Thanks very much, Simon, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. Today, great day, strategy briefing day. Thanks for coming along, and hopefully you'll enjoy the day. Before I kick off, I wanted to acknowledge that we're meeting on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and I'd like to pay respect to elders past and present. I'm very conscious that we have a broad range of investors and analysts in the room and on the call today, and some of you are incredibly familiar with our group and our businesses, while there are many new investors, including some from offshore, that use today as a way of learning more about the Wesfarmers Group. So we'll try and meet the needs of all of the people that are dialing in and here in the room today.
Hopefully you'll find it a useful day, and we really look forward to answering your questions and also catching up during the breaks for the more informal discussions. We will focus very much on providing an update on recent strategies, and we'll also try and share a bit more context on some of the new and emerging areas of the group. However, I don't apologize for the fact that most of what you're going to hear today is very consistent with our previously communicated strategies, which is what you should expect. We have no shortage of opportunities across the portfolio, and we have a clarity of focus about the things that are going to create shareholder value. What really matters to us is the quality and pace of execution, and hopefully you'll hear some good examples of that today.
In recent years, we've talked a lot about the resilience of our portfolio, and I'd like to think that the performance of our divisions through more challenging economic times has demonstrated this resilience. If there was a theme I wanted to emphasize more today, it is the pipeline of growth opportunities we have across our businesses. Most of these growth opportunities exist within our larger businesses, Bunnings, Kmart, and WesCEF, and our operating model enables us to unlock these opportunities to deliver superior returns. I'm also conscious that we have some emerging platforms for growth, notably Covalent Lithium, our health division, and OneDigital. To provide the update on each of their businesses, I'm pleased to be joined today by our divisional managing directors as well as other leaders from around the group.
Now, to start today, I'll make some opening comments on our group's strategy before handing over to Nicole Sheffield for an update of OneDigital. Then our CFO, Anthony Gianotti, and our EGM of corporate affairs, Naomi Flutter, will join Nicole and I to take questions before we move on with the rest of the day. Starting where we always start, which is a slide that will be familiar to many of you. Since the listing of Wesfarmers in 1984, we have been guided by a consistent objective to provide a satisfactory return to shareholders. We define satisfactory as top-quartile total shareholder returns over the long term.
We believe it's only possible to create long-term value by anticipating the needs of customers, looking after team members, treating our suppliers fairly and ethically, contributing positively to the communities in which we operate, taking care of the environment, and acting with integrity. Our focus in these areas is integrated into our strategies and how we manage our businesses, and hopefully this will come through in our divisional presentations today. But I first wanted to share some of the high-level proof points that demonstrate the group's progress in these areas. So on slide 5, in relation to climate and environment, our divisions have made a range of interim and long-term decarbonization targets and are making good progress. The retail businesses are largely focused on reducing electricity usage and securing more renewable energy both through our own solar generation and power purchase agreements.
In the industrial businesses, progress continues on two fronts: investment to abate our Scope 1 emissions and partnering to drive research and innovation to commercialise lower-carbon processes. For our team members, the priorities remain safety, diversity, and advancing reconciliation. This slide shows some recent progress on each of these. In the communities where we operate, our divisions engage very deeply to continually strengthen ethical sourcing practices, to build long-term trusted partnerships with suppliers that offer commercial benefits as our businesses grow, providing direct and indirect financial support to important community partners in the arts, medical research, and reconciliation. Just in the first half, the level of this commitment, both direct and indirect, totaled AUD 46 million.
Now, right now, there's a lot of focus on cost of living as households are doing it tough, and the focus of our retail businesses on everyday low prices is certainly trying to help with this. Now, many of you will recall a little over two years ago when signs of inflation started to emerge and interest rates started to go up. We talked about how we were going to double down to keep our prices as low as practical and work even harder to take costs out of our businesses so we could help our customers.
Now, I remember this really well because when we made these comments and our divisional managing directors reinforced this, our share price fell about 7% that week as some market commentators were concerned that this signalled that we wouldn't take advantage of a short-term margin opportunity that may exist or maybe even our margins would fall. Now, I'd like to think that this is a demonstration of the difference between being short-term focused versus managing businesses for the long term. Businesses like Bunnings, Kmart, Officeworks have built a reputation for lowest prices and great value over decades, and these were the moments of truth. So as we look back on the last few years, we have delivered on our commitment to value to customers, and in the process, I believe we have built stronger and more valuable businesses.
Turning to slide 6, which shows Wesfarmers' return to shareholders over the long term. Now, ultimately, it's these results that are the best way to judge our success against our objective and to demonstrate the value of our operating model. In line with our objective, Wesfarmers' TSR performance has been top-quartile for the ASX 100 on a five year and ten year basis. Since we listed in 1984, Wesfarmers has delivered total shareholder returns of nearly 20% per annum. Now, the importance of this focus on the long term cannot be underestimated. Today, you'll hear from our divisional managing directors about opportunities that have resulted from investments and developments in recent years, together with investments we're making that hopefully will deliver new revenue streams in the future.
Now, you would have also seen an announcement today about Ian Hansen's retirement later this year when Aaron Hood will take over as the new MD of WesCEF. And there'll be time for me to better acknowledge Ian's fantastic career at Wesfarmers. But as we look at this chart, it's interesting to reflect that Ian joined Wesfarmers before the start of this chart, in 1983, when we were still a cooperative. I'm grateful that Ian has agreed to stay on with Wesfarmers as an advisor to support Covalent Lithium and some major developments at WesCEF. Aaron has been working with Ian for a number of years, most recently as the Chief Operating Officer and previously as CFO of the division. Aaron is well regarded across Wesfarmers and has been instrumental in many of WesCEF's major projects in recent years.
Turning to slide seven, once again, a slide that should be familiar to you, which really sets out our operating model and provides a framework of how we manage the group to generate superior returns over the long term. Driving the delivery of our corporate objective, we have four overarching strategies that inform our focus at a group and a divisional level. We seek to strengthen our businesses through operating excellence and a focus on customer needs, securing growth opportunities through entrepreneurial initiative, renewing the portfolio through value-added transactions, and ensuring sustainability through responsible long-term management. It's these strategies that not only guide our focus in the divisions and at the corporate centre, but they also shape the capabilities that we look to develop across the group. They also represent the areas of focus for our annual corporate planning process and portfolio reviews.
Finally, at the bottom of the slide are our core values that guide our culture across the group. Now, I will talk to our approach with some of these strategies at a high level and provide some examples, but at the end of the day, the real value of today will come from the discussion from our divisional managing directors. Turning to slide eight, I'd just like to focus on the next few slides on a few things. First of all, talking about how our portfolio has evolved in recent years, talk about the quality and the shape of our current portfolio, and explain how I believe we're well positioned to deliver growth and returns over the long term. To start, this slide summarizes how we have renewed and evolved the portfolio in recent years to support shareholder returns.
We've established significant new platforms for growth in Covalent Lithium and Wesfarmers Health, both of which provide exposure to industries with attractive long-term potential. We have made incremental, logical acquisitions in businesses that support our divisional growth ambitions, and we've also made changes to the portfolio where they supported our longer-term TSR objective. We exited businesses that were lower growth, faced structural or sustainability issues, or where we had an opportunity to realize a price that we considered in the best interest of shareholders. Through the Target Store Network Restructure and Conversion Program in Kmart Group, we were able to address some of the structural challenges in Target at the time and reallocate capital towards higher-returning opportunities in Kmart, and this has materially reduced our lease obligations and strengthened both businesses.
Our long-term perspective, strong financial discipline, and active portfolio management allow us to deploy capital to businesses that can drive better returns in the future. And I see this as a source of competitive advantage for Wesfarmers and one of the reasons why our model is so fit for purpose in the current market, where investment prospects of businesses and industries are changing rapidly. And for this reason, I believe that Wesfarmers has one of the most resilient and adaptive operating models in the ASX. Now, of course, we don't get a ride all the time, and the acquisition of Catch was one part of a very substantial investment we have made over a number of years to transform and accelerate our digital and e-commerce capabilities.
And while I'm incredibly pleased with the progress we've made in this transformation and the quality of our omnichannel and digital capabilities, it's clear that Catch as an investment has underperformed. Now, clearly, we've learned a lot from Catch, and we are benefiting from the assets and capabilities that we've acquired. And Nicole, but I don't want to shy away from the fact that we don't get it right all the time. Now, Nicole will talk to the progress we've made with the business and how we're repositioning it to improve financial returns and support growth. Turning to slide nine, now, this slide highlights what I think really goes to the quality of our current portfolio and the ways in which it offers a strong platform for shareholder value creation.
To summarize, we have a portfolio of market-leading retail businesses with strong value-based offers, broad customer appeal, and growing addressable markets. Our globally competitive industrial businesses offer products and services that support some of our most critical industries in Australia. The health division provides the group with exposure to the attractive and growing health and well-being sector, and the ongoing development of the Covalent Lithium project is one of the ways our businesses are supporting global carbonization, with these all underpinned by the group's strong balance sheet, which enable us to make disciplined investments with a long-term focus. Turning then to slide 10, today, you'll hear many examples of growth-focused initiatives from our divisional MDs. Ahead of that, I wanted to make some overarching comments. Firstly, we have a strong set of businesses with good growth opportunities and very broad customer appeal.
And I think that point of broad customer appeal across our retail businesses is probably not as well understood as it could be. The divisions continue to expand their addressable markets and to develop new products and service offerings. Population growth and demographic changes also provide opportunities to grow our retail networks and to expand our offer. And there are many opportunities for continuous improvement in delivering productivity and efficiency gains. Now, specifically as it relates to demographic changes, our divisions are developing their offerings, our retail divisions in particular, to capture a greater share of spend from the younger generation, notably Gen Zs, and while continuing to meet the needs of the growing base of retirees, which is also a very important base of our customers. Now, it's estimated by the end of this decade, millennials and Gen Zs will combined represent about 50% of total retail spend.
We have made some great progress across our retail divisions through investment in data and digital and through new category and product developments to take advantage of this trend. Now, we know this demographic like to engage with brands digitally and across multiple channels, and our investments at OneDigital and the development of digital capabilities in the divisions are having a positive impact. Meanwhile, the continued extension of products, notably the Anko ranges that Ian will talk about in youth fashion, health, and beauty, just to name a few, the continued expansion of Bunnings range in more consumables, products for renters, and so forth, and Officeworks, very deep engagement and expansion of their offer to students are all examples of this. Now, second, we've established new platforms for growth, which will also provide incremental earnings beyond what is in our current P&L.
So for example, we will see the growth from our lithium earnings as Covalent Lithium progresses through to the production and the sale of lithium hydroxide. And the health division is progressing plans to significantly increase earnings in the coming years. And the digital capabilities and scale of our businesses also provide us with opportunities to unlock new earning streams, for example, through retail media. Now, fially, the flexibility of our model enables us to deploy and reallocate capital within and outside the portfolio to support shareholder returns. And we recognise that often the most attractive opportunities to invest capital are within our existing businesses. And for this financial year that we're currently in, we would expect to invest net capital expenditure of AUD 1 billion-AUD 1.2 billion. Now, turning to slide 11, which provides examples of what we're doing under that strategy of strengthening our existing businesses.
Strengthening our businesses start with a relentless focus on customers, and our retail businesses are hardwired to continually look at ways to improve their range, value, customer experience, both in-store and online. Through this approach, they've built reputations as trusted brands with value-based omnichannel offers that enjoy broad customer appeal. This focus on value is enabled by a similarly relentless focus on operating excellence. In fact, you can't have one without the other. Our retail businesses haved developed low-cost, scalable business models, often supported by investments in direct sourcing and own-brand capabilities. Their focus on reducing costs and improving productivity and efficiency over time has enabled this reinvestment into price, range, and customer experience. I wanted to provide some examples of this as we turn to the next slide.
On slide 12, this hopefully brings to life some of the examples of our businesses' consistent focus on productivity and efficiency. While this slide has the details, I wanted to call out some of the general areas of focus. Investment in technology and digitization is a consistent theme across all of our businesses. Some of the examples that you'll hear from today from our MDs will be ways in which we're using technology to improve store operations, supply chain, and our digital offerings, investments to improve team member workforce planning and productivity, and the way we forecast demand and associated inventory management processes. These technology-related investments are continuously improving our product and service offerings to meet the needs of customers while increasing sales and driving efficiency.
Further, across the group, divisions are also investing in modernizing and simplifying their supply chains, including a new automated frame and truss plant for Bunnings, new customer fulfillment centres in Victoria and WA at Officeworks, and at Wesfarmers Health, the construction of a fully automated new distribution centre in Brisbane. Finally, at WesCEF, the disciplined investment in plant maintenance and asset management has contributed to delivering sustained levels of operating availability above industry averages. Now, on slide 13, I mentioned earlier Wesfarmers' value-creating strategies and how these are embedded within our businesses and how they operate. Our ability to continually develop new growth opportunities is one strategy that I am most excited about across the group.
At the end of the day, this is about the value we create when we combine great talent with exceptional businesses and empower them to invest and innovate for the long term. I'd also like to say that from a corporate office point of view, a lot of this is about staying out of the way and letting our divisional teams get on with the job. Now, our approach to corporate planning and management incentives is aligned with long-term value creation and encourages entrepreneurial behavior, while our executive remuneration is heavily weighted towards equity and also creates an owner mindset within our leadership team. Now, as I said earlier, we don't get things right all the time, and being entrepreneurial means accepting that not everything works all the time. However, the value we're able to deliver across the group from encouraging an entrepreneurial mindset is significant.
Today, you'll hear more about these growth opportunities from each of our divisional MDs, but I wanted to highlight a few themes. Now, these include the expansion of our addressable markets through entry into new categories, ranges, and end markets. Often in retail businesses, you can get so caught up with the tactical day-to-day trading that you don't invest in those longer-term opportunities. Our investment in digital offerings across our businesses and our range of loyalty and reward programs really do support growth. It drives deeper customer connections, improved personalizations, more targeted offers, and a stronger omnichannel customer experience. It's also important to note that these examples represent just the latest vintage of growth opportunities across the group.
Over time, our businesses will continue to evolve and secure new opportunities, and we expect that the examples on this slide should look very different in one, three, and five years' time. Now, while there are many case studies we could talk to, a fantastic example of this is Kmart's evolution of the Anko model. Now, Ian Bailey and the Kmart team have had a consistent focus over many years to develop the strategy and invest in end-to-end sourcing capabilities to deliver a market-leading own-brand product offering. Now, they have made some very bold and difficult calls over the years, such as the dramatic network change I talked about earlier to Target and Kmart, also investing in some new technologies and fundamentally changing business processes. Some of you will remember the trial that they undertook, opening a few test stores, really testing new technologies in Seattle.
Now, all of these ingredients have enabled Kmart to deliver a step change in performance and providing new growth opportunities for the future. This would have been very difficult to achieve with a short-term focus or without the capacity, capability, and mindset to support the execution of long-term strategic plans. Now, this is just one demonstration of how the Wesfarmers model works at its best. Businesses are less distracted by short-term variability and noise and instead can be laser-focused on the things that matter for the future. Turning to slide 14, in summary, our current portfolio consists of high-quality businesses that provide multiple avenues for growth. Our operating model and value-creating strategies have become embedded into how we manage our businesses, and we have a relentless focus on customers' operating excellence and securing growth within our existing businesses.
This is all supported by strong financial discipline, active portfolio management, and a focus on managing our businesses for the long term. Finally, our strong and flexible balance sheet provides the capacity to support continued investment in our businesses and the ability to take advantage of opportunities that arise from time to time. Now, with that, I'll hand over to Nicole Sheffield, and then we look forward to answering your questions shortly. Nicole, over to you.
Thanks, Rob, and good afternoon, everyone. Last year, I shared our plan to continue building the group's omnichannel ecosystem. Over the past 12 months, we have made great progress in building out OnePass and the OneData Shared Data Asset, and we've executed real actions at Catch that are enabling us to scale our marketplace. I'd like to start by looking at where we are today. Turning to slide 16, OneDigital has solidified its foundations with all the group's trusted large-scale retailers, including Bunnings, Kmart, Target, Officeworks, Priceline, and Catch, now part of OnePass. The investments to improve our digital customer experience are paying off. In FY2023, the group surpassed AUD 33 billion in retail sales with 40% growth in online sales since FY2020. Every month, we handled 210 million digital interactions, and every week, we processed over 10 million transactions across all channels.
Our strength lies not only in our digital presence but in our physical network, where we have over 1,900 stores and over 100,000 highly engaged team members supported by 29 delivery centers and CFCs. While having a broad omnichannel reach is a core pillar of our success, knowing our customers is key to unlocking value as it enables deeper connections, improved personalization, and a better experience. Complementing our network of great retailers are the group's loyalty programs, Flybuys, Sister Club, and PowerPass, with their large and engaged membership bases. As you know, Flybuys is a free program where members earn and redeem points, and it gives us the ability to engage with over 9.4 million active members. OnePass, on the other hand, is a paid membership program with a scaling and highly valuable base. Members get meaningful benefits immediately upon joining, like free delivery, express click and collect, 365-day returns.
These programs link our retailers, drive divisional earnings, and provide members with great value. They also enable deeper customer insights through data, which is supported by OneData, our shared data asset. Turning to slide 17, now, you may be familiar with our omnichannel ecosystem. OnePass underpins the ecosystem by providing compelling benefits to members across a uniquely broad range of omnichannel retailers and our Catch marketplace, particularly as we extend the OnePass benefits across more of Catch's 3P range. The benefits help attract and retain scaled and engaged membership base and deliver a bigger share of wallet through incremental sales and frequency of shop. This means increased customer lifetime value, reduced customer acquisition and retention costs, cross-selling opportunities, and the potential to develop new revenue streams like a retail media offering.
Underpinning this is the privacy and security compliant shared data asset built by OneData, which allows us to use our collective data to better understand and provide benefits to customers. As this flywheel accelerates, it unlocks more value that each division can achieve alone by creating scaled traffic, spend, and audiences that are valuable and hard to replicate. Turning to slide 18, I will talk to the OnePass benefits. As outlined earlier, all our major retailers are now part of OnePass. With the launch last September of our enhanced omnichannel CVP, OnePass now delivers even more value for our members through a truly differentiated set of omnichannel benefits across a unique, broad range of partners.
The enhanced CVP offers free delivery for online shoppers, in-store benefits like five times Flybuys points at Kmart, Target, Bunnings, and Officeworks, and two times Sister Club points at Priceline, as well as other omnichannel benefits like express click and collect and 365-day returns, plus discounts at Instant Scripts and Catch member pricing. The offer is resonating, and the membership and platform are scaling. Throughout the year, OnePass will become more deeply embedded across the divisions. We'll be demonstrating more value to members as OnePass is included in more customer missions. This includes a better app, richer in-store experiences, and continuous improvement of the member experience across OnePass and in divisional checkouts to drive membership and sales. You'll see more co-branding and bigger and better events that leverage learnings from our successful early access events.
Given the strong brand awareness, there'll be more focus on personalized marketing and offers, more exclusive benefits, and we'll extend OnePass across more of the Catch range. We're excited about the year ahead as we continue scaling the platform for our members. Now, turning to slide 19, where I'll highlight the value of a OnePass member to the group and the value they get from being a member. So while we continue to build out OnePass, it's worth noting that OnePass members are already more valuable than non-members. Members shop 2.7x more frequently across our brands. They spend more with our brands, so 3 times more in the case of Catch and 2.7x more across the group. They cross-shop 1.4x more across the group, and they are much more likely to be omnichannel shoppers, in fact, 3x more likely.
Importantly, members are benefiting from their membership, and so they are changing how they shop. After joining, members increase their spend with us by more than 25%. This demonstrates that not only are we getting incremental benefits from the program, but that members are seeing value and choosing to shop with us more. We're also seeing more members take up an annual membership, with about 50% of our members now on an annual plan. This means churn is decreasing, and we have more opportunities to demonstrate value throughout the year. OnePass is also introducing new and valuable customers to our brands. For example, since the launch of Priceline partnership in March, nearly 20% of members linked to Priceline via OnePass were new to Sister Club. In terms of engagement, we're seeing some experiences really resonate, like the Black Friday early access events that all brands participated in.
During November, member acquisition was nearly 5x higher than the prior three month average, and order value increased by 11% across Kmart, Target, and Catch. The Officeworks back-to-school event generated 35% of members to date from Officeworks, while the average order value was over 70% higher for members than non-members. Not only have these events introduced new customers to our brands, they've driven increased OnePass membership and spend. We'll continue with these marquee events this year. Turning to slide 20, I will talk about how OneData is using data as a key enabler to improve customer experience across the group. The shared data asset developed by OneData is foundational for the group's omnichannel ambitions. The asset includes 12.2 million customer records. For nearly two-thirds of them, the asset holds more data than any one division. This allows us to understand customers better, improve their experience, and unlock growth.
Critically, underpinning this is the continued investment in strong privacy, security, and data governance to drive the responsible and consented use of data. By using this data responsibly, OneData empowers our businesses to better understand customers through broader datasets and deeper profiles with the right customer consent. These provide richer, actionable insights that no single division could develop themselves. This data has helped with targeted audiences, for example, to promote key OnePass events that I spoke about earlier, plus Catch Afterpay Day and Officeworks using it to increase their back-to-school database by 5x . The shared data asset also enables more data-centric strategies and initiatives, from personalization to range planning or retail media offering. Finally, OneData will support the measurement of commercial outcomes through integrated data feeds, closed-loop analytics, and real-time reporting across the ecosystem.
This is something that no individual division can do on its own, demonstrating the value of the OneDigital ecosystem. Now, turning to Catch and slide 21, as outlined in our half-year presentation, Catch has made significant progress. It has seen a material reduction in losses and has established the foundations to support growth and scale its third-party marketplace. This has been underpinned by three items. Firstly, the significant rationalization and curation of first-party range, with a 70% reduction in SKUs, a focus on profitable in-demand categories, and stock clearance. This has seen contribution per order more than double. The second is a sustainable and material reset of the cost base. This includes a halving of headcount and other productivity initiatives. The final item is the execution of efficiency initiatives.
These have seen a circa 30% reduction in cost to pick in the first half through core system improvements and an optimized labor model. Catch has also developed a low-cost last-mile network with reduced freight costs and faster delivery across more postcodes. Catch is now more efficient with paid marketing and is increasing free traffic through Flybuys and OnePass. These actions have delivered a material reduction in losses of over 50% in the first half. Importantly, both 1P and 3P products are delivering positive unit economics, which establishes the foundation to scale the marketplace, which is what I will talk to next on slide 22. As you know, Catch has always been about great promotions and great deals across its 1P range.
The significant actions we've undertaken provide the foundation to reset and refocus by shifting Catch from a 1P-led business to a 3P-led business with a scaled marketplace, which is asset-light. As we scale, we will reinvigorate Catch's customer proposition as we reinforce its heritage as a trusted Australian marketplace focused on expanded deals and promotions, fast delivery across its entire range. Catch will materially broaden its marketplace range to improve customer choice and introduce seller competition. This, in turn, drives competitive intensity with better value for customers. Catch will provide new tools to help sellers grow, get better served by the Catch team, and in turn provide better service to their customers. OnePass members make up nearly 50% of Catch's 1P transactions and spend three times more at Catch than non-members, showing that the Catch element of the OnePass offer is resonating.
Catch will therefore focus on utilizing OnePass and Flybuys, as well as the actionable insights it gets from OneData, to accelerate growth and scale by driving more free traffic, broadening OnePass benefits to millions of items across the 3P range, and using OnePass recruitment and the growing number of Flybuys members shopping on Catch to grow GTV. Finally, Catch will scale new, higher-margin revenue streams like fulfill by Catch, leverage its last-mile solutions, and will expand its retail media offering. For fulfill by Catch, sellers benefit from increased availability in sales and cost-effective fulfillment, making Catch a more attractive place to sell. Customers get faster and more reliable delivery across a broader range. This drives stronger GTV while reducing costs through consolidated orders and fixed-cost fractionalization. And for retail media, sellers get better visibility, improved insights, increased GTV, while customers see more relevant ads and just get a better experience.
Turning to slide 23 to summarize, the OneDigital ecosystem creates network effects by leveraging data to increase customer lifetime value across the group. This will, in turn, enable new revenue streams like a retail media offering. OnePass members are more valuable and spend more after joining. Importantly, we're also seeing that members are getting compelling value from the omnichannel benefits that OnePass delivers across its broad and unique range of partners. Catch's focus is to scale its marketplace, which is an asset-light strategy. Catch will also continue to develop newer, higher-margin revenue streams like Fulfill by Catch and retail media. Thank you, and I'd now like to invite Rob, Anthony, and Naomi to the stage to take questions.
I'm good? Okay. Hi, Rob. David Errington, B of A. Can I just two quick questions?
The first one, if you go to slide eight, I don't know if you can bring slide eight up on the screen. It's with regards to your shareholder value creation, I suppose, through acquisitions and incremental investments. Without being too critical, I'd say that the majority of the value being created by Wesfarmers is in that bottom category, history of portfolio renewal and capital reallocation. That's where the value's being created. But the top two buckets, Wesfarmers Health and the other buckets, the incremental investments, I'd say that they're being drags on value. I mean, the return on capital, leave Covalent out of it for the moment. I mean, that's going to be heavily commodity-price driven if we could leave that out. But the other ones, I'd say, are probably drags, some of them pretty material drags.
My question to you is, your point is when you look at the demographics and you look for a good business, then you make an investment. Now, the problem with that is I remember Michael Chaney saying a good business can be a bad investment if you pay too much. So how do you get that tactical part right with effectively wanting to be in the right logistical business? Because at the moment, where those incrementals side, I'd say health and the bottom six, they're just not getting the job done for you. In fact, they're heavy drags. So that's my first question. The second question, I was listening to Nicole, and I just don't understand why you're keeping OneDigital separate.
I mean, I listen to her, and I just want to hold you guys to account with how your investment in One Digital is actually leading to a business in dollars and cents. I say the only way you can do that is to allocate the cost of One Digital to each individual business. It's the only way you can do it because, at the end of the day, we're never going to hold you to account as to how this investment is actually increasing your value to your business. There's two questions there, but if you can answer them, that'd be great.
Sure. Well, thanks, David. Look, on the acquisitions, I'd say the one that I was pretty open with that hasn't delivered value today in terms of return on capital and value to shareholders is Catch, and very transparent with that. But if I think about the other acquisitions we've made, I'd say the first thing is that we have shown I believe we've shown a lot of discipline. We haven't allocated an enormous amount of capital to M&A despite many opportunities that have been out there. And if I think about Instant Scripts, Silk, Beaumont Tiles, to put TKD into perspective, we're talking about circa AUD 10 million. So it wasn't a lot, right? It was the rounding error in the scheme of things. Geeks to you all of those acquisitions are looking quite encouraging, quite promising.
Health? Health at 3.5% ROC?
Yeah, that's right. Well, look, time will tell with health. I think we were very transparent when we bought API that we said a few things. We said we felt it was a really interesting platform to create long-term value. It was a business that had been materially underinvested, and we have made a fairly big investment both in terms of capital, technology, and talent. And it was going to be a long-term project. So we talked about this being a 3-5year type horizon. And at the end of the day, time will tell. Time will tell on that. So I think the jury's out. We're happy to be held to account of whether we generate an acceptable return there. Covalent Lithium, I think, has the potential to be a very good contributor.
I'd say, though, David, one of the features of these and the point I was trying to make is that it's not that hard, well, you can find acquisitions that deliver a reasonable return on capital in the short term, but they tend to be declining businesses. The businesses that we like are the ones where we feel there's an ability to invest in over time. And as I said, we won't get it right all the time, but we're still quite confident in these. The final point is I wouldn't underestimate, and as you rightly pointed out, some of the bigger portfolio moves, and I would put the Target network rationalization into that. Leases are a form of capital, and we faced into that very aggressively and have delivered good value for the group.
Similarly, it is going back quite a while now, but I am trying to give the broader context of how we think about the portfolio over the longer term, the moves to exit coal mining, and the demerger of Coles, I think, were good deals.
And the OneDigital investment?
Yeah, the OneDigital investment. Well, look, it's interesting.
And how do we hold you to account? How do we hold you to account that this money's been well spent?
Yeah, sure. Well, look, I think it.
I'm not an adviser today on that.
It's interesting that I think Nicole shared—well, she shared a lot more information than we've ever shared before on the data points that do flow through to the benefits that will be attributed to our retail divisions. Something that Wesfarmers has done over the years that I think has been a very positive aspect of the Wesfarmers model is that we haven't sought to allocate corporate costs back to our divisions. That has been a very common and deliberate feature of the group over many, many years. A lot of the investment we're making in One Digital is quite—there's a high risk associated with it. It is deliberately focused on a long-term investment. I think you can look at case studies of many retail businesses that have avoided making some of these transformational investments if they cause earnings to go backwards in a year.
So we did debate the pros and cons of do we allocate those costs back to each of our divisions, but we think it's far better to actually we're being very transparent with what those costs are. We're not hiding them. And in fact, some people might say we would have been better off just to keep them in a broader corporate cost bucket, but we are being transparent about it. We're also being transparent about the data points that give us confidence that they are adding value. And once again, time will tell. We will continue to monitor the amount we're spending, the benefit realization. Also, if you look around the world at other groups that have gone down this path, there are benefits in not burdening an operating division with the upfront costs of some of these investments. But time will tell.
That's Bryan Raymond, JP Morgan. First one, just to follow on from that, actually, just thinking about where the benefits might be flowing earlier. So we've seen a tremendous profitability improvement in Kmart. Obviously, a lot of moving parts in that. But I was just wondering, is there a bit of an outsized impact early on in something like Kmart/Target from the One Digital investments you've made? And obviously, the costs are sitting in One Digital, but are some of the benefits flowing through a bit unevenly at this early stage into some of your divisions?
Well, the first point I'd make is, although we're very encouraged by a lot of these data points showing really good customer metrics and incremental spend as a result of OnePass, that's not the only reason why our retail divisions are moving forward well. So I wouldn't want to overstate the benefit of OnePass. I'd say with Kmart that Kmart has been one of the strongest, it's probably fair to say, Nicole, one of the strongest adopters of OnePass. So we probably have more data, and Nicole can talk more to that. Yeah, do you want to add to that?
Yeah. I mean, Kmart definitely joined the program at the very beginning and have absolutely, from a marketing perspective, been key. I think what's really interesting in the Kmart story, when we look at it, about 20% of their online customers now are OnePass members. But actually, those OnePass members are driving a lot of value in-store, and it's the omnichannel element where we, I mentioned the 2.7x . We're really seeing that omnichannel growth. Once a member joins OnePass, they're really driving a lot of those benefits in-store as well.
Great. Just to follow up on that, I may have missed it, but I couldn't see any sort of active member numbers in OnePass.
We're not disclosing those yet.
So we're a couple of years in. Is that because they're not particularly large numbers? You're happy to give, obviously, lots of other things.
Oh, I'm very happy to tell you why. Years ago, when I was talking to Doug McMillon at Walmart, he gave very strong advice, "Don't get into the trap of giving a running commentary on subscriber numbers." So we took that advice. And look, over time, we may, but I don't see any real at the end of the day, I don't see benefit in letting our competitors know what the numbers are. And at the end of the day, we're happy to be judged by, are we continuing to grow the earnings collectively of our retail businesses in our group?
Okay. But you're comfortable with the pace of customer acquisition and member numbers?
Yes, we are.
It's going to plan, basically?
We are. And look, I think the final point I'd say is that we're still learning a lot, right? Last year was the first time we haven't even had the new CVP for OnePass in market for a year. We relaunched that in September. We learned a lot through the Black Friday campaigns that all of our businesses participated in, but not all to the same extent. So the program will continue to evolve. I suspect the program will look very different in a year's time, two years' time than it looks today.
Hi. It's Lisa from Goldman. Hi. It's a question also on One Digital. Just out of interest, how do you actually attribute incremental benefits that's been driven by One Digital versus just good execution? For example, the Black Friday event, what would it have been if we didn't have it? And then therefore, looking two, three years out, what do we think the incremental benefits of One Digital should be?
Yeah, thanks, Lisa. So the benefit of having OneData is they have actually created an attribution model and understand what is incremental and work with the divisions to actually assign that. So for example, the early access to Black Friday Kmart, for example, was a significant beneficiary because it was early access. We could actually see which OnePass members went online, actually bought those products before it was available to all customers. So we've got targets that we've set. We've worked with each division because every division has different strategies and has different omnichannel goals that they're setting. And so we work together to actually set that up each year in our budgeting process.
And so you have a plan, and you may not tell us, but annually, biannually, what your incremental uplift to the business needs to be, and you have clear measurements against that?
Absolutely. Yeah.
One follow-on question then. This new discussion of retail media, is it a group retail media network that you guys will run, or is it going to be run independently in each of the divisions?
So we're still working through that at the moment. I think retail media is not new to Wesfarmers. Many of our divisions have very successful retail media programs. So Priceline Officeworks, Bunnings have just launched screens in stores and have got a very successful program. This is actually looking at how do we actually build out a retail media network and leverage the data that we've got. And so that's kind of that broader spend that we're looking at and how we kind of deliver that not just for our brands and our divisions, but actually in terms of audiences that are already interacting with us, and we have a lot of data on them.
But more to come on the details?
Yeah, more to come.
Hi, Shaun Cousins, UBS. Just a question on OneDigital. I think in the first half result, you indicated you'd lose AUD 70 million in the full year 2024. Can you reiterate that? And then if we think about the progress of losses, when things get better, does that loss stay AUD 70 million and the benefit goes up in the division, or does success look like that AUD 70 million loss dropping down? I was curious how the 2024 and then what the future looks like.
Shaun, I'm happy to take that. I think obviously, we're two months out, so I can't give it a precise number, but we should land pretty much in line with that AUD 70 million estimate that we gave. In terms of your second question, I think it's a combination of both. So we'll see what we should see is obviously incremental, as Nicole's talked about, sales and margin growth across the businesses, which we will track internally to make sure that the economic model of what we're doing in OnePass is paying off. What we'll see in terms of the OneDigital P&L specifically, obviously, we've got to continue to make investments. We're quite transparent around what we're spending in marketing through that. Of course, the subscription income that comes in will offset the costs.
So as the program grows, I would expect that the losses will come down, but where most of the benefit will actually sit is with the divisions. So that's something that we are watching very closely to make sure that as we continue to invest in OneDigital and OnePass program, that the economic model for Wesfarmers as a group is actually paying off. And as you've talked about, we've seen greater benefit as we relaunched the CVP in September last year. We learn more as we do more events. We understand the incrementality better. We know what drives incrementality. And so as that and Nicole talked about some of the targets that we've got internally for what we do from that perspective, that will obviously grow, and that increases the value. So it'll be a combination of both.
Great. And then just secondly on Catch, Wesfarmers is quite concerned about its reputation. If I'm running a marketplace, that might not be congruent with that in that I might be more willing to bring product on that's grey market, that I want to move in and out quickly. Why is Wesfarmers given it sort of quite you're quite slow to bring product onto Catch. We've had feedback from suppliers that are selling on Catch. They can get their product onto other marketplaces quicker. Given that sort of very noble sort of approach that Wesfarmers takes, why is Wesfarmers the right company to own Catch then?
Yeah, thank you. So I think we're very committed to ensuring that we're going to provide a lot of seller tools. We're providing a lot of governance in terms of actually how we grow that marketplace. It's going to be very considered, and we've got support in global experts that know how to do this. So to your point, we are very considered in how we're adding to that marketplace. The reality is what the marketplace offers at the moment, we have 11 million SKUs. As we grow those SKUs, we grow categories. We grow categories and SKUs that are available, which is valuable for our customers. And if you think about the digital ecosystem that we're building, they're actually broader products they can buy, and there's more that they can do. So from our perspective, I think that it is the right strategy.
We just need to be quite considered in the way we bring those marketplace sellers, and then we onboard them.
But you'll be less nimble than your peers. And so you'll be sort of somewhat disadvantaged in the way you want to go about it. I'm just curious, is this not a business that's actually better in the hands of someone else? Sorry, I'm not sure that might not have been clear on the question.
No, I don't think we feel that there's plenty of opportunity to build a really competitive and broad marketplace offer. In fact, I'd say in some ways, I suspect that the regulators may well become more focused on other marketplace providers and asking questions, "Are they managing appropriate expectations around not just ethical sourcing, but the way that the marketing occurs?" So we feel that we have more than enough opportunity to build a really competitive marketplace in line with our ethical sourcing standards.
Great. Thanks. It's Ross Curran from Macquarie. Can I come back to David's question? I might ask it a slightly different way. Are you able to refresh us on the metrics a business needs to have to end up as part of the Wesfarmers portfolio? But then more importantly, what are the minimum metrics a business needs to be able to demonstrate to stay in the Wesfarmers portfolio? At what point do you say, "This doesn't fit what Wesfarmers wants or looks like"?
Yeah, thanks, Ross. So internally, we have return on capital measures, as you know, and it's one of the key drivers that we use to gauge performance of existing businesses that we've got. We don't necessarily use a return on capital when we're looking at new acquisitions because obviously, that's a difficult measure to see at the start. And what we're focused on, even with acquisitions, is obviously how fast we can grow return on capital over time. Internally, we have a minimum target of return on capital of 10% across our businesses. We have an 18% target, which we deem to be what we call satisfactory.
And then above that, really, the focus is about, "How do we actually reinvest capital to drive growth in the business?" And of course, as you know, over time, you can grow you don't want to continue to grow return on capital endlessly because really, the only way to do that is shrink. What we want to do is then invest that back into driving performance. If you look at across our businesses, generally, when you're buying a new business, it's going to be on quite a low return on capital. And I could take you all the way back to Coles. When we bought that business a long time ago, it was a low return on capital. What our focus is on new businesses and a good example, of course, is health.
We have plans to significantly grow the return on capital in our health business towards the minimum of 10%, but hopefully then to the 18% satisfactory return. The timeframe around that will depend on the size of the investment we're making and, of course, the starting point. But the focus is very much about driving improvements on return on capital, and particularly for those businesses that are sitting below that minimum and below the 18% target. And that's the focus that we use internally. It's the focus that we have when we look at our corporate plans. So we look at our five-year plans across our businesses in terms of strategic planning, and we look at how that return on capital is changing over that period to warrant the investment that we're making in driving that return. And then, of course, we assess the risk associated with doing that.
Thank you very much. All right. So I'm Ben here from Jarden. You talk about sort of the different generations coming through, and we look at Amazon, who's putting another AUD 500 million in New South Wales at the moment, AUD 500 million down in Vic, and probably got over 200 million SKUs on their site now. Wesfarmers have done a great job around leveraging scale on sourcing. Obviously, what's happening with OneDigital, but supply chain, to me, just seems the area where you're a bit I don't want to say absent, but you just haven't put the investment. I appreciate what you're saying around Officeworks and those sorts of things.
But if you want to do Fulfill by Catch, you want to push range and compete on that, and you want to break down same-day delivery like Amazon's got 85% coverage now, when do you guys take the decision to do a bigger, fully automated shed, endless aisles, being able to have that investment from national base? It feels like the longer you wait, the harder it's going to be, or the more money you're going to have to put down.
Ben, I think it's important to remember it's not a like-for-like comparison. We have an enormous benefit of well over 1,000 stores that can act as fulfillment centres in their own right and can often get product to customers either through click and collect or home delivery faster than others with dedicated centralized fulfillment solutions. We also have a very wide range of distribution centres with fulfillment solutions there that we're continuing to invest in and upgrade. As it relates to the marketplace fulfillment capabilities that Nicole talked to, we have a fair bit of excess capacity in our Moorebank facility. We also have a site in Melbourne with excess capacity. While there's a good and a bad, with that, the good is that we've got a fair bit of capacity to leverage. The bad thing is that it's flowing through in costs to the Catch P&L at the moment.
We feel that we can better leverage our store network and our distribution center capabilities to be very effective in the omnichannel space.
So do you have any sort of concern or thoughts around younger generations typically going to one site to begin their search now? OneDigital is obviously a great platform, but you're then going to go through and click into all the individual banners to go through to the sites. How do you sort of leverage it? Just feels like there's an opportunity to leverage scale and appreciate you want to run it as silos, but do you ever have to think about breaking that down for a single platform?
No, I don't think so. And in fact, I'll let Mike and Ian and Sarah talk to this later. But many customers, including younger customers, have a very deep connection with our core retail brands. And take Kmart as an example. Kmart is certainly getting more than their fair share of spend from younger customers, both in-store and online. And they're going to Kmart because they love the Anko product. They have a deep connection with the range. They have very sophisticated social media engagement that they leverage. So if I had a choice between having just a very vanilla marketplace with lots of products on or having the very unique brands that we have within our portfolio, I know what I'd rather be leveraging.
Thanks. Just final one from me, maybe just 30 seconds on how you're seeing the consumer at the moment. We've had Batcore and Big W today both sort of talk down the consumer. Admittedly, I think they're probably both losing share, one of which to you guys, but general lens or view on the consumer, as you said, today?
Well, for some time now, we've been noting that a number of households, particularly younger families, are under a bit of financial pressure with cost of living pressures, higher interest rates. We've also been consistent in the last six months that we thought that those inflationary cost of living pressures were going to be more enduring. That does seem to be playing out. I think with some of the media of late that maybe it will take longer for interest rates to come down, maybe inflation is a bit stickier. That obviously weighs on consumers and weighs on households. Value is still incredibly important. It hasn't really changed the way that we think about our businesses or our strategy.
It just means that we need to keep doubling down on the really strong value credentials, making sure that we have an offer that is going to resonate with more value-focused customers.
Thanks. All right. Michael Simotas from Jefferies. I've got a couple of questions. The first one is on the productivity and efficiency initiatives that you've spoken about. I'm sure we can talk at a divisional level later, but I think it's worth just talking broadly from a top-down. Where you see Wesfarmers as a group and a collection of businesses in terms of the evolution of the investments that you've already made and the benefits that they're delivering and the investments opportunities that you see ahead of you to deliver similar productivity benefits?
I'm not sure if this properly answers your question, but a lot of the real productivity benefits are best delivered at a divisional level, would be the point I'd make. Of course, there are always some theoretical cost savings you can drive by integrating certain back-office functions. The small cost benefit you gain, you lose the accountability and the focus and the agility and the portfolio management capacity that you have by having that stronger divisional focus. What we are doing is we have been very clear about where are the areas where you can collaborate, you can leverage scale and capability and procurement. That largely is around data, the digital platforms, some technology choices that we're making, some of the work that's going on across the group around generative AI, sharing insights and ideas and group procurement approaches.
There's a bit in that, but I'd say, and I'll let the divisions talk to this as well. I'd say the vast majority of the opportunities around productivity and efficiency are very much driven at a divisional level.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I guess what I'm asking is if we look backwards at what you've invested already, how much of the benefits have you got from those investments? Look, we can talk about divisions, but just as a group. Then how much more opportunity do you see to invest in productivity and efficiencies when you're weighing up whether to put capital into new businesses, expand markets, or drive productivity and efficiency, what you've already got?
Well, look, it's hard to put a specific number on it. I'd say a lot of the productivity benefits, certainly around workforce optimization and so forth, I think fair to say, and the MDs could add to this, we get pretty good payback over a pretty short period of time. Some of the longer-term investments, so the investment that Ian and the team have made around the use of RFIDs, they were multi-year programs. So some of these investments do take time to deliver the results, probably 3-5 years. And really, what we're trying to do is you can't afford to do everything at the one time, so you want to have a portfolio of options in the pipeline, some of which are going to deliver the gains faster, some will take a bit of time.
If you go back to the broader investment we're making in data and digital through One Digital, just to put that into perspective, the AUD 70 million accounts for about 2% of retail earnings. Now, we could allocate that back to our retail, and we are very optimistic that that is going to flow through to be accretive at a group level in terms of earnings and returns. Some of that is flowing through now. Some of it will take time to realize the benefits of.
Yeah. So you've led into my second question, actually. It's good to hear that you've got a sophisticated way of measuring the benefits you get from the centralized One Digital spend. How far off recovering the OPEX that you're spending on a run-rate basis are you? And then I guess the next stage is recovering the OPEX that you've sunk in previous years as well.
Yeah. Look, I think it's. I'd say over the next couple of years. And clearly, what we haven't done as yet, and it's been quite a deliberate choice, there are many retailers that have gone quite hard at clipping the ticket, so to speak, or trying to aggressively and rapidly commercialise the data. We haven't gone there. And if we were to do that, we'd do so in a more measured way, as Nicole was talking about with the retail media strategy. Once you start to extract some of those benefits, obviously, that materially improves the P&L outcome. But just to put it into perspective, we're being very transparent with the investment we're making. We shared today some very positive customer and sales and metrics that are flowing through. The investment we're making in this space is about 2% of retail earnings.
We've got strong mechanisms in place to monitor that, and we'll scale it up and down depending on where we see the value.
Makes sense. Thank you.
Phillip Kimber from Evans & Partners. Question. Just traditionally, Wesfarmers has run its business standalone. It's been very agnostic about what it owns and what it doesn't. Does this start to change with this One Digital strategy, at least within the retail businesses? They're starting to become more integrated, and therefore, the ability to maybe move on from One is more limited going forward?
No, not at all. I think we might have touched on this a year ago or so. We have set the OneDigital, the shared data asset, the OnePass program up in a way that is highly modular. So it doesn't, in any way, restrict our ability around portfolio management. A lot of the technology you can use now around ingesting data and leveraging the data assets don't require it to all be integrated. So we still retain all that flexibility. Now, there are, obviously, as we touched on, there are other use cases and other revenue streams that we do hope that we can develop and extract that are not part of the group at the moment. Hopefully, over time, some of those might start to become more meaningful contributors. But once again, it wouldn't restrict our capacity to manage the portfolio.
Hey, Rob. Craig Woolford from MST Marquee. I've got two quick questions. First one mightn't be so quick, but what do you see as the boundaries on this health division over the next 5-10 years? What would you consider that business to be? What does it look like? What type of businesses would you hold within the health division? Health's a pretty broad term, so I'd be interested in your perspective.
Look, Craig, I'll let Emily talk more to that. We're pretty pleased with the platform we have at the moment. There are obviously ways in which we can keep growing each of these pillars, but I describe our focus as being very much around consumer health and areas where we could ways in which we can leverage our platforms, our data, the community pharmacy networks to deliver more accessible and affordable healthcare. That's what's most interesting. The areas where we are less interested are areas that have a high degree of regulation, regulatory control around pricing, areas that are very capital-intensive, or areas that are very much more on the biotech, pharmaceutical side where it's a bit of hit and miss, big risky calls around investment. That's not really for us.
Got it. Next question may involve Naomi. So we're moving towards a world of Scope three emissions, and what Wesfarmers has disclosed so far puts an emphasis on Bunnings and Kmart with more Scope three for fairly obvious reasons. Do you think that has any tension over the medium term about the kind of businesses they are? You offer great value, but some of that value is about how frequently people purchase products and they're low-priced items that may not have long lives. How do you see that come into play, and what should we expect on Scope three emissions reporting going forward?
You'll see a lot of change on Scope three emissions reporting in the years ahead, and the legislation that's been introduced into Parliament, which we'll expect pass in the next couple of months, will mandate far more reporting and assurance of reporting. I think we welcome that. As regards our Scope 3 categories, you're absolutely right. Bunnings and Kmart are the largest contributors to Scope 3 emissions. For us, probably two major Scope three categories stand out. One relates to our supply chain emissions associated with the production of goods that we, in turn, sell. The other then relates to the use and the disposal of products at the end of life. I think the way we would look at them is there are partners who can work with us to really address those Scope three emissions categories, both upstream and downstream.
Upstream, a lot of it comes through things that we've been working on for a very long period of time, like product design, renewable or sustainable raw materials. It's no accident that Kmart uses BCI Cotton for everything. Packaging materials. So you don't see many laminated white boxes in Kmart anymore. It's a recycled and recyclable off-white, sort of light brown card, which brings with it both some efficiencies. I think the product actually looks better in the store. But it's also lower Scope three from an emissions standpoint. And I think increasingly, you'll see us measuring that. So upstream, I think we're very optimistic that we'll be able to have some meaningful impact on Scope three.
Then downstream, if you take the benefit of a business like Kmart, but also I think a lot of our other retail businesses, is those really deep and longstanding relationships with suppliers mean you can help design either yourself through design functions or partner with suppliers to design products which have greater kind of Scope threthr benefits at end-of-life treatments. So can the embedded resource be recovered and reused? Can the product even perhaps be repaired? All of those kinds of measures. And I think all of the customer engagements that we have, sort of 10 million a week customer engagements, they provide opportunities to help educate and drive behavioral change around end-of-use end-of-life treatment. So I think we're welcoming of the change and the reporting and the clarity that people will increasingly see and focus on.
I think also very optimistic about the capacity to really make a meaningful dent on upstream and downstream, which are our two biggest Scope three categories.
Great. Thanks. Rob, you've got Richard over here from CLSA. Another question on OneDigital. I think in the past, you have talked to the or suggested that OneDigital would get to a point where it was profitable in its own right. And we've sort of talked around that concept a little bit now, and certainly heading from the -70 closer to a zero. So can you just clarify exactly what the intention is there? So even if it's on a not tightly defined timeframe, is that the objective? You want OneDigital to be profitable in its own right, or would you be satisfied with an outcome where the benefits are accruing into the individual retail businesses and you are, say, running it close enough to break even?
Look, just to be crystal clear, we are really focused around value creation at a group level. So what matters more than anything is are we getting more benefit out of the investment than we're investing? As simple as that. Now, I have a very high degree of confidence that that will occur in terms of the benefit that will flow through at a divisional level. There are other ways, as we've talked about with retail media and other areas, where we think there's a good pathway to develop incremental earnings, some of which may sit within OneDigital. But to be honest, that's not how we're not hung up about where the profit sits. We're more hung up about how we're creating the value. So time will tell. But I think there's every capacity for OneDigital to be a profitable profit center in its own right.
But to simply look at that would be missing the bigger picture about the opportunity.
No. Okay. I understand that. It just makes it a lot more difficult for us if we're thinking about the retail businesses and what component of those retail earnings come from OneDigital, one do not, and which ones do not.
Yeah. That's right. Well, I think at the end of the day, like I said earlier, the investment we're making in One Digital at the moment accounts for about 2% of retail and health earnings. If you look around the world at what other large retail groups are investing around data and digital capabilities in an effort to fast-track their omnichannel developments and so forth, I think that's a fairly modest cost in the scheme of things. We could reallocate that AUD 70 million to our retail divisions, and you wouldn't really notice a difference. I just have a big argument to have with all of my divisional managing directors, which is not really the biggest thing to focus on at the moment.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Hi. It's Johannes here from Morningstar. I had a question relating to the number of customers you have in your database. I think it's over 12 million. How big is the overlap there between the individual retailing groups? So where I'm coming from is if OneDigital is now spread across all retailing segments or all retailing brands, what's the opportunity there to activate customers that have been inactive or having new customers, a customer of Bunnings trying Kmart for the first time?
Well, that's actually the opportunity for OneData. So the 12.2 million that we have in our database are a combination of the transactional data that comes from each division as well as some of the Flybuys data, the OnePass data, and we haven't ingested Priceline's yet. And the opportunity is to have a de-identified understanding of those customers so that we can actually use them for personalization, for insights, for planning, whichever the division wants to use. And so depending on the use case and how they engage with that will depend on the outcome that they get. So the example that I gave was Officeworks at Back to School used it and was able to get five times better, I mean, their personalization for their Back to School campaign. So I think different divisions have different use cases.
They as well are building out their own very strong data asset. But it is basically their customers that they know. What the shared data asset delivers is a much broader understanding of a broader customer set.
Okay. Great. And on the overlap, is there any ballpark number? Is it the majority of Bunnings customers are also Kmart customers, or is there a lot of opportunity there?
No. Look, I think that from our perspective, we don't really have a number on the overlap. But what we know is that, for example, the OnePass example, that if we can get them cross-shopping and we can find ways for them to actually identify when they're in store or when they're online and understand them, we'll get a much better picture of who they are.
Thanks.
Okay. Thanks, everyone. We're go ng to take a 10 minute break. There's some tea and coffee outside. For those on. Just don't hold the scorecards up.
Okay. We might make a start. Double-check everyone's coming from down the back. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for the opportunity of speaking with you today. 2024, I should say, marks a special anniversary for us as we celebrate 30 years of running our iconic warehouse format. And over those three decades, we've been through various economic cycles, changes in the market, and ever-evolving customer needs and preferences. But a lot of things have stayed the same and really core to who we are. We have a relentless focus on our customers, a strong growth mindset, and expanding the addressable market. And of course, our disciplined focus on executing our strategies to deliver returns over the long term. And this has stood us in good stead to deliver on year-on-year sales growth as well as earnings growth.
To do so on the back of the significant growth we delivered through the COVID period is an incredible credit to our team. This growth has been consistent through economic cycles, reflecting our resilient business model and a product offer that is a mix of necessity and discretionary spending. Today, our addressable market size is around AUD 110 billion. The market has grown through new and expanded product ranges, categories, and services, as well as new formats and channels to market across online, on-site, in-home, and of course, in-store. It's earned us the right to be chosen by customers more often and attract new customers both in the consumer and commercial segments. The way we see it, competition has never been stronger. The playing field spans geography, product assortment, formats, channels, including traditional hardware, big box, and specialty retailers.
And of course, there's pure play online, which continues to grow strongly, led by the international market. We take a category-by-category approach, keeping our customer offer differentiated and compelling. And it's centered around three value pillars: lowest prices, widest range, and of course, the best experience. Our offer is resilient, with demand influenced by a number of drivers. These are often countercyclical, with broad customer bases shopping across projects like new homes, renovations, repairs, and maintenance. With cost of living front of mind, consumers are more looking for ways to stretch their budgets than ever before. That might be the bulk packs and entry product lines we have, DIY projects to maintain or improve their homes, or setting up a space to entertain or work from home to save on discretionary spending.
Looking ahead, we see population growth, housing age, and supply, as well as lifestyle trends, all contributing to demand. Our customers are staying in their homes for longer, driving renovation activity, accessible fit-outs, and assisted living. Technology continues to bring new products to market like smart home lighting, security, household solar, and automation. Our strategic agenda has four key themes: care, grow, simplify, and evolve. Care is at the heart of everything we do. Our philosophies that if our team, suppliers, and the community are successful, then we too are successful. We genuinely care for the environment and take our responsibility to make a positive contribution seriously. Growth is about driving product range, innovation, and expansion to deliver the widest range and lowest prices. It's also about building new B2B capabilities to better serve our commercial customers.
We know there's opportunities to simplify, and our focus here is on reducing tasks for our team and leveraging our technology to the lower cost to reinvest in price and service, make stock available for customers when and where they need it. And lastly, we need to evolve to strengthen the customer offer and our business model. And here, we're focused on deepening our space management and supply chain capabilities and continuing to unlock the benefits of data and digital for our customers and team. We couldn't be more proud of our team and our culture. It's one of the important ingredients of our success, and it's enabled us to grow and change over time, whether it's large-scale tech transformation, range innovation, fresh formats, or a step change in our commercial service offer. And these things don't happen by chance.
We work hard every day to maintain and foster a high-performing team. Ensuring our team stays safe and well in the workplace continues to be a very high priority. We continue to look for ways to improve how we handle stock in our stores and see results from our safety programs to reduce injury. Our new EBA for our store team was implemented this financial year and provides industry-leading benefits. Combined with new rostering systems, it means we can much better match team hours to the demands of our customers. We invest in training and development in product knowledge, commercial acumen, and leadership skills, all as ways of investing in our talent and providing incredible career pathways. We're focused on building an inclusive and diverse workplace, reflecting the communities where we live and we work.
These elements all come together to support our strong team culture, high retention rates, helping us build a knowledgeable and engaged team, which also gives us a cost of doing business advantage. Our sustainability agenda is integral to keeping our business relevant and profitable, and we're on track to deliver on our commitment to achieve 100% renewable electricity in 2025, with around 80% renewable electricity powering our Australian network now and 100% in New Zealand. We're well advanced on our journey to achieve net-zero Scope one and two emissions by 2030 and continue to deepen our Scope three reporting. Our power tool and household battery recycling program has been embraced by our customers, and over 370 tons of batteries have already been recycled. We love bringing the community into our stores and having our team go out into the community.
Community barbecues, hands-on local projects, product contributions, and free in-store family events are managed by our local store teams, strengthening local community connection and team engagement. Collectively, we've supported over AUD 47 million in direct and indirect community donations in the last financial year alone. Our customers are seeking more value than ever, and we're relentlessly focused on sustainably delivering lowest prices. Our team is inspired by delivering affordability to our customers and making DIY more accessible. We've been offering specialty products at lower price points for many years. A great example of this is our DIY glass pool fencing. Historically, products like these were high-cost and needed expert installation. Today, we have fantastic DIY offerings across areas like smart home and home storage, where our new Lugna cabinetry range combines trade-quality finish with DIY modular ease and value.
Our business model leverages our scale and finds cost savings through operational efficiency, from the unique design and layout of our stores to our service model, so we can invest in price and service. We partner with our suppliers to offer even better value and quality and greater value to our customers. Import cost inflation is moderating, which supports our quality and pricing offer across a range of categories. One example is more bulk-sized packs in categories like fixings and light globes, which are strongly resonating with our customers and differentiating our warehouse offer. We're always looking for new ways to innovate, expand, and launch new product ranges, and we're constantly learning from local and global partners. And that's complemented by detailed market and customer research to ensure we continue bringing our customers a winning offer.
It's incredibly rewarding when our teams see customers respond to a new or refreshed offer at market-leading low prices. One example, of course, was the new pets range, which we're strengthening with new accessories and an expanded pet food offer. With many of our stores in regional locations, there's a great opportunity to make our offer even more relevant to our regional and rural customers. And product development in the rural category is very much top of mind. We're also broadening our automotive offer, building on the range of car accessories we already have, like service and inspection tools and car jacks. Interest in our smart home category is going from strength to strength, and we're continuing to offer an improved and refreshed offer for customers with a focus on smart security and smart door locks, anchored by improvements in technology. And our customers are embracing this.
In commercial, we're working on quality, supply, and installation packages that save our builders and trades time, along with a broader offering in cladding, joinery, and windows. Helping consumers and trades access quality household renewables offers at great value is an emerging opportunity and is something we're actively exploring. We know customers value a mix of brands they know and love. We have a long-established strategy of delivering widest choice through our house of brands strategy, which includes providing customers with world-leading brands like Ryobi, Dulux, and Hills, complemented by our own brands. We continue to strengthen our direct sourcing capabilities, and customers are responding really well to some of our own brand offerings. One example is the Matador barbecue, which we've been offering to our customers for 16 years.
In that time, we've improved features and on-trend design, and now that range is going digital with new models that send cooking notifications to smartphones and enhanced LED controls, keeping this trusted Matador brand as popular and relevant as ever. Another example is ourSyneco Safety Ladder brand, which has been really well received by the trades, and we're now expanding this brand into our PPE range. I'd now like to talk about a really important opportunity that we see at Bunnings: space optimization, which we see as a driver of future growth. It's how we better use our retail space and make product ranging decisions across our network so the in-store range is tailored to serve the local market, taking into account location, store size, layout, and format.
When I reflect on our history, the absence of an omnichannel offer meant we had to carry wider ranges in our smaller stores, often meaning stock availability was compromised to ensure range width. The development of our online store and last-mile capabilities, along with recent investments in inventory and order management technology, means we can reduce some range width in our smaller stores and ensure we have greater availability of the key products our customers need, with our full range of products available for customers online. We've been trialing, localizing, and curating range based on geographies, climate, customer demographics, and trends. Our visual merchandise and data science teams have been using space planning technology in some small-format stores to help us understand improvements to return on space, as well as testing macro and micro range choices.
The results are really promising, and we'll be keeping on building this so that we can compare the performance of our ranges and offer across our network and drive more relevant customer offers and increase sales density at scale. We'll look to deliver this capability across our 50 or so small-format stores as a start point across our network in the year ahead. Our team is known for making every interaction in-store friendly, helpful, and tailored to our customers. As purchasing habits change, we're making sure our digital experience is as seamless and reflects those same qualities that our in-store team is famous for. Pre-shop, our retail and trade websites and apps are major destinations for project inspiration and planning. We see around 41 million customer sessions on these channels every month.
Customers who are members of the Flybuys, OnePass, and our PowerPass programs are invited to visit us online through regular email updates that are tailored to their interests and their current projects. We know our customers, as Nicole said earlier, are more engaged with OnePass, having a higher spend frequency. Over the past 30 years, we've moved from offering 34,000 hardware and home improvement items in-store to an omnichannel model offering close to 300,000 home, commercial, lifestyle products through multiple channels. We're working with our suppliers to expand our product offer online further, including extended ranges and growing a profitable marketplace. We've also enhanced product information and host an array of content to inspire and inform our customers. Recently, we added augmented reality to our online store so customers can visualize what a product looks like in their home or their garden.
Our digital ecosystem makes it easy for customers to move from product discovery and planning through to the shop phase. For example, a shopping list you create on your app before you visit can be turned into a map with the location of those products in your local store. Post-shop, we curate how-to content for customers based on their shopping list with tips on how to get the best out of their project. For example, we have a group of customers that's very enthusiastic about their lawns. We support them with step-by-step guides, product, and maintenance information that helps keep their pride and joy looking its best across all four seasons. Using insights to invest in our relationship with customers supports a more meaningful and loyal customer base.
For our suppliers, we've been encouraged by the early uptake of our trials of a retail media offering in partnership with our colleagues at OneDigital. Our suppliers have embraced the opportunity to more meaningfully communicate with our sizable and relevant customer audience, and we're looking forward to growing our offer in a way that is incredibly customer-centric in the year ahead. In the commercial space, we have a very clear focus on our growth opportunities. First is our strategy to be a better partner to our builders across the whole of build. Builders are time-poor, and we want to support this segment with expert account managers, refurbished builder design studios, our PowerPass app, and through our expanded commercial ranges.
In the frame-to-fix phase, we want to aim to make it as easy as we possibly can for our builders to access the frames and trusses, timber, cladding, insulation, plasters, windows, and doors that they need on spec and, more importantly, on time. Our investment in our frame and truss plants comes as the residential construction industry is facing labor shortages and a need for efficiency, which creates growing demand for prefab products delivered direct to site. Our latest site, this one based in Wacol, Brisbane, takes our total to seven. Wacol services an important growth corridor, and the automation we have in the plant means we have an increased capacity to bring frames to market more efficiently and at a lower cost. During fit-out, we see real opportunity to grow the supply of kitchens, bathrooms, flooring, and installed appliances. Part of this strategy focuses on Beaumont Tiles.
This is now well-established in Western Australia, rounding out its national presence, and its expansion into timber and hybrid flooring is resonating strongly. In the finishing phase, we support landscape trades to broaden their offer, as well as commercial paint ranges to bring a better participation to these trades in the final stage of build. Our second opportunity for growth is in better equipping our trades with all their business needs, helping with all the tools, workwear, and safety equipment that they need. We keep evolving our commercial tool offer across warehouses and small formats and a Tool Kit Depot. We're doubling down on online to accelerate our national reach while leveraging the Bunnings network for fast fulfillment. We've set up a trade assist line, which is a new phone, text, email, and chat service to make it easier for trades to order.
Since its full rollout in March, we've seen increased use from trades who are using it to transact more frequently and pleasingly select more items. The third opportunity is in businesses and organizations. This is where we're positioning ourselves as a solutions provider. Our customers here range from small operators to local government to large complex businesses across industries like hospitality, education, and assisted living. Across all our commercial customer segments, we continue to improve our PowerPass offer to give our commercial customers the tools and benefits they need to run and grow their businesses. We're looking at more ways to reward their loyalty through tiered benefits and value in the future. We've been encouraged by our progress in productivity and excited about the opportunity to further leverage our investment in technology and processes for a faster and better customer experience.
For example, our new rostering technology gives us deeper insight into how to match customer demand with our team. That creates a customer experience and efficiency advantage. It also makes it easier for our team to access their roster and confirm their availability from their own device. We continue to invest team member time away from task and back into service. We're well-progressed with putting GenAI to work to make it easier for our store team to get things done. We're running a trial where store team members make chat-based queries on their handheld devices. They're able to ask for instructions to set up the latest product range, check a customer order, and estimate a delivery, and confirm when a product is in stock.
Our consumer app roadmap has self-serve features to improve the customer experience in store so our customers get what they need to complete their projects even faster. Overall, in the year ahead, we expect to redeploy over 1 million hours of task back into service across our network. Our supply chain continues to evolve, and we're taking a logical, customer-led approach to realizing efficiencies and building our capabilities to support online and commercial growth. A unique supply chain model has been built through a number of long-term partnerships with our suppliers, and we'll continue to develop this as we evolve. We do more than 1 million customer deliveries every year, and we continue to provide a brilliant last-mile experience that's in step with what our customers expect. For faster deliveries and friendly, personalized service, we're expanding our Bunnings local delivery service.
Bunnings store teams use a fleet of special utes for parcel, bootload, and bulky product deliveries to retail and commercial customers. We've had great feedback from our initial trials, and we're rolling this now out to 50 stores to complement the range of third-party delivery providers we already work with. This also leverages the competitive advantage of our diverse network of stores and warehouses. We're removing cost and complexity by consolidating our DC network, expanding these distribution centres around the country, and driving operational and transport efficiencies through stock consolidation. Technology plays a major role in introducing efficiencies too. We're improving our warehouse management systems to get stock flowing more through our DCs more smoothly, including voice picking advice for our team.
Our new forecasting tools will help us and our suppliers keep availability of products high, improving the customer experience while at the same time helping us to manage inventory more efficiently. We see lots of runway ahead for growth through the expansion of retail space at our existing sites and through new and replacement sites. In the year ahead, we've got 10 significant projects scheduled, a combination of new stores, replacements, and expansions, and we anticipate growing our retail floor space by around 10% in the next five years. We expect to add new Bunnings stores serving communities like Frenchs Forest here in Sydney and expanded offers through replacements or expansions, I should say, such as Dubbo in Western New South Wales. Our established network planning program is informed by deep analysis so we can identify the right formats and sites based on demographics and evolving customer preferences.
In moving to Outlook, we are incredibly energized by the opportunities we have ahead of us. As always, our growth mindset means we're focused on driving sustainable earnings growth over the long term in both consumer and commercial segments and across all channels, including in-store and online. Our value credentials are resonating really strongly with value-conscious customers, and we're disciplined about identifying and delivering cost efficiencies that continue to support this. Population growth and housing demand both remain positive macroeconomic drivers, and we see plenty of opportunity to support the anticipated recovery in building commencements over the long term. Of course, we continue to invest in new and expanded ranges, optimizing space, supply chain, and accelerating our data and technology investments to improve our customer offer and maintain a low-cost model to support growth over the long term. Thanks so much for your time today.
I look forward to taking questions shortly, and I'll now hand over to Ian Bailey.
Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. My name's Ian Bailey, and I'm the Managing Director of Kmart Group. I'm very much looking forward to sharing the Kmart Group strategy this afternoon. Turn to slide 41. Last year, I talked about the unique advantages of our business model and outlined our strategic priorities to grow our share of customer wallet. These priorities for Kmart remain consistent and are underpinned by the pillars of a great place to shop that is simple to run and better products at even lower prices, as well as exploring the new and profitable channels to market through our Anko brand. These pillars continue to allow Kmart to maintain and grow its competitive advantage of lowest-price leadership.
In late 2023, we announced the integration of Kmart and Target processes, systems, and organizational structures to achieve one operating model across two brands. We have made significant progress on this integration with Anko general merchandise products now available in Target and our operating model integration progressing to plan. Our progress on each of the strategic pillars during the last 12 months is as follows. Firstly, winning in omnichannel. We have improved the overall customer experience through enhancements to digital platforms, improved stock availability, and a better delivery experience while increasing the efficiency of the operating model. We continue to invest in the OnePass customer value proposition to drive subscriber growth and engagement. Digitizing in-store experience. We successfully rolled out our RFID platform, including Tory robots, to our New Zealand stores and continue to invest in digitizing our team member experience in store, resulting in much improved availability for customers.
Leveraging product development capabilities. Our product offer continues to grow with successful introduction of additional apparel ranges that target new demographics such as our recently introduced youth range and AFL fan range, both of which have seen early and promising successes. Digitizing sourcing and supply chain. We have continued to invest in our digital capability, including expanding the use of 3D design and building an ecosystem of interlinked design, planning, and ranging tools. This is resulting in lower end-to-end costs and accelerated lead times. Expanding Anko into new markets. We have made good progress on our international growth strategy with Anko over the last 12 months. While it is still early days, we have learned a significant amount both in terms of how our product resonates with consumers in new markets and which operating models work best in those markets.
Today, I'd like to focus on the strength of Anko's business model as a competitive advantage and what opportunities we have to continue to leverage it for our future growth. Turning to slide 42. The core insight which has driven the Kmart business for many years is the idea of lowest price without compromise. It's two elements which really then come together into our overall purpose, which is making everyday living brighter for our customers. The first one is the importance of lowest price. Now, in the current economic climate, I think we all understand how important that is when consumers really are under pressure. But the reality of this is true in every economic climate. The vast majority of Australians and New Zealanders do not have enough money to do all the things they want to do in their lives.
And if we can save them money on the basics, they really appreciate it. So I would never underestimate the power of lowest price, I think, in any category, but especially within ours. The second thing that we've done, which has really created the emotional connection with our brand and with our consumers, is take products which were previously unaffordable and bring them to a price point which suddenly gives them permission to play. So we are frequently a third of the price of the equivalent product. And when I say equivalent, I genuinely mean equivalent. I'm talking about the lifespan of the product, the quality of the product, the specifications of the product, pretty much exactly the same when you get it for a third of the price.
I think this is one of the reasons why, as we see customers trading into our business at this point in time, we have confidence we can retain those customers for the long term. Because once you've experienced the value that we can provide, it just makes sense that you stick with it and use your cash to spend on other things which may be more expensive in your lives. This purpose helps us then try and bring the joy back to shopping and empowers our customers. Again, I wouldn't underestimate this. If you think about going into some retail stores, they can be quite intimidating. So particularly if you go into a high-end boutique, you sort of know that you're going to be under pressure with the price point.
While you might be excited to look at the products, it's also a little bit awkward as you sit there as a consumer. I think one of the things that we've established with the Kmart brand over time is pretty much everything in that store is affordable. We hear it from our consumers consistently that, "I don't need to check the prices anymore." It comes back really clearly because they have so much confidence in the value proposition that we provide. We take that very seriously, and that's why we keep a very close eye on all of our price points to ensure that every one of our products is the lowest price for the equivalent item, irrespective of the price point of where it sits within our product offer.
The next piece we want to remove is the stress of, "Have I bought the right item?" And again, I don't know. Last time you went into a clothing store and tried something on, if you were there on your own, what did you think about it? Did you think, "I like it, but will my partner like it? Will my friends like it?" and so on? And we all have those natural stresses. I think customers are also getting faith in our design capability, that what they buy will be on trend. And when they do take it home, they're likely to get a good reaction from their partner and their family. And again, it takes another piece of stress out of shopping. Let's move to slide 43.
We strive to be number one or number two market share in every category that we play, and we have made really good progress of this over the years. In the latest slide, we talk about how much market share we have in these categories, and we still see a great deal of opportunity. But to call out a couple of the points, the first one is we are the market leader in home when you exclude furniture. We're a very small player in the furniture part of the market, as I'm sure you know. But if you exclude that, we clearly are the largest. When you look at the toy brand, this one's an unusual stat, but the Anko brand, currently only sold in Kmart, is the number one toy brand in Australia.
If you take brands two, three, four, five, and six, if I've got that right, I think it is, then they add up pretty much to the same as the Anko brand. So it is an amazing stat which gives you a sense of the power of own brand, even in a category like toys, which historically would have been thought of as a highly branded category. In terms of clothing, approximately one in five items of clothing sold in Australia is either Kmart or Target. Our market share, though, as a percentage, is more like 7%. So you can see while we still have a high representation in terms of units, we still see a lot of opportunity in terms of our potential to grow share within that market.
In terms of our sustainability practices, when you consider this volume, we have a big role to play, and we accept that. And we come up very highly rated in a lot of the global measures around sustainability, and we take it very seriously. So we frequently appear in the top three in the Global Fashion Transparency Index. I think we've been number one or number two in the last couple of years, and we appear in the top five of the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark. And there are many others, of course, which we participate in and perform well. Turning to slide 44. Our focus is on continually simplifying every step in a fully integrated model from product development through to the end customer. Importantly, we are a retailer who has become a product company. I just want to emphasize that point.
Most of the time, you're either a retailer or you're a product company that's become a retailer. We're one of the few that's gone the other way and really have found ourselves as being a product company. We strive for pure retail, and we remove all the impurities and unnecessary processes and costs, which is why we can deliver products to customers at prices our competitors cannot. Not many people have the factory relationships and the proximity to the factories that we have. A lot work through agents globally, as well as Australia, and our ability then to work closely with our factories in the way that they operate. We can co-create with those factories so that we can eliminate costs systematically and develop really amazing products at incredible prices. We are different because, at the core, we have structural advantages which make replication of our model very hard.
At the core of this is the power of Anko, our mono brand. A single brand helps in so many ways that you wouldn't immediately appreciate. The first one is it enables us to have a very complete offer in a very small space because there is zero duplication. So if I give you a practical example, if you go into most retailers and you look at something like frying pans, there will be three or four brands of frying pans. And each one of those brands have products that do roughly the same thing as the other brands that are represented, therefore multiple points of duplication. What we've done is we've eliminated the duplication, and each product that we range has a specific purpose and should be unique relative to any other. The net result is a customer has the right choice.
It's relatively easy to choose, and they're not overly bombarded by too many choices to make. The next result is it's a very high volume per SKU. Now, if we're the number one market share and we have less SKUs than our competitors and our prices are lower, you can imagine just how much more volume we purchase than anybody else in the categories we play in. And it would be multiples of our nearest competitor in terms of the multiples of each item that we purchase. And those economies of scale are very hard to replicate. The last one, which we haven't talked about too much historically, is the quality of our data. We have, again, 100% own brand in many categories. We have no promotions. And what we have is very pure sales data, which we could then use for future forecasting and future analysis.
Combine that with the product data that we have through some of our 3D tools and our digital tools around product lifecycle management. We have an incredible dataset which we can now start applying more and more analytics tools which can help us with future ranging, future quantification, and future pricing options. We have an ecosystem of interconnected digital tools across the operating model, from 3D design to digitising in-store processes, powered by RFID and the much-talked-about Tory the robot. 10 years-plus relationships with our manufacturing partners who share our passion for finding ways to make better products with us at lower prices, again, is so important. I know I've mentioned them already, but they are real partners to us. They're not a contracted partner that we just contract with for one season and we go out to tender for the next.
These are partners which we've worked for more than a decade. So over that time, a trust and a working relationship that's very efficient is formed. It's something that we hold very dear to our model. They're a group of people that are incredibly important to us. We have significant scale across our end-to-end supply chain, which enables strategic long-term partnerships and cost structure advantages, as well as control and visibility of the movement of product from factory to consumers. So what does all this unlock? Well, first of all, it unlocks lower prices. The second is it unlocks a completely integrated brand experience. We get simplified and easy selection for our customers. We also get this bonus of accelerated brand awareness. We haven't spent AUD 1 on the Anko brand in terms of marketing.
Yet, it's one of the best-known brands within the country because it appears on so many products. That mono brand gives incredible resonance to consumers because it's there. The piece I would add to this is one of the pieces we've been working on the last couple of years is getting around to other retailers around the world, talking about Anko and the products. I'm increasingly confident our model is unique. There may be businesses out there which undertake a model that's similar in categories, but I haven't found another retailer yet globally that does what we do across as many categories as we do. So I genuinely believe we have an asset which is globally relevant, not just locally relevant. Turn to slide 45. Anko has become a competitive brand in all the categories that we offer in all the categories we offer in Kmart.
But with an addressable market of more than AUD 100 billion in Australia alone, there is plenty for us to play for. We have also expanded selected general merchandise products to Target, bringing Anko to a new customer base while maintaining Target's unique customer value proposition in apparel, soft home, and toys. Leveraging Kmart's in-house design and direct sourcing, the Anko range is being selectively expanded into new markets globally to grow our total addressable market well beyond our home markets of Australia and New Zealand. Turn to slide 46. Kmart operates in a large and growing and yet highly fragmented market. Since last year, the total market has grown in categories of apparel, general merchandise, and home. Overall, we have grown share in this period as we have attracted new customers. But more importantly, we have expanded our share of wallet with our existing customer base.
There is significant opportunity to grow share of wallet further by expanding share in existing categories through range improvements and expansions, and enhancing our product offerings in growing demographics. Beauty is an example of an existing product category where we are looking to build out our current range, offering a comprehensive range of solutions for our customers using our in-house product development capabilities. Beauty is a category where we have seen strong customer demand across value, especially with young consumers. Fan Zone is a new category where we bring together our low price points to a whole new market of sports lovers. We have recently launched an AFL-branded range, and we'll look to expand this to other sports codes in the future. From a customer perspective, Gen Z is a growing demographic which provides opportunities to develop range adjacencies.
We have already seen our youth apparel range, which has benefited from a much shorter design-to-shelf lead time apparel operating model. This range is bringing young consumers to Kmart, and we continue to build out this range to meet Gen Z's changing tastes. And Gen Z would be the fastest-growing segment when you look at it through the different customer segments within our consumer groups. The most important customer segment remains young families, of course. And for those of you that have young kids, you know why. There are so many things that you just need to buy when you have a young family. But what we are seeing is our ability to play in every section of the community.
And the more, of course, that we can bring in Gen Z now, then, of course, those customers will stay with us as they start to mature and have families of their own. Turning to slide 47. In 2023, we announced our one business, two brands operating model. One business means leveraging the scale benefits of common systems and processes across Kmart and Target, enabling a lower cost structure. Two brands means retaining unique and differentiated propositions between Kmart and Target to access a larger addressable market than each brand could address on its own. So we leverage similarities between the two brands, and there are similarities, of course. The first is that families are the core of both businesses. We do everyday items at high volume because scale, of course, is critical to both brands.
We direct source the majority of our range, and we will operate one range across both businesses across all stores. So one range for Kmart, one range for Target. Critically important, though, is to retain the differentiated offer of the destination categories of apparel and soft home for Target. For Target, the anchor we are looking to establish in customers' minds is elevated quality, which leverages the brand's strong heritage and delivers products at a half or a third of the price of specialty competitors. The strategy for apparel and soft home remains unchanged, and the operating model changes enable us to have given an enhanced focus to continue to improve these offers while supplementing the customer offer through the introduction of Anko in general merchandise. Importantly, Target enables Kmart Group to participate in higher price points in apparel and soft home, where Kmart does not and should not play.
So going back to that point where customers know the prices in Kmart are affordable, that puts a natural threshold on where the top of those prices should be. Target gives us the ability to play in higher price points, and therefore, we can go after a bigger share of wallet than we could do with one brand alone. Turning to slide 48. We already compete against the world's retailers in Australia and New Zealand, but only point our supply chain to those two countries. When you think about the globe's population, that's 30 million people out of a population of many, many more than that when you look around the world. So over the last 18 months or so, we have begun to investigate taking our Anko product and operating model to global markets. We had some key questions we tried to answer.
The first one, will Anko products resonate with consumers in other markets? Can we deliver attractive margins for both Kmart and our partners? Can we move products efficiently to consumers across the globe? While we continue to learn at pace, we now know that the answer to these questions is yes. Our understanding of retail, our great product ranges, our data capabilities, and the scale of our manufacturing base are allowing us to create new partnerships both with retailers and brand owners. As an example of this, our new partnership with Mattel in wooden toys is one where Kmart is responsible for the product development and manufacturing. And then we leverage Mattel's Fisher-Price brand and world-class distribution network. Later this month, this product collaboration will launch across 1,000 Walmart stores in the U.S. with Canada and Central America to follow. We are also launching a small trial.
I'll emphasize that it's small with Carrefour in France in the pet accessories category, and that's both in stores and online. That offer is now live online and will be live in stores over the course of the next two or three weeks. We are also exploring potential partnerships in Asia to open a trial of small-format stores. Therefore, our global approach looks to leverage existing retail brand partnerships in developed markets, which already have dense retail networks, and seek to develop a store network over time with partners in developing markets. We will retain our focus on developing profitable businesses, keeping capital, and operating costs low while these business models are in their infancy and will only invest more materially when we have a clear line of sight to acceptable returns. In the near term, costs and revenues will be immaterial to group numbers.
In terms of reporting, global revenue is reported in total Kmart Group revenue, but not in headline or comp sales. Turning now to slide 49. The strategic priorities for Kmart remain consistent. This strategic agenda has allowed Kmart to maintain and grow its competitive advantage of low-price leadership, especially in the face of growing competition. Historically, when customers have discovered value, they do not go back. Why pay more for everyday items when there are so many other demands on their income? We see this period as a great time to grow customer numbers, but more importantly, expand the number of categories our existing customers participate in. Anko is the driver of future growth for Kmart Group. Our model is unique and difficult to replicate. There is a significant opportunity to continue to grow both Kmart and Target with the adoption of our one business, two brands operating model.
Finally, before I go to questions, I would, of course, love to thank the Kmart and Target teams for all the hard work that they do. I know our customers really appreciate it. Thank you for your time this afternoon, and I'll hand over to Sarah.
Okay, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Sarah Hunter, the Managing Director of Officeworks. Starting on slide 51, Officeworks' purpose: to help make bigger things happen, and our vision: to inspire Australians to work, learn, create, and connect, remain consistent, as do our five strategic priorities which provide the roadmap for delivering sustainable long-term growth. Turning to slide 52, Officeworks is delivering profitable growth by meeting the needs of a broad customer base, which includes personal shoppers like students, families, hobbyists, and flexible workers, and business customers like micro, small, mid, and large-sized businesses, as well as schools, early learning centers, and government.
Families remain at the heart of Officeworks' customer base, relying on Officeworks for solutions that help their households operate day to day, whether it's setting up a gaming/study area, buying a present for a birthday party, printing wedding invitations, helping the grandparents with their laptop upgrade, or back-to-school supplies. Officeworks also has a well-established presence in the B2B market, where we've built out our capabilities over the last few years and expanded into new customer groups. We see more opportunities to accelerate growth in our B2B business, particularly as we begin to win more large businesses, schools, and government tenders. Turning to slide 53, we continue to see digitization accelerate for our customers due to the need for productivity, flexibility, and efficiency, coupled with the accelerating adoption of AI and Gen AI.
For the last 30 years, Officeworks has always evolved its range and offer to meet the changing needs of customers, and we see the acceleration of digitization as a key opportunity and driver of growth for our business in the years ahead. Turning to slide 54, as a leading retailer of technology, with 59% of our sales coming from our tech business, we are uniquely positioned to help our customers digitize. In addition, changing customer preferences continue to provide us with opportunities to expand into new and emerging categories. We will be expanding our range to include additional premium laptops and PCs launched with next-gen AI capability. We anticipate this significant hardware innovation will lead our customers to consider upgrading to the latest generation of devices. We expect, when upgrading their device, that our customers will look for new and improved accessories to match, such as headphones and wearables.
We also continue to expand our digital display range as our business customers look for multipurpose solutions for their offices and workspaces, including monitors, digital screens, and televisions for displaying a wide range of content. In addition to growing our existing technology ranges, we're also exploring opportunities to expand into adjacent products and services. For example, we are a significant retailer of Outright Mobile handsets, and we're exploring ways to complete the solution with a telco plan. And given the current economic conditions, our customers are looking for a broad variety of payment options to help them manage their finances. We need to have options to assist our customers with the cost of purchasing devices. And in the coming weeks, we'll be launching a partnership with Latitude Financial, enabling Latitude customers to finally shop at Officeworks.
Additionally, through our device trade-in service in partnership with Moorup, we're accelerating opportunities for customers to trade in their old or used devices for an Officeworks gift card, providing additional value and allowing them to trade up their technology to a new product. Turning to slide 55, Officeworks remains focused on delivering profitable growth through growing market share across all categories. In stationery, education, and art, we continue to increase share with strong availability in the products that we are known for and through the expansion of our private label brands such as Studymate, J. Burrows, Keji, and Born. Private label brands now represent nearly 60% of our units sold in these categories. We're continuing to expand our private label Born range in art and craft, which we've built over the last five years.
Now, the number one art supplier in the market, there are over 1,100 SKUs in the range. Customers recognize and respect the brand, and year to date, unit sales of Born are up 8%. We have new ranges coming that will enable our customers to access the latest high-quality art and crafts at affordable prices. Our furniture business is also predominantly private label, and we're now expanding our brands into premium products, starting with the addition of premium sit-stands and gaming desks. Exclusive brands also play a critical role, and a great case study is what we've done in A4 paper. In this sector, at an industry level, volumes are declining 5% per year. However, the inclusion of the exclusive range of Reflex paper, coupled with great private label availability, sees Officeworks growing at more than 6%.
Our private label and exclusive brand strategies help us to ensure we can continue to provide great-priced, high-quality products for customers and differentiate Officeworks from our competitors. Turning to slide 56, we continue to leverage our omnichannel capabilities for our B2B customers as a competitive advantage over pure online or store-only retailers. Our business and education customers can shop for their office and school supplies how they want, whether in-store, online, or over the phone, and with our best-in-class delivery proposition, click and collect, and our 30-day account offer.
We intend to accelerate the growth we've experienced in recent years by investing in a new digital experience and platform for our B2B customers, scaling our education offer by expanding our range into textbooks and digital resources through our partnership with Box of Books, growing our early learning center customer base, and broadening our parent pay model to more schools and geographies across Australia, expanding our B2B range to access new customers and sectors, and in doing so, seeing more opportunities to grow, particularly as we begin to win large business and government tenders. From the 1st of July, just around the corner, same-day print will launch, enabling our B2B customers to order products such as flyers, banners, and business cards online, picking them up in-store on the same day. You can see on the photo a large Konica Minolta machine up there on the slide.
There are 45 stores across Australia now with these machines operational, enabling us to deliver this unique service to our customers. This new offer will enable over 17 million Australians, or nearly 65% of the population, access to same-day printing for these items. I'm also excited that our new business loyalty program, Officeworks for Business, will soon be here. Launching in FY2025, Officeworks for Business will incorporate our new B2B digital experience with a range of benefits for our loyal customers.
Our B2B offer continues to resonate with both existing and new customers, with continued strong sales growth and, notably, over the last year, a 60% increase in the number of businesses spending in the number of businesses who spend more than AUD 250,000 per year with us and a 40% increase in sales from existing customers who spend over AUD 250,000 per year with us. So more businesses spending more with us more often. Turning to slide 57, our accessible store locations, easy online experience, and market-leading fulfilment options continue to support an easy and engaging experience for both our personal and business customers. For our stores, we continue to invest in customer-facing team member service to allow our team members to provide advice to our customers when making considered purchases, whether a new desk, a new laptop, or a new business card.
Online, there remain many more opportunities to leverage our investment in data to help improve conversion rates and improve the experience. For example, we're progressively launching improved search and guided buying capabilities to help customers find, compare, select, and access the products and services they need. For loyalty and value, we now have 5.2 million known and marketable customers, and this number is growing. We know these customers who are marketable benefit from personalized experiences and, in turn, spend more than double a non-marketable customer. We also use our customer understanding to improve our marketing effectiveness and improve the marketing effectiveness of our supplier partners. As we're able to market to even more customers and we better integrate into the Wesfarmers' data ecosystem, we expect the benefits and value of loyalty and personalization will only grow.
For example, we have a number of Officeworks loyal customers who have become OnePass subscribers and are now getting great value across all the Wesfarmers' brands. Pleasingly, OnePass is also bringing new customers into Officeworks, particularly, as Nicole mentioned, through key trade periods like Cyber Week and back to school. Our partnership with Flybuys continues to strongly resonate with value-conscious shoppers, allowing them to get even more back from every dollar they spend with us, both online and in-store, particularly during back to school. Our fulfilment options are market-leading due to our convenient and accessible store locations with two-hour click and collect, two-hour delivery, same-day delivery, and our next-day delivery available to around 80% of Australian households and businesses.
Turning to slide 58, our four customer missions - work, learn, create, and connect - are underpinned by the credentials that our customers know and trust us for: our low prices, widest range, and best experience. Our everyday low prices are supported by our price beat guarantee, meaning we won't be beaten on price. We continue to invest in lowest prices across the range to ensure we can provide trusted value both online and in-store. Every day, twice a day, we review thousands of prices to validate that we are providing the best value in the market. We continue to create even more value for our customers through member benefits and loyalty rewards through OnePass and Flybuys. Our widest range supports our customers to have access to great-quality products at various price points, offering choice and value.
And we know that when we are delivering the best every-channel experience, whether it be online, in-store, through our B2B team, or our delivery partners, our customers will shop with us more often and spend more. Turning to slide 59, we remain focused on driving productivity and efficiency across Officeworks. We are realizing the benefits from our recent investments in supply chain. For example, our Victorian Import Distribution Centre and Customer Fulfillment Centre and our recently launched Perth CFC are all delivering in line with their business cases. This has allowed us to increase efficiency while continuing to support our same-day and next-day delivery offer for customers. In our stores, we've made investments to drive efficiency and improve the customer experience, and significant improvements have also been made in the way we plan and roster our workforce.
We believe there are further opportunities to digitalize and automate processes to drive efficiency and to increase team member time for customer service. We've made pleasing progress with our demand planning and replenishment transformation program, with the pilot phase commencing later in FY25. When complete, we will have an end-to-end view of inventory across our operations, enabling improved availability, lower working capital, and freeing up team member time for service in stores. Turning to slide 60, we have an integrated approach to sustainability, which includes building stakeholder trust by embedding people and the planet into our decision-making. This is underpinned by our People and Planet 2025 commitments. We have a relentless focus on keeping our team members safe, healthy, and well, and have made continued improvements in TRIFR. We've reduced our absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by more than 40% since 2018, meeting our target early.
We expect to meet our 100% renewable electricity target in 2025, driven in a large part by installing solar PV systems across our network. We continue to grow our People and Planet product range, a range of products that have sustainability attributes such as being made from recycled materials or products that are recyclable at end of life. Turning to slide 61, in summary, Officeworks remains focused on meeting the changing needs of customers. As digitization is transforming the way our personal and business customers work, learn, create, and connect, we are evolving to meet their needs across all categories and channels, broadening our technology offer to include the latest products and services, accelerating growth in B2B, and leveraging our data and loyalty programs to deliver a leading omnichannel customer experience.
We will continue to expand our store network by 2-3 net new stores per annum to provide more customers with the ability to experience our products, seek advice from our team, and to give customers the immediacy that stores provide. We continue to progress broader efficiency and productivity initiatives that will deliver financial benefits across stores, supply chain, and support center. Officeworks is well-positioned to leverage our established position of low prices, widest range, and best experience across every channel to deliver the products and services customers need to run their households and their businesses. The team and I are confident that Officeworks will continue to deliver strong returns for shareholders over the long term. Thank you, and I'd like to invite Ian and Mike back up to the stage so we can answer any questions that you might have.
There we go.
It's cold.
Do you want me to go over it? All right. You keep it. Hi. It's Ben here from Jarden. Maybe just two questions for me. Maybe first one. You're obviously doing more in the electronics side of things, and you talked about plans. You're obviously doing more in TV or in AV at the moment as well. You've probably got a bit of a disadvantage versus, say, Ian or Mike in the sense that you've got Office written in your name. How do you expand and teach the consumer? You get the younger people looking for their gaming. You convince a family to go in and buy a TV. And how much of a focus is that for you?
It's a great question, Ben. So when we did a piece of work about four years ago, four or five years ago, around our brand, one of the specific things we knew when we were putting together our strategy was that we were going to go broader in tech and into different adjacencies, including things like art and craft, as I mentioned before, as well as trying to build our B2B business. So one of the specific questions we tested for when we were doing our branding work was actually whether the term Office in Officeworks held us back. And all the evidence tells us it doesn't. We've successfully expanded into a number of adjacent categories. We've obviously grown our technology business. In FY2019, it was 52% of sales. It's now 59% of sales. We don't see our brand holding us back. In fact, it's quite the opposite.
When you talk to customers, when you hear their perception of Officeworks, and we look at our brand health and where we're first choice, there's huge strength in the brand. We're one of the most reputable retailers in the country. We've got one of the most recognized brands. We see it actually as a massive opportunity.
So I know you're obviously big in tech. I think you're probably the third biggest for PCs nationally. Are you sort of on the journey, or is this the start? You've obviously had a bigger push into TVs lately. You're now talking about mobile plans. You've obviously got Apple benches sitting in your stores. Is this the start, or is this just progressing for it?
We're mid. We've had a strategy in place for over four years now to really move towards premiumization in technology and expand our range and really refine it. And so for us, this is not new news, but it is great to be able to share a bit more of the story with you today.
Thanks. Just a second one for me, just to you, Ian. I think it's the first time in a long time we haven't seen the cartoon at the front of the store with the 10-6-1.
I'm glad somebody remembers it, so thank you.
Well, I like it. It's a nice little cartoon. But it seems you've sort of moved outside of the house or the store now with the business. I know you're not here to give guidance, but it's probably on track to be what, an AUD 8.5 billion-AUD 9 billion brand for this year. What does the future look like in terms of how do we think about it conceptually? Because it must be much higher margin, but as you deal with Walmart and Carrefour and these players, is that dilutive, or does it just feed the machine that it should be a creative? And could it be an AUD 20 billion brand in the next five years?
I mean, I'd love it to be that. I think the first thing is we're looking to create a long-term model. Let's start again. Maybe over the medium to long term, we're looking for a model that generates equivalent EBIT returns that we deliver today. So that's our ambition. But of course, when you're at the start of the journey, you've got set-up costs, which are going to dilute that to some degree. When you look at the impact on the P&L over this year and over next year, it's, as I called out, completely immaterial because we're keeping the operating costs of the business really low. So what you'll see us do is you'll see us grow revenue, and you'll see us grow our cost base, and there'll be an expansion of margins over time as we fragment that cost base with incremental revenue.
But the run rate position we intend to get to is an EBIT margin very close to what we deliver today. When you say, "How big can this business be?" That's something we're trying to figure out, if I'm really honest. That's why we've got some different models in market. As you can tell, we're starting to get some traction and some progress, but there's a long way to go before this becomes a multibillion dollar business. But clearly, that's our ambition.
All right. Thank you. Hi, Mike. This is toward you, David Errington, B of A. I think now that we're through COVID, we've gone through the COVID period. We've done 2.5 years from Bunnings. You've consolidated, I suppose, is a good way of putting it. Sales and earnings have been relatively flattish. So this question I'm asking is with an optimism, glass half full, rather than as a glass half empty criticism. But when you look at your sales density, sales per square meter, you look at your online penetration. You probably look at when I listen to Ian on the Anko direct sourcing model, I mean, jeez, that's a powerful model that he's created with Anko, whereas your direct sourcing is fairly very low. So these are opportunities, I think.
You mentioned today, look, space intensity, but you only talked about 50 small stores, I gather. I'm trying to figure out in the next 3-5 years how big a prize can you go after by narrowing the gap in sales per square meter because you're about two-thirds of that of what the global leader is. Your online sales is less than 2%, whereas the leader's 15%. And your direct sourcing's, what, 15%-20%? When you look at someone like Ian's up around 100%. And you look at the way Anko's going, it just is really powerful. So is that a realistic target that we can map for you, that you could probably do this for Bunnings?
Because at the moment, the last 2.5 years has been pretty modest, and Anko's, I'd hate to say it, Kmart has got stronger growth prospects than Bunnings at the minute. And soon, Ian will be number one presenter rather than you. What can you do to get this thing really back on its toes to be the number one?
You're trying to get a bit of Sibley Collingwood.
A little bit of Collingwood. Well, I didn't like his thing where he had Richmond and Carlton at the AFL. I didn't know where Collingwood was there. But anyway, we won't touch that.
Collingwood won't feature in my presentation. Thanks for sharing. Look, they're all really exciting opportunities. I think, bringing it right back, our go-to-market position is fundamentally different, say, for example, to Ian's. We are very open and proud house brands, and we think we can really drive value. Certainly, the brands are responding very well to that because we are providing a really meaningful channel to market for those brands. A lot of those brands are exclusive. You won't find them on our international competitor list. So now when they're playing in the online space in Australia, we've got brands coming to us enjoying the opportunity to work with an organisation that wants to work with brands, many others going down the private label strategy for all the right reasons, particularly if you listen to what Ian's doing with Anko.
The way I think about global sourcing, though, is it's an enormous opportunity for us. So we don't want to take our foot off the accelerator of innovation and brand enhancement for what we're doing. But we are going closer and closer to source on a huge array of our globally sourced products. That gives us an opportunity to create incredible value for consumers. But we're also very mindful of the product assortment that we have. There are many of our products that are quite technical, quite specialized, and there's real value in working with agents and partners to bring those products to market. So I'll give you an example as a spa bath. We could bring a spa bath direct to market from a factory, but we bring with that all the compliance risk that's associated with that. So we're very mindful of that.
We're very mindful of the position we occupy in the community from a trust point of view. If I think about space, we look at it more in our gross margin return on space or through a gross margin return on space lens. If I think about Home Depot, and I think that's the example you're using, you have to sort of bear in mind they've got a really, really large extended range. I talked today about growing from sort of 34 to close to 300,000 SKUs. And we've got another 100 that will come online over the next 12 months through our marketplace, for example. Those external sales dump onto the existing space that Home Depot have, which creates a slightly distorted view of sales per square meter at a buy-store level. But they are stronger than us. I don't want to get away from that.
If you think about the last few years, our gross margin return on space has improved by about 5%. So we are using space differently. And we were definitely inhibited by not having an omnichannel offer because to advertise our products, we had to have those products in store. So we went wide, even in a small store. So the Bunnings network goes from 2,000 square meters. Well, there are about Erina on the Central Coast at 20,000 square meters at Alexandria. Optimizing that small store space is the very first step in a lot more to come. So what can we do in Alexandria? All of a sudden, we can now have, instead of 40,000 SKUs, 60,000 SKUs because we can showcase that for the consumer. We can do that across our large stores. We've got dozens and dozens of stores in rural and regional Australia.
That's an exciting opportunity for us. Understanding space better means we can now start to optimize or minimize categories to give space to other things. So if you think back, Automotive was in a Bunnings warehouse in 1994 when we opened in Sunshine. It came out for a period of time as we prioritized that space to other categories. Now that we use space better, we can bring that back without sacrificing anything else. So I think across those different elements that you touch on, there is lots more to do. There is a lot more upside. Our net space will grow by about 10% on top of that. So new stores, expanded stores, replacement stores. We're opening into Northland, Preston, which we both know quite well, 6,000 square meters bigger. Let's showcase a much stronger rate. So they're all upside opportunities for us.
At the risk of sounding defensive, and it's definitely not, when you look at Bunnings versus our global peers on growth, we're literally the only large format home improvement retailer in the world that didn't go backwards post-COVID. So I think what we've been able to do is continue to demonstrate strong growth credentials as well as now demonstrating operating leverage through the P&L, which you sort of saw at the half if you back out property because of the sort of cost investments we've been making and will keep making to drive that bottom line growth.
So optimistic for the next five years?
Optimistic. Yeah. We're a very growth mindset.
Yeah. Thanks, Mike.
Great. Shaun Cousins, UBS. Just a question for you, Ian. Maybe just a little bit about how you're seeing the performance of your business across different customer cohorts in that, I think, in the past, you've sort of said a third each, sort of low, middle, high-income earners. Maybe one of the areas you sort of focus on trying to get customers to shop more categories in terms of, in the past, there's been a focus by consumers really on mission shopping for one item or one category and not playing there. Maybe just sort of how many categories does your average customer shop with, and what's that come from? I'm just curious around how we can sort of get a benchmark around how you're getting the customer to shop more or to shop, please.
Yeah. So first of all, talking about the segments between high, middle, and low-income, we're seeing growth in all three groups. Not surprisingly, the growth is biggest in the middle and the high-income as they've got greater capacity to divert more of their share of wallet. If you look at it from a percentage of share of wallet, of course, it's biggest in the low-income, and it's smaller as you go up, as I'm sure you understand. So all three groups are very important to us. So that idea of a third, a third, a third is a pretty good way of thinking about it. If you look at it from where we're getting our growth from, we're getting it from more customers. So I think we're doing a very good job bringing customers into our business.
Clearly, the increase in the population is helping us with that, as well as finding those few people still out there who don't shop with us normally, of which there's not many, but we're still managing to get those to convert as well. That really helps. We've got more customers than we've ever had before. Frequency is the next driver. When you look at what we're seeing with our customer base, they're coming in more often, which means they're choosing us for more shopping missions than they were previously. We look at things like value and frequency when we look at our customer groups. If you look at that high-value, high-frequency group, the number of people that qualify in that definition is growing.
So that's evidence that we're seeing more people get across more categories and shop more frequently because they're shopping more categories. To give you a sense of, if I give you some very rough numbers, these are not to the cent or to the percent, but roughly, a high-value customer's going to shop half our categories. An average customer's going to shop around 20%, and a new customer's going to shop less than 5%. So you can get a sense that our ability to migrate people up that ladder gives us real potential. So we're seeing that this is a wonderful time for us to collect new customers.
And then, of course, our mission over time is to leverage the data tools, the customer information, OnePass, and other tools to ensure that we can then start stretching their spend into new categories so that we can get an expanded share of wallet over time.
Great. Thanks. And my second question, Mike, can you just talk a bit about Tool Kit Depot in that context around the online effort that you've played, the role that Bunnings is playing there for store collection and the like there? But you had indicated some time ago that there was an ambition maybe to get to 75 stores in the sort of medium to longer term. Does that still play, pardon me. Is that still an ambition? And then just what are you seeing in the broader competitive dynamics in the tool space in that there's a lot of stores being opened by Sydney Tools and Total Tools as well, please?
Yeah. It's a great question. Look, what really has surprised us is the engagement online and in markets where we haven't or where they've got no physical presence like here in New South Wales or Queensland, where we've got just the one store. So continue to sort of optimize the model. There's a little bit more work to do for us in private label through the accessory space. And we'll continue to optimize the network as those opportunities present. But one of the things that we were really clear on very early in the journey was to let Tool Kit Depot stand alone and not sort of try to integrate some of the big corporate pieces into what's a very different operating model, which is reflective of the industry in which we're playing. Now we've established that we are able to sort of integrate PowerPass.
So you can now use your PowerPass card at TKD. That's a middling customer straightaway able to engage in store online with TKD. We've been able to leverage the marketing power and the marketing spend of Bunnings. If you're searching for products, we don't sell at Bunnings, but we do sell at Tool Kit Depot on the Bunnings website. It will now take you to the Tool Kit Depot website. These are really big steps. And that online-led piece is actually really giving us a significant opportunity to engage thousands of new customers in those markets. So it may well be over the next 12-18 months, we actually rethink that even more. And the ability to be pretty capital light.
We haven't got a lot of stores, but we've got a lot of reach is allowing us to be incredibly competitive on brands like Milwaukee, bringing incredible value to the trade customer base. So it's an exciting time for that team. It is a really small business, as Rob said earlier today. So it gets plenty of attention because it's an important customer base. This is a white-hot market in terms of competition. And we're really enjoying the fact that we're bringing some new value into that space.
You're not in breach of, I think, one of the whole purpose for the Adelaide Tools acquisition. You could get if I go to Bunnings and then I kick through to TKD, that's yours.
You won't find a Milwaukee product on the Bunnings website. You won't find a Milwaukee box in a Bunnings store. Yeah. We're completely compliant with all of that and great relationship with TTI as well.
Great. Thank you.
Oh, good day, guys. Tom Kierath from Barrenjoey. Sarah, a couple of questions for you. AI-enabled laptops sounds really cool. Firstly, when do you start selling them? Second, do you think it leads to a replacement cycle in laptops that we all bought at the start of COVID? And thirdly, what are the benefits of them? I asked my IT guy at work, and he couldn't explain one. But how are we all going to be smarter because of this technology?
So very soon. Months. Not very many months is the answer. And I'm really conscious that, obviously, I can't breach the very important relationships I have with my very big suppliers who are very important to us. And we have very strong, trusted relationships with them so that we can get visibility of what's coming down the pipe. So I'm very respectful of that. And it's important to secure the right products and the right availability for our customers. So very soon, Tom, in terms of do I think it will trigger a generational shift, the answer is yes. Over what timeframe, I don't know. But I do know that if you believe our suppliers, they will tell you globally.
They expect this to be quite a transformation in terms of hardware over the coming year or two as the adoption of AI and specifically GenAI-enabled hardware really starts to gain momentum. In terms of how do you use it, it depends on how you use your laptop. So I expect Microsoft through Copilot will be very focused on productivity and how that drives businesses, in our case, small businesses or large businesses. In the case of the people in this room, whether your company adopts Copilot or not. In the case of other types of devices that we sell, so, for example, premium gaming laptops, it's really in that create and that interaction space and connection and feeling really connected into a game and how that interacts and works.
More broadly than that, if you've got a small business who's a content creator, it'll be through how you use your device to create content and run your small business. So it's very dependent on your mission and what your purpose is. And it's pretty exciting.
Cool. Nice. And I've got a really quick one for Ian. The global deals you do with Walmart, Carrefour, etc., are they exclusive in the U.S.? Can you go to other retailers, or can you sell the same product to other retailers? Are you kind of hamstrung there? And yeah.
So if I go back to the Walmart example, that's actually with Fisher-Price and Mattel, which is a deal we've done with Mattel globally. So they've got exclusive rights to those products to leverage through their global distribution. And Walmart's the first stop. But it's wooden toys, to give you a sense of how small or sliver that is. Still a meaningful amount of orders when you consider the size of that brand across the globe. But if you consider what we have left to sell, it's a lot. When we're dealing with other retailers, we're really trying to not get into an exclusivity arrangement mainly because inevitably, we're going to start at a modest size and want to grow over time. And until we get to a certain scale, I think giving away exclusivity is premature.
The work we're doing with our other customers is not on an exclusive basis. However, our preference is to work with a small number of very large players as opposed to a large number of small players.
Yep. Got it. Thanks.
Afternoon. So Bryan Raymond, JP Morgan. I realize there's no quantitative trading updates today, but just wanting to check if there's been much in the way of change to the momentum that you guys reported in February. I think it was strong in KMR, circa 2% in Bunnings, and flattened Officeworks. Would that be broadly consistent over the intervening couple of months?
Sounded like a trading question.
Well, as more has anything changed? Is more the question. Has there been any uplift or reduction in momentum?
I'm happy to go first. This is always a tricky period because of Easter. And you've always things like timing of when winter comes and all those types of things. So I'd say most retailers, I'm sure, are trying to look through the data and try and interpret what the trends are. But I'd say the broad trends around value is super important, remains really clear. And I think we are in a period now where customers are really seeking that value. And as we said before, they're very smart, and they know where it is. And they're voting with their feet and with their wallet.
Yep. I'd probably say almost exactly the same thing. It is really hard with Easter and the way that ANZAC Day fell this year, getting second sort of four-day public holiday, once pretty close and two years in a row, sort of trying to map that out because of the leap years. So there's a couple of interesting things that are in our numbers we need to look through. But value consciousness is really, really high. Traffic through the stores remains really pleasing. That focus on bulk and bulk value is really, really strong. And I think we've been able to continue to attract customers on that value proposition, which is really, really pleasing.
Yeah. And I agree. It's really positive to see continued good transaction growth both in store and online for our business. And for us, good to see strong single-digit B2B growth continue.
Okay. Great. Thanks for that, Cola. And then just one for Mike on the Gross Margin Return on Space that you're talking to. You've obviously had some pretty significant category evolution with some of those FMCG categories coming in in recent months, maybe a bit longer for some. Just wanting to get a feel for how you're thinking about pet and cleaning on the FMCG side, so the new products that have come in, what sort of percentage of space they account for now. And it seems like a pretty big presence visually when I'm in store, but and how that compares to some of the categories that's replaced from that GM return on space perspective.
Yeah. So if we take pet, which is a good macro-space example, we exited space that was outside now nursery areas for large play gyms and gave that space over to pet. Now, that didn't mean we lost sales on large play gyms because they're a considered purchase and mostly purchased online. So it's probably got a return on space plus to it. The advantage of the categories that we've expanded into is that they do drive great frequency because they're a consumable product. We're not trying to be Australia's best pet food retailer. We offer a really wide assortment of product from accessories to structures to bedding, all sorts of things that build out quite a broad pet offer. And that sort of fits in with the fact that you can bring your four-legged family member into the store, right? So it complements really well.
Cleaning's really interesting for us because we're actually seeing a really good uptick in commercial cleaning. So the person who's maybe cleaning a home, cleaning a number of homes, cleaning some offices, it's got a good B2B resonance. So we've actually structured the range to do that. And where we've achieved that is in the reduction of space in a category like window furnishings, which we continue to have a full assortment of in our larger stores. So to David's question earlier, a big store like Newstead in Queensland or Castle Hill here in Sydney, we're able to have all of those things and actually do a really good job. But in a smaller store like Randwick or Rose Bay, you wouldn't find window furnishings anymore, but you would find cleaning. It's more relevant from a consumable everyday point of view, less the considered purchase of something else.
So that ability to flex up and flex down micro-space is what's really, really important for us to drive that return on space and do things really well. What's important is that the focus remains on bulk, buy in bulk, create great value, and then sell in bulk. So large pack sizes, multi-packs, that does require space, but we're able to sort of balance that really well between the different categories. It'll be the same for auto. In our rural regional stores, you think about Dubbo, we're expanding it quite significantly. If we've got a rural regional range in there, that will fit really nicely into that alongside our landscape offer as well.
The criticism would be you've kind of not been expanding in other core hardware categories as much. I'm sure there's lots of changes that happen that we don't notice. But some of the bigger new categories have been outside of your core. Do you still have room to run in that core hardware space in terms of new categories and that evolution of the mix?
Yeah. A die-hard DIYer that we've lost our way on range. And I think nothing could be further from the truth. We've been really, really clear for three, four years now, front gate to back fence. That's our ranging lens. And we think we've got a natural right to play, build, maintain, repair homes. And if you sort of think about maintain and repair, cleaning's really strong in it. Supporting all members of the family is really, really important. We've seen huge growth in categories like smart home. And that's a really interesting thing about our industry, Bryan. If you go back 10 years, smart home wasn't invented. And now we've got that in our store. We're growing really well. Though sales of electronic door locks, with some of the challenges around home security at the moment, they're performing really well.
They're coming at the expense of traditional categories. They're around traditional door locks and those things. So you can sort of see how customers are changing. Same in power tools. A decade ago, we had some 14-volt NiCad batteries, didn't do a really good job. Almost all our PowerTool, PowerGarden ranges are now battery-operated. So you've just seen this evolution, not only of categories, but within categories. We've sold cleaning in Bunnings for 30 years. We've sold pets in Bunnings for 25 years. These aren't new. They're just evolutions on the category. But what we want to stay really true to is what makes your home or your small business better to build, maintain, live in. And if we can play strongly there, then I think we earn that right to be chosen.
Thanks, Mike.
It's Michael Simotas from Jefferies. So in front of us are the MDs of three very successful, profitable, high-returning retailers. It's becoming a little bit politically unpopular to generate strong margins and strong returns at the moment. And a couple of other large retailers have come under some pressure on that front. Can you just sort of talk about how you defend your positions there and balance the various objectives? And then maybe a specific one, Mike, if there's any comments you could make on the grocery code?
Yeah. Okay. If you guys are happy, I'll start. So the way I look at it is, stamped in really large letters on most of our buildings, is lowest prices are just the beginning, right? So we are absolutely focused. And I referenced that half a dozen times, I think, in my presentation. If we're offering the strongest value to the consumer, then we earn the right to be chosen. We have an enterprise agreement that pays all of our team members above the retail award. That drives high permanency, high retention, creates more jobs. They are great for the economy. We work with thousands of suppliers paying hundreds and hundreds of millions of AUD a year to those suppliers to keep their businesses growing. We've worked with many of those suppliers for multiple decades, helping their businesses grow from our first warehouse.
So we deeply understand the ecosystem in which we sit. We also service hundreds of thousands, millions of small businesses to help their businesses stay afloat. So I think business has a strong role to play in delivering for all of those stakeholders. And alongside that, actions that build trust, working well with regulators, working ethically with our suppliers, doing the right thing by our customers, keeping our team safe. So we're very clear on that purpose. The outcomes of that, if you're doing those things right and you optimize the efficiency of a business that has scale, like Bunnings has scale, you can deliver great returns for your shareholders as well. And I think all of those stakeholders need to sort of have that. If I sort of circle back to the grocery code, we've looked at the grocery code. We understand the grocery code.
It's been built over quite a long period of time with a lot of input from stakeholders in that industry segment. I think it's fair to say you walk into a Bunnings, it's very clear we are not a supermarket. Do we have some crossover categories? Absolutely. Do most of our industry peers, Mitre 10 and others, have those categories? Absolutely. The supermarkets have some crossover categories with us. Absolutely, they do. That's great for the consumer. It's great for competition. And it's great for choice for customers when they're out and about doing their things. But is a supermarket code fit for a home improvement business where a small percentage of its overall revenue for its consumer base is coming from those when you're actually servicing 40% or so of your revenue to B2B markets?
It just doesn't make sense for us to sort of have a fit-for-purpose there. So hopefully, I've answered through a Bunnings lens those questions for you. And I'll hand over to Ian. Yeah. Covered a lot of it, a bit different for us. First up, lowest price. I mean, it's a statement of the obvious, but we are a lowest price by quite a long way. We know that because of the market assessments that we do. We know it because of what customers tell us when we do the research. So I'd say that's point number one. Point number two, if you look globally at the most successful apparel retailers or home retailers or product brands, they would deliver EBIT percentages well above what we deliver. We have no desire to go above where we are because we want to hit that lowest price position.
We think the types of returns that we deliver are appropriate for the business that we are within Australia. It gives us the strength to be able to invest, which is really important so that we can be a really great Australian business for many years to come and a great employer and a great payer of taxes and do the right thing by our community.
I'm not sure what else I can add to two fabulous answers other than to say, as Bunnings and Kmart have their value position, so do we. It was quite clear in the investments that we make in price, our everyday low-price position is critical. We check prices twice a day. We won't be beaten on price. We have a price beat guarantee. Our customer trust and our brand trust is contingent on us absolutely delivering to that. That does mean year on year, we've spent more money investing in price to keep our prices down for our customers. And that's why productivity is so important for us because the North Star is continuing to keep everyday low prices as low as possible, keep customers shopping with us, and being able to pay our team and deliver returns for shareholders.
I think it comes down to the structure of your business, your values, and being disciplined about sticking to what you know makes you successful. For us, it's low prices, a great curated range, and looking after our team to deliver returns for shareholders.
Makes sense. Thank you.
Hi. It's Lisa from Goldman. I've got two business model questions. First from Mike. I looked at, I guess, the monthly foot traffic to our website, and it's very large. It surprised me. It's actually larger than Woolworths for a non-as-high-frequency category, but we don't transact as much as well online. Aaron asked earlier about going deep in terms of direct sourcing. But what about going broad? What are we thinking, especially with some of the lessons we've learned from Catch to go into more of a marketplace strategy? Obviously, we've already got the eyeballs there. It's a low-capital way of expanding our sales quite rapidly. That's the first one. And then maybe the second one for Sarah. I'll hold off.
Yeah. Look, it's fantastic so many people come to the website. They're coming for lots of different reasons. They're coming for inspiration. I can't tell you the number of years, but it runs into the thousands, it feels like, of content on there for doing things when you've bought a product and you take it home. When you think about online penetration at Bunnings, a more accurate way to think about it is a combination of what you're buying online and what you're buying through the PowerPass app. We would call that digitally-enabled sales, which has our revenue about 5% because a trade customer can actually do everything and pay through their app. We'd love to be able to offer that to every customer. What we haven't solved for is how we manage that product as it leaves the store.
We actually offer it to over 100,000 team through the app that we have that spans across Bunnings and our sister companies with our team discounts and things like that. So the technology's there to be able to do that. When it comes to marketplace, we're really happy with the performance of our marketplace. It's been growing really well. We're at 92,000 products, 355 sellers. We put our sellers through a very strict vetting process. It is curated to front gate to back fence. It is extended. So you would find sporting equipment, saunas, all sorts of things that we don't think have a natural fit. And extended ranges on categories like pet, outdoor furniture, those things are catered to different customers. You do that transaction through the website. It is fulfilled by the partner. So you can buy your packet of screws and your sauna in the one transaction.
The seller will sell one, and we will send the other. So that's working really, really well for us. We've got another 100,000 or so SKUs to come in marketplace. And we've got 100 sellers lined up to join. So it's well-known, well-understood with great brands in the furniture, soft furnishings, and extended home space. So fully agree with you there. Why aren't transactions converting? There's a couple of reasons for that. I do think we do create a very unique in-store experience, which drives traffic to the store, whether that's our community activities, learning activities, other events, and the fact that, to some extent, it's a thing to do on a weekend to go to Bunnings. That's something we are mindful of. And we've got to continue to make the online experience frictionless.
Since we introduced Apple Pay, for example, in the last few months, we've seen a strong uptick in usage of our app. Google Pay is not far behind. There's other things that we're going to be able to do to recognize and support customers on that. I think on the commercial side, the tiered loyalty that we're working towards on PowerPass will drive more of that. But ultimately, Lisa, we want to be customer-led. We want to be where the customer is. So for Bunnings today, that means an expert account manager on a job site. It means a kitchen designer sitting in your home helping design a kitchen. It's in store with our team, or it's online. And we see the customer behaviour between pre-shop and post-shop, and how they then choose to transact is in their hands.
As I said in my presentation, over 1 million deliveries a year, we've got great last-mile capabilities. We're doubling down on those. We want to be faster and better and able to sort of promote that more strongly across our customer cohort. But again, it just comes back to where the customer wants us. We don't have a target, but we expect that's going to grow and grow significantly. So we're making sure our last-mile fulfillment capability is ready to go when the customer demand is there.
But you don't think you could push marketplace significantly faster with the dropship model? I mean, specifically.
Look, it's an option for us in time. What we've got to make sure of is that it continues to be a profitable way for us to engage with customers, a good experience for the seller, and a good experience for the consumer. Now, we've only stood this up in the last few years. So it is a new business, but it has grown well from day one. It resonates. How we then think about handling stock, managing stock. And you've got to remember the types of products we're selling are big and bulky. A big home gym set isn't something that you're going to be able to put through automatic sortation. It requires specialist fulfillment capability. We think at the moment our sellers are a better place to handle that than we are. But where that takes us in the future will be interesting to see.
Got it. Second question is for Sarah. So in terms of the business evolution, the mid-progress business evolution, we've seen the range expansion. Clearly, we've seen the sharpness on the price. Clearly. What about the service model? So our key competitor is a very high-service model. How do we think about that, including some changes to the incentive pay structure of our team?
Yeah. It's a great question, Lisa. So firstly, we actively monitor customer feedback around service. So that's the first point. Get to the data and understand what's making a difference for customers. So we rolled out a tool called Medallia to all of our store teams recently, about seven months ago, AI-enabled eight months ago. AI-enabled so the team on the shop floor can really understand and across the whole business, including in our CFCs, where delivery is really critical and feedback on delivery is really critical, they have access to real-time information around what's working and what's not working. What that enables us to do is really focus our team on we can see very clearly stores that are and aren't performing, shifts that are and aren't performing, team member levels of engagement.
In the first instance, the most important thing is to understand before you change the operating model is actually understand what's working and what's not working and the opportunity to get an even better return on the investment that you're making. I mentioned earlier about productivity and being able to invest in service. That's about taking hours out of, as Mike also referenced, out of tasks that aren't value-adding and being able to dedicate those team to the shop floor. Beyond that, other things that we think add significant value is integrating our team and making sure our leadership team really understand from a learning and development perspective the new products that are landing into store and that they can talk to those products. But actually, when you talk about tech specifically, over 95% of the journey starts online.
So when I reference the fact that we'll be rolling out guided buying guides, digital guides, for us, that's critically important because a lot of the decision-making doesn't happen in the store. What we see with the customer journey is a customer goes online, they compare and shop. Price is a factor, but actually, what they're looking for is trusted brand-agnostic advice, not whatever I'm incentivized to sell necessarily if I'm in a store. So for us, trusted brand-agnostic advice that really helps a customer decide what they need based on their requirements is critical. And then they come into store to validate that, or they purchase online. A lot of tech is purchased, obviously, online as well, given our fantastic delivery offer. So at the moment, we're really comfortable with our service model. Customers tell us they love our service. There's always opportunities to improve.
We really think enhancing our online experience will make a big, big difference in helping customers choose in quite a confusing market. We just heard about, "Well, what's GenAI going to do to my laptop?" I think the more we can do to help our customers demystify those choices, the easier it will be for them and the easier it will be to then transact in store.
Got it. Thank you.
Hi. It's Ross Curran from Macquarie. First question, I guess, for Sarah. You called out for the first time government and sort of large corporate as being an opportunity set. Can you please help us sort of size that as a customer set for you? And then what investment is required to unlock those customers?
Yeah. It's a great question. We've been building capability over the last couple of years to really unlock that market and testing and learning how we would participate in that market, recognizing we wanted to make sure we did it profitably. That's very, very important. And also, a lot of these government and large business procurement processes are quite long with long-term contracts. So we wanted to make sure we fully understood the market before we went into it. The new B2B digital experience that I referenced will enable all of the capability that we need, and we are building it now. So it is underway. Been building it for a number of months now. So it is underway, and it will enable large businesses to have all of the administration and delegation of authority or government back-office simplicity that they need to be able to work with us.
Where we've been surprised and we are very small in this space at the moment, so we see the market as quite significant. You just have to think about how many government and large business procurement tenders there are. It's AUD billions and billions. Where we see the surprise and delight for us in terms of how we enter this market is what's special about us, is the fact we have an every-channel model. And where we're seeing customers choose us, it's because they're really delighted at the ability to shop online or in store. Traditionally, B2B offers in our space have been very online-centered or catalog-centered as opposed to having a store network.
For example, a large business could be equivalent to a large school. A lot of our large school customers really love the fact that a teacher can come in and buy in store, buy on account, buy in line with the pricing that's in place, and get what they specifically need rather than having to expense it in an uncontrolled way. So procurement teams love it. We have recently been appointed to the WA Government Panel for Education. So now schools in WA, government schools, can access and buy from Officeworks. And a month or so ago, we were appointed to the Victorian Government Panel for Arts and Craft Supplies for Schools, which we see a huge opportunity for our Born range to really then get access to the whole of the government schools market in Victoria. And there are more panels coming up in the year ahead.
So we're very focused specifically on education as a way in. But we've also found large businesses, particularly retailers, like to shop with us because their franchise network means they're accessible to a store wherever that store is around Australia.
Thanks. And then, Ian, I love the flywheel you talked about within Kmart. Can that be applied to Target, or how quickly can that be applied to Target? At what point can we see Target generating the same returns as Kmart does?
Yeah. I think what we've aligned now, the process is we're aligning the technology, and we're seeing benefits from that as we can start to deploy the tools and capabilities of Kmart into the Target buying process. The buying process takes time in apparel. Generally, you've got a couple of learning points a year, one in summer and one in winter. So it will take us a few years to really optimize the model. But we're seeing good progress already. We're very happy with the performance of women's wear in the first half of this year, which we called out of the half results. And we feel like we understand the DNA of what we're trying to deliver. Now, it's a question of delivering that consistently across all of the apparel and soft home categories.
If we're on track, we should be delivering consistent improvement over the course of the next few years, with the final destination being where you say.
Thank you. Afternoon. Craig Woolford from MST Marquee. Just a question for Mike, or two on firstly, on commercial. Target was to get to 50% commercial. Is that still a stated target? And where are you in that progress?
Yes. We're about 39%-40% now. So we see plenty of opportunity. Usually, the question that will follow on is, "Is that going to have a different shape to margin?" No, we don't see that because we continue with the same sort of customer. Let's be just growing that. I think the credentials we're bringing through our account team, our builders' studios, I think when the housing market picks up, what we've done in Frame and Truss all give us reasons to be chosen more by the trades and really please. And even things like Trade Assist where we've now got more engagement, more contact with those trade customers there. They're using us more and more. And I think the value proposition we offer, and particularly backed up by the credit access through PowerPass, is resonating really strongly. So commercial team doing a great job.
The other one, Home Depot and Lowe's tend to have about 10% in white goods and related, which would be far less at Bunnings. Is that an area of opportunity, and why or why not hasn't been pursued as quickly?
It always remains an area of interest to us. It's a very challenging market to break into. There seems to be a strong sort of focus within the appliance industry to hold those brands within the industry. It's hard to sort of understand why we're having some really productive conversations with a number of suppliers who I think, similar to other categories we've been in, are interested in working with us. We see that as an opportunity more through an online channel. One of the things we know when we talk to Home Depot or to Lowe's is that what's showcased in store tends to take up quite a lot of footprint, which we feel we could use more productively. Back to some of the earlier questions on return on space, and often attract quite a lot of damage just by the nature of the sort of store format.
So we do think there's some ways to go. It is an area of interest to us. The attachment rate for our kitchens. We sell tens of thousands of kitchens every year. That's a huge opportunity for an appliance retailer to partner with us strategically. We do sell some direct to the trade through the Builders Solutions Studio, more in the installed appliance space. But yeah, definitely an opportunity for us.
Okay. Thanks, Mike.
Great. I think that's it. I think we might have a break next. Is that right, Simon?
Yeah. That's right. We'll take 15 minutes, and we'll be back at 4:10 P.M.
So good afternoon, everyone. I'll start today by providing a brief overview of WesCEF before diving into our main strategic focus areas and finishing with some key messages for the division. Turning to slide 64. WesCEF's vision is to grow a portfolio of leading sustainable businesses, with the delivery of this vision enabled by our four key strategies, which are ingrained across all of our segments. On the bottom half of this slide are these operating business segments within the division: the chemicals, energy, fertilizers, and lithium, which are, in most cases, accretive in the value chain. That is, taking raw materials and adding value to transform them into key products for use in critical industries.
We're proud to support a wide range of end users of our products and often highlight to key stakeholders that industries such as mining and agriculture rely on our locally manufactured and distributed products to support their operations. I'd like to provide a brief update on these business segments before we dive into the rest of the presentation. Starting with our chemicals businesses, we are concentrating on continuing to provide high-quality and reliable supply to our customers with organic growth opportunities attainable through capacity expansions and debottlenecking initiatives. Our energy segment is focused on maintaining and improving its award-winning customer service to drive customer retention and acquisition. In fertilizers, we continue to invest in digital innovation, infrastructure, agronomic advice, and productivity initiatives in order to continue to deliver the best reliability, experience, and advice to our customers.
Finally, in lithium, we are focused on the ramp-up of spodumene concentrate production, progressing the expansion study at the Mount Holland Mine and Concentrator, as well as finalizing construction and commissioning the Kwinana Refinery. Further information on our chemicals, energy, and fertilizer business segments can be found within the appendix of the presentation. Now to slide 65. On divisional integration, while this may look like a complex slide, its purpose is to demonstrate that our various operations have many interdependencies and utilize similar feedstocks. It is these synergies that allow us to achieve economies of scale in many different areas, such as procurement, production, and distribution. Additionally, the shared services structure of our division allows us to leverage common skills, knowledge, and capabilities for the benefit of all our businesses and deliver consistency in governance and compliance.
I think this slide really highlights the significance of natural gas within the portfolio. Aside from being sold by Kleenheat into the WA natural gas retail sector and used to produce LPG and LNG, it is the major feedstock in the production of ammonia, which is the key ingredient in the production of ammonium nitrate. Both natural gas and ammonia are used in our sodium cyanide production and fertiliser production plants as well. Gas is also used in the manufacture or refining of lithium hydroxide. Moving to slide 68. At WesCEF, we currently have five strategic focus areas that I will expand on in further detail throughout the presentation. Firstly, we continue to ensure we have strong plant reliability in production in order to provide high-quality product with a focus on providing the best customer proposition.
Next, we have a strong pipeline of major growth projects, which includes production capacity expansions in our chemicals and lithium businesses to capitalize on growing markets and to reduce our reliance on imports. Moving to natural gas, we've seen domestic WA pricing steadily increase since mid-2020. And as I touched on in my last slide, given the importance of natural gas to the WesCEF portfolio, we need to ensure that we are securing competitively priced gas for all of our operations. In the decarbonization space, we are leveraging our existing knowledge, technologies, and processing capabilities to invest in decarbonization initiatives and progress long-term abatement opportunities, including carbon capture and storage, to meet our net-zero roadmap commitments.
And lastly, we are focused on providing all the necessary resources to support the Covalent joint venture to assist in the ramp-up of the production at the Mount Holland Mine and Concentrator, and also the successful completion of construction and commissioning at the Kwinana Refinery. This has included seconding key talented individuals into critical roles within Covalent, something SQM, our joint venture partner, has also done. Turning to slide 67, on our first strategic focus area, operational excellence. We remain committed to our pursuit of operational excellence through the ongoing continuous improvement of plant performance and the embedding of a match-fit cost culture across the division.
We have many different levers we can pull in our pursuit of operational excellence, including incremental debottlenecking and productivity initiatives, optimization of shutdown and catalyst scheduling to maximize production yields and minimize CO2 equivalent emissions, investment in enablers, including a new ERP system across the division to deliver process efficiencies, and an asset management improvement program to maximize asset performance, continuing our ongoing promotion of a safety-focused culture which prioritizes employee, contractor, community, and environmental safety, investing for the future through talent pipelines and the development of our employees' technical capabilities, and diligently deploying sustaining capital to maintain and enhance our operational assets. Now, moving on to slide 68, our major growth projects.
Starting with Covalent Lithium expansion, regulatory approvals have been submitted to enable the doubling of the production capacity of the Mount Holland Mine and Concentrator, which will allow us to further leverage our low-cost position on the cost curve by expanding production from the world-class ore body and bringing forward future cash flows. We continue the early-stage engineering work associated with the expansion project, and it is possible that we will commit to long lead items prior to receiving these regulatory approvals and also a final investment decision. An expansion of the capacity at the Kwinana Refinery is also a possibility, which we will be considering following the completion of commissioning of the refinery and following a successful final investment decision of a Mount Holland expansion.
In the ammonium nitrate business, the opportunity to debottleneck each of our three nitric acid ammonium nitrate plants received partial regulatory approval recently, with the final approvals to debottleneck the first plant awaiting assessment. Long lead items have been ordered, and debottlenecking of the first plant is currently proposed to occur during the next planned major shutdown in the second half of financial year 2025. Moving to our sodium cyanide business, a revised expansion study is nearing completion to increase production by approximately 30,000 tons per year in a staged approach. The study was revised to reevaluate the costing and scope of the project to deliver more favorable returns and capitalize on the strong growth outlook of the WA gold industry.
A larger, more prospective project in the pipeline is the construction of an additional ammonia plant, which would reduce our reliance on imported ammonia and should allow us to capitalize on favorable manufacturing margins. Regulatory approvals associated with greenhouse gas emissions from the project have been received, with additional regulatory approvals in progress. It's important to note that a final investment decision will be subject to several key commercial factors, including a viable gas supply, a credible carbon abatement solution, and the growth outlook of markets requiring ammonia, such as the nickel industry, which has faced uncertainty in recent months. We currently supply approximately 80,000 tonnes annually into the WA nickel sector. To slide 69. WA natural gas pricing has been steadily rising since the middle of 2020 due to supply constraints.
Given natural gas is such a critical input into our various production processes, we will continue to be impacted by elevated prices, which are anticipated to persist in the medium term with a supply deficit forecasted. WesCEF has a number of gas supply contracts varying in length from six months' duration through to multi-year agreements. This means we're not entirely exposed to the WA spot market price, but the trend of the rise on the chart is illustrative of the state of the contracted gas market. A unique feature of the WA gas market is the domestic gas reservation policy, which is currently being reviewed via a parliamentary inquiry of which we are actively engaged and involved in. Moving on to slide 70. Our 2050 net-zero roadmap defines the three phases of WesCEF's decarbonization journey so far and into the future.
phase one, which began in 2012 with the installation of secondary abatement catalysts in our nitric acid plants. The introduction of these catalysts led to approximately 5.5 million tons of cumulative CO2 equivalent abatement from 2012 to 2020. And, in fact, from 2012 through to date, so to the end of March 2024, we've abated over 8.5 million tons as a direct result of our investment in decarbonization technologies. Next, phase II, the phase of the journey we're currently in, where we are seeking to reduce our emissions by a further 30% to 2030, but relative to our 2020 baseline. We have a host of initiatives we're exploring to meet this target, and I'll touch on more on these in the next slide. Finally, phase III, which is the period post-2030 on our journey to net-zero.
We are proactively progressing foundational work and exploring long-term abatement solutions in collaboration with other industry leaders. So turning to slide 71. Our Scope one and two emissions performance has continued to improve due to our investment in optimizing secondary abatement catalysts. We're working through a number of decarbonization initiatives in order to meet the 30% reduction target, including tertiary abatement catalyst installation, which is a more recent technology than the secondary abatement, in our three nitric acid plants with recent substantial grant funding from the Commonwealth and state governments, which will further reduce our nitrous oxide emissions. Replacing one of our existing sodium cyanide plant incinerators, which is reaching end of life, with a lower emissions unit, with engineering having commenced on this project, and evaluating ways to further reduce our Scope two emissions. Collaboratively working with customers and industry leaders on methods to reduce our emission footprint.
Lastly, as I mentioned earlier, we are advancing groundwork now on phase III, including the development of a carbon capture and storage solution. A recent key milestone was the successful completion of a test injection assessment, which is a small-scale proof of concept, and we did that in partnership with Mitsubishi and Company. Now to slide 72 on lithium. As I'm sure most of you be aware from the update we provided in February, lithium pricing declined significantly throughout 2023. Although lithium pricing will continue to remain volatile given the market's immaturity coupled with the cyclical demand patterns, the long-term demand outlook for battery-grade lithium chemicals is strong, buoyed by the expected growth in battery electric vehicles. It's these strong market fundamentals that give us confidence in the success of the Covalent Lithium project.
It's also worth remembering that when we invested in Covalent and took the final investment decision, lithium hydroxide prices were lower than they are today. Our focus is on executing the project and becoming a fully integrated lithium hydroxide producer that is additive throughout the supply chain, delivering satisfactory long-term shareholder returns. Turning to Slide 73. The Covalent Lithium project continues to progress, with production at the Mount Holland Mine and Concentrator ramping up and construction at the Kwinana Refinery now approximately 75% complete. WesCEF's share of CAPEX and the timing of first lithium hydroxide remains in line with the guidance provided at the 2023 half-year results.
I am pleased to report that our first spodumene concentrate shipment was successfully completed in March 2024, which was a key milestone for the project and the direct result of the hard work and effort put in by many team members since we took FID in February 2021. I'd also like to reiterate that the FY2024 lithium earnings guidance we provided in February still remains true, acknowledging that there has been some recent modest recoveries in lithium pricing. For FY2025, we are anticipating our share of spodumene concentrate production to be somewhere between 150,000 and 190,000 tonnes as the mine and concentrator ramp up, recognizing that 190,000, of course, is nameplate capacity for the whole year.
Moving forward, our objectives are to finalize construction of the Kwinana Refinery and see it successfully commissioned, continue work on the potential mine and concentrator expansion project, and possibly move into purchase long lead items to support the expansion ahead of FID, and advance WesCEF's exploration efforts, namely at Davyhurst and also other prospective opportunities within the sector. Finally, to slide 74 on key messages.
We will continue to advance our efforts within our key strategic focus areas, being continuing our pursuit of operational excellence through incremental productivity initiatives and investment in divisional systems to achieve process efficiencies, progressing our project opportunities, including production capacity expansions to support long-term growth, diligently working with suppliers to secure competitively priced natural gas and explore innovative long-term sourcing arrangements, investing in decarbonization initiatives and investigating medium and long-term abatement opportunities to meet our net-zero roadmap commitments, and finally, providing the necessary support and resources to progress the lithium project with the primary focus of ramping up spodumene concentrate production, continuing to evaluate the potential mine and concentrator expansion with our joint venture partners, SQM, and advancing commissioning activities at the refinery ahead of anticipated first lithium hydroxide production in the first half of calendar year 2025. Thank you, and now I'll hand over to Tim Bult.
Thank you, Ian, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm delighted to take you through Wesfarmers Industrial and Safety's businesses, or WIS, as we call it. Turning to our strategic agenda on slide 78. WIS is a leading supplier of industrial, safety, and workwear products to a wide range of customers, including some of Australia and New Zealand's largest corporate and government entities, through three main businesses, the first being Blackwoods, which incorporates Blackwoods Australia, New Zealand Safety Blackwoods and Bullivants, the second is Workwear Group, and the third is Coregas. WIS's competitive advantage is providing our customers confidence in the products and services we deliver. This is achieved through anticipating our customers' needs, how we act, and how we treat our teams, suppliers, communities, and environment.
Our strategic focus is on sustainably growing market share in targeted segments, making disciplined investments in improving capability, improving service and customer experience, and seeking out productivity initiatives to drive an efficient organization. Turning to recent performance on slide 79. As a division, we are building for the long term. We have seen steady improvement in earnings over recent years. This is supported by higher sales in all of our businesses and through the achievements that I'll talk through in the next few slides. Earnings growth continued into the first half of FY2024 as all WIS businesses' revenues grew during the period, but this was partially offset by investments to support growth, ongoing domestic cost pressure, and movements in foreign exchange rates. Safety remains a key priority for us.
Our key safety measure, the Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate, or TRIFR, improved from 3.3 in FY2023 to 3.2 in the first half of FY2024. I'm really pleased to report that we have operations within the division that are recording a nil TRIFR, a testament to the fantastic effort by our teams to keep each other safe. Our safety results continue to show long-term improvement as a result of the strong safety programs in all of our businesses. There is always more work to do, and we continue to focus on improving our safety culture. Slide 80 provides an update on Blackwoods. Since the last strategy day, there has been positive progress, notwithstanding a tougher market environment that we are operating in. The business has delivered some important achievements in the past 12 months. This is driving greater efficiency and strengthening our customer offer.
We have achieved improvements in order fulfillment and demand forecasting and planning through leveraging our new ERP system. We have continued to strengthen relationships with strategic customers to drive profitable sales growth and market share in this segment. This includes executing our integrated end-to-end procurement supply program. Blackwoods's wide range and geographic coverage provided by our DCM branch network means we are uniquely positioned in our offer to strategic customers. We are pleased to have seen sales growth with these customers over the past 12 months. We continued investment in our digital capabilities to enhance our offer to our customers. These initiatives also look to increase customers' digital penetration, which improves both customer experience and our operating efficiency. Key examples included upgrade e-commerce search and inbound order processing automation. Ease of doing business, including the ordering process, prompt delivery, and correct invoicing, is a key differentiator.
We are working with customers that are being impacted by margin pressures on solutions that meet their needs. Turning to Blackwoods' strategic priorities on slide 81. Blackwoods continues to focus on building a market-leading product and supply offer based on our four key value pillars. These are unbeatable range, reliability, expertise, and ease of doing business. Looking forward, the current priorities to growth are enhancing the middle market offer through strong value and service proposition. In New Zealand, where we are strong in safety products, our priority is to grow the engineering range and continue our Trade Centre Refresh program. We are continuing to transform the business model, with data and digital playing a critical role in this. Key priorities include customer and supplier digitalization, data alignment initiatives, process automation, and productivity tools.
We continue to progress initiatives to increase fulfillment workflows efficiency and automation across our supply chain. Now turning to Coregas on slide 82. Coregas has delivered resilient performance thanks to its industrial gas products being an essential input for a diverse range of industries, and the business has a number of avenues through which it can drive growth. Coregas has gained market share with major customers by developing tailored solutions to meet their needs. This is underpinned by our agility, technical innovation, speed to execute, reliability of supply, and quality control. Revenue growth is particularly strong in the healthcare, mining, and oil and gas industries, along with the trade-and-go gas offer and good underlying growth broadly across its industrial customer base.
Examples of innovation include our digital cylinder tracking offer, our new cylinder designs, which include high-capacity acetylene cylinders and hydrogen packs, and integrated medical and specialty gas regulators. This latter example in healthcare simplifies medical oxygen therapy. Coregas will continue to leverage its expertise and capability in hydrogen and is active in several opportunities focusing on handling, storage, and distribution. We previously announced that Coregas commissioned Australia's first heavy vehicle hydrogen refueling station at its Port Kembla hydrogen production facility. This has been operational since July last year, and we are supplying hydrogen-fueled vehicles in the area. Last month, we also opened a heavy vehicle hydrogen refueling station in Auckland, and it, too, is supplying vehicles in the area. We are also working in partnership in the development of a green hydrogen production and offer from our Victorian and Auckland sites.
While relatively modest in scale, these develop and demonstrate capability for the future. Finally, we expect that net-zero targets will drive demand for and investment in industrial gases over the medium to long term. This is particularly acute when we think of investment that will go into high-efficiency combustion using pure oxygen rather than air in industrial applications, carbon capture in various sectors, and in our ability to supply gases and technical solutions to new and growing industries, including hydrogen, that support the decarbonization of the economy. Now turning to Workwear Group on slide 83. Workwear Group's key industrial brands of Hard Yakka and KingGee have a strong position in the market. We will continue to invest in brand desirability initiatives aimed at driving consumer desire and choice. In uniforms, we are targeting growth in sectors that have growing essential uniform needs.
That includes uniforms required for security, health, and safety or branding. These sectors include healthcare, emergency services, defense, and government. Our end-to-end capability, scale, and track record will support growth in this area. Workwear Group is pursuing a number of growth-enhancing and efficiency initiatives. We are currently partway through the rollout of an e-commerce platform with a number of uniform customers now onboarded. Feedback has been very positive, and we see this new platform improving our value proposition while simplifying our backend operations. The platform will be rolled out for wholesale and New Zealand customers in coming months. We are accelerating the growth of our industrial brands internationally through a number of global distribution partners. We are making changes to optimize and simplify our supply chain, which included exiting manufacture in New Zealand to simplify operations and commissioning 3PL capacity in Queensland to support growth in that area.
We continue to have an elevated focus on productivity and competitiveness, supported by ongoing investment in technology. Finally, on slide 84. While we are building momentum in the businesses, we recognize that performance must continue to improve. Our teams are aligned on the task ahead of us. Each of our businesses has strong market positions, and each offers a strong point of differentiation in their offer, supported and enabled by our sustainability credentials. We are focused on continuing to improve the customer value proposition, enhance operational capabilities, and execute new growth opportunities.
This is to be achieved by providing confidence in the products and services we deliver by offering the right product with reliable supply and ease of doing business, investing in data and digital capabilities to improve efficiency and value of our offer, and continuing to work closely with customers that are impacted by margin pressures on solutions that best meet their needs. Market conditions remain uncertain as the economic environment sees pressure in commodity prices and foreign exchange. WIS businesses continue to actively manage the impacts of cost inflation and labor availability constraints, as well as heightened cost sensitivity from our customers. While market conditions are difficult to predict, we are focused on our businesses' building market share, capability, efficiencies, and integrating sustainable practice to ensure long-term profitability.
Finally, I'd like to thank our teams in each of the WIS businesses for their ongoing commitment and contribution in helping our customers and for their input into helping shape our strategy. That concludes the presentation on WIS. I'll now hand over to Emily for the health division.
Well, good afternoon, everyone. Two years ago, Wesfarmers Health was formed with the acquisition of API. Since then, we've embarked on a significant evolution of our business, establishing strong foundations for growth that capitalize on the opportunities in health and beauty. Today, I'm delighted to share how we're leveraging these opportunities to create a unique consumer proposition and drive growth, particularly in retail. Wesfarmers Health has identified the opportunity to create consumer-centric, integrated, and affordable experiences in the health and beauty sector.
From this comes our mission to make health, beauty, and wellness experiences simpler, more affordable, and easier to access. The opportunities are enormous. Our division today operates in large and growing markets worth more than AUD 60 billion. These markets are underpinned by strong tailwinds. Firstly, Australia's aging population and increasing prevalence of chronic disease are driving demand for health services and products. As workforce shortages and cost-of-living pressures persist, we're seeing community pharmacists play a greater role in primary care. Pharmacists now administer vaccinations, prescribe certain medicines, provide advice, and help consumers manage medications. This expansion in scope is welcomed by governments and the community alike. The retail pharmacy market is predicted to grow on a compound basis at 4% over the next three years.
Secondly, the beauty and personal care markets are also growing, driven by consumer demand to look and feel good, as well as technological advancements and increased social acceptance of beauty treatments such as injectables. Thirdly, we saw the rapid adoption of digital health models during the pandemic, which has persisted. Digital solutions such as telehealth have become valuable alternatives for consumers seeking timely, affordable, and convenient healthcare and have an added benefit of driving better access to healthcare. And finally, consumers are playing a more active role in managing their own health and beauty experiences. They're demanding integration of services to provide simplicity as well as greater personalization. We are seeing this with the emergence of new products like personalized vitamins, the increased use of e-scripts, and growth of member-based offers.
In this environment, Wesfarmers Health now has a unique set of assets, which positions us well to capitalize on these trends. Today, we have four business units. In retail, we have a strong asset in Priceline, which has a leading health and beauty offer balanced with a high-quality dispensary offer. Priceline has a clear place in the market. In beauty, we're positioned between grocery and premium retailers. In health, we have strong pharmacy service credentials enhanced by our unique assets: Sister Club, Instant Scripts, and SiSU Health. Our medical aesthetics business comprises the Silk Group and Clear Skincare. Silk is the most recent addition to our portfolio acquired at the end of November last year. We're now the largest provider of non-surgical medical aesthetic services in Australia.
And finally, our operations are enabled by our pharmaceutical wholesale business, which ensures Australians have timely and affordable access to medicines regardless of where they live. There's considerable interest in the plans we have to grow retail, so I'd like to spend more time on this part of the business now. Priceline is one of Australia's most loved retail brands. We offer a wide range of health and beauty products at affordable prices. We are known for our beauty and skincare offer, stocking a number of exclusive brands such as Number seven and The Ordinary. Today, we have a national network of 473 stores with a mix of franchise pharmacies and company-owned stores, and this continues to grow. Our loyalty program, Sister Club, is Australia's largest health and beauty loyalty program, and it has over 8.8 million members. Every month, we have, on average, 50,000 new members join the program.
One of Priceline's differentiating factors is its market-leading service offer, both in-store and online. We pride ourselves on providing an enjoyable shopping experience and high in-store service levels. Customers come to Priceline for beauty advice and for our health services. They include health checks, vaccinations, travel consultations, and medication packing. Our service offer positions us well for changes in pharmacists' scope of practice. Our omnichannel offer makes it easy for consumers to shop with us anywhere, anytime. We have a good retail business today, but we have an opportunity to make it even better. There are five key parts to our retail growth plan. Firstly, accelerating growth of the core Priceline pharmacy proposition. This includes expanding our network and evolving our offer through a range of initiatives.
For example, we're growing our private label offer, bringing in new exclusive brands, improving our price position, and continuously updating our range to appeal to our target consumers, women and their families. If you've shopped with us recently, you may have already experienced some of these changes. In March, we launched price reductions across a range of commonly purchased items such as Band-Aids, Avirax, Systane, eyedrops, to name a few. We've also grown our network by 24 stores since the start of 2023. We're doing a lot of work to better understand our consumers in Priceline and tailor our offer to meet their evolving needs. Secondly, we're making significant investments in our e-commerce capabilities. The launch of our new website last year saw a 52% increase in online sales in the first half of the financial year compared to the previous year.
We're now focused on improving the user experience on our website, updating our app, and integrating Priceline's digital assets with other parts of the portfolio such as Instant Scripts and SiSU Health. Thirdly, we're exploring opportunities to enhance Sister Club to provide more value to more consumers and increase their engagement. This year, we launched member-exclusive offers, including member-only prices on certain ranges in our catalog. In March, we also integrated Sister Club with OnePass, offering market-leading value with two points for every dollar spent for Sister Club tier members, free eligibility on eligible items, and 365-day returns. Our focus now is to expand these offers and experience, introduce new ways to earn points, and improve personalization. Improvements across e-commerce and Sister Club will also enable us to grow retail media revenue, a capability that we're actively building.
And fourthly, we're redefining our company store format to better differentiate it from Priceline Pharmacy and capitalize on our strong beauty heritage. And finally, we want to be the retail partner of choice for pharmacists. This will be achieved by delivering a compelling consumer value proposition as well as by leveraging Wesfarmers Health's assets to strengthen our offer to our franchise partners. And of course, at the same time as our work in retail, we are progressing growth opportunities across other parts of the portfolio at pace. In wholesale, our aim is to be the pharmaceutical wholesaler of choice. Our success relies on having the best service levels, range, and competitive pricing. Since March 2023, we've improved the proportion of stock delivered in full to our pharmacy customers from 67%- 83%.
This financial year, we've also achieved an improvement in delivery on time from 90% to consistently above 95% today. We have invested in our supply chain to reduce costs and automate our distribution centres, starting with Sydney and now Brisbane and Cairns, with plans to upgrade the rest of our network. We continue to focus on improvements in customer experience through investments in people, systems, and processes. We're also aiming to be the leading medical aesthetics business in Australia, leveraging the capabilities of SILK to help improve the performance of Clear Skincare. Our current focus is on integrating the two businesses to capture synergies in support services, brand, product, and supply chain. In digital health, we've made good progress creating connected consumer journeys by linking together Instant Scripts, SiSU Health, and Priceline.
For example, in December last year, we launched a weight management offer that allows consumers to consult an Instant Scripts GP for weight management advice, access products and services at a Priceline Pharmacy, and track their progress on a SiSU Health machine. The opportunity now is to bring together all of our assets into a single platform from which we can create new consumer-facing products and services. In summary, Wesfarmers Health is playing a valuable role in improving health outcomes of Australians by creating customer-centric, integrated propositions that leverage our full suite of assets. The health sector is at an inflection point where the aging population is driving demand for health services at a far greater rate than supply can meet. In response, we are seeing new models of primary care emerge with community pharmacists at the centre of this shift.
We're seeing increasing consumer demand for beauty and wellbeing experiences and growing expectations for these to be delivered in a digitized, integrated, and personalized way. We have unique assets and are well-positioned to capitalize on those trends. The retail business is a core focus area for the next 12 months, and we have clear plans in place to accelerate growth. In addition to driving organic growth, we will continue to consider opportunities to expand into logical adjacencies as we've demonstrated over the last 18 months. Thank you, and we're now happy to take questions. I'll ask Tim and Ian to join me.
You go, Shaun. Great. Hi, Shaun Cousins, UBS. Just a question on health. I guess the business has been owned for just over a little bit over two years now. Best maybe just reference to the period between now and the end of the first but then in the first half, 2024. During that sort of period of time, I guess, is health tracking above or below your expectations? I think Rob mentioned you bought a business that had some challenges. So there, what's been better than expected, and what's proven more difficult than what the team envisaged?
I think we've always been clear that, as Rob said earlier, it's a multi-year transformation journey. I'd say it is pretty much in line with what we have thought, and I'd say we're tracking in line with our expectations. I think in terms of what's better, I think the health category is really resilient. I'd say that's a key learning that we've got over the last two years. And that's really great because it helps you balance out a whole lot of, I suppose, headwinds that we've faced. So in the period since we've owned the business, we have continued to invest. We're putting money into our supply chain. We're really upgrading our people and capabilities. But at the same time, we've been able to grow our top line and our underlying bottom line while dealing with headwinds.
That's things like 60-day regulatory changes, a reduction in generic sort of price medication, a more challenging consumer environment, which definitely impacted our Clear Skincare business. So I think there's a lot that's happened in the sector in the last 18 months, but we're feeling really positive about the investments that we're making and the momentum we've got.
Great. And then maybe for Ian, you sort of called out with regards to lithium that prices are actually, pardon me, when you made the FID, that prices were actually lower there. So were you always planning to lose money in the2.5 , 2024, or is it the costs that are actually, I'm just curious, in terms of we don't have a lot of experience with covering companies that do big projects that have ramp-ups such that even when you did sort of some of the expansions in the AN facilities, you're adding to them rather than starting from zero. So I'm just curious. There's a very good chance we all mucked it up rather than in terms of where we've been going about it. Did you plan to lose, or was it costs that were more difficult or more higher than you thought?
I don't think we ever planned to not make an either contribution, Shaun. Although when you do start up large capital projects and you have a ramp-up period, your unit costs are inevitably higher because you've got lower production, higher depreciation, higher fixed costs, and higher variable costs because you're going through commissioning. And so your unit costs are inevitably higher. I think if you've cast your mind back, it was never really our intention to sell the Spodumene concentrate on the market at the time we took FID. That was a strategy we adopted later throughout the project as Spodumene prices rose and the delay in the refinery, which we spoke about some time ago, occurred.
We took the opportunity to review the cash flows from the project and saw that there was an opportunity given earlier production of Spodumene concentrate than what was required for the refinery due to the commissioning time of the refinery. It was a good way to bring cash back into the business earlier. Now, inevitably, with lower prices at the same time, higher unit costs, which were always on the cards because of the ramp-up, the earnings in FY 2024, half two, will not be positive from the sales of Spodumene concentrate.
So just to be clear, is it because of the shift to selling Spodumene because of the later refinery, or is it the higher operating costs?
Well, it's a combination of both because when we were looking at ramping up the concentrator at the same time as the refinery, we would have had higher concentrate tool costs per unit going into the refinery, which was also ramping up, so higher costs flowing through there. Though I can't remember what the model said, I don't think we were projecting a negative contribution, but it wouldn't have been much of a contribution in the first or the early stages, be it the first six months, year, year and a half. We've always said ramping up of the concentrator would take about 6-12 months, and ramping up of the refinery, I think we said 12-18 months. So we always factored in lower production. And it depends upon your expectation of price relative to those unit costs.
Great. Thank you. Thanks for all your help from a non-chemicals analyst over the years as well. Thank you.
Hi, Emily. And Emily, one question for you and one for Ian and Aaron. Emily, look, this is a question that it's not holding you to account. It's more holding Rob Scott to account, but you have to deliver it. The reality and the cold, hard facts of life is that your current ROC's 3.5%. And this is following on from Shaun's question. Your current ROC's 3.5%. And Rob said in order to Ross's question, you've got to get to 10% ROC. And I'd say you're 2 years in, you've got another three years to get there. And then ultimately, you've got to get to 18%. How do you do it?
I mean, I don't know how you're going to get there because I see because you're in a very competitive retail market, you're probably up against the most competitive, probably the best retailer at the minute in Chemist Warehouse. I just don't know how you're going to get there. So Rob's accountable. He's the one that made the call, but you're the one that has to deliver it. How are you going to do it? I don't think you can. I don't know how.
Well, I think our five-year plan that we've presented to the board says that we can get there. It obviously will require a number of things, which is underlying earnings performance uplift, which is what the transformation's all about. I think we're at the point where we're starting to get sort of positive momentum. We're very focused on improving the return on capital, which will fundamentally come through the transformation of underlying earnings. I think also we did make a decision this year to take a long-term view, and we bought an external financing arrangement that the previous management had off balance sheet onto our balance sheet, and that really impacted our return on capital this year versus last year.
As Rob and Anthony said, we do take a long-term view, and we think that was the right thing to do for the longer term, but it has obviously impacted us in the short term.
You've got a triple earnings in three years.
Well, you know.
Without any extra added capital.
So yep.
Okay.
Thank you. We do. Look, we're.
That's just to meet the minimum, 10%.
Yeah. The three years is probably what we could debate, but I can ask Rob to comment on that later, so.
Okay. And to Ian and Aaron, just on the gas price and the ammonia price, two-pronged. The ammonia price is $350. Now, I'm no genius because our forecasts are $550-$600. Can you give us a bit of an overview as to why the ammonia price has dropped the way you see it? Because it's a big part. And the DOM gas, the fact that gas is now $9 a gigajoule or whatever, the DOM gas arrangement, does that or should that allow you to access volume or lower-priced gas? How is it supposed to work? Because at the moment, we've been talking about this probably for the last two strategy days. There seems to be a real issue with your sourcing of gas, either you're having to pay a higher price for it or you can't get access to it.
Can you give us an update on that access to gas situation? Because it just seems to be a bit of a pain point at the moent.
Yeah. So perhaps I'll start, David, and then Aaron can jump in, especially as it's going to be his pain point after 1st November . In terms of the ammonia price, the ammonia price globally, it's a global price, and it's volatile like a lot of commodity prices, but it's been volatile over the last 2.5 years, as you'd see from the graphs that we produce from time to time. It shot up to, I don't know, about $1,200 a tonne at one stage, then dropped back to $350, then bounced back up to around $500-$600 a tonne late last calendar year, and since dropped back down to $350. So in that volatile environment, our earnings do move about a fair bit because we've got this three-month lag with our pricing where we're buying ammonia today to supplement our manufacture.
For those not aware, we manufacture about 50% of the ammonia that we require and so import the other 50%. So we're buying ammonia today. Our customers are being priced on ammonia pricing for the previous three months. So there's always this pricing lag. So if we're in a market where the price is increasing, we're generally behind the eight ball, whereas if we're in a market where the price is decreasing, we're ahead of the eight ball, so to speak. The reasons for global ammonia pricing moving around so much, there's many and varied. It's about demand, obviously, global demand, and that's based upon a whole range of sectors and what their demand for ammonia is, but also supply. And supply has been impacted by some very large plant outages for mechanical problems in various places around the world.
There's also been some problems associated with moving ammonia through the Middle East, shipping ammonia through the Middle East. I think everyone's aware of the problems with the Middle East. So there's a range of reasons why it does move around. We do believe that $350 is quite low and that it would move back up at some time in the not-too-distant future. That's perhaps the ammonia side of the question, I hope. I don't know. You want to add anything on ammonia? No? Gas. Yeah. So as I explained in my presentation, or tried to, Western Australia does have a more advantaged position than the East Coast in that we have the domestic gas reservation policy, which was put in place in 2006, which requires the major offshore gas producers who feed their gas through LNG plants to provide 15% of that gas into the domestic gas market.
Now, it's been our understanding that they're required to put 15% on an average basis, but we've since found out, primarily through the parliamentary inquiry, which commenced late last year, that there are some producers who've been given some flexibility by the state government in the past, which means that on average, only 8% - this is the words of the parliamentary inquiry - only 8% of the gas that's shipped offshore is coming down into the domestic market. So there's a loss of supply on that side of the equation. Furthermore, there is talk within the Western Australian government about allowing Perth Basin onshore gas - so this is gas from the ground rather than gas from the sea, Perth Basin onshore gas - to be allowed to be exported as LNG, which is against that policy that was formed in 2006.
So the parliamentary inquiry is also reviewing that. We are actively involved dealing with the government and the parliamentary inquiry on these issues, and I might say speaking with the gas producers themselves. In terms of pricing, the pricing has gone up significantly. It was AUD 2 maybe three or four years ago, then it went to AUD 6 and now AUD 9 on the spot market, which is still probably less than what you're paying on the East Coast where it's AUD 12 supposedly cap, but we are aware of higher prices than that. We have seen a little bit of softening of price recently. Obviously, our position is we want to secure gas for our production plants, and whilst it's more economic to manufacture using that gas, we will do so.
If the gas price gets too high, then we will look at the alternatives, which is to shutter those plants, as has happened on the East Coast, and look at importing as an option. We haven't faced that position yet. We will secure supply up to a price, and that's what we've been doing. I don't know whether you want to.
Yeah. I think, David, you mentioned, have we had a problem with our gas procurement strategy? That has been a pretty consistent strategy for WesCEF for a long period now of having a portfolio of short-term, medium-term, long-term in the book. We've been public on our long-term arrangement with a new emerging project, West Erregulla, in the Perth Basin. And I think the state government, the premier, is really keen to see that project come into production, and that will be an important story for us. Ian covered the supply side very well. I think the other factor is demand. The state has got a consideration at the moment of when coal is switched off, moves to gas, and how renewables are going to play in the WA grid, which will really impact the future gas demand.
But there's other big issues like Alcoa and the nickel industry that potentially could come out of the demand book. So I think we're confident that our business is well-positioned provided the government continues to stand behind and enforce the DOM gas policy.
Hi. It's Bryan Raymond from JP Morgan. First one, just on the lithium expansion, the doubling of capacity. Obviously, the mine is fairly straightforward, but just on the concentrator and refinery, just wanting to know how price-dependent those decisions are given you're pulling forward cash flows if we remain in a pretty subdued spot and lithium price environment. Does that impact your decision-making at all, or is it all pretty much just long-term pricing that you're considering there?
Yeah. Thanks for the question. I suppose, firstly, the current investment is for a 50-year mine life. So we're looking out over 50 years. And if we were to double the mine and concentrator, that brings it down to 25. But as I was explaining to Shaun earlier, the unit cost would drop significantly. So irrespective of where price is, the unit costs are lower. So that would position us further down the left-hand side of the cost curve than where we'd be with just the current configuration. So that would be beneficial for our shareholders. We do believe that pricing is probably at its nadir, and it will move back up. But even if pricing remained lower than what we might anticipate it to be going forward, that additional capacity volume and lower unit costs would provide returns which we think are in the interest of the shareholder.
A broad timeline, sorry, just on the concentrator and refinery in terms of those FIDs, is that in the next?
Yeah. With the concentrator and the mine, it's a bit difficult to say when FID might be taken. However, we might be looking at taking or putting orders in place for long lead items later next year, which would mean bringing the concentrator online probably mid to late 2027. Yeah. Calendar year 2027. But it is subject also to those regulatory approvals, so. In terms of the refinery, when we get the current refinery up and running and comfortable that it's the right configuration, delivering at the right volumes and the right conversion and all those other technical things, we would then consider investing in additional refining capacity. So it would be somewhat later than the concentrator and mine.
The other thing to be aware of, though, is that we do have land available and have designed the refinery, which currently has a nameplate capacity of 50,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide. We've designed it such that we can put more trains in and double the capacity to 100,000.
Okay.
I just think the only addition that because it's a multi-decade project, the slight delay between doubling the capacity of the concentrator and then the decision on the refinery also allows us to consider whether we want to make an alternate lithium product with that spodumene, so, as battery chemistry changes and where the industry's going.
Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Great. And then just finally on the health side, one for Emily. Just on, there's obviously a lot going on in the sector at the moment, some of your competitors. In terms of mergers, acquisitions, however you want to frame it, what opportunities does that create for your business in terms of either on the wholesale side, if there's any contracts available, or on the retail side, if there's any divestments that are required? Is that something that you see as an opportunity, or is that completely separate to what's in your strategic agenda?
I think it's separate. Look, we focus on the business that we've got today. I'd say the market is always changing. If opportunities come up, we'll look at them.
But it's not something on your mind at the moment?
No.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Hi. It's Ross Curran from Macquarie. Emily, I'm going to come back to the question I asked in February around business model in health. And when we look at the Chemist Warehouse model, they fairly consistently generated a mid- to high-teens margin out of that business. And when we look at your business and we look at the predecessor in API, it's a low single-digit business. So it's a fundamentally different business model across the two. Why are you happy with your business model, and why can't it be something else?
Well, I think what we outlined today is a couple of things. One is we're transforming the business that we bought. The second is we see a lot of growth in the consumer side of the business. So the retail side, not only retail pharmacy, retail stores, and our media settings business, which is fundamentally higher margin. So a lot of our focus is on evolving our business model and really kind of pursuing, I suppose, differentiated offers in the market.
Can your retail margins approach the commercial that are generated by Chemist Warehouse?
Look, I think our business is fundamentally, our retail offer is fundamentally different to theirs. So it's a different-sized format, and our focus is really on making sure that what we have in market is leading and differentiated, so.
But why stick with your format when the competitor's format generates 5x the returns?
So today, we're not a fully sort of franchised model, and so we can't own a pharmacy, and so therefore, we can't have an exact replica of their model. So we're really focused on evolving the model that we've got.
Yeah. It's Ben here from Jarden. Maybe I just want to, Emily, first. Just with the health side, it seems it's going to be, to Ross's point, very difficult to compare with, say, someone like Chemist Warehouse. But if you flip it around the other way and you look at what you're doing with SiSU and the other clinics, etc., you're probably more like what we're seeing offshore with the CVS and UnitedHealth in this world. And that's just me being a differentiator. To Rob's point before we tackle the argument, much of it's around creating currency within the business, around things like preventative health, creating a true currency that you can ensure as a sporting goods ready sort of place, directing it onto your return on targets, or can you do it from the existing wholesale and retail business today?
I think, in reality, we need to do both. So part of the reason that we've invested in sort of Instant Scripts and primary care models is most people's to really capitalize on the trends in health, you've really got to follow the customer lifecycle journey, which really starts and ends in some ways in primary care. And so as we want to build out that sort of proposition to follow demand, if you like, we need to improve what we've got as well as sort of play in the future, and that's really how we're planning on bringing it all together.
To Rob's point at the start around you don't want to go into capital-heavy hospitals or maybe insurers and these things might be too expensive or whatever at the moment, how important are partnerships? Is that how we should be thinking about progress and validating the model?
Yeah. I think we stay really open-minded because not only are we in a new sector for Wesfarmers, the health sector itself is really changing. And if you think forward 10 years, you think about the way we consume health today, it will change because we have a supply-demand kind of mismatch, really, in health. And that's where the opportunity lies, I think. So we'll always stay really open-minded to everything, partnerships, what are the best ways to kind of participate in other parts of the health system.
It's a final one for me maybe to you, Tim, just on the industrial side of things. Do you ever discuss internally that it makes sense sitting with Bunnings? You look at what Mike and the team are doing now in terms of all these additions, and you've obviously got a lot of similar suppliers and probably a lot of end customers. Do you ever think what is the materiality or significance of the synergies that come if you were to wrap all that up under that model?
Yeah. Look, we've talked about it briefly. I mean, I think a couple of points to make there. The customer overlap is not as great as what you might think. So across our division, we've got a very large focus on resources, large enterprise customers. The second point is Bunnings is a very valuable customer for WIS, so both Workwear Group and Coregas. We have a really good working relationship with the Bunnings team and a lot of collaboration. So look, it doesn't appear to be there's a massive synergy there, but there's certainly some really good interface points, and we're just focused on improving the businesses with the opportunities we've got ahead of us.
Great. Thank you.
Hi. It's Lisa from Goldman. First one for Emily. On the health business, we talked about focusing more on accelerating retail, and you put up a couple of key initiatives that we've been doing in terms of format, e-commerce, all that. I know that there's quite a few Priceline stores already that don't have the dispensary. So is a more accelerated rollout of those stores that wouldn't be governed by some of the location rules be part of that factor as well? And how do we think about that?
Yeah. No, absolutely. That's exactly what I said. So we see a huge opportunity to really leverage our beauty and skincare credentials to expand that offer. So that's definitely part of it.
Okay. All right. The second one for Ian and Aaron is on lithium.
So obviously, even you said if lithium prices do go lower from here, we'll be fine in terms of the returns, and we've got no troubled access to capital. But clearly, some players in the market are getting into a little bit more of a difficult spot. So how robust or available are potential M&A opportunities out there, and what would we need to sort of see to tick for us to pull that trigger if any come up?
I think it's a bit of a boring answer, but on M&A, it's difficult to comment. I think our perspective, though, is the near-term opportunities where we can add most value will be the expansion of Mount Holland. Having that 50-year world-class ore body well positioned on the cost curve, we should be able to ride out the commodity cycles as well as the other well-known West Australian producers. So that's first cab off the rank. We've been public, obviously, with going into more early stage, developing our own opportunities, which is not just lithium. So obviously, the Davyhurst tenements that we acquired are all metals other than gold and silver and precious metals. We're clearly there because we're interested in lithium, but there is prospectivity for more, and that package is 3-4x the size of Mount Holland. So it's got a lot of potential.
And then we have other tenements in other minerals across Western Australia. So I think we can probably develop or hopefully develop a lot more value doing it the harder way, going early stage rather than M&A.
Okay. Inorganic's not really a priority right now. It's really not.
We've got a lot to do at Mount Holland first.
It's Michael Simotas from Jefferies. Emily, can you talk a little bit about sort of how you see the split of the economics in Priceline Pharmacy with a dispensary between Wesfarmers Health and the franchisee? And that leads on from your point around one of the differences between Chemist Warehouse model and yours is the part of the value chain that's owned. And the reason I ask is if you can lift the unit economics of the stores, does that upside go to Wesfarmers, or does some of it need to go to the franchisees as well?
Look, the reality is, hopefully, if the businesses perform better, it can go to both is how we would think of it. I think Priceline Pharmacy has quite a unique proposition. We think it has a strong proposition. It's about 50% dispensary, 50% front-of-store. And on a front-of-store basis, we compete pretty actively in the market with all competitors at the moment. And we know that when we bring market-leading offers such as price. Really use our Sister Club database to drive that differentiation. We have customers crossing the road to come in and sort of take part in the Priceline offer. So we are confident that it is an offer that really stands on its own two feet.
As we grow it, absolutely, part of what I was saying earlier is we also have to look at our franchise partners as customers as well, and the proposition absolutely has to work for them. So absolutely, we can use our scale to hopefully buy better and allow them to participate, but we get to share in that benefit over time.
Okay. How do you get more franchisees into the network? Can you convert pharmacies? Do you need to?
Yeah. Prime.
You can't buy, but can franchisees buy?
Yeah. Primarily by converting existing ones. There are a set number of licenses in Australia. You can only open a new pharmacy with a license if it's in a particular sort of growing area where population is moving. But the more compelling our offer, and we really think our front-of-store offer is compelling, and it can really deliver the scope of practice changes really well for pharmacists. We just need to be super easy to deal with and help pharmacists who want to be part of our network feel like that we're a great option to partner with. And I think we're seeing really great success with that. We've just done our recent franchise partner survey. We've had the highest-ever response rate at like 85% and really positive engagement because I think they can see that we're actually doing things and moving the offer on.
Okay. And then the new Priceline pharmacies that you've done under Wesfarmers' ownership, have they stayed in the hands of the same pharmacist, or have they tended to transfer ownership?
I think it's completely not one-size-fits-all. It's everything, so.
All right. Thank you.
Another one for Emily. It's Richard from CLSA. So you've touched on it a little bit already around price, but it would seem that Priceline is not the price leader. But if I look at all the Wesfarmers' retail businesses, with the exception of Target, which has had a pretty checkered recent history, so what's it mean for you in terms of price? Where do you need to take the brand? Is that the goal, or is it about all these add-on services and so on which will make a difference?
I think the pharmacy environment is probably slightly different. So service absolutely has to be part of it because it's what customers expect when they walk into a store that has pharmacy over the door. So they have to be able to get a vaccination and all the things that you'd expect. I think on price, our job is to be competitive. What we do know is that, unlike our other businesses that might be everyday like for us, we are a high-low retailer. We are super competitive when we're on promotion. We've got a job to do that we've already started to do when we're kind of off promotion on some sort of key lines. So we've got a key value line promotion.
What our customers really understand, and this is the power of Sister Club coming to the fore, is that we are absolute market-leading when we're on promotion. We also bring a whole lot of kind of excitement to the brand, and we really want to continue to evolve the brand in that sense. We do things like beauty boxes, great gift with purchases, all sorts of things, and actually drive phenomenal engagement and excitement. It's really about a balance of making sure that we are demonstrating value kind of every day.
Are you where you need to be or where you want to be on that?
No. No. We're very clear. We're not where we need to be, but that's the journey, and we're taking our franchise partners on the journey with us as well.
Okay. Thank you.
Hi. It's Johannes here from Morningstar. I had one for Ian, please, or Aaron. You guys mentioned the cost curve for lithium a few times today. Where exactly would you sit or not maybe exactly, but roughly in quartiles for concentrate versus battery-grade hydroxide once you're up and running, once you're fully ramped?
Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, we're not where we want to be at the moment due to the ramp-up. I'm not sure we've disclosed that, but we would see ourselves in the lower half of the cost curve for both spodumene concentrate and also lithium hydroxide.
Okay. Great. Thanks. On the expansion projects that we spoke about today, both in chemicals and lithium, how do we think about CapEx for those projects?
In terms of relative to the current CapEx, or?
Or capital intensity of debottlenecking those plants.
Yeah. Well, CapEx has gone up like everything. So if you were to rebuild the Mount Holland concentrator today, what we've currently built, it would be much, much more expensive. So the good news there is that new players coming in are facing those CapEx challenges. So as demand goes up, so will the cost of delivering that demand.
The incentive price from what?
Incentive price changes. So that's a positive. The negative is, for companies like us that want to expand, we're going to be faced with higher CapEx relative to the initial investment. We're still doing the engineering studies on what that might be for an expanded concentrator. Now, I'm not saying it will be the same price or a higher price as the existing concentrator because there are some natural benefits from the original concentrator that we installed, especially non-process infrastructure and so forth. But if we do take FID, we'll be announcing what that capital would be.
Great. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks very much, Ian, Aaron, Tim, and Emily. That brings us towards the end of the day. I just wanted to make a few closing remarks. Firstly, thank you all so much for hanging in there right to the end. Ian, I wanted to thank you for your last strategy briefing day. Obviously, you'll be there with us for the full year results and four months ahead, but thank you again. I also wanted to just acknowledge a couple of points about the discussion today. As I said at the outset, we tried to bring to life a lot of the growth initiatives that were going on within our existing businesses and also some of our new growth platforms. What I hope we've emphasised, and it may not be agreed by everyone, is that we take a long-term view around value creation.
There are some areas we've discussed today that you probably see a lot of conviction of quite immediate benefits flowing through. There are other things that we talked about today in some of our divisions that are starting to get traction that are a function of work that has gone on over the last five years, some of which there were a lot of questions in the early stages when we embarked on some of those strategies. At the end of the day, we don't get everything right, but the one thing we do try and encourage within Wesfarmers is this culture of entrepreneurial initiative to really focus on ways in which we can continue to grow our businesses in a way that is going to deliver value to shareholders. So hopefully, at least that intent and that focus on delivering long-term returns has come through very strongly.
I was really pleased to see Emily commit to improving the return on capital. The health division. Thank you, Emily, given that Emily wasn't around when we bought the business. So it was great for someone that bought the business to hear the strong conviction from leadership around improving return on capital. One thing I would note is that in the last couple of years, we have invested a fair bit of capital in areas such as the leading telehealth business in the country, Instant Scripts, that when we bought, it wasn't profitable. It is now profitable. The areas where we're allocating capital to our health division, notably digital health, the pharmacy retail side of the business, and also the skincare aesthetics business, all of these businesses are businesses that have the capacity to generate very good returns on capital.
The business that we bought and one of the foundational elements of the healthcare division, the wholesale business, is a much tougher business to generate superior returns on capital. But it is a very unique asset that provides a very powerful foundation for our growth that we are looking for on the retail and consumer side of the business. So time will tell, but we do believe that we have a very interesting collection of assets that should start generating good returns on capital and good growth over time. But at the end of the day, it all comes back to whether we have our customer offer right. And I guess you're all part of this early stage of this emerging division, and we can watch the development of it as time goes on.
Final point I wanted to make on the investor relations side, I wanted to also thank Simon Edmonds. This is Simon's last strategy day. Simon, like many other former heads of investor relations, some of whom are in this room today, Simon will be going on to a divisional role. So he'll go from being a cost centre to a profit centre, which is what we all aspire to at Wesfarmers. Simon, thank you very much for all of your effort here. And I wanted to welcome Dan Harlow, who'll be going into Simon's role. That's all we had to say. Please travel safe. Any questions, please follow up with Simon and Dan, and it's been great to catch up. Thank you very much.