Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the LiveMed's Full Year Results Briefing. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Following the presentation though, there will be some time for a question and answer session today. And just please be advised that today's call is being recorded. But without further ado, I'll hand the conference over to your first speaker for today, Cameron Coleman, CEO of WhiteWave Limited.
Thank you, and please go ahead, Cameron.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our full year results presentation. I'm joined today by our CFO, Burgess Hune and Executive General Manager of our Technologies business, Michael Kemp. I'm pleased to be able to say that the company is back on track. 2021 has shown great improvement when compared to last year.
Overall revenue is up 28% to $323,000,000 The EBIT result of over $25,000,000 is a significant improvement as well. The business has continued to experience growth over the full year period as highlighted on release of our first half results. This result has been driven by growth in cement and concrete volumes, increased precast activity, increased quarry volumes from both fixed plant and contract crushing operations, additional haulage work in the resource sector and strong utilization of those haulage assets. Whilst our CFT growth aspirations in the USA were put on hold until we could safely deploy staff to establish our new manufacturing facility, our low carbon concrete technology, EFC, continued to make traction in the U. K.
Over the last 12 months, we have reduced our gross debt by over $15,000,000 We are increasing our investment into our low carbon technology and international expansion of our CFT business. For this reason, the Board has decided not to pay a dividend, rather it is committing to further investment into the business. I'll now hand you on to Fergus to take us through the financial results in more detail.
Thanks, Karen. Looking at this year's results, revenues have increased by $71,000,000 to $323,000,000 or by 28% compared to last year. As Cam pointed out, revenue increased across almost all business units, in particular precast, concrete, quarries and transport. What is pleasing about this year's performance is that the increase in sales is falling through to the bottom line. EBIT at over $25,000,000 showed significant improvement on the prior year in terms of earnings result and also the margin.
Even though there is growth in cost arms, the results also reflect the lower contribution from our CO2 business, mostly due to the impact of COVID on demand for the cost custom build, pedestrian and marine infrastructure projects products. Moving to Slide 7, the segment results. The Construction Materials and Services segment is the largest business within the company. The good news is that our cement business is back to normal after the suspension from one of our major customers came to an end last year. So this year reflects a normal full year result compared to last year.
In addition, there was strong performance from the precast business added by the Costa Gilroy project, volumes to the Karnak mine project and a full year in the Emerald quarry. Transport again had another bumper year, increasing both revenue and earnings. We also renewed the haul of service contract with Brencor at George Fisher and Lady Lorraine mines for a further full year period. The complex batch plants had mixed results in FY 2021. While revenue increased to reflect the general upswing in the building and full gs trading from the Narangba, Coolum and Carrara plants.
The competitive landscape in Southeast Queensland continued to present challenges. As such, learning contribution from our concrete operations was again disappointing. Moving to our segment results for Composite Fibre Technologies, so we also had good results from our CFT businesses. Across our business, we recorded a 4.2% growth in revenue and a 29% growth in EBIT contribution on the back of manufacturing efficiencies and our equipment upgrade. However, for the first time, our custom build business, being marine infrastructure, pedestrian and short span bridges, recorded a decline in revenue.
This is mainly due to the lack of activity from regional councils and other customers who were impacted by COVID-nineteen. We saw some momentum shift from these customers in the back half of FY 'twenty one as all lockdowns were lifted. However, we are now uncertain how current lockdowns will affect our performance in FY 'twenty two. Our investment in R and D continues to create new product lines, which provide opportunities to expand geographically, evidenced by the new powers developed for our electrical distribution products. Looking at our EFC Liveguarding technology.
As we continue to invest in EFC technology and market development, we still need to guide our performance from the financial results. The negative $2,000,000 EBIT contribution should be viewed as an investment opportunity, and the company expects to see this investment increase further over time as we gain market traction. The performance of ESE should be measured in terms of these gains to commercialize the technology around the world, which will be covered in more detail in the later in the presentation. Now to the cash flow on Slide 10. A significant increase in cash flows from operations is due to two factors.
The first is the increase in earnings, which provided an extra $20,000,000 in cash flow, which we expect to continue in FY 'twenty two. The second is the movement of working capital at year end, which shows the most significant contribution to cash flow from operations. However, this seems to be viewed differently as it reflects the higher investment in working capital at the 30th June 2020 compared to this year. The debtors were lower than the previous year and trade credit significantly higher, which had a temporary impact of showing a much higher cash position at the 30th June 2021 than normal. The $17,500,000 worth of capital expenditure this year has been spent across the business with $4,800,000 on land or concrete quarry and precast thesis, dollars 3,000,000 on quarry equipment and $3,700,000 on CFP plant in Australia to complement the $5,000,000 spent last year, which significantly increases our capacities and efficiency.
Another $500,000 was spent on COB facilities and equipment in the USA. This CapEx spend is mainly growth CapEx, not maintenance CapEx. Under the working capital and net debt. As mentioned previously, the net working capital is reduced while cash at bank has increased this year, which has allowed us to repay both equipment finance and term debt. It should be noted that the net debt on this slide excludes any impact of that LASB 16, which now puts nearly $100,000,000 of debt and assets under our balance sheet reflecting the long term nature of our property leases.
We successfully renewed our finance facilities in June of this year with our existing bankers for a quarter of 3 years with significant headroom on term debt and equipment finance facilities. I'll now hand back to Cameron and Michael to take you through more detailed results.
All right. Thanks, Fergus. On Slide 12, here you will see our new cross arm automation line. It is fully automated and doubles our production capacity of cross arms. As reflected in the numbers that Fergus has just presented, it is encouraging to see an overall improvement in the business over the last 12 months with further opportunities for the business to continue to deliver growth in revenue and profitability.
Michael will now take us through the composites and the EFC business. Thanks very much, Cameron. I'll start with our EFC business. And for those that are unfamiliar with this technology, it's a lightweight, non corrosive, nonconductive, structural composite material uniquely manufactured by Wagner's as the only procurer in Australia. It's used in the form of cross arms, power poles and light poles.
And composite products are also used in a range of civil engineering structures, including pedestrian infrastructure and bridges. Whilst revenue was relatively consistent with FY 2020, continued investment in technology development has delivered significantly more efficient manufacturing processes, following on to improve margins. Our Queensland manufacturing facility is now home to 4 protrusion machines, a brand new cross arm automation line with fixed state of the art robots controlled by the latest in programming technology. We have 4 injection and overmolding machines and 2 additional machines to be commissioned over the next 12 months. We're currently building an additional factory building on our Toowoomba site to house our new protrusion machines that have been designed in house and manufactured by our engineering solutions team.
These machines are in much higher capacity than our existing protrusion lines. Our R and D engineers have worked tirelessly to create the next generation of protrusion machine, which will increase our production by 60% and allow protrusion machine to be dedicated to the manufacturing of poles, an emerging market for composites, we're only just starting to service. You'll see a photo of this facility on Slide 13, which we're very proud of. In terms of business performance, our Australian and New Zealand business achieved 4% increase in cross arm sales. This has been offset by stalling activity in local and state government funded pedestrian infrastructure and road bridge projects due to delays attributed to COVID-nineteen.
Looking now at our international composite fiber technology operations. In the U. S, COVID has substantially impacted sales along with our ability to build and commission a manufacturing facility. We have now commenced the construction of our new factory and installation of our new Pultrusion machine will be complete later this year. Some of the international sales we have achieved throughout the year include pedestrian infrastructure to the Middle East, USA and Canada.
We've also begun to sell light poles in the USA and cross arms into Oman. Our lightweight composite structures have also proven to be an ideal solution to noise abatement in large distribution warehouses with 4 stand abatement systems installed distribution centers in the USA. More broadly, our international sales team continued to pursue opportunities that we can manufacture and distribute from our Queensland facility until the new facility in the U. S. Is fully operational.
Moving on to Slide 15, Earth Friendly Concrete, our low carbon concrete technology that provides a solution for a problem that is now a major priority worldwide. Our technology replaces the cement powder used in traditional concrete. Given the production of cement is responsible for 8% of the world's carbon emissions, earth friendly concrete is now very much on the radar of concrete producers and consumers around the world. Have significantly increased our spend on the development of our technology in response to increasing international demand. In Southeast Queensland, customers are beginning to select earth friendly concrete for applications ranging from multistory building complexes to homeowners that value the environmental benefits our technology has to offer.
We've supplied EFT for a large trade and distribution warehouse, with this project alone saving close to 100 tons of carbon emissions. Our technology was also selected to be used in a man made marine reef to South Queensland's Gold Coast. Throughout the year, the 3rd party cradled gate carbon emissions report we had commissioned to verify our carbon emissions compared to that of ordinary concrete was completed. This report confirms that every cubic meter of EFC used saves 2 50 kilograms of carbon compared to traditional concrete.
In other words, if you build a
4 bedroom house from EFC, it's equivalent to taking 5 cars off the road for 12 months. All this activity has not as yet turned into any sizable revenue. We believe we are now close to commercializing technologies in various countries around the world and this will involve further capital. Looking at our international EFC operations, our FME concrete technology is being used in infrastructure projects being undertaken by various construction companies globally. I'll list a few here.
Throughout the year, we've proven the application of our technology into numerous product applications, including roof tiles, concrete pipes and a wide range of various precast products. We've partnered with Kelp Bray and Capital Concrete in the UK market to deliver our technology into a number of projects within London, including structural slabs on the HS2 project and structural piling on the Kona Water project. We've run successful trials with the UK rooftop company and are now in the late stages of negotiating a long term supply range. We're negotiating with a number of precast concrete manufacturers in Europe, many of whom are seeking exclusive rights to our technology. The extension of our German DIBT approval into the European standards is progressing well.
We expect to have full European approval by February 2022, creating an even larger serviceable market. We've now identified a site in One Foot just outside of London for our UK manufacturing facility. We've commenced the manufacture of our digester, which is the next generation of this piece of equipment compared to the unit we commissioned in Brisbane. It provides higher capacity and improved material handling processes through automation. In India, we continue to work with our partner JSW to obtain the Indian standards approval required for the application of earth friendly concrete in projects.
I'll now hand back to Cameron to complete the presentation. Thanks, Michael. So we'll move on to the Construction Materials and Services segment. And on a consolidated basis, the business delivered a 33% increase in revenue and a 79% increase in EBIT compared to the previous year. I'll start with the quarry business, which has performed well.
The fixed quarries have produced solid volumes And when coupled with the increase in activity from the resource sector, this business has made a significant contribution to our performance through this period, delivering a 36% increase in sales compared to last year. Our Cement business on Slide 19 has enjoyed increased volumes. We've experienced an increase in sales due to growth through our internal concrete plants along with the general increased activity in the sector. The construction industry in Southeast Queensland is looking promising for the years to come. Our cement plant is designed to deliver value for the future.
The cement grinding technology we selected at Pingtan Bath is ideally suited for grinding slag, a waste product generated by the steel industry that is one of the key ingredients in our earth tonnelling concrete technology. Moving to the concrete business. We have seen a 55% increase in sales from our concrete plants as our sites are now fully commissioned, all capable of producing earth friendly concrete as well as traditional concrete. We have also seen a general increase in construction activity in the Southeast Queensland market. As Fergus has pointed out, the concrete business remains one of the bigger challenges.
The business has continued to be impacted by pressure on concrete pricing and resulting margins. As we work through these challenges, this business has the potential to add significant upside to our overall performance. On to the print house business on Slide 21, that's an image of the Cross River Rail project. And this year, the business has realized a significant increase in revenue due to that project. This project is a great example of the value that can be achieved through the vertical integration our business model represents with our cement, fly ash, concrete, reinforcing steel and engineering solutions businesses, all contributing to the manufacturing process.
As of the 30th June, we had only completed approximately 70% of the segments due to project delays. While that impacted last year's performance, the carryover in the FY 2022 provides additional opportunity when coupled with many other new packages of work we are currently in the process of negotiating for this year. Our bulk haulage operations provided another solid contribution to our financial performance this year, delivering a 44% increase to our sales. Throughout the year, we had approximately 50 bulk haulage trucks travel over 10,000,000 kilometers and hauling over 8,000,000 tons of product for clients through the Northwest Minerals Province. We have been successful in securing extensions of 2 of our long term haulage contracts in North Queensland and a new contract in the Northern Territory.
These contracts provide this business with confidence over the next 4 years. Our customers have increased their outputs, which has meant higher utilization of our assets and increased revenues in this business. We see further opportunity to grow this business into the future. We've seen a significant increase in tendering activity in the recent months. So I'll now move through to the outlook.
So I'm up to Slide 24. In CFT, we look forward to the USA manufacturing business opening later this year, which will provide a better cost structure and allow us to declare the made in America status on many projects, which will provide more tendering opportunities for the business. A full year of efficiency from our new automated cross arm manufacturing cell will further improve margins going forward. Revenue growth is expected to improve in the custom build applications, including the local and state government funded pedestrian and bridge market across Australia and New Zealand, subject to current COVID-nineteen lockdowns and restrictions easing. The commissioning of 2 new perfusion machines for our Queensland facility that we spoke about earlier will allow us to significantly increase capacity to produce poles, positioning us to service a market we've recently established.
We expect the CFT business to deliver growth throughout FY 2022 as we continue to invest in our new Filtration machines and manufacturing facility in the USA. We anticipate further investment throughout the year to position the CFT business to service a growing market. The outlook for our earth friendly concrete business focuses on increasing sales through our concrete match plant network in Southeast Queensland and through our commercial partners across Europe. Opportunity exists to build more and more strategic partners under similar arrangements to those that we have established over the past 12 months. These partners provide a critical channel to market.
As advised in our half year results presentation, we are currently undertaking a process to identify potential partners that are dedicated to accelerating the use of green technologies through investment in our EFC business. Our technology makes a positive impact on carbon emissions in the construction industry. We are excited about the global demand for green technologies such as ours, which was identified in consultation with potential investors. It is on the back of this keen interest that we have made the decision to not only continue to invest in EFC, but to increase our commitment and investment to the development and rollout of this technology globally. It is critical that we move quickly and accelerate the rollout of this technology, while the market is desperate to find solutions that reduce carbon emissions, particularly in the construction materials area.
Therefore, we will spend more money and invest further in this business to leverage all opportunities. We will now move into the next phase of identifying a suitable partner to invest in our low carbon technology that will add significant value to our business. Also, we will continue with the installation and commissioning of a production facility in London. On to the outlook for the Construction Materials and Services segment. As I mentioned, we see opportunity for growth in our bulk haulage business coming from the resource industry.
We look forward to continued opportunity in Southeast Queensland Construction Materials business with improving concrete demand driving increased sales in our cement, fly ash and aggregates businesses due to the vertical integration of our business. However, even with the demand increases, it remains a challenging market. FY 2021 did benefit from some more significant projects like Cross River Rail and the crushing operations in the resource sector. These projects will finish in FY 2022. Our business development team remain focused on seeking new opportunities.
The recently announced Olympic Games scheduled to be hosted in Brisbane in 2,032 will provide opportunity and demand for construction materials and services. While we will not see any activity in this space in FY 2022, it will in time present significant opportunities right across our business. We also see this as an opportunity to showcase our CFT and EFC technologies in various applications for future development. It certainly is an exciting time for Southeast Queensland and our business in the lead up to these gains. So in summary, Waringham has performed well in FY 2021.
We've delivered a positive financial result compared to the prior period, and we've had continued traction from our growth strategy. In Construction Materials and Services, we have expanded our concrete plant network and have experienced growth volumes from those plants. We've also experienced strong volumes in the Cement business along with growth in volumes in our quarry and transport operations. With the current and forecast level of activity in the construction and resources sector, we expect these volumes to remain strong over the next 12 month period. We will continue to pursue major project opportunities internationally and remain well placed to deliver major infrastructure projects planned for Southeast Queensland as and when they are awarded.
In our composites business, we've seen growth in cross arm sales and realized the benefits of our investment into manufacturing automation and optimization with improved margins. Throughout the year, we have continued to invest in research and development to identify new products, increase our in house capabilities and improve our production processes. We have also continued to invest in business development in new markets. All of this will deliver future growth for the business in years to come. A really exciting aspect for our business for the next 12 months will be our global expansion as with an establishment of our international manufacturing facilities, which will deliver significant growth for our CFT and EFT businesses.
This expansion will require significant investment. For this reason, the Board has elected not to declare a dividend. So that concludes our presentation for today, and we're more than happy to take any questions anyone may have. Thank you.
Your first question comes from Curt Gelsimino from Morgan. Sir, please ask your question, Curt.
Good morning, Cam, Greg and Michael.
You cut out a bit there, Curt. Sorry.
Hopefully, you can hear me further. But I'll just start with maybe a quick question. It looks like a pretty clean impact result. I think there were no one off items. Was there sort of any one off problem you've seen in that sort of underlying that result or sort of, yes, not expected
or okay going forward? Or is it
a pretty clean result from 12 years?
It's a pretty clean result, Kurt. We didn't really have any one off costs or anything this year compared to prior years. So yes, it was as cancer, we're sort of back on track and back to normal.
Okay. So if you can sort of flag that increased investment you're making across both EFC and ESP. Maybe can you provide any sort of color on, I guess, what that investment will be from an OpEx perspective across those 2 business?
Kurt, you'll see in the pack we've called out the EFC business as standalone segment now. So when you look at that, you'll see we spent about $2,000,000 last year. And we can it is our intention to double that and take every opportunity that presents itself for EFC this year. So I think if you worked on double the spend that we had last year and if Michael gets his way, he could even spend more. And we will be pushing to take every opportunity for EFC across Europe.
At least double what we spent last year would be a good guide there.
But that spend is part of the reason why we are looking at the strategic partner or investment partner for EFC. We need to accelerate to take advantage of the current market, which is looking for low carbon technology right across everywhere. We've seen the carbon sort of capture has had a real purple patch, but the next step is the actual carbon abatement. So it's about not producing carbon. So that's why we want to really hone in on this and take advantage of it.
Otherwise, we could get left behind.
Understood. And maybe could you provide a bit more color on how that external investment process in ESE is progressing? I guess, I guess, level of interest at the moment and when you're still targeting an outcome for that process?
Well, it's progressing well. We've been extremely encouraged by the process so far. Our advisers are doing an excellent job, and we would be moving in about a fortnight's time to the next stage of that process where we will be able to get a feel at that point for
perhaps
a deal conclusion date. But at this stage, it's probably a little difficult to put a conclusion date on that, Kurt. But I guess I can say we've been very, very encouraged by the process today and the level of interest that is out there for this technology.
Terrific. Maybe just on Cross River Rail. Can I just confirm, you said you completed 70% of the tunnel segment contract in FY 2021? And then just a follow on of that sort of cross river rail project. I think my understanding was that there's potential to secure some on pre COVID stations, I think.
So that's going on sort of securing that Kollofib to Kollofib right?
Yes. So those negotiations are all on track, Kurt. It was disappointing not to get the whole project finished last year, but I guess the upside for us is having 30% of the job still flowing for this year's numbers. And then we're very confident with where we sit on future works with our precast business. The opportunities are looking quite attractive there.
Awesome. And I might just squeeze one final one in. Obviously, I think there's been some time until you've enjoyed major concrete project work. I think there's been a few wind farms you've been close to over the last couple of years. I guess, do you have any sort of further sort of update on how those opportunities across the wind pump space progressing and the bulk liquid of them falling in maybe first half twenty twenty two or FY twenty twenty two overall?
I don't see too much upside in the first half, but we'd anticipate certainly some opportunity from our mobile concrete business on the contracts that we're very close to at the moment. We would certainly be expecting something in the second half and maybe a small amount of a contribution in the first half.
And are those 3 opportunities across the wind farms base still are still alive count?
Yes, they are, Kirk. We've still got sort of more than 3 mobile concrete project opportunities. And as you say, there's 3 of them in the wind farm space, and there are a couple of other mobile plant opportunities that we are pursuing as well.
Terrific. I'll just join the queue and let someone else answer some questions. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Kurt.
Your next question comes from the line of Peter Stein from Macquarie. Please ask your question, Peter.
Hi, Cam and Fergus. Thanks very much. Just a quick one on
the concrete market in Southeast Queensland.
Cam, what's your sense of when stability could return? Obviously, that's a balance both between supply and demand and some of the effects of sort of driving the price environment. But how are you thinking about the next 12, 18 months in that space? We're thinking the market conditions will improve. We've seen a small improvement already, Peter, and we are experiencing quite significant demand in the concrete business now and are seeing the opportunity to sort of command a price that reflects the level of investment we have in those concrete and delivery truck assets.
So we're certainly predicting continued improvement there. Just how quickly we can get that improvement remains the challenge.
And does EFC play a big role in how you try and write prices in the market? Do you think it can? And how much of a base do you think you could transition into EFC sales realistically over the next year? And then maybe on a 5 year view, I'm just curious how you think about that.
Well, I'd love to think that all
of our plants converted over to full
production of EFC and we can do the right concrete anymore, but that's just not a reality in this market at the moment. It is amazing how many customers and consumers out there are prepared to pay for carbon reducing technology. So it's very difficult to put a sort of put a number on what volume of EFC we think we can distribute out of these concrete plants in the next 12 months. We now have a dedicated sales team sort of committed to educating consumers on the difference between our earth friendly concrete and our great concrete offering. But to sit here and say, we think we can get 10% of our market delivered at EFC at a price premium is a very difficult it's a guess really at this point.
We really need to understand how those consumers are going to sort of react to the availability of this product. And that's a job of work we've got on foot at the moment.
Perfect. If I may jump just as an extension of that question. So on the EFC side of things, what would make your product offering distinctly different to some of your peers? There's obviously a lot of people talking about, let's call it, low carbon concrete. But so curious why yours would be different and therefore whether there's any
competitive advantage that you see? So for me, I might let Michael talk to that. But we have 0 cement in ours, I guess, is the key. But Michael, can you Yes. So we've been developing this since 2007 with our first test tube level.
And our focus in the whole lot has been to not use cement. The purpose of this technology is to, as a service alluded to, a bake carbon. Just about every other low carbon concrete on the market still uses cement. We're still relying on it to drive the reaction. There's a lot of other technologies coming out of America or other parts of the world that are minor improvements, but we're saving 2 50 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions per cubic meter without planting trees or other offset type activities.
We're doing it by not using cement in the 1st place. And that's the big difference. And that's where the environmental sort of
world is heading. To put that sort of just into perspective, like so carbon fuels, there's
a lot of press at
the moment around being a carbon reducing technology or carbon capture technology. The amount of carbon made saved per
cubic meter of concrete,
I would say a number here in my numbers, but it's 17 kilograms per cubic meter and we'd say 2 50 kilograms per cubic meter. And slag availability is not a constraint?
No. We've got solid slag supply change in place, not only here in Australia, but also in the other areas where we're focusing our efforts. Perfect. Thanks
guys. I'll leave it there. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Okay. Your next question comes from Raju Ahmed from CCVet Equities. Please ask your question, Raju.
Hi, everyone. A couple of questions. The first one is, you talked about your outlook statement and there's quite a few moving parts there and I can appreciate those. Cameron, I think first of all, you mentioned that you had a number of major infrastructure related projects like the or major projects, I should say, like the Cross River Rail and Carmichael Mine and so on. Can you just give us a more clearer sense of where you spend in FY 'twenty two in terms of timing of the next wave of infrastructure projects like inland rail and the 2nd wave of cross rail packages, Bruce Highway and so on, and how they could sway the earnings one way or the other?
Okay. Yes, sure. So I'll start with the precast business. We've got quite a bit of work to carry over into this year already on the books. And the next wave of work coming is really the discussions around that work are really focusing on when we can actually perform the work.
So the key discussion point with our clients there is when we commence the next wave of work. The yard at the moment is at capacity and we physically cannot take another job for approximately 4 months and that just happens to tie in with the next wave of work that we see coming. So we're very, very fortunate in the precast business to have the timing of the completion of the segments match with the next decent size opportunities that we're working on. So we see that and we see that as a great opportunity and all sort of matching together quite well. In the resource sector, it's a mix in the resource sector at the moment of bulk haulage and contract crushing.
We've just recently commenced a new contract crushing job and the team only in the last couple of weeks have secured another quite a reasonable sized contract crushing job. So whilst the Carbajal project that you just referred to will start to ease with volumes, we expect that we still expect to be at that site for a number of years to come. And we do have a contract with that site that allows us a 5 year right of use for that quarry. So any construction materials that are required for that site that come out of that quarry, we have that contract in place. So we don't expect to see earnings drop off completely from that side.
And we've recently contracted another 2 pretty reasonable sized contract crushing jobs and are actively searching for more. So that's quite encouraging. The Inland Rail opportunity, I really don't know that we're going to see too much revenue from that project this year. We might get some work on the northern end of the New South Wales part of that project from our Gundowindy operations. But moving through sort of to the Toowoomba to Brisbane land, I think we're at least 12 months of seeing decent revenues out of that work.
The Bruce Highway opportunity for us is another massive precast opportunity that we are actively discussing. And there are a number of precast large precast opportunities in New South Wales that our team are working on as well.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you, gentlemen. So the next question on that front is when we think about CMS earnings, and I know it's a movie piece at this point given the macro environment. What's your feel in terms of growth?
Do you expect to continue revenue growth and earnings growth? Or am I getting the sense that you're still a bit unclear at this point?
No, absolutely. In the Construction Materials and Services business, we expect to see growth. And that comes not only from the Southeast Queensland Cement Aggregates and Concrete Businesses and Reinforcing Steel Businesses, but also from the opportunities we see in infrastructure and resource sector. But the level of activity, for example, in that bulk haulage business is really, really impressive. And the opportunities that we're currently exploring there do signal to us if successful in our tenders that we currently have live.
They signal the opportunity to achieve another significant step up in asset numbers deployed to that work.
Okay. That's helpful. And the last question, if I may. You've talked about EFC, so I'll park that aside. But on the CFD side of things, can you just give us a sense of what sort of investment you're thinking further?
And how do we think about revenue for this financial year? I mean, last year, it was 31,000,000 dollars I get the sense that you guys would have been disappointed with that number. How should us investors, analysts think about the revenue profile this year? You've got USA starting up. Is there going to be a considerable ramp up period?
Or are discussions already underway that you expect revenue at full swing from early next year? How do we think about it?
I'll take that one. Roger, we do see growth for CST Business. Last year, we didn't have any sort of significant projects in the USA. We had a lot of there were a series of projects that weren't of massive dollar value. We've already secured some decent work in the USA for delivery this year.
And in addition, with our new pole manufacturing line, we've already got initial orders for poles that
will be coming off that line from October. So
we see some new product lines coming to market with existing orders and a significant increase in work from overseas. So we do
see growth in CFC this year.
But you're absolutely correct. We were disappointed with a flat year last year. And we're sort of concerned again that these sort of southern lockdowns are going to stifle our opportunities for pedestrian infrastructure, particularly around the coastline of Australia. We generally have a lot of activity in that space. And as those lockdowns reached 6 months ago, that activity just skyrocketed in the business.
And it is still we're still enjoying that work today. However, it's a watch point for us if the orders stop flowing again due to these current lockdowns. So it's really important we continue to deliver new products to the market to broaden our revenue pool and also really capitalize on this opportunity in the U. S. A.
And some of the order sizes, Michael, from the U. S. That we've currently got contracted are quite impressive. Yes. We've got a $2,500,000 project underway at the moment over in Sacramento.
So yes, some significant boardwalk style projects. A typical job here in Australia is a couple of $100,000 to be able to pull orders of that magnitude is encouraging.
All right, gents. Thank you very much. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
You've got a question here from Peter Wilson from Credit Suisse. Please ask your question, Peter.
Thanks. Good morning, Kevin and Fergus. If I could just follow-up on that, the comments around South East Queensland project activity. I mean, you've already spoken quite a bit of detail about the projects that are coming up. But still, I guess, your view seems to be a lot more positive than the view put forward by Boral yesterday, for example.
Do you have any thoughts on what the difference might be in terms of, I guess, maybe the work you've had in place in the last 12 months versus some others? And I guess, why your outlook might be better than some of the other players in the market?
Well, I guess, there's a slight difference there, Pete, in the fact that we're our Construction Materials business in Southeast Queensland is still very it's still maturing. We're seeing customers move across to our concrete batch plants as they get to know us. We've only been back in the market for a short time and we're still very much growing. We've had them operational now for 12 months, but that doesn't mean that we've sort of exhausted all sales opportunities yet. And we see that our sales team are really starting to get some traction now with 12 months of sort of relationship building under their belt with customers.
And we probably still have some growth left there yet, whereas some of our competitors have been sort of in the game for a long, long time and have that established market already bedded down, I guess. That's sort of one of the key drivers for us is to continue to grow sales out of the investments that we've established. We don't think we've exhausted the sales opportunities yet.
Got it. Okay. And then the transport business, can I check with the 2 new haulage contracts secured, are they replacing other contracts that are rolled off? Or are they generally kind of new incremental revenues? And in terms of the margins, I guess, you expect on these and those other tenders that you talked about, should we expect strong margin?
And I think one of the factors you mentioned in the past is whether you were meeting those contracts with your own trucks or 3rd party trucks. Is there any comment there?
Okay. So I'll speak to that. 2 of the contracts we called out were renewal of existing contracts. So the 4 year term that we had contracted was drawing to a close, and we've now renewed them for a further 4 years. And there was one new contract, which is new revenue, entered into in the Northern Territory, which is which we had about around about 5 or 6 months worth of contributions from as that ramped up last year, and we anticipate a full 12 months contribution from that project this year.
We still are using some subcontract services for this work, and we have more assets that we're waiting to arrive to deploy into the business. And as they arrive, we will expect increased margins. The contracts we renewed also had appropriate sort of rate rises as you'd expect with CPI and sort of various other mechanisms we had to increase price. So there's a bit of a combination of answers there, but we do expect that business to continue to deliver better margins and growth. Good.
And by the sounds of it, there's no discomfort with the proportion of kind of group revenues that are coming out of this business, I guess, given that you're getting growth from some of the other segments now?
No, that's right, Peter. No, we're comfortable with it. We don't we pass up a lot of opportunities that come up in that transport business because they don't fit with our with where we think they should fit in terms of security, length and margin. So we are turning down a lot of work. We're only sort of picking the ones that pick our sort of hurdles and move forward with those.
So these are not cheap things to invest in. And to make the investment, we want to make sure that we're getting the appropriate return on it. So But we're long term secure contracts. We're comfortable with the ones that we enter into. We're not out there chasing every small little project and trying to make it back as they go along.
We sort of secure long term secure contracts.
Got it. And lastly, on ethylene concrete, so really the time change is right to push quite aggressively there. And it sounds like you're all making good progress for full year approval in FY 'twenty two sounds great. Could you help me maybe by just sketching out almost kind of a best case scenario here? And one of the things I guess I'm wondering is this investment partner that you're seeking, will this be a private equity type investor that can be investing alongside you?
Or will it be a strategic player that can massively kind of increase the rate of the rollout of the product?
So I guess I'll answer the so I'll have a go at it. Where we see VFC is across the world within about 5 years and across different markets. We're aiming to take it out 2% to 5% of the market, and that's a very small percentage of the market that our ERC product is ideally suited to. We can compete in other parts of the market and could grow up to sort of 10% to 15% of the market. But we've looked across a few, say, Europe, U.
S, India, Australia, a little bit into the Middle East. And we believe that within 5 years, we should be providing enough material to the equivalent of 5,000,000 cubic meters of concrete per annum. That's a significant amount. But as I said, it's not a massive number compared to total market size. And then in terms of the partner that we're looking for, look, we are looking for well, our first prize would be, as you said, a strategic partner that can help us grow the product and push into new markets and give us a path to market.
We're also not adverse to having financial partners that can provide a bit of income, type of a mix of EFC into different markets. But at the end of the day, it's we believe that we'll be able to if we don't get a strategic partner that will be able to forge markets, we'll be able to provide enough strategic alliances across the globe with people that want to use this product that we will get that market penetration. So that's why we're sort of moving the way we are at the moment.
Great. That's super helpful. One of the, I guess, the near term things is the U. K. Distribution and manufacturing sites.
What does that change for you overnight in terms of your ability to access and grow that market?
Well, 2 things. Firstly, it's the ability to supply into the market readily and quickly. And the second thing is the cost of our materials. So at the moment, we're literally making we're combining chemicals. We're importing things that local manufacturing and steady delivery into concrete plants just enables that constant supply and really gets us into the market as something that we can deliver on a project on a day to day basis.
Allows us to ramp up that volume we're supplying.
Got it. All right. That's all for me. Thanks for that.
Thank you.
And we just have a final follow-up question from the line of Curt Gelsimino from Morgan. Please ask your questions. Curt?
Hi, guys. Just a couple of quick follow ups. Maybe you can just talk to sort of your outlook for shipping costs in FY 'twenty two and just sort of talk to any sort of color you can write on how your supply chain is operating at the moment?
Sure. So shipping, obviously, is a big import cost for our clinker that we bring in to make our cement. At the moment, we're on a deal which is still being honored by our shipping company, which is good, and we've got that deal until the beginning of next year. We've recently just extended our Quimpa contract at favorable or similar to favorable terms to what we've currently got, so that's a nice relief. Shipping, as I noted, is definitely a watch point, and we are currently monitoring it thoroughly carefully.
Spot prices for shipping have gone up ridiculously. There's a lot of people ships are getting held out of harbors in China because of COVID. They're not allowing them in. So they've been at anchor for 10 to 12 days as opposed to sort of being in and out and dropping off. So the pricing at the moment is very, very high.
So we're sort of low to try and lock in something at the moment, but we're watching it very carefully.
Awesome. And just sort of where you've hedged your FX to pay compared to, I guess, what you sort of locked in FX that in FY 'twenty one?
Yes. So at this stage, we have probably up about $0.04 or $0.05 on what we were last year. Yes.
And just also the outlook for CapEx in FY 'twenty two. I guess you sort of flagged some further investment too, I'd assume, will be sort of CapEx with the CST side of the business. Yet, where do you sort of see CapEx exiting or finishing in FY 'twenty two?
About the same level of depreciation, I'd say, Kurt. It could be a little bit higher depending on what opportunities come along. So say for instance, if a big project was to drop and we had to gear up, then we would gear up quickly. As I said, we've got significant headroom in our return debt and equipment finance facility, so we can move quickly when we want to. One of the issues at the moment, and I'm sure everyone else is sort of finding it, is actually getting supply of some of that equipment.
It does take a fair lead time on getting some of that stuff. So we're having to be quite strategic around when we order stuff to make sure that we're getting it at the right time.
I think I guess, being that sort of larger opportunities in the project space come up, there's one particular opportunity there that would potentially double our CapEx spend for the year. But clearly, the revenue and EBIT would be appropriate to match that capital investment.
Would that be a project in the transport haul space, Cam, or something different?
Yes.
Yes. No further questions from me. Congrats
on a solid result.
Thanks, Kurt.
Okay. There are no further questions at this time. I might hand the call back to you for now, Cameron, for any concluding remarks.
Okay. Thanks very much, Myles. I guess, thank you very much to the audience for dialing in and showing interest in our organization today. We were sort of very happy with the performance of the business and we're sort of excited about the future. We're very excited about the Technologies business and the opportunities that will present themselves there over the next 12 months.
And we think the Construction Materials and Services business is in a really great space. I really believe Southeast Queensland is the place to be there. And the resource sector just continues to offer up opportunities. And so yes, it's looking positive for us. So thanks very much, and I'll close the call.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference call. Just once again, thank you all for participating today. You may now all disconnect. Thank you.