Hello again, welcome to this webcast. I'm Kostas Sarmadakis, Kri-Kri CFO. This session, I will first try to elaborate on the figures of our annual report for 2022. I think this will be the most interesting part, I will try to give you a picture of our estimated performance in 2023. After a short pre-presentation, Q&A will follow. You can post your questions using the chat tool. Starting with some macroeconomic data, 2022 was substantially characterized by an ongoing energy crisis. Remember that the energy crisis started back on the summer 2021, with natural gas at first, and over the following months, a chain reaction happened and the crisis spread all over the economy. The direct impact to our business relates firstly to energy cost and also transportation cost.
You can see that energy prices more than doubled and transportation cost per pallet had increased of 13%. This had a cost surcharge of EUR 3.3 and EUR 1 million for e-extra cost for transportation. However, the most severe hit was the indirect effect from the climbing prices of raw materials. On the graph below, you can see the evolution of raw milk price. This is the most important material that we use. On average, material prices increased by 32% versus 2021. The graph shows that, starting at December 2021, on December 2022, raw material price, raw milk price was 37% higher. The total cost surcharge was reached EUR 34 million.
To respond to this highly inflationary environment, we proceeded to a series of price increases to our products. At first, we were reluctant, our customers were not keen to accept our revised price lists. When the war in Ukraine broke, and as the inflation was spreading to all economic sectors, we achieved to increase our product price level by 26% on average in yogurt. The process was very demanding, especially in cases where we had private label contracts. Of course, the time lag between the increase in the raw material prices and the increase in the product prices severely affected our profit margins. Hence, in the yogurt segment, our profitability is only marginal in 2022.
On the other hand, there is a part of the product price increases that happened in 2022 that is expected to be seen on 2023 in the current year. As we can see, if we set 100 as our yogurt price in 2021, the current price level in yogurt segment stands at 126, and the average price increase in 2022 was 12%. This leaves roughly more than 10 percentage points of sales growth along with improvement on gross margin to be seen in the current year. On the next page, you can see the gross profit bridge. Starting at the gross profit of 2021, which was EUR 41.2 million, there was an increase of EUR 6.5 million coming from increased quantities that we sold.
Price rises add extra EUR 18.3 million. This is not enough to cover increased costs coming from raw materials inflation and energy. All these input costs, Higher input costs. The gross profit for 2022 goes to EUR 31.5 million. Moving to segments review, let's start with yogurt exports. The segment continues to show strong growth of 32.7% in sales. Our major markets of Italy and U.K., the developed Greek yogurt markets, were up by 37.6% and 26% respectively. There were other countries where our export performance was strong. Some examples are Sweden and Austria. Yogurt exports represent more than half of total yogurt sales.
Moving to yogurt domestic market, you can see that we are the only supplier that achieved increased market share in branded yogurts. That was up by 0.8% at points. In value, we reached 17% market share, and we hold the second place in the market. The most important element, however, is the fast-growing market share of private label. You can see that private label gained around five percentage points of market share in volume. This trend also continues in 2023. This is a result of the high inflation that turns more consumers to value for many products. We, Kri-Kri, strongly benefit from this as we are the major supplier of the domestic market for private label yogurts.
In the ice cream segment, in the domestic market, our sales saw a strong double-digit increase of around 15%. This is mainly due to the expansion of our sales network and the launch of new premium range of Master Rich ice creams, combined with the strengthening of tourist flows from abroad. For exports, the tip of our spear is the frozen yogurt ice cream series. It is a series that we have developed that combines the pleasure offered by ice cream with the values of healthy nutrition offered by yogurt. It has great appeal even in difficult markets such as Italy. Let's now see some ratios starting with working capital. Actually, our cash conversion cycle remained unchanged at 45 days.
The gearing was increased to around 16% because we needed financing as the cash flow from operations were low and we needed to finance investments and also the payment of the dividend. The free cash flow figure was negative at EUR 4.3 million. Our CapEx for 2022 stood at around EUR 8 million. For the current year, 2023, we are highly optimistic about the improvement of the company's financial result despite the demanding economic and business environment. Sales, we expect sales to continue the upward trend, showing a double-digit growth rate. Total sales are expected to reach EUR 200 million in 2023 compared to EUR 172 million in 2022.
That is an increase of around 16%. At the same time, a significant improvement in profit margins is expected. We expect to recover the EBIT margins of 2021, that is, which was 12.4%. This leads to an EBIT level of EUR 25 million. Up until now, from Q1, all the evidence that we have support this, strongly support this guidance. For CapEx on 2023, we expect CapEx expected to reach EUR 20 million as we need the investments for capacity increase. Moving to dividend. The board of directors decided to propose to the general meeting a flat dividend per share of EUR 0.20 per share. This gives a dividend yield of above 3%.
This dividend will come from from retained earnings as the current year earnings are not as much to give this amount. Finally, the shareholder structure. Tsinavos family holds around 73%. Legal entities are at 20%, and individuals retail at 6.7%. This is the end of the presentation. I'll leave you some time, if you have questions to post it to with the chat tool, and I'll come back with answers. Thank you. Thank you for your questions. Actually, there are a lot of them. I'll try to answer as much as possible. Firstly, just note that we will release Q1 statements later this month.
You will see that sales present high growth rates and the margins have recovered. The raw material prices in the current period show a downtrend, and this downtrend also gives us a spare room for some extra discounts without affecting our budget. We have in mind if it is needed to provide some discounts to our customers, because this year the primary target is not losing business as it is seen that the figures of sales and margins will have good performance. This gives us confidence about our guidance. I have a question of for the CapEx.
The CapEx will add around roughly 30% extra capacity to our yogurt production facility. This figure is high for 2023, but we expect to decrease around 2024. We expect on 2024, less than EUR 10 million CapEx. For hedging the milk price, unfortunately, we couldn't find a way to effectively hedge against milk price variation. We try to develop some econometric models in order to better forecast the prices or raw material prices and perhaps to find a correlation with financial instruments that will allow us to hedge against especially this violent variations.
I have also a question about the midterm level of EBIT margin. We believe that an EBIT level of 20+ is sustainable for the future and could be achieved in midterm. I have also a question about what percentage of the yogurt exports are private label and what percentage is brand Kri-Kri. Our exports, yogurt exports consist mainly of private label products. Private label in exports account more than 80% or 85% of the total sales on this segment. Finally, I have a question about the maintenance CapEx. We estimate the maintenance CapEx each year to account around EUR 2 million.
It is a low figure because most of our machinery is new and so it does not need much maintenance. Final question. Has Kri-Kri ever thought of entering the Greek cheese market? The Greek cheese market is a neighboring sector. It is a dairy sector that also fits our distribution networks. However, all these years we were very reluctant entering such a market because of the low profit margins. However, it is a sector that we keep on looking and also exploring opportunities that may arise in the future. No, I said 12 EBIT margin, not 20. That's all.
Thanks again for joining us in this webcast. See you. Goodbye.