generating an incremental AUD 5 million EBITDA.
I think another recent example we've had in New Zealand, is we looked at the stocks and broth and soups category, and we said there's companies around us that already use our material and then deliver a much higher value product to the market. We've just recently launched Waitoa Free Range Bone Broth, so that's our first entry into a new category. Ultimately, it's 30% more margin than where that material goes today. I think whilst in reality it's small, it's an example of there's a lot more opportunities beyond that for us to go after. Platform expansion, so as Ed often says, there's companies around us that make very high margin growth from utilizing our material. How are we very clear on how we're gonna play in those categories and channels?
Once we've earned the right after delivering sustainable and continued performance over the coming years, how do we move into new areas that are in high category growth? I think when we step back at the three key earning streams, hopefully it's very clear that poultry remains the engine. What we're looking at is it's not going to define the boundary of where we grow into in the future. I think looking at the high value streams, there are opportunities. We're very clear on where we can win in new areas. As Matt shared, we do see that our trans-Tasman model should give us an advantage relative to our competitors across ANZ.
This starts with really understanding what is the consumer need, what are the insights, what's in high growth that we can go after, what are the propositions we're gonna bring to the market. As Ed shared, distinctive propositions is where you get your margin growth. If you're bringing the same propositions that already exist, it's always going to be end up a race to the bottom. Insights become critical. We have 30 million ANZ consumers that we can leverage our insights from. New Zealand is our test market, I think bone broth is a good example of how we're launching that into the New Zealand market, ultimately we prove that out, then we scale it into the Australian market. Another good example was Bostock Brothers.
I think from acquiring a business and growing it over the last two years, we're now very good organic poultry farmers. We're always very good at non-organic, but now we've a very good appreciation of what it takes to grow an organic company. Ultimately, what New Zealand allows us to do is test scale in a smaller market, and then once we've proved that out, bring it to Australia and scale it and ultimately deliver more value. How we see that all coming together ultimately over time, that's what should allow us to have a scale-scaled portfolio that shows that we show up in other categories outside of where we play today. This is a bit of an insight into how we're thinking from how consumer insights are translating to opportunities in the market. There'll be nothing new in here.
When you look across convenience, nutrition, experience, these are macro shifts that every food company in Australia is talking to at the moment. When we look at the total addressable market across these three platforms, it's AUD 2.6 billion that we have a right to play within. It's an addressable market. The work ahead is what are the kinda key segments that we're gonna play within those markets. Which we've already started working on. I think importantly, CAGR is growing strongest across the areas that we're looking at. I think whether it's insights on GLP-1 usage or the move to higher protein, there's lots of opportunity for us to play with the material that we already have. Some examples of propositions. I think importantly, they're not a product success.
I think if you take Ingham's crunchy fix in New Zealand, that was a very focused need on how do we premiumize the freezer. We heard from consumers, they said, "I want to feel like I'm cooking something that feels more premium at home." We brought out this range 12 months ago, and it's after growing the freezer category by 39%. I think Waitoa bone broth is another example which I've spoken to. 30% margin lift compared to the next best sale. Outside of brands, I think Zeus Street Greek is a great collaboration that we had with Zeus, Woolworths, and we saw an increase of 38% new customers to the category.
I think what those examples say is it's not about the individual product and ranges that we're bringing to market, but it's how do we be really clear in what the proposition we're trying to solve for is. Wrapping it up, I think when we look across, as I've shared, insights become very critical. I think when we look at everything from ingredients we've spoken to today that we see it as a major opportunity for us to go after. We have some tests that we'll be proving out, we're getting the results for, but we see it as a much larger market that we can take advantage. We have all the raw material inputs, it's now where do we choose to put that material into higher margin and higher growth categories.
We're already starting to see mix structurally improve, there's still tons of opportunity for us to go after over the next coming years on where we're going to play in the market and ensure we're playing in the right places. Ultimately, when we look at the three streams coming together, we should have a portfolio that enables us to move to parts of the market where we can premiumize, but we're also not cannibalizing the core. Ultimately, that's what allows us to both execute on the values that you've heard today, but also how do we grow EBITDA further into the future. That's it from myself, and I think I'm passing over to Ed, who's going to run a Q&A session.
Thanks, Kaz. We did a dry run of this, we went over by about an hour or so. I asked the team to make sure that they focus on their lines, and they obviously spent the weekend doing just such 'cause we're probably 15 minutes earlier than anticipated. What I might ask is that the people who presented, I appreciate we've only got two chairs up here, but perhaps if you could line up, and I'll just field questions. I think Brett. Is Brett here ? There's Brett. Brett, firstly, I think I'm taking questions from the room.
Yeah, I think so. We'll start with the room then check with the folks. There's nothing online I think.
Okay. Sure. All right. Go for it. Oh, microphone. Sorry.
Okay. Craig Woolford from MST Marquee. I've got really one question, but I'm sure we'll get a chance for some more. There's a lot of focus throughout the presentations on the word execution and the meaning behind that. We certainly agree. What is the company going to do to measure execution, and just as importantly, share with shareholders and analysts?
Good question, Craig. I think what I'd quite like to do at the back end of the deck, I'll get it in my closing thoughts. We've got effectively three horizons that talk about stabilize, optimize, and grow. Over time, what I wanna do is keep coming back to the market with where we are relative to that journey and kind of overlay it with some of the key projects and initiatives that we talk about today. Quite frankly, if you look at the Ridley presentation and how it's evolved over time, it's stealing effectively from that sense of things. I think internally we'll have a stronger sense as well as to what our balanced strategic scorecard is. You know, which hopefully that allows us to hold ourselves to account for delivering on what we say we're gonna do. Keep going.
Are we getting quantified measures on execution or you're just?
We'll keep working on that. I mean, I think as you and I chatted about, prior to me stepping into the role, you know, I hope that what the market sees is, from myself as a CEO, is wanting to rate the lead on how we're operating and performing and increasing the transparency that you get from the business. As over the next six months, we intend to make sure that that finds its way into our presentations. Whether it is showing a kind of view on how mix is evolving on ingredients, you know, our volume of ex-in-ingredients is expanding, you know, we'll make sure that we're giving you the information that allows you to make sound judgment on how we're operating as a business.
Is that an invitation for one more question?
Yeah, yeah.
Sure. Just in terms of the market opportunities, there's a bit more on ingredients than I expected. Just at a baseline, what is your market share in sort of basic or primary processed product versus value add and also free range? I think we have a good feel on New Zealand where you do have a better mix across those three product areas. What about in the Australian market?
Yeah. Total Australian market share is give or take 30% across the board. I think we then say of that, I'll go to kilograms as opposed to anything else. Let's call it 8,000 tons a week is what our sellable core product is. Of that, we've got 1,200 tons a week that goes into further processed. Call that sort of your nuggets and tenders, et cetera of the world. Value enhance is slightly skewed because our biggest SKU, biggest single SKU remains the roasted, and we're selling give or take 800 tons a week of that. I'd say just go Value enhance must be 1,300-1,400 tons as well, that sort of number.
Yeah. Just give a little bit on flow of process. Yeah. You're talking sort of to the market's about 20%-25% on value enhanced. As we say, the whole roast chook is in there. However, there's still opportunities to keep that growing. We over-index in the value enhanced in retail, which is good. From a further processed, in the most recent market read year to date, Caroline, we're actually the market leaders now when it comes to freezer brand, which is a significant step change. That's over 34% and growing in terms of total market retail.
Thanks. Jonathan Snape, Bell Potter. Look, just one question. A lot of it was around processes. Have you actually got the systems in place today where each of these plants can talk to one another and make sure it can do it from that week two to week 13? Is there some kind of investment that has to go on behind it to unlock that kind of number?
Yeah. I mean, look, we've got systems in play in so far as, you know, we've got good processes set up that are reliant on humans, yeah, effectively saying yes or no as it relates to the capability and/or capacity. You know, I'd say we do a very good job with what we've got today. You know, as Andrew will say, the systems could become inherently more complex, and we do need to start leaning on technology if we're gonna start to optimize it. Yeah, you may notice that even though we're talking about planning is the spine of the business, you know, for the last 11 years, it's been the most important process still within the business. We're just saying that we ultimately need to significantly enhance it and really need to invest behind it as well.
I mean, there needs to be some big central system, possibly like an ERP.
No, we won't be looking at ERP. As Ace referenced, you know, our first step is around building a demand planning tool. We've got a partnership in place with Amazon, and we're in the process of building that at the moment. Then our next step is to look at, you know, what is a more kind of optimized planning system in totality. Maybe, Ace, do you wanna.
Yeah, sure. Yeah, I suggest, I mean, I think the word I used in the presentation was it's progressive, so not a big bang. It's not something that's gonna suck up lots of cost to get to the next step. Andrew will talk about this more when we do talk about technology, that when you, when you break it down across the planning levels, there's a lot better we can do now. There's a lot better. I talked about the fact that we have made operating model change and process change, and that is really about using the opportunity for improvement on tools and process enablement. There's a lot more we can do. There's value we can absolutely get out of today's processes better. That's the first step. As we go, there is a point.
You made a good point there. We go, the optimizations get complex. The idea of data has to be better, reputation has to be better, process has to support it. That's not the starting point for what we're talking about. There's a pathway to get there. There's material value we can get out of doing planning better, and it does require significant technology investment.
Ajay from Macquarie. Just a question around the days life that you talked about in terms of getting the shelf life required and the 98% across the board for your customers. Can you talk to any data points you have around your competitors and how they sort of what level of day slot do they have, and what differentiation you can bring to that?
Yeah. I might get Susy perhaps to speak to that including reference to our Deepchill system and the advantage that that provides us with.
Sure. Thanks, Ed. Ajay, sort of two parts to that answers to that question. I think the first part is around our network and the uniqueness of our network. When you compare us to our competitor, we have quite a unique network where we have a footprint in every state, and that enables us to get our product to our customer more quickly with a higher level of efficiency and also a higher day slot. Secondly, we have quite a unique shelf life program within our business, where essentially we chill the product rapidly, which is great for food safety but also for shelf life. It means it gives us that freedom to be able to move product around the network as we need to and achieve that 98% customer service level that Clair was referring to in her presentation.
Morning. I'm Ben from Jarden. Just the AUD 130 million that you sort of identified, should we be thinking of that as linear over the three and five years? How do we think out in terms of bankability through the P&L? You talk about getting more return back for that value chain.
Yeah.
Is the issue just holding on to 100% of that?
No. No, it's not. I'd say that that is gross of embedded inflation within the system as well. I'm not gonna be providing any sense of guidance as it relates to future years. I'd say that it is linear. It's probably slightly front-ended, particularly on the unlocking trade value from our operations. I think the way I think about it. Sorry, let me start with maybe a story, Ben. I went to Japan the other day to go through Procter & Gamble and some of the best sites they've got globally. They took me through their system of operations excellence, and they said two things.
They said, firstly, once you get to If they got all the sites within their entire Procter & Gamble network to a level 5 from an ops excellence perspective, then it would be the equivalent of building 13 new greenfields across the globe. They also said, regardless of level, every site's expected to take a further 5% of cost out each and every year. I suppose how I think about things, like, the way in which these things become sustainable, is by developing a system which fundamentally keeps reinforcing itself and keeps taking costs out over time. You know, quite frankly, I think that's why there needs to be further reinvention. My point there in relation to your question is saying, while I think it's front-ended to start with, the system itself will find further opportunity just as time goes on through way of how it's been set up.
Excellent. Well, you know, sort of looking forward at the value add and all those sorts of things make sense. The challenge I sort of still see in Australia is you don't have a brand that's front and center outside of the freezer.
Yeah.
Your ability to continue to drive better pricing outcomes, win contracts sustainably at a higher margin versus a larger volume, that seems challenged. Do you need to lean in more on your brand? Do you need to undertake innovative move more down the cost curve for the competitors and see how you go after that?
Yeah. Look, it's a good question. Maybe I'll get Kaz. I know you've thought a fair bit about how you bring brand over to the Australian market. Whilst you stayed seated down there, maybe jumping up. I would say, like, o ur strategy fundamentally looks at three key things around how you create value over time. The first is how do you pivot more of your total revenue to places that are in growth? The second is how do you create distinctiveness? You know, distinctiveness creates pricing power. Pricing power creates margin. The third is how do you increase customer stickiness over time? The reason that I say that is that there's many ways in which we create distinctiveness. Distinctiveness is the thing that creates leverage and pricing power. We talked about our network.
You know, I think our network is completely laden. I look at what Baiada's doing, what the market's doing. They're consolidating. They're driving down unit cost. They're doing a fantastic job on delivering on that vision. I think at the end of the day, they drive further commodity into an otherwise commoditized industry. Where we're just saying our network is completely distinct from that. We're gonna remain operating in all states across Australia. We're gonna use that to provide the freshest product, the best customer service, and we're gonna use it to create product optionality as well over time. I think it's an important demarcation. Brand absolutely works in New Zealand, but it's always been there in New Zealand as well.
As you're quite rightly pointing out, Ben, the shift or There's significant drift towards private label within Australia. Maybe, Kaz, do you wanna talk about just how you're thinking about brand more generally and the role that it might play within the Australian market?
Yeah. I think as said, where we're starting is where it's the categories of growth that we're gonna go after. I think when we look at brand, we recently went out, and we did lots of consumer research on how do people see the Inghams brand versus private label as an example. When we look at the portfolio in everyday commodity, consumers see every brand as the same. When you look at freezer, they strongly resonate with the Ingham's brand, and I think that's where you see because it's a different proposition. We've grown 17% year to date this year in freezer alone.
But as we think about our portfolio ahead, I think as Ed shared at the start, we're looking at how do we scale what we had in New Zealand for organics. Organics, a perfect example. The brand is the vehicle by which you speak to the consumer. I think there's still opportunity with the Ingham brand here. Ultimately, as we grow into new areas where we do have a distinctive proposition, brand will 100% be the vehicle that we use to do it. I think we'll naturally see a shift over time. It'll look different to probably how we've thought about it in the past.
I'm Craig from MST Marquee. Just, what is the company's plans for positioning in free-range in Australia? It touches on that brand debate, I think.
I mean, I mean, we're, correct me if I'm wrong, Clair, we're the biggest sellers of free-range at the moment within the Australian market. I think we've got 20% so is about field that's growing as free-range. Slightly less of that that's sold as free-range. You know, at the moment, we're by far the majority supplier into Macro within the Australian market. I think as Kaz pointed out, Clair pointed out, it's growing above the base growth rate of the category, I think we continue to push in that manner. Again, as Kaz pointed out, we obviously A few years ago, we came out with The Free Ranger as a brand to step into that category. I think the reality of that as a proposition, though, was that it just wasn't sufficiently differentiated from what else exists in the market, therefore, it wasn't successful as a brand.
If you look at something like the Bare Bird, you know, which is now ranged into Woolworths and Coles, it's this air chill. It's got no antibiotics. It's free-range. You know, it's got a very much a point of difference, and it resonates with consumers. Long answer short, I think that's an area of the market that we continue to play into. We always pride ourselves on being leaders in welfare. I think the question becomes: How can we create the next iteration of free-range and distinction over time? Part of that, we'll probably say, you know, as we've made no secret of, that we like the idea of bringing Bostocks over to the Australian market as well. Appreciate that that is an organic proposition as opposed to free-range.
In terms of customer channels, I know my numbers are in the ballpark, but my sense is that wholesale alone would be circa 20% of the volume, if not a little bit more. It hasn't historically, going back five, 10 years, hasn't been that high. Are you comfortable with wholesaling, you know, a fifth of the volume, or is that adding to potential earnings volatility?
Yeah. Look, I mean, maybe, Clair, you've got a pretty strong perspective on wholesale. Why don't you have a crack at this, let us say if I think you got the answer wrong.
Well, I mean, first of all, wholesale has a role to play, and we have seen, as we've diversified our customer base, we've shifted more into retail, so we're moving material from some of those lower wholesale channels into retail and QSR. Equally, there's pockets in the wholesale where we have leverage in terms of proximity or lower competition. Equally, it plays an important role for our business to ensure that we can move and maximize the value when we're as Adrian talked about, in that 13-week window. You need a home for that, and you need to maximize it the right way. The key is to ensure that your supply and demand is at an equilibrium so that you can provide in the right way, but you're not leaking value.
My view is that we will remove lower value channels and move that into higher value channels, but the wholesale will still play an important role for us. There's some customers in that channel that are emerging and growing, such as food manufacturers, that there is significant opportunity to make that more sustainable.
I might just further add. I remember the periods of time where we've been more like, to your point, the kinda 10% odd share of the market. Your pricing within the market actually becomes, I think, more volatile through there because you're easily replaceable. In terms of you get to a point within wholesale market where, in effect, you've hit a critical scale such that you actually do have a little bit more power than just, you know, working on spot price and market economics alone. We've certainly seen that over the last few years as well. I'd also make an observation relative to the market, which is if I look at the last three years, I'd say it's been incredibly rational.
There was obviously the period of time with the final Woolworths adjustment last year, where I'd say arguably we were the ones that set the market long at that point in time. Outside of that, you know, it's a market that's very rational. And as Clair said, plays a critical role, you know, for us from both the supply chain as well as revenue generating perspective. Over to you. Please.
Tends to increase costs. I wonder how much of that has been able to get passed through in terms of pricing and also how you pick up on that.
Yeah. No, that's a good question. I mean, look, firstly, I'd say if you look over a long period of time, you'll see that the business is give or take tracked with feed costs. By that I mean, whilst I think it's fair to say that there is an element of lag, over time, ASP moves with rising and falling feed costs as well, which is somewhat of a first principle thing. I say secondly, you know, in particular within our retail and our QSR segments, we've obviously got mechanisms set up with major customers which allow for cost pass-through.
By and large, we design those contracts such that they are back to back, in terms of the point in time at which the cost is incurred, is the point in time at which the price flows through. Obviously this question around wholesale, and I'd say the wholesale is a market that whose price doesn't move based on changes or variations to cost inputs. It moves based on market economics or supply-demand imbalances. That becomes the somewhat question mark. I think, you know, what that really asks for is the industry and us playing our critical role there are irrational in terms of how we think about volume. I'd say definitely a slight level of lag, particularly it relates to the non-contracted volumes. Albeit there's also a slight, slight benefit on the way back down. Go on.
Before you talk about instructions for the last couple of years. That's a construction in, if it's doing it. What did you learn from the last couple of times that you've already come up against implementing now thinking 2027 with some of the channels? Are you already ahead of that?
We are. Look, if I go kind of probably specifically to our principles in terms of how we're thinking about the crisis. The first one was this idea we neither gain nor lose based on price pass-through. That, that is a direct response to, you know, I think we'd say quite candidly that through the period of high inflation, we saw too much increase and we became uncompetitive in the market and that was a big basis for the, you know, the change to the Woolworths contract that we saw and other lost volume that flowed through the business.
One element is that I think Clair and the team, as well as Matt from the New Zealand perspective, have done a very good job in partnering with customers, as it relates to the price that is being passed through at the moment. I think the second is, you know, COVID in particular. You know, when we were sitting at, whatever it was, 35% vacancies across Australia and New Zealand. Ultimately, this needs to be, whilst we talk a lot about margin, this needs to be a revenue generating business and without labor to generate the revenue, we were just coming to a standstill. I remember when I first got over to New Zealand, we were literally making donuts in terms of underlying performance.
The second is every week we're tracking vacancies at the moment, making sure that we've got full labor available to produce the required, the required SKU set. I think that the final is, you know, I fully anticipate that we're going to go into a higher single-digit inflationary environment over the coming, you know, six-month period. You know, what do we know from that? We know that you see an increase in in-home consumption, you see a reduction in out-of-home consumption as well. Whilst we're not, you know, whilst we're not, we're not really doing anything except for being very aware of that at the moment. What does it really say? It says that you're likely to see, you know, a slight reduction in demand in your sort of food service, QSR, wholesale channels offset by strong retail performance.
I think pleasingly, we've got a retail channel, where we're continuing to improve our market share position as well.
Buddy. Just making the excise piece. I don't know.
No, that was up until March. I think the, you know, in terms of the trading update provided to say net impact this financial year of the AUD 7 billion-AUD 10 billion, largely predominantly through fuel-related increases that have flown through.
Just 7-10 positions.
Probably at some level. In New Zealand, do you have it at all with the.
It's on natural gas.
Yeah.
As it relates to fuel for transport.
Yeah.
No.
No, is the short answer. Brett?
We've got one question on my end. The question is: How will the business be impacted by global fertilizer supply as it relates to feed costs? Additionally, can you comment on freight and logistics due to increased fuel costs in terms of costs?
As I said, we're covered on feed through to early financial year 2027. We're definitely there as it's publicly available, seeing an increase in the cost base. Looking onto the next financial year, at that point in time, you know, we're going to have to rely significantly on the mechanism and contracts that we've got in place, along with how we manage pass-through from a partnership perspective. In terms of fuel, there's definitely, again, been a significant impact that's hit the business and is flowing through at the moment, notwithstanding that we've had a slight reduction through way of the excise tax being taken off. You know, I'd say what I am most proud of at the business is just seeing the offsets that are happening through operational operational improvements.
I probably skipped over it somewhat, but the focus is we've introduced these minimum order quantities. We're leveraging AI to optimize our transport routes. We're rethinking where raw materials are going across the network. All of that is helping to significantly reduce, I'd say, the cost impact that's flowing through as a result of the fuel increase. It's material, but, you know, we're obviously not alone as it relates to confronting the impacts of the war in the Middle East.
Are you surprised that the poultry volume tonight hasn't accelerated much in the grocery through how big the price gap is? It just seems to be ticking along. I would have thought consumers would shift over a lot more.
Yeah. Yeah. That would be an insufficient answer, I guess.
How do you think about it in terms of the grocery side, in terms of price-
Yeah
- issues, but that seems to be resolved from the beginning of the year. How do you continue to drive that switching? While protein prices haven't changed.
Yeah
The demand hasn't really kicked up in the much the last couple of years when theoretically it should have.
Yeah. Look, I tend to think maybe a few things. I mean, firstly, I think it's fair to say that retailers are significantly investing in red meat from an infrastructure perspective. You just need to look at, you know, where Woolworths are investing their dollars. They're investing upstream, that then means that they're incentivized to keep volume flowing through that area of the network. I'm sure they're taking some level of hit from a margin perspective, to keep pricing on shelf slightly lower than the kind of true raw material increase would suggest. I think the second thing is that where we see big changes happen, it's when the shelf space ultimately changes. We saw that through the most recent sort of inflationary increase, where space for poultry was expanding.
We saw an uptick in demand, which just says, you know, consumers, I guess, shop with their eyes more than they necessarily shop with their minds in many respects. Look, I think from our perspective, you know, how do you Sorry. The third one is just I think consumers are people of habits. You're seeing, you know, people would like to eat red meat twice a week, and you see that flow through how they think about their shopping. The fourth is, and the opportunity for Inghams, is how do you create a more premium experience such that you can become a substitute for the red meat opportunity as the winner presents itself.
yeah, short answer, Ben, is I am surprised that there's not a more significant switching that we see as a result of price.
First of all, we might have touched on it, but I'm interested on the capital side of things. How do you think about M&A in terms of balance sheet compatibility? Do you wanna be investing more downstream around brands or basics? You talked to, sort of, launching broth, et cetera, but are there other opportunities to buy branded?
Look, I, I mean, I go back to, you know, we need to stabilize, optimize, and then grow the business. Once I get to the capital section, I'll talk about it. I think our net debt position at the moment is too high, and obviously, I think our leverage is outside of range. The immediate term is around making sure that they all come back to within that range. I then still think absolutely there's a role for M&A to augment strategy. I personally like the notional. The role of M&A is to, is to invest in new capability that offers that distinctiveness, and whether that is brands or it's a new capability that produces a different product.
That's how I probably think more about M&A as opposed to just expansion for expansion's sake, which I don't think is necessarily a good use of investor dollars. Okay. I think unless there's no more questions, Brett, I'm sort of looking at you. We're probably 20 minutes shy of where we anticipated being at this point in time.
I think break and morning tea now. We've started a little bit late.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks, people.
Folk, we're good to go. Welcome back. Trust you had a great morning tea, and apologies there was no product out there. We'll ensure next time that we've got some product. My name's Andrew Lock. I'm the Chief Technology Officer for Inghams. I'd like to convince you that I left university a couple of years ago, but that's not the case. I've actually been in technology for just a tad over three decades. It actually feels quite a long time just saying that. The last two companies I've been with have been 25 years, with two other companies, multinationals. You know, they had a very clear vision, which was around providing quality, affordable products to consumers every day, and that was the attraction to Inghams for me.
As you've heard from the leadership team, the ambition and direction is clear, and I think for a technologist, that's music to my ears. That provides me a rich foundation for me to build on as technology is really a key enabler to this business. The next 10, 15 minutes, I'm going to walk you through how technology is looking to enable this ambition. Just firstly, I wanna touch on a decision that was made three years ago at Helen and Michael and the board made. You know, this was a very deliberate, yet considered decision not to invest or and embark on an expensive multi-year ERP program. To be fair, at the time, it was called quite a bold decision given the residual risk of the environments that we work within.
Aged infrastructure, aged systems and people. There is a but. Since then, we've seen significant advancements in cloud and compute platforms, AI, modern integration. These modern integration tools allow us to connect and extend our existing systems without replacing them. We don't need a multi-year ERP program to unlock the value in this business. The decision two years ago was not just bold and three years ago, sorry, was not just bold in hindsight. It's actually positioned us today to take a smarter path forward. Let's fast-forward to today. Heard a little bit about it already, but I wanna introduce Nexus platform. This is Inghams digital engine. This is the technology future for Inghams. I wanna call out that this not a product we're buying off the shelf or a ready-made solution.
This is an ecosystem that we are creating as an organization. Let me dive into the platform, the Nexus platform itself. I'll start with layer one, which is the foundation. The layer at the bottom there. Today, this is where our rich systems of record, systems of knowledge sit, and this has realistically been built up over the last 30 years. Given the age and residual risk of these systems, the temptation would be to replace them with new for old. We're not gonna do that. Our philosophy is clear. We want to wrap these systems, not rip them. Containerize the technology that has enabled this great business over the last 30 years with this technology. Let me explain the intelligence layer. Significant, I do mean significant.
In my career, I haven't seen the advancements in technology that I'm seeing in the last two-t hree years. They've made this a reality. When I talk about cloud platforms, compute power, we've got AI. I've got traditional AI, agentic AI, multimodal AI, perhaps there's others, integration capability and digital twins, and so on. I mentioned wrap, not rip our current systems. How are we going to achieve this? We've partnered with Amazon or Amazon Web Services, and I'll refer to them as AWS, to leverage their capability, both knowledge, process knowledge, and technical capability to deliver this platform further. This is the layer where our business data becomes business intelligence. One trusted source of the truth, live data streaming across both ANZ and AI agents that can act on intelligence within proper governance and guardrails.
We are not replacing humans, we are augmenting them. Just for a moment, we talked about planning before. Think of a supply planner in our organization today. Currently pulling data sources up to five, probably more five than five data sources or systems across the organization. We will bring that down to one data source driving a single production decision. Nexus puts the intelligence in the forefront real-time with recommendations they can actually act on. This is the layer that turns 30 years of operational knowledge into a genuine competitive advantage. If I talk about the experience layer three. Today, if you think about it, end users look at a 30-year-old system. That's one advantage is to change that look and feel for our end users.
The big play here is to have access to real-time data to drive real-time insights. For a business like Inghams, this is critical. Digital twins, conversational AI grounded in Inghams' own data, and human AI collaboration driving real, right, real-time, and right information for those people. Accessible on desktops, mobile, and embedded tools that we have today. As you've heard, this direction improves bird value, better pricing, and better decision-making. Reduces cost to serve through optimized logistics and network planning, drives consistency of earning by real-time visibility and not surprises. My final message on this slide, we are not We are making a deliberate shift in our thinking and our approach from traditional technology mindset. We're looking to leverage significant advancements in technology. The Nexus platform, Inghams' digital engine, is not a concept, it is a platform.
It is secure, it is scalable, strategically owned, and here to stay. If I move to the roadmap. I'm only going to spend a couple of minutes talking about two key themes within this roadmap, and the first one is AI adoption and literacy. Cast your minds back to March 2025. The leadership team made a bold move to provide access to a large language model, Anthropic, which is known as Claude, in a secured Inghams environment. First, the board and leadership team, then two months later, Claude was rolled out to 1,000 users across Inghams. A very deliberate deployment strategy to lift the exposure and literacy of this evolving technology. These adoption rates that I'm going to refer to in a second are rates that I have never seen before throughout my career. Within two months, we had 80% adoption across the business.
Month four, we had 90%, we maintain those rates today. I fast-forward to today. We haven't just adopted AI, our literacy has improved considerably. We now have 30 trained AI champions embedded across all functions in the business, and of those 30, we have 13 advanced AI champions or AI evangelists, as we're calling them, to drive oversight and advance our AI capability in Inghams. In addition to that, we've created an AI innovation board, which most of the leadership team sit on, and this is really looking, as well as support from AWS, and this is really to look at high-value use cases, high impact, that drive real business opportunity. The goal is not just adoption, it's about making AI a core operating muscle for this business. Now if I move to the roadmap. These are clear phases.
We want to strengthen the foundation, we want to accelerate, integrate, lead and optimize. I think the advantage of this approach provides flexibility to adopt and adapt. The phase structure gives the business and board clear direction at each stage. If the returns are not there, sorry, we pause and redirect. If they are, we accelerate. Just to close, we are not chasing technology for technology's sake. Every layer of the Nexus platform, Inghams' digital engine, every use case, every investment on the roadmap is tied directly back to earnings improvement, cost efficiency, competitive advantage. We own the platform, we own the data, and we own its future. Thank you. I would like to hand back to Ed.
Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, everyone. As I said earlier on, I'll caveat this part of the presentation by acknowledging that obviously normally my CFO would be presenting on balance sheet and our debt position, but given Gary's decision to step away from the business as of September 30th this year, we thought it appropriate that I present instead. Accordingly, the next few slides are largely framing up how we're thinking about capital and some of our positioning without necessarily providing a specific answer. One of the questions that was asked of me during the break was, how do I feel about a new CFO coming on board, having not had significant input into the strategy?
Whilst myself and Grant have been liaising, and I've shared with him the key tenets of our strategic direction, this is an area where I absolutely want him to put his spin on things, including how we create and ultimately ensure a healthier balance sheet over time. With all that said, I think strategy only really matters, at the end of it, we can put up a lot of nice words, a lot of nice ideas, but it only really matters if we can successfully translate it into returns. I think very candidly, this is an area where we need to improve as a business. Over the last decade, as many of you will have seen, significant capital has been invested into the business.
Many of those investments made absolute sense at the time, including, if you think about things, purchasing our Bolivar primary processing plant. We purchased our water cutters, our DSI, we purchased leg deboners. We've invested significantly in automation and capacity expansion. As Susy highlighted, I think many of those investments really provide opportunity for us to capture more value today. You know, the three reference points that she positioned to was firstly Osborne Park One Touch, which enables WA self-sufficiency in a far better and more cost-effective retail solution. She referenced obviously the new oven at Lisarow, which is around contingency as well as expanded capacity for our further processing network.
She also referenced automated tray packing, and that's both around how we ensure a more efficient tray pack solution to the market, as well as how we'll ultimately meet the fixed weight needs of both our customers as well as consumers in the market. There's opportunity. Look, the reality is that as capital has increased within the business, returns have declined, and that almost as a starting principle is insufficient. The outcome for clarity doesn't come down to a single cause, and in no way am I suggesting that there were bad decisions that have been made historically. Returns have been compressed by both the volume of capital deployed and by periods where overall business performance has simply come in and fallen short of expectation. Both matter. The important thing is that both are within our focus to address.
It is to say that I think a key lesson for us being obviously a vertically integrated business that's got intensive capital, is that these projects can't be reviewed on a project-by-project basis. Hopefully, a lot of what you've heard today is about if we as a business are gonna extract full value, then we need to be operating as an end-to-end system. That means that we can't think about things as a one-off process of cost reduction or capital improvement. It's about how does an investment ultimately reduce costs? How does it optimize meat flow? How do we ensure that the product comes back together and can be sold in the market? How do we ensure it can be sold through to our customers? How do we also ensure sufficient network flow?
Another question in fact asked of me during the break was this idea, and I'd say it's somewhat of a false theory in many respects, which is that over time, when, you know, retailers or large customers see our earnings performance, that they simply seek price reduction as a result of that. I'd say that's not the case. I'd say in many respects, where we have fallen short in terms of delivering on our capital investments is that we haven't attributed the full system impact, and therefore, we haven't extracted full value from the investment. We can build very good assets, but if the system around them isn't operating effectively, then the returns simply won't realize.
That is why, as of the last six months, we've centralized capital management underneath finance, whose specific goal or role is to ensure that only the very best capital projects come forward, and that they're being considered in a very well-rounded system-level nature. That means that sales know how to sell them. We know how to implement them through operations. We think about the impacts as it relates to meat flow and cut balance throughout operations as well. Probably three points in particular that I just wanna note on this slide. The first is that our immediate priority is to reduce leverage to within our target range of one to two times pre-AASB 16 EBITDA, and once there, maintain it within range.
This is important because obviously, a stronger balance sheet improves our resilience, provides us with opportunity to withstand shocks such as the one we're currently, in many respects, living through. Also provides us with optionality in the future should, you know, as Ben, you alluded to, should M&A opportunities and the like come along. Secondly, as Adrian alluded to when he talked about planning as this part of the business, we see real opportunity to reduce our net working capital across the system. Historically, suboptimal planning has driven significant increases in inventory, and I think it's fair to say that we, as a result of that, as a result of the complexity of our supply chain, as well as the need to deliver service level to our customers, we hold buffer right across our supply chain.
That results in the increase in inventory or net working capital. We see that as we invest in planning, that we can reduce that, ultimately gonna reduce net debt over time while simultaneously improving our service levels through to our customers. Finally, capital allocation itself has now been centralized and segmented into four distinct buckets. Obviously, Stay in Business. You know, this is a capital-intensive supply chain that we're operating in. We'll always expect to spend 30%-50% of available capital on Stay in Business. It's about reliability, continuity, and compliance. Secondly is Optimization Capital. This is capital that's really focused on cost out.
I think it's fair to say that with cost out and with the market dynamics as we see them today, over time, there should be a level of expectation that you bank the benefit, ultimately, they will be competed away over time, such is the reality of the business and the industry that we're working within. We expect to spend 20%-40% of the total capital envelope on optimization capital. Thirdly is growth CapEx. This is around how do we increase capacity, how do we drive mix improvement, how do we drive higher revenue-generating opportunities? This is the one where, as I referenced earlier, my view of the world is that our role needs to be how do we invest more capital towards distinctive capability? Because distinctive capability is what creates distinction in the market.
Distinction is how you create pricing power, and pricing power is how you create margin. Over time, we're gonna make sure that we're allocating a further portion of capital or the available capital envelope towards growth capital. Finally, there's more strategic investments, new strategic capabilities that may well go beyond the realms of what we're doing today, that again, are seeking to provide distinction and deliver or augment our strategic positioning within the market. The important shift here is really that we wanna make sure that if I look at it historically, it's fair to say capital allocation was managed largely through operations within the business. We're centralizing that.
We're putting it underneath finance, and we're making sure that it's far more closely linked to strategy than it ever has before because the role of capital outside of making sure that we're able to continue to run our operation as we do today is to augment strategy. Hopefully, that's what you're seeing on the page up here. Finally, we do have a pretty clear and distinct plan, which says that we need to reduce operating leverage and reduce debt over time. Over the next two years, we'll be reducing net debt and leverage, and ultimately get it back to within our target range. The balance sheet today is sound, ongoing discipline can make it become materially stronger.
A stronger balance sheet ultimately is not just a financial objective, but it's what gives us the platform to do new and different things in the future. The real key messages, you know, from here is that, as Helen alluded to up front, I think we've done a listening session with our investors and we've heard you, and that is that we need to reduce our net debt position and get our leverage back to within thresholds. Improving the balance sheet does not depend on heroic assumptions by any means. We've got four levers available. Improved earnings. Hopefully, what you take from all the areas that have preceded this section is that there is a strong argument to say that Inghams can improve earnings and extract further value from this operation.
Secondly, we're gonna get better planning to reduce our net working capital. Thirdly, we're gonna ensure capital discipline. If you think about even this year, we went out into the year, into this financial year, with AUD 36 million of overhang capital from the previous financial year, and we'll finish the year spending, give or take, AUD 80 million. We cut hard on capital given the balance sheet position of the business, and that kind of discipline is absolutely what we need to do as we continue forward as well. Finally, I put up there dividend policy. That's not to say that we are reducing our dividend or our payout ratios in the short term. It is to say that it is a critical lever that's available to us. Our first and foremost position is we need to make sure that we've got a healthy balance sheet.
If it gets to it that the top three levers there we feel are insufficient, then we will look at addressing it over time, but it's not something that we're introducing right now. If I had to summarize very simply the capital philosophy of the business, it's these four, these three points. I've got four of them on my slide, but the first is the stronger cash generation through earnings performance, reduced working capital, and capital discipline is our focus. The second is that we will reduce net debt and we will get our leverage back to within target range within the short term. The third is that a stronger balance sheet ultimately gives us resilience and gives us the freedom to invest in new and different things for the future and to strategically grow.
Finally, as I've mentioned a few times today, 70% of return on capital over time comes from revenue-generating capability and opportunity. Over time, the intent is that we invest more of our available capital envelope into the new ideas and capabilities that are gonna create products and solutions that are distinctive to the market, create pricing power, and therefore grow margins. Above all, we believe there's still very significant value that's available across our network that we can unlock from just running our operations better, and that's certainly the near-term focus as a business. If I can finish with a few reflections and just wrapping up on some of the key messages that you would've heard from myself and the team this morning, it's this.
Firstly, as I said with the outset, we're reconfirming FY 2026 pre-AASB 16 EBITDA guidance of between AUD 180 million and AUD 200 million, despite a materially more volatile environment brought about by the war in the Middle East. The situation is creating meaningful cost pressures across both fuel, as well as increasingly packaging. The impact is real, but the business is managing it very effectively, and that's through a combination of cost pass-through, through procurement discipline, logistics optimization, as well as some level of SKU rationalization. What gives me confidence is that the operational performance of the business is improving underneath the external volatility. As I said upfront, volumes are improving across both Australia and New Zealand.
I think the fact that the Australian business has got back to growth of 1.2% in the first nine months through the end of March is incredible, and it says a lot about the business, the customer centricity, and the customer partnerships that we've been able to grow over the last nine-month period. The second is that inventory is improving. We've reduced inventory by AUD 25 million across year-to-date, with more still to come. The third is that prices are increasing. You would've heard from me in the half, I talked about the basis through which upgraded guidance was provided, was on the basis of holding pricing flat. We're now talking about appreciation. Of course, a big element of that is due to the crisis in the Middle East and the need to pass through some of that cost through to customers.
Finally, the wholesale market is buoyant. Again, in my 11 years, the one thing that I'll say as a theme or a correlation is that if you have strong demand flowing through the retail channel, it's likely that that will result in strong wholesale economics. What we're seeing at the moment is retail demand continues to be very buoyant, driven by a combination of cost of living pressures, as well as an increasing delta between poultry as well as red meat, which is driving consumers' up demand. Importantly, the run rate of the business is materially stronger than it was earlier on in the year. You all would've seen the graph that we put up earlier pinpointing that. I think it's fair to say that the rate of improvement has been significant and material.
This slide really captures the philosophy of the strategy that myself and the team presented today, that is that sequencing is everything. We'll keep coming back to this in market updates. I think, Craig, as it relates to a document that I wanna keep putting in front of the market to give a sense as to how we're going executing strategy, this will be it. We'll work on how we quantify as well as put more discrete initiatives against each of these areas over time. In a vertically integrated business, stability matters. The last two years in particular for this business have been incredibly destabilizing. Over the last nine months, we've been focused on simply stabilizing the business. This means reducing our inventory, getting back to growth, getting our operating settings back in line with what we know produces best value.
We move to optimizing the asset. That's around how we're going to expand margins through improving mix, through reducing cost to serve, through instilling greater planning discipline, and ultimately optimizing our network flows. Finally, we're gonna grow new value, and Kaz took you through that today. We see three very key areas that we can grow value into where we've got an absolute right to win, and that's where the opportunity is significant, the opportunity is scalable, it's backed by consumer insight, and where ideally we control the raw material input. As I said, or as the All Blacks in their approach to games warned, you earn the right to play outside. We're under no delusion that we're not gonna jump straight out to the growth stream of things.
We're gonna make sure that we focus on stabilizing and getting through the immediate period first. The immediate focus is that we need to navigate the crisis in the Middle East. As I said, the cost increases are material. We're doing a very good job managing it, but it's gonna be on our agenda for the foreseeable future. Secondly, we need to keep building on our operational discipline. We talked about the fact that in the near term, operational efficiency is our best and easiest way in which we improve the earnings performance of this business. Susy talked about AUD 100 million of upside. You saw the yield improvement that's already flowing through. We believe that there's significantly more that can come through simply running our existing operation more efficiently. Thirdly, we need to continue being great partners to our customers.
As I said, if there's an area of pride that I feel as it relates to our performance over the last nine months, it is in this area. The fact that we're getting awards with all the customers, we're first in the Advantage Group survey. The fact that we're growing at high teens with all non-Woolworths related retail accounts is testament to two things. One is that we have absolutely transitioned to become a customer-centric culture. The other is that Inghams can absolutely compete. You know, I feel like you hear an awful lot about can Inghams or can't Inghams compete in this market. Make no mistake, we're a 30% market player with what I believe is the most attractive network in the market with the best partnerships.
Of course, we can compete in this market. The facts should state that for themselves. Finally, we're gonna be making planning a strategic capability. As I said, I probably belabor the point a bit too much now, but planning is the thing that connects the left hand with the right hand. When we get it wrong, we get it very wrong. Quite frankly, we got it very wrong this time last year. It led to the massive increase in inventory. We spent the whole first half of this financial year managing that, getting back to balance, managing supply demand, bringing our inventory down. Planning needs to be better as a capability. We're elevating it. We're making sure that it sits at the executive table.
Over time we'll also be augmenting it with technology as well as artificial intelligence. In terms of what I hope gives investors some level of confidence, it is that none of this is theoretical, and we're provided the trend of improvement the whole way through. Many of these initiatives are already well and truly underway and already producing results. On the productivity side, you've seen improvements to labor productivity. We've reduced our overtime materially. We've seen planning uplift. We've seen the yield improvement. Susy talked 61%- 63%. New Zealand, just for context as well, is closer to 65% in terms of yield generation. I think at some level that provides, whilst there's differences between the markets, there's differences in the kit, at some level, that's got to provide sense of opportunity that's available.
Finally, we talked about improvements to logistics and supply chain. You know, when we went into the half, we didn't have a sense as to what our true cost to serve was on a customer by customer basis. We've now built within tool, which within Claude, which Andrew referenced, a true cost to serve model. We can make far more informed decisions relative to where we're directing our product. On the growth side, you know, what you should be looking out for as we look ahead is firstly, Bostock Brothers within the Australian market. I talk at length about the role we need to be If we're gonna be branding stuff, it needs to be distinctive. No point branding commodity. We bought Bostock two years ago.
One of the big intents or one of the basis of the investment thesis for that acquisition was that we wanted to scale it into the Australian market. The second is that we're scaling this ingredients curve. You think about ingredients. Currently, we apply effectively no cost to product that flows through to rendering, and it's a significant volume as well. Our plan is to scale that wall of value over time. It also allows us to compete on the export market basis, where we can be competitive because we don't assign cost to the product. I see over the medium long term, in particular, significant upside relative to that as a strategic positioning. Finally, we're seeing the significant new business.
You know, Clair's obviously talked about some of the big lifts of new business that we've won over the last nine months. There's more new business that's been committed to over the coming six months. Again, if nothing else, what that tells you is that Inghams can compete. Finally, we're moving into higher value formats as well as new category opportunities.
Kaz referenced this, but, you know, when we think about things like Waitoa entering into broth, you know, when we think about the collab around the Zeus hot roast chicken product that seems to have taken the world by storm, and we think about that Inghams kind of new bringing QSR to home for you range, these are things that truly do create advantage, and they allow us to grow our category, you know, not for ourselves, but for our retail partners as well. Importantly, I think much of this growth and much of this opportunity, it's not about investing in new spaces. It's about leveraging the existing infrastructure and the existing capability that we have today. Why are we confident and ideally why are you confident as well?
Firstly, it's because this remains a structurally sound business. I said I, I empathize significantly with investors over time that you look at this business on face value and you say you give or take a 30%- 35% player in the most attractive protein, you know, in a largely closed market, why can't you generate higher returns on that economic fair value alone? We do operate in this structurally attractive market. Secondly, it's 'cause Inghams has very strong foundations. I want to belabor the point around we have got a very different network to what our largest competitor in Australia has. We've got a network that spans all states, and it provides for localized service, it provides for great customer service levels, and it allows us to provide differentiated product over time as well.
We've got New Zealand, which is a strategic Australian, sorry, which is a strategic weapon within our armor. In many respects, what we're thinking about now is how we leverage it more strategically or purposefully. How do we start to innovate, test, and then scale into the Australian market? We've got these deep customer relationships, and as I said, we've got a diversified network. Thirdly, because we now have far more clarity on where the value opportunity sits, the opportunity is better through execution. We're talking about higher value per bird, improved planning, stronger mix, focused operational excellence, and disciplined capital allocation. Finally, this is a sequence strategy. Whilst ambitious, I think it very appropriately manages risk. We think about firstly, how do we stabilize the business first? How do we optimize and expand margins second?
How do we grow new value third? On that note, I'll open up for questions straight after this. I do want to say thank you on behalf of the board as well as the management team. Inghams, as I said up front, is not a broken business. It's not a business that can't compete. We've shown that across the course of the year, and we'll continue to show it as we move forward. I'd say we're a pretty strong 108-year-old business that has not consistently captured the full potential that's available. Over the last 12 months, we've reflected deeply, we've changed significantly, and the results are starting to flow through. You can see them, albeit there's still a lot of work ahead.
Increasingly, we believe we now have, firstly, the right strategy, secondly, the right sequencing, and finally, and perhaps more importantly, is the right team that's capable, has the capability to deliver on this strategic intent. Importantly, we're not trying to fundamentally change the greatness that this company is. All we're thinking about is how we can create a better version of this company that can ultimately extract more value from what it's doing today. On that note, I'll thank you very much for your support and time today, and I'll open up to any questions that the room may have. Ajay?
Ajay Mariswamy from Macquarie. Just a question around the working capital reduction plan. Does that rely on the supply chain and things like cost to serve to be optimized first to be getting your working capital down on a sustained basis? Cost to serve be optimized first.
I'd say they happen in parallel as opposed to a rough sequencing relative to it. If I think about working capital today, I think you can think about working capital based on buffer at any stage of the system. You know, if I think about how our competitor thinks about buffer, I think they have a majority share in wholesale, and they think about that as buffer. If they're short, they think about redirecting volumes of wholesale into the retail channel. I'd say we've got buffer within there. We've got buffer as it relates to fresh and frozen inventory. We've got buffer as it relates to broilers in the field. We've got buffer as it relates to eggs.
We've got buffer as it relates to breeders, and we don't always grow our breeders out to full age of 62 weeks. I think all of that represents sort of working capital, all of which can be reduced. I think it's more around how do you get better real-time indicators as it relates to, you know, what's sitting within each stage of the supply chain whilst at the same time ensuring good customer service and low cost to serve .
Just around the CapEx requirements, going forward, how do you aim to essentially balance out your, I guess, commoditized product and ensuring your unit cost of production is low enough, but also being able to have enough CapEx to spend on things like value-add ends?
Yeah. No. It's a good question. It's more I'd say that the real focus that I want myself and the team to be putting over the next 12 months in particular is around how you extract more value out of the existing asset sets. I think there's far more value that's gonna come. Make no mistake, when you introduce big capital change into a factory, that comes with its own destabilization inefficiency. We see that quite frankly time and time again. Next 12 months in particular, whilst we're looking at improving earnings and improving the health of our balance sheet, I think it's largely gonna be that rather than cost out CapEx, we'll be looking at how we just run those assets more effectively.
I think over time, Ajay, it's probably less about none of cost out, more revenue generating and more saying we're pooling every capital opportunity together. It's gonna be managed centrally, and we're gonna optimize, you know, allocation based on the available envelope.
Craig Woolford from MST. Just on your, this working capital reduction, are you suggesting you can get working capital, however we want to measure it, below previous, you know, points that you've had?
Yeah. I think so. I would say that there's probably sequencing to how quickly we deliver it, which is that we need the tech solution in place first. I think absolutely. I mean, it's a business that's always operated with buffer. And manually at that, and always trying to achieve 98% service levels. Over time, yeah, I think absolutely. You can It's a decision around where you effectively hold your buffer, making sure that we're not holding buffer at multiple stages within the supply chain, that we're just holding it in the most appropriate place.
Any implications on other elements of working capital, whether it be trade creditors or your debtors?
I don't think so. Let me get my new CFO in, sure he'll provide a more educated perspective on it.
Where is capacity utilization? I know that's a big question, but maybe first part is to understand at what point of your value chain is the capacity tightest?
Yeah
How much spare capacity do you have for production growth?
Yeah. Look, I mean, why don't I go more holistically, which is to say through to give or take 2030, there'll be ongoing capacity expansion that needs to take place within our network, but nothing significant, you know, in terms of all that's manageable within our kind of forecast capital expenditure. Beyond 2030, certainly once we hit kind of some lease renewal in sort of 2034, et cetera, we're then opening up optionality in terms of how we think about capacity expansion. In the immediate term, you know, we'd say that we've got, you know, once we can look at going to kind of a six-day processing week, we've got give or take 15%-20% of spare capacity across the network, and it feels comfortable as well.
I'd also say that, you know, one of my beliefs at least is that the worst thing unions could do at the moment is invest in significant new capacity at a point in time at which, you know, obviously that's coming on in the market.
Is that apply on like further process as well as farm?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Primary will be the first pinch point and then further process. I'd say, yeah, you'd sort of say further process over time becomes slightly less critical just through nature of the product set that's produced.
Just on fuel costs of AUD 710. It was interesting just as when things get resolved, there's obviously been a timing dispatch and testimony you can collect. Does that happen on the way out as well to where you think it's going to become tailwind to fiscal 2027?
Yeah. I'd go back to Ben without overplaying these principles, we neither gain nor lose through way of cost pass-through. You know, that's certainly the principle. We've seen that at the moment, which is that there's definitely been a slight dip in the kind of headwind cost of fuel in the kind of immediate short term. It's in this week, next week. Based on the last check, it was around AUD 120 per barrel price of oil. Like I imagine it's gonna uptick again, but we haven't passed that back, that price increase at the moment.
Yeah. Just check on that. You're talking, I mean, obviously your pricing's got better since you resolved. Have you seen much of a shift or change in terms of difference across supply channel? You talked more about leading at the moment. Have you seen it, the numbers yet in terms of shift growth through the QSR?
I'd say non-materially at the moment, to tell the truth. I mean, it's. No, I'd say non-materially at the moment. You probably talk to a few of the QSR operators that they're starting to talk a little bit more softness, certainly than what they were seeing in March. Based on our sort of ex-factory numbers, it's pretty hard to say. We'll probably have a pretty much stronger, better view of that, you know, once we get to the full year, I imagine.
Yeah. We'll go over it in a while. It's a technology-related one. Questioning 30-year-old foundation systems. Do you have data that you can provide on the performance of these systems, for example, failure rates, error rates, et cetera? Considering that foundational systems may not be able to be resolved by AI, we've planned to modernize the core system.
Might get our, resident technology person to answer that one, please, Andrew.
Yeah, look, I think the thing we need to weigh at the moment is the age of the system. I think these are actually well, we've invested in them over the years, and they're fit for purpose. We have built on them. What we're looking to do at the moment is stop further enhancements on those systems and really take them back to vanilla. I think, you know, having sort of been in technology for so long, these are robust systems that do exactly what we need to do. What we're going through, as you saw through the Nexus platform, is we're going through quite a logical process of how we take them into the cloud and how we take them back to vanilla.
Once we're back at vanilla, then what do we do next? Do we continue to containerize them and look after them, or do we actually look at what technology is in the market at that point in time? I think the thing that we have put risk mitigations around to ensure that they're not going to fall over, and we do monitor them on a daily basis. The majority of the team that I look after is focused in on business as usual, we have a lot of monitoring in the background.
Do you want to, Andrew, just talk about the example of a change to, I think, the code within BPCS, and just the reduction of time that that now takes through use of AI?
Yeah. BPCS is our ERP system, and I started my career on BPCS, so it is incredibly old environment. That said, what we've done is we've got Claude, and within Claude is Claude Code. Claude Code has gone in and looked at our source code in BPCS, and what it does is it does two things. It does knowledge artifacts, so we actually know the folks that have coded on the system probably left some time ago. We actually know what the code is doing, so that is point number one. Point number two is it does break fix. If we have calls come through the service desk, we now can actually use Claude Code to resolve the issue.
The other thing too is we are looking to use it for enhancements, not necessarily just on BPCS, because as I said, we're gonna stop doing that. If there are bugs that we need to fix, and we had an example, a month ago, where the developer said it would take 90 days. Claude Code did it within three hours. We are seeing the advancements in technology coming through, making sure that we are putting controls around that. This is not a new hype, and I've been used to hypes throughout my three decades in technology. This is not a hype. This is a reality. We've got to make sure that we put controls around it.
Any other questions online, Brett?
There are no.
Okay. Any other questions? No. Great. You're welcome to stay around and have a chat to management over the next 20 minutes or so, but thanks very much to everyone who attended today. Very much appreciate it, and look forward to touching base with many of you over the coming months.