Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Wagners' half-year results briefing conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will only press star one on your touch-tone telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star then zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Cameron Coleman, Chief Executive Officer of Wagners. Sir, please go ahead.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our half-year results presentation. I'm joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, Fergus Hume, and the Chief Executive Officer of our Earth Friendly Concrete Business, Michael Kemp. To date, 2022 is on target, delivering growth on the first half of last year. Overall revenue of AUD 172 million for the first half was slightly ahead of the second half FY 2021 and is up 10% on the first half of last year. The business has delivered an operating EBIT result of AUD 12.6 million if we exclude the investment made into our Earth Friendly Concrete technology, a significant improvement on the prior corresponding period. This result has been driven by strong demand for construction materials and project services across the business.
Our composites business has grown in revenue, although delivered lower margins with increased costs and delays associated with continued lockdowns due to COVID-19, and we have continued to invest heavily into the establishment of the USA business. Progress of our Earth Friendly Concrete technology continues to advance in the U.K. and Europe. EFC is now regularly being sold through our partners in these countries. We've increased our investment in EFC and have separated it from our operating results. I'll now hand over to Fergus to take you through the financial results in a little more detail.
Thank you, Cameron. Looking at the operating results for this half, which now exclude the EFC results. Revenues have increased by 11% to AUD 172.2 million compared to the first half of last year and 3% compared to the last half. The revenue compared to the prior corresponding period increased in cement, concrete, steel, precast, and CFT, partially offset by reduced activity in our contract crushing business. Revenue compared to the second half of last year increased in the same business units as mentioned above, but these were partially offset by significant reductions in precast and contract crushing.
The operating EBIT is up by over 8% or AUD 1 million on the prior corresponding period, bringing the first half of this year's results to AUD 12.6 million. This is due to the improved performance of cement and precast compared to the first half of last year. The operating EBIT has decreased by AUD 1.9 million or 13% compared to the second half of last year. This is mainly due to the reduction in gross profit as a result of the lower contributions from some major projects in the precast and contract crushing businesses. We have continued to invest in our Wagners CFT expansion with an increased spend in this half. As previously flagged, we have increased our spend in EFC to fund the international expansion of this product. Now turning to the segment results.
Here you can see the summary of our three operating businesses, and we'll go through each of these in a bit more detail on the following slides. Firstly, the construction materials and services or CMS. The CMS segment is the largest business within the company. There's been a sustained improvement on the first half of last year with a revenue increase of 10% and a 26% increase in EBIT. Compared to the second half of last year, we grew revenue across most sectors with lower revenue from contract crushing and precast, with the precast impacted by the completion of our initial tunnel segment project for Cross River Rail. The major contribution came from our cement business, which delivered stronger sales.
Our reinforcement steel business, which is a much smaller business, has shown a significant growth with a 70% increase in revenue and a 50% increase in earnings on the back of high construction demand in Southeast Queensland and the opening of our Brisbane Steel business. All concrete batch plants have increased sales in the first half, although they continue to be challenged due to the competitive landscape in Southeast Queensland. The overall earnings contribution through our concrete operations continues to be an area of management focus. If you look at our composite fiber technologies business, we've had mixed results this half. Compared to the first half of last year, the reduced sales of pedestrian infrastructure into the Middle East and New Zealand, which had higher margins, impacted our earnings, whilst the business development costs have continued.
Compared to the second half of last year, the cross-arm business recorded a decline in revenue of just over 4%, but the EBIT margin was an improvement of over 9%, reflecting the manufacturing efficiencies from our equipment upgrade. The supply and install of marine infrastructure, pedestrian infrastructure, and road bridges provided revenue growth of over 45%, contributing a positive impact on the EBIT. We have increased our research and development spend this half. Now have a look at the graph on the right. This shows our scale-up investment in the USA. The manufacturing facility was constructed during the last half and will start manufacturing in the second half of this year.
As shown above, we've increased our resources and costs in the U.S. to develop the sales pipeline, which is starting to show in the revenue line as set out in the graph. Our ongoing business development costs in New Zealand, Europe and the Middle East continued despite the lack of sales that COVID again provided some barriers. Now looking at Earth Friendly Concrete and our low carbon technology. As we continue to invest in the EFC technology and market development, it's difficult to gauge our performance from the financial results. We see the negative AUD 1.9 million EBIT contribution as an investment in this business and expect to see this increase significantly over time. We've increased the number of employees, including the appointment of a Chief Executive Officer, with more to follow in the second half.
The performance of EFC will be measured in terms of the commercialization of the technology around the world. Michael will provide an update about EFC in more detail later in this presentation. In terms of the cash flow now, the major impact has been the working capital, and our working capital has increased mainly due to the increased inventory holdings due to our expected delays in shipping. If we look at our capital expenditure, we've increased our capital expenditure this half. The AUD 14.5 million worth of capital expenditure has been spread across the business. The AUD 1.7 million spent on CFT facilities and equipment. A further AUD 2.5 million on CFT Australia plant. AUD 1 million on EFC equipment and AUD 7 million on mobile equipment. The remainder of the CapEx was fixed plant upgrades across cement and precast.
This CapEx spend is mainly growth CapEx and not maintenance CapEx. I'll now hand back to Cameron and Michael to take you through the segments and the outlook.
All right, thanks, Fergus. If we start with our composites business, there are a number of highlights through the first half. In Australia and New Zealand, we achieved 30% revenue growth. The revenue growth was driven by the increase in sales in the supply and installation of CFT marine infrastructure, pedestrian infrastructure and road bridges. The increasing demand for our product has also identified an opportunity for us to establish an in-house installation capability. This increase in capability has enabled us to secure projects during the period which previously we may have been precluded from tendering for, therefore contributing towards the revenue growth. On the back of a large R&D effort, we are currently commissioning two new pultrusion machines in our Toowoomba facility that are capable of manufacturing power poles, light poles and marine poles.
These machines are designed to service a market that we do not currently generate any revenue from. Our new crossarm automation cell is delivering higher margins. During the period, our R&D team continued their efforts into establishing new products, markets and production efficiencies. While the domestic business did experience revenue growth, unfortunately this was not reflected in the resulting EBIT for the period. This was due to a decrease in crossarm volumes, project delays and costs increases associated with COVID-19 and completing those works quoted in earlier periods where costs have increased. We were unable to pass these costs on to our clients. Moving to the international CFT business. We have now built our facility in Cresson, Texas.
The installation of our pultrusion machine is almost complete, and we have employed a full complement of staff, including some that have relocated from our Toowoomba manufacturing facility to Cresson, and will be pultruding product in April this year. Our business development efforts have been delivered significant sales growth through this period. We've been encouraged by the strong demand for our product and made the decision to double our existing manufacturing capability to ensure we are well positioned to service the customer base that's been identified. We only realized minimal revenue from the Middle East in the first half as business development efforts were hampered due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. We still do remain committed to this region, with resources remaining dedicated to identifying future opportunities. Looking forward to the next half for CFT, we expect an improvement in both revenue and margins.
COVID restrictions are easing throughout Australia and New Zealand. We have a strong forward order book for pedestrian and marine infrastructure projects, and we anticipate an increase in crossarm sales compared to the first half. On the secured pedestrian and marine infrastructure projects, we expect improved margins as the anticipated increase in revenue dilutes our overhead expenses and increases supply chain costs are being recovered in future projects. We expect to experience further improvement on margins in our crossarm business as a result of the efficiencies expected from our Toowoomba upgrades and automation at our Toowoomba facility. We will see the first sales for power poles this half and then as is anticipated, the demand from this market will increase as other customers understand the benefit of this new product offering.
Light pole sales are gaining momentum and as I mentioned earlier, the two new pultrusion machines we are currently commissioning will ensure we have the production capability to service these emerging markets. In the U.S., we expect to experience an increase in revenue now that we have in-country manufacturing at our Texas facility. We're also doubling the production capacity with the commissioning of a second pultrusion machine to ensure we have sufficient capacity to service the growing demand for our product. Our business development team are delivering repeat orders and have a strong pipeline of opportunities identified. As I said, while there was little activity in the Middle East in the first half, we are confident there is still significant demand for our product in this region. We're currently in the design and tendering phase for a large boardwalk similar to the previous projects we've completed in Abu Dhabi.
We'll continue to pursue opportunities in the U.K. with a dedicated business development resource for the region. We remain committed to investing in research and development with our composites business. The team is currently working on manufacturing efficiencies along with a number of potential new product lines. I'll now hand over to Michael to discuss our low carbon concrete technology.
Thanks, Cameron. Before I talk to the first half achievements, you'll see a couple of photos on this slide of two recent applications of EFC. One is of an EFC bridge that's been installed in Northern New South Wales. This is the first concrete road bridge using no ordinary Portland cement at all, saving approximately 15 tons of carbon on the project. The other photo was taken in Germany following a production run of concrete pipes made from Earth Friendly Concrete that have made at the precast yard. It's fantastic to see our technology in community infrastructure applications such as these. We have a lot of exciting things happening at EFC. Throughout the period, we commenced construction of our U.K. manufacturing facility, enabling us to reduce costs, improve service and quality.
One of our strategic partners, Capital Concrete, has continued to manufacture Earth Friendly Concrete for a number of customers from their Silvertown batch plant and are now adding EFC capabilities to their Wembley plant, not only demonstrating their commitment to the product, but also the demand for our technology. In addition to our partnership with Capital Concrete, we have established a number of strategic partnerships throughout the period with concrete manufacturers, consumers, and suppliers. The concrete manufacturers and consumers are critical to ensure there is demand for the technology and an ability to service the markets. We've also established agreements with key suppliers of raw materials. Some of these agreements provide additional revenue to our business through royalty arrangements over time. We've recently conducted a number of successful trials with precast concrete manufacturers in Germany and a large concrete rooftop manufacturer in the U.K.
A number of these customers are seeking exclusivity arrangements for the use of EFC in their product lines in the U.K., Germany and Austria, demonstrating an appetite for this carbon reducing technology. Work continues with JSW in India, where we are seeking Indian Standard approval for the application of EFC. Now to the outlook. Global demand for carbon reducing technologies continues to grow at an exponential rate. EFC technology provides a carbon saving of over 70% compared to traditional concrete. This will provide significant carbon reductions for large scale commercial and infrastructure projects just through the use of EFC as an alternative to concrete. In the coming months, we'll complete our production facility in London. This will enable us to service the existing market we've established and positions us well to service the increasing demand we're experiencing in this region.
We start this half year with a full complement of management, production, technical and sales staff in the U.K. We expect this investment will accelerate the rollout of EFC. We continue to pursue new partnerships throughout the U.K. and Europe to allow us to increase our sales. Following completion of a number of successful trials in Germany, we're now in negotiations with a number of concrete precasters. They intend to replace traditional concrete in their products with Earth Friendly Concrete. The investment we have made in conducting these field trials and building these relationships with customers will begin to generate revenue this calendar year. Locally, our EFC team are manufacturing in Brisbane and continue to service consumers in the Southeast Queensland market that value carbon reduction. We're also committed to obtaining approval for the use of our technology in India.
In conjunction with our partner, JSW, we see this as an emerging market that offers great potential for the future use of our EFC technology once approval is gained. We're in the process of considering external investment in our EFC business, which would allow us to accelerate our international expansion along with product and market development. We'll continue to work with a number of investors through the next half who have expressed interest to date in investing in EFC. Regardless of the outcome of any third-party investment, we will continue to invest in our EFC technology and remain committed to the international expansion of the business.
All right. Thanks, Michael. I'll just move into the construction materials and services, where demand for construction materials has certainly been strong in Southeast Queensland. Revenue has increased in all areas of our Southeast Queensland businesses compared to the first half of 2021. Cement volumes were strong for the period, and we've seen significant growth from our fixed concrete plant network. While there has been a 32% increase in concrete revenue, the market conditions continue to impact the margins in the concrete business. On a positive note, we've seen some movement in our average selling price in the last few months, and we remain hopeful this trend will continue.
There has been an extremely high demand for reinforcing steel, creating the opportunity to establish an additional retail outlet in Brisbane that will support our Toowoomba fabrication facility. We successfully completed the production of the precast concrete tunnel segments for the Cross River Rail project. The precast business is now busy producing additional elements associated with the Cross River Rail passenger stations, along with a number of other contracts for infrastructure-related projects in and around Brisbane. Our quarry revenue from our contract crushing business has reduced over this period as a number of large projects were completed. We did, however, commence a number of new contract crushing projects in recent months. These will have a positive contribution to our second half performance. Our Toowoomba and Cloncurry quarries experienced growth during the period, and we secured a development approval for a new quarry site just west of Brisbane.
We successfully negotiated a new contract for bulk hauling services in the Northern Territory with McArthur River Mining, which should deliver AUD 33 million in revenue over the next three years. This contract complements the existing long-term work that we've secured in Northwest Queensland. We currently have more than 60 truck and trailer combinations and almost 200 people servicing these projects. Moving on to the outlook for the construction materials and services business, where we do not expect to see any decline in demand in Southeast Queensland market. We expect cement volumes to remain strong in the second half of the year. However, we are faced with supply chain cost increases and are passing these on to consumers where market conditions and contracts permit us to do so. Concrete volumes are expected to increase.
While there are increasing cost pressures on our concrete supply chain, we expect the improving market conditions will reduce the overall impact of these increases. Next month, we commence construction of our next concrete batch plant south of Brisbane, adding capacity and volume to our expanding network of concrete plants. Our precast business has solid forward orders for this financial year. We are looking to service new markets following the successful completion of the large project in Brisbane, where we were able to significantly reduce our cost base through innovation and optimization of our existing assets. Our mobile concrete business has not provided any significant revenue for a number of years. However, we have recently been awarded the concrete supply for a small wind farm project west of Toowoomba. We mobilized our plant equipment to site during January, and this project will contribute to our second half performance.
While the project is relatively small compared to others we've undertaken, it is positive to see activity in this area of the business. We are actively tendering on other concrete projects identified in our pipeline. In the project services area of our business, bulk haulage and contract crushing will continue to provide a significant contribution given the long-term nature of some of the contracts in these businesses. In summary, we are pleased with the business performance for the first half and encouraged by the level of activity and forward order book that we're presented with as we're moving into the second half. We look forward to the investment we've made in our composites business, generating even more revenue, but more importantly, more profit than it has in the first half.
With the facility now established and manufacturing to commence in April, the USA composites business will generate additional revenue this half. It is well positioned to become one of the more substantial businesses within the Wagners group. This, coupled with the global demand for our Earth Friendly Concrete technology, provides an exciting platform to generate international growth and long-term value. We remain committed to the expansion of our construction materials business in Southeast Queensland through our vertically integrated model. We continue to establish our concrete plant network. We are developing new quarry locations, and we've expanded our reinforcing steel business to ensure we capitalize on every opportunity these markets present. There is a heap of activity in our bulk haulage and contract crushing businesses at present, and we look forward to the contribution they will make to the overall business this financial year. That concludes our presentation.
We're all happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you. If you have a question at this time, please press star then one on your touchtone telephone. If your question has been answered and you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key or the hash key. Our first question comes from the line of Kurt Gelsomino with Morgans Financial. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, Cam, Fergus, and Michael. Thanks for your time today. I've just got a few questions, if that's okay. Maybe just kicking off with EFC. I just wondered if you could provide maybe a question for Michael, just a bit more color on just the level of interest you are seeing in that investment process at the moment and just any other color you can maybe provide on in terms of timing for any potential investment.
Kurt, I'll jump in first. It's Cameron here. Our EFC business is gaining a lot of momentum at the moment, and that has created the necessity for us to move Michael into that business as a Chief Executive Officer to just provide 100% focus on all the moving bits we've got happening in our Earth Friendly Concrete business. I'll hand over to Michael to sort of talk about where we're at, where we're currently at. There's obviously some of the information regarding the third-party investment is quite sensitive and confidential, but Michael will share with you what he can at this point.
Thanks, Cameron. Yeah, Kurt, we're obviously, I guess my move into this role signals that we're very confident in the EFC product. We are going through the process, and we can't say a lot more about it at this time. We're getting more and more demand every day for the product. We'll have our facility operational in London by April. We start to manufacture over in London rather than buying in chemicals. We'll be able to reduce our cost of manufacture, increase our ability to supply in volume to the market. We're very upbeat about EFC going forward.
Kurt, just in relation to the investment process, we are working with a number of parties and our advisors, obviously, to sort of progress that third-party investment. It's still afoot and we're quite happy with how it's progressing. There's probably not a lot more we can share without sort of opening up too much confidential information there.
Yeah. Understood. I guess the question is, I guess you've sort of been progressing this now over the last 12 months. I guess you're still as equally as optimistic, as you were you think in securing investment as you were maybe 12 months ago?
Absolutely.
Terrific. Maybe just a final one on EFC for me too. Michael, what I think obviously Boral's, you know, talking quite a lot about their low carbon concrete offering and, particularly I think ENVISIA, which they're sort of positioning as their more premium product. Can you just maybe provide comments as to how EFC compares to ENVISIA maybe on a carbon reduction basis?
Well, I think that the key thing for us has been to, you know, there are many different companies taking many aspects to decarbonizing construction. Our drive is to create concrete that doesn't consume cement. It's really. It's probably the biggest bet technically, but it's also the greater. It's the method of reducing the carbon emissions the most. We've got the lowest emitting concrete in the world that's proven at scale in Earth Friendly Concrete. With over 70,000 cu m placed, with zero cement in any of those cubic meters that have been put in the ground. It's a significant drop in carbon comparatively to any concrete, let alone Boral, but certainly anything in the world that has been used at scale.
That's the real driver for us.
Understood. Thanks for that, Michael. Just on maybe CMS, Cameron, and just maybe concisely in the interest of time, we'll just keep to one pretty simple question, I guess. You called out, I guess, a number of pretty positive dynamics for that business in the second half. I guess you might have a lot of contribution from Cross River Rail, and you've called out some cost pressures also in cement. How are you sort of seeing that EBIT contribution for that CMS segment in the second half relative to the AUD 18.6 million delivered in this first half?
Kurt, we're seeing the CMS business very strong for the second half. Volumes in all areas of our Southeast Queensland business are anticipated to rise and increase on the first half. That coupled with the level of activity in our project services business, the additional wind farm project that'll fall into this half that we didn't have last half, and I think the additional activity we've got at the precast business with secured orders now, are certainly meeting our expectations. When you look at all those areas of our business, we're sort of quite excited about the remainder of the year.
Understood. I think it's still reasonable to assume probably a stronger second half contribution from that CMS business on that basis.
Yep. We're all working very hard to make sure that happens, Kurt.
Terrific. Thanks, Cameron. That's all my questions. Thanks for your time, guys.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Peter Steyn with Macquarie. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, gents. Cameron, Fergus, Michael, I appreciate your time. Just curious on your inventory build, could you give us a bit of a sense of which areas you've specifically buffered your inventories?
Sure, Peter. We've taken steel, CFT, mainly glass and resin on the raw side, and we've also produced some finished stock, which we are holding in stock to make sure that we can deliver on the second half order book that we've got. Cement, we've made sure that we've got more than enough clinker to get us through. It's across those areas.
Thanks. Yes. I was keen to pick up on the cement piece. How are you guys going for supply? Obviously, your long-term contracts are probably gonna give you a little bit more visibility, but there's been quite a lot of chatter about the complexity of clinker supply into Australia generally. Just curious on that. Attached to that question, if you could just give us a bit of a sense of your freight cover and what your costs look like on that score.
I'll talk to the clinker supply. Clinker supply, we've got no issues. We've extended our agreement with our current supplier for a further two years at very similar rates or with an up and down sort of Clauses in it. In terms of the shipping costs, we are going to see a significant increase in our shipping costs in the second half. We are starting to sort of combat that. They are starting to see price rises in the market for cement, not only by us, but also by our competitors, especially in Southeast Queensland.
May I ask what level of price increase you're broadly expecting, perhaps both at the cement level as well as in your concrete environment over the foreseeable future?
I guess in the concrete space, we're probably looking at somewhere over a year. You'll be looking at somewhere between 10%-20% increases in prices if what we're considering should go through. On a cement point of view, it would be similar size numbers as well. I mean, it's a direct relationship there.
Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sorry, did I hear you say 10-12, did you say?
10-20.
10-20. Okay.
Thank you very much. Sorry.
Okay. That's quite a wide range. Is that, at the center of that range, an expectation that perhaps the market somehow gets quite tight towards the end of the period?
I mean, demand is growing as we speak. There continues to be a lot of activity in Southeast Queensland, both residential, short-term infrastructure and some major infrastructure work. We are expecting the demand to increase. In terms of the price rises or the price increase, that's why there's such a big range. It depends on when some of that demand really kicks in and when the work comes along. Yes, we are expecting there to be a tightening of supply. We're already starting to see a tightening of supply within the market. The short answer is yes.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks very much, Michael. I'll leave it there.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Peter Wilson with Credit Suisse. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. I might just follow up that question on price. I'm not sure I ever recall seeing such strong pricing intention. I got the impression from your earlier comments that margins might still be under pressure. Just maybe talk about whether or not that's true, whether the price is enough to offset costs. Earlier you mentioned that, you know, there's been considerable pressure, it's somewhat stabilizing in concrete. Cement, obviously you've got those, you know, the input cost increases and you're passing it on where you can. I didn't necessarily suggest that, you know, you're getting kind of price greater than costs or any kind of recovery in margin.
I'll jump in there first. As Fergus mentioned, we have renewed our clinker supply agreement on more favorable terms than we expected. We've also renewed our energy agreement again on favorable terms. Shipping, we've known for quite some time we were going to face an increase in shipping costs and have been working hard to pass that shipping cost through to the market. Now that's okay when you pass it through to other producers, but when you pass it through to your concrete business internally, it's imperative concrete price increases accordingly. There's been a lot of work over the last six months with two price rises to combat these additional costs being effected. There are further price rises in the concrete business.
We've got a very, very strict pricing policy regarding those price rises to ensure that those increased shipping costs are passed through to the, to the market, to the consumer.
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. To the projects, I mean, so there's some pluses and minuses. Can you maybe just give us a high level view of like second half, you can think about like all the project activity in your CMS business. Is that gonna be higher or lower than the first half?
Well, in the bulk haulage business, we'll see higher activity on the back of the new contract we called out. In the contract crushing business, we will see some growth on the period we have just finished on the back of contracted orders we have in place. Coupled with that, in the contracting business or the services business, we have that wind farm project also providing a contribution, looking forward, which we didn't have in the prior period.
Okay, good. I've actually got a couple more questions if I can.
Yeah.
Yeah. Sorry, Cameron.
No, you're right. Sorry.
Okay. I was gonna move on to EFC. I saw some, I guess, really exciting progress there. Can you give us some sense of scale of these U.K. and Europe partners? Capital Concrete is not a company that I'm aware of. Or perhaps another way to think about it is what kind of revenue could you generate from this U.K. manufacturing facility that you've established?
Yep. I'll jump in first, and then I'll sort of hand over to Michael to talk about the type of customers that he has managed to bring along the journey with us. For us, we're selling our activator and admixture technology, not the concrete. To talk to revenue numbers over the next six months, I think, we'll be more focused on investing money into that business over the next six months to create additional concrete producers to assist concrete producers to be able to offer the technology to the consumer. The second batch plant in London to be able to offer Earth Friendly Concrete is coming online, Michael, in I think about a couple of weeks, or was it actually next week?
I think it's a couple of weeks.
Two weeks away. For them to do that, we need to provide the equipment at their batch plants, which we hire to the producers, to be able to do that. The big job of work for us at the moment is manufacturing the equipment required in London to enable concrete producers to get this product to market.
There's definitely work to do to be, you know, cash flow positive, which is why we're seeking that external investment. It's about growing that market, getting international approvals for the use of the material. You know, what we are seeing is demand and people specifying it. We are selling it at a premium price to traditional concrete, and it is being taken up on the basis of its green credentials.
Just the business, to be clear, is that in London we are making a chemical manufacturing plant that is selling the activator, so the liquid chemical to Capital Concrete, the concrete supplying company in London that has a number of batch plants around the M20, inside the M25 in London. We're looking to grow the number of plants that we service, obviously, in that region.
Can I perhaps. Sorry. Peter, if you haven't heard of Capital Concrete, they're a subsidiary of both Bretts and Breedon, which are both quite large concrete manufacturers across the whole of the U.K. That is their London arm of the business that they put into London as a Capital Concrete, sort of as can be said, they're all within the M25. That's what their focus is. Through that relationship, we've also got relationships with both of those companies that own them, and they are looking at different areas in the U.K. of operating or turning on some of their plants to EFC.
To talk directly to the revenue, though, I think, you know, a great result for us over the next five months would be in the order of millions dollars of revenue, not tens of millions of dollars of revenue.
Yeah. Understand. The growth investment, I think most people agree that it's a good time to be investing in this product. Should we brace for an increase in the investment and the net EBIT loss, or is the current level of spend enough?
It's our intention to maintain the current level of spend. We may need to increase it a little bit, you know, maybe a little bit more than we're investing now, is our strategy at this point. The current level of investment does allow us to achieve what we've got on our radar for the next 12 months.
Great. One last one, if I may. Just in the EFC business, I was surprised to see the cross-arm sales fell. Should we extrapolate that or is there, you know, a one-off, one contract ended or something like that?
Our forward order book sees increased cross-arm sales in this period. There was only one region where they fell, and that was in the New South Wales sort of region was the reduction in sales. We're sort of working through that. There is, you know, a number of reasons and we still feel that certainly some of the COVID restrictions limited our clients' ability to get around and replace cross-arms. Certainly on our forward orders, we're seeing growth in cross-arm sales this half.
Okay, good. I'll leave it there. Thanks for taking all my questions.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Raju Ahmed with CCZ Equities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for your time. Michael, I should say congratulations on your new role. I'll start with you, Michael, if that's okay. Just following on from the EFC discussions. You showed an interesting picture around the EFC pipes in one of the precast yards in Germany. I'm just trying to get a feel for how you think about the, I suppose, the strategic pricing of this product. I presume people aren't necessarily going to overpay for low emissions products in the future. I mean, in any infrastructure or construction work, they have an IRR to meet. How do we think about that for EFC relative to other low-cost concrete where the focus is on minimizing pricing and then the regular Portland concrete?
I think there's probably a couple of ways to look at it. You know, concrete's used in many different products. The first way to look at it is, you know, concrete out of a batch plant delivered to projects. We're seeing projects are specifying, you know, carbon limits or, you know, net zero emissions on a project. You know, the people running projects are driven to use low carbon technology. We're seeing that on HS2, that London to Birmingham railway line in London, for example. With the pipes specifically that you called out, we're primarily focusing on wastewater pipes. With a normal concrete pipe with ordinary Portland cement in it, we see acids attacking, I guess, the cementitious part of that pipe.
Often nowadays you'll find that they are lined with HDPE liners. Geopolymer concrete pipes don't need the HDPE liner, so we can actually sell it at a premium and be the least expensive option for a project. That's what you're seeing with those pipes in the presentation. We see a massive market in the wastewater environment. Finally, I'll point towards carbon currency becoming a large opportunity. In all of our efforts so far, we've had that as something for the future, but it is something that we're looking to work on and develop. It's a real opportunity for us as we offset or abate, I guess, the use of carbon in the construction environment.
Okay. That's very helpful. The other quick one on EFC, Michael, is from a regulatory standpoint, is there anything outstanding in the U.K. or continental European region that is sort of a, how should I explain it, a roadblock to encouraging sales in next 12, 18, 24 months?
Sure. At the moment, on a project-by-project basis, an engineer can certify the use of the product. In Germany, as we've talked about on numerous occasions, we have a certificate that allows the general use of the product that's been assessed through the German technical authority. To get that same, you know, general use and applicability in the U.K. and the rest of Europe, we need a European technical authority. Sorry, a European Technical Approval. That has been launched, and we expect that towards the end of the calendar year, by the third quarter is what we're expecting. That has been launched and does go through a process which we don't control, so we are waiting for people to, I guess, review and approve. But we are expecting that, you know, between September and December of this year.
That will give us a blanket approval for use of the product where concrete is specified.
Okay. Thank you. Just moving into CFT, if I may. You clearly incurred a lot of costs in the CFT business in the first half. Can you just give a sense of, if you were to repeat that same revenue in the second half, what would be potentially the quantum of costs that won't be repeated?
Well, certainly we've got the supply chain issues behind us, and all work that we've been performing for the last couple of months is not subject to any of that supply chain, particularly shipping, where we had contracted orders. We were faced with increased container shipping prices to get glass and resin into the company that we either elected not to pass on to customers or were unable to pass on to customers. We're a growing business. We've got a lot of government contracts in place that once we've entered into those contracts, the fact that the shipping price goes up, we were unable to recoup those costs. They're all behind us now, and forward orders do have an allowance for us to recover additional shipping contracts, shipping price increases. We've got those behind us.
What we will still be subject to though is continued investment in research and development for new product lines. Without that, we wouldn't be faced with the increased revenue we'll see this half from our power poles, light poles and marine piles. We wouldn't have those new product offerings and new revenue streams if it wasn't for the spend that we commit to R&D. We will continue to spend on research and development for new products and production efficiencies. Our ramp-up costs associated with the U.S. business have been spent, and we do expect a much stronger contribution this half. You know, probably four times what we saw last half in revenue from the U.S. business. We're quite encouraged by the level of orders we already have committed in that space.
It's not pipelined. We already do have a number of committed orders. I think the committed orders we have at this point will meet our expectations in revenue from the U.S. this financial year.
Okay. Just to dwell on it further, Cameron, in terms of what I'm trying to get my head around is what is the underlying EBIT margin, I suppose, that CFT is tracking at? I think it's in honor of some of our prior conversations, you mentioned you would be targeting somewhere between 18%-20% sort of group EBIT margin, so to speak.
No, nothing's changed. Nothing at all has changed from that. If anything, we may even see a stronger return.
Okay. That's where I was getting to. Sorry to dwell on this a bit too much I suppose. That's what I was getting to. I mean, EBIT margins were hit in the first half, and I fully understand given the circumstances. Should we be considering a double-digit EBIT margin for the second half and beyond? How do we forecast? I mean, this is very difficult from an analyst perspective, that's all.
No, I understand. We will see our margins return to double-digit margins.
Okay, fantastic. That's very helpful. The last one, if I may. You've talked about your bullishness allied with some concerns around costs in the CMS segment. There are clearly some tailwinds in the EFC, and you're talking about return to earnings, good quality earnings in the CFT segment. Is it safe to say that the second half EBIT would be better than the first half? Or that's too early to tell?
There are some headwinds there, as you said, Raju, but there are also some good positives that are coming out of it as well in terms of we will see growth in CFT. Our level of spend in EFC will probably be maintained. We should see some improvements across concrete with some price rises coming through. I guess the one issue, the one place where we're probably not confident of seeing an increase in the second half is due to the increased shipping costs associated with the cement business. We are confident that we'll be able to sort of maintain where we are, but perhaps not grow where we are. Precast, we will have the jobs.
We've obviously finished the Cross River Rail job in this first half. Albeit that was sort of completed by about September. We have got work in Precast and we are very busy in Precast, but they're not running on the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week program that the Cross River Rail project was running on. There will be a slight reduction in the margins through the Precast business. We expect improvement in bulk haulage and mobile concrete projects, and we expect a stronger performance from our contract crushing business as well.
Okay. That's very helpful. I will leave it there. Thank you for your time.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of William Cunning with Carter Bar Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for the color so far. We've gone through a lot of my questions, but I guess just a couple from me. Is there any reason to expect that the sort of corporate overhead in the second half would look dissimilar to the first half?
No. There's no real reason. I don't think we're expecting any major changes in our overall level of overhead. The only cost would be that, I guess, one thing that we are wearing in the corporate overhead costs is some of the consulting costs associated with the EFC process that we're running. But that should be consistent half on half.
Great. Thanks for that. I guess you guys have provided a lot of color on the second half for the CMS business. That's been very helpful. I guess just looking at some of the commentary that was provided at the back end of last year by, you know, major projects units and Infrastructure Queensland. Some of them flagged a little bit of slippage maybe in their expectations for second half FY 2022, which you guys probably aren't quite seeing. The commentary on the back end of FY 2022 was quite positive and actually, you know, sort of signaled a fair bit of uplift. Could you maybe just give a little bit of color on what you're seeing maybe going into the back end of this calendar year and so FY 2023?
Just on the major project side of things, we're not sort of too excited about anything significant getting started. The commentary we've provided through this presentation is based on the business as we see it today. There are some significant projects to get underway in Queensland, in Southeast Queensland. However, we don't see those starting in the immediate future. I guess probably the more significant one of all of them is the Inland Rail project, and we think we could be sort of two years off generating revenue from a project such as that, whereas New South Wales are currently enjoying a big sort of revenue uptick on that project.
The commentary we've provided is around business that we know is occurring and doesn't really consider any of that major project. Yeah. Right.
Okay. That's great. Thanks for that.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brett Campbell with Barrenjoey. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for your time. Just got a question on this 10%-20% price increase range you flagged earlier on. I'd love just to understand that a little bit better. What then was the most recent pricing increase for concrete specifically and what was the percentage increase that you announced? When do you expect the next one to come through as well?
Just to give you a bit of color about concrete pricing in Southeast Queensland compared to the southern states, you'd be paying AUD 50-AUD 60 a cu m more in Sydney and Melbourne for concrete than you would be here in Southeast Queensland. To call out a 10%-20% increase is not out of the realms of what people are paying in other places. Just to put a bit of color around that sort of concrete pricing, Southeast Queensland has been suffering from depressed concrete pricing for two and a half years, I would say. It's starting to be. The movements are starting to happen.
Yeah. Understood. Are you able to be sort of specific about the most recent one you put through and the magnitude of the increase and the next one that you're planning to put through?
I can give some color around that. Between September and December, we had a 7.5% increase, and our next increase is a similar order of magnitude. I think it's around 10%. Then as these increased cement costs on the back of increased shipping flow through around March, we'll be forced to go again with a further price increase to offset those increased supply chain challenges.
Okay. That's great. Really appreciate the detail. Just the last one from me. You mentioned earlier on in your prepared remarks about investing in your quarry assets. I might have missed the detail there, but could you just provide more color around this? Are you looking to develop new quarry locations and essentially adding capacity, or is this more looking to acquire established producing quarries?
It's great. Well, there's two significant activities in our quarries business in our fixed plants in Southeast Queensland. One is we're installing a new crushing plant at our Wellcamp quarry here in Toowoomba, which will significantly decrease our production costs. We currently use mobile track mounted equipment in that quarry, and we're about halfway through the installation of a large fixed crushing plant that will generate significant savings to our production costs. That's one significant part of the quarry business upgrade, if you like. The second is we have just obtained our development approval for a new quarry west of Brisbane.
We haven't made a decision as to when we're going to start to operate that quarry or not, but it is good to have the development approval process behind us now. As market conditions and demand increase, we'll consider the right time to open that quarry and begin servicing the market and ourselves. It's in a position that will service a lot of our concrete batch plants into the future.
That's great. What was that development approval allow you to produce per year on a ton out of that quarry, if that's the way it's measured at one time approved, obviously, as you pointed out?
It's a lot of development approvals limits you to 100,000 ton per year. Our approval on that site is in excess of 100,000 tons per year. It's the larger category as far as the extraction approvals go.
Excellent. I really appreciate the detail, mate.
Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back over to Chief Executive Officer Cameron Coleman for any further remarks.
Not a lot of further remarks. Just a passing comment that we are very happy with where the business is. We're excited about the opportunities ahead of us. We thank you all for your attendance and interest today, and we'll close the meeting. Thank you very much.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.