So, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call on Newlat Food 2023 full-year results. I'm Benedetta Mastrolia, I'm the Investor Relator at Newlat Food, and joining me today to discuss our results are Angelo Mastrolia, our chairman, Giuseppe Mastrolia, CEO and Chief Commercial Officer, Rocco Sergi, CFO, and Fabio Fazzari, Group Financial Director. Before commenting on our results, I would like to remind you that this presentation may contain specific statements that are neither reported financial results nor other historical information.
Any forward-looking statements are based on Newlat Food's current expectations and assumptions of future events and are subject to various relevant uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied by these statements. Now we move on directly to slide seven where we have our financial highlights for the period. As usual, we're analyzing the key financial figures for the period.
In terms of revenues, we recorded revenues of EUR 793.3 million, which is an increase of 7% compared to last year's results. In particular, we had an increase in instant food, which is partially boosted by the acquisition of EM Foods, so the unit increased by almost 22%. We also had a very good increase in dairy, led by the increase in sales of mascarpone, and dairy grew by 14.3%. We also had a very good performance of bakery, which grew by 13%, in particular thanks to new contracts signed in the private label and B2B businesses.
In terms of geographies, we had an increase of 3.1% in Italy, almost 6% in Germany, and an increase of almost 9% in the U.K. In particular, other countries increased by 24.7%. We had an increase in some of our major other countries, which we'll see later on.
Regarding EBITDA, we're looking at adjusted EBITDA as usual. So for the period, we recorded an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 72.4 million, which is an increase of almost 22% compared to last year's results of EUR 59.5 million. In terms of EBITDA margin, we had an EBITDA margin of 9.1%, which is a major improvement compared to last year's results of 8%. This kind of proves the recovery of margins, which was initiated by the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, with the commercial action that was taken to increase prices to work against the inflation that we experienced last year. In terms of EBIT, we had an increase of 55%, with EBIT being EUR 31.3 million for the period. Net income was EUR 15.5 million, which is an increase of 135% compared to last year's results of EUR 6.60 million.
Moving on to free cash flow, we had an underlying free cash flow, which is calculated as operating cash flow minus CapEx of EUR 20.8 million. And we would like to highlight that we had a very positive free cash flow despite a higher expenditure in CapEx of over EUR 25 million. In terms of net financial position, we had an increase in net debt in we're looking at net debt excluding IFRS 16, going from EUR 63 million last year to EUR 29.5 million this year. If we do include the IFRS 16 lease liabilities, we had a net debt of EUR 74.3 million as opposed to EUR 109.8 million at the end of 2022. Moving on to the next page, we've pictured some of the major food companies in Europe and in the world. And we've looked at their EBITDA margin improvement for the period.
And we are very happy to see that we've been the best among the ones analyzed here in terms of improvement in net EBITDA margin, as we had an improvement in EBITDA margin of 110 basis points compared to the other companies, which were not as, didn't have a good performance as us in terms of increasing EBITDA margin. This is to prove once again that the commercial actions and the relentless work that was done by a commercial team to increase prices and to keep our margins high, as well as from the procurement side, in terms of procurement and purchase management, was done in a very smooth way and helped us have a very good result in terms of EBITDA margin. Moving on to the next page, we have the review for the year.
I would say that 2023 was a year of consolidation in different aspects of the company. Firstly, it was the first year of having EM Foods as our company. EM Foods was integrated very efficiently in 2023, and the integration is still ongoing. But in the span of one year, we were able to strengthen our relationship with Unilever, which was already part of the existing company, but we've been able to strengthen our relationships. We've also been able to launch our own brand in less than six months. So our Minuto brand has been listed in EDEKA, REWE, Markant in Germany. And our Minuto shakers, pancake shakers, were listed in Waitrose in the U.K. And we have more plans to come regarding Minuto in the next year. Moving along, we've had a very good year in terms of Italian pasta sales in Germany.
I would like to note that 2023 was the second year without the Buitoni brand, but Delv erde performed even better than Buitoni. So the transition from one brand to another was smooth and was perceived very well by the German public. And we actually had an increase of almost 2,000 tons in 2023. So we had a record year of 44,722 tons recorded in 2023. Moving on to investments, 2023 was a very important year for investments. In particular, we had some major investments, including our IT systems. So our goal is to optimize our IT systems across sites and countries in order to have more efficiencies in the long term. Regarding our investments in PPE, we had some important investments in machinery in the last quarter of the year, especially in the special foods plants.
We've installed a new oven, and we're also implementing the improvement on our production line of milk. This will increase our efficiency. We'll also increase our production capacity in the special food segment, setting us aside from the competition in terms of technology. We've also had a very important investment in terms of logistics, as we've bought a new warehouse in Germany, which is just adjacent to our German plant. Regarding marketing and sales, 2023 was a year of resetting our marketing and sales strategy. We've been able to consolidate our existing positions in our reference markets, as well as export markets.
We've also been able to put more work into our core brands. We've reset a 360-degree strategy in terms of marketing, which has been paying off very well in our core markets, especially with our core brands, as we've had an increased social media presence.
We've launched TV ads, we've done line extensions, and we've also worked on some brand relaunches. Moving along to Naked, we've had a very good year for Naked. As you know, Naked is a brand we really believe in, and we've been working with influencers in Italy and U.K. to raise awareness. We've also launched an e-commerce in Italy for the sale of the Naked Pods. We've done different types of brand activations at events, universities, at stores where we've been presenting the products, and we've done product tastings across different locations. In general, we've been able to increase brand awareness in the U.K., in Italy, and in Germany. Lastly, regarding M&A, as you know, we've stopped our negotiations for Princes last month, but we are really focused on our M&A, as always.
We're also already considering four dossiers of four potential targets, which have turnovers ranging between EUR 200 million and EUR 800 million in revenue. Moving on to our next slide, which is an overview of our ESG practice. We've had an extreme amount of work done in the last couple of years in improving our ESG standards and our ESG policies. In terms of environment, we've been able to reduce electricity output as well as water intensity, which is linked to some efficiencies that were put in place in the last years. We've been recognized for the third consecutive year as the most climate-conscious Italian companies, as one of the most Italian-conscious companies by some important entities, as well as sustainability leader, again, for the second consecutive year. We've also been awarded different recognitions across ESG.
In terms of carbon intensity, we've also been able to decrease carbon intensity by 19% over the last few years. We've also achieved more than 90% of waste being either recycled or recovered across our sites. We've also increased our transport via train. We've avoided at least 840 tons of CO2 emissions in 2023, and we expect to increase even more by using cargo via train in the next years. We've been extending our ISO 14001 certification to different sites. Moving on to social instead, we've been working with our R&D team to really work on innovation, to be able to keep up with the different needs and specific dietary requirements of people. We've had unique plant-based formulas, high- protein and gluten-free, lactose-free recipes. We've had a lot of different new product developments being in place at the moment.
In terms of generational change, in the last few years, we've been able to increase our weight of under 30 years of age people employed in the company. So we've increased by 27% our employees under 30 years. And we've also been able to engage with universities and schools, talking about nutrition and food culture in general, especially in the milk segment. Moving on to governance. So as you know, we have a very important board of directors with three women out of seven board of directors. And in terms of governance, we've adopted group's ESG policy, and we've also shared a group's code of ethics. We've also published our supplier's code of conduct.
And we've implemented a whistleblowing system across all countries we are operating in. Now we're moving on to the commercial update. For this part, I will leave the word to our CEO, Giuseppe Mastrolia.
We'll walk you through all the commercial actions that were taken in 2023. Thank you.
Hello. Good morning, everyone. So thanks, Benedetta. And so first of all, I would like to introduce this year was a real important year for us in terms of product innovation and new goals, as Benedetta mentioned before. So starting from the bakery line expansion, we successfully extended our offer beyond the popular salad crouton in Italy and put everything under the Delverde brand. And now we are hitting the market with the three new products that are next, of which the worth of the market only in Italy is around EUR 10 million. And these products are produced in our facility in Sansepolcro . And this can bring substantial value projected around in only in Italy, these three SKUs' worth of market is EUR 10 million.
So we really look forward to the launch of these three new articles. In the dairy and dairy alternatives, as we are launching a bold campaign to rejuvenate our range of vegetable drinks, as you can see. We are setting really ambitious goals for our mascarpone segment. Within this year, we aim to double our market share in Italy for the brand Optimus that you see in the presentation, tapping into a market that's worth approximately EUR 117 million only in Italy. Of course, we do not stop our international growth.
Our brand Optimus is the objective is to increase from EUR 4 million revenue in Italy to EUR 6.5 million during this year, trying to confirm and increase our share as a second player on the market. Additionally, we're introducing kefir on a national scale, showcasing our commitment to innovation in the dairy segment.
Then we have the new noodles range launch. So going to our noodles, we are excited to launch our Naked, the best-ever range in Italy and Germany for Q3 2024. The Italian noodles market is worth about EUR 100 million. In Germany, it's worth about EUR 300 million. We already embraced in Italy a growth on last year, year-on-year value of +71%. This positioned us strongly in this competitive landscape. About the new product launches, I want to underline that we really merged the know-how between the new company EM Foods and the Italian company Centrale del Latte d'Italia with the new products launch of panna cotta and crème brûlée, targeting the restaurant, hotel, and catering market.
This initiative stands for the successful integration between Newlat and EM Foods, allowing us to offer this premium ready-to-use dessert preparation. Then protein products, I want to add something about that.
Now we are launching two new product categories related to our new product. We introduced new sports drink under the Training brand and the protein- enriched milk under the Mukki brand. I want to underline that the market in Italy this year worth EUR 350 million and in Germany worth EUR 762 million. The compound growth rate of this segment is established at 4.55%. We see great opportunity in this new segment. That's why we are focusing on these new products. Okay? We are trying to, of course, support everything through our marketing activities, focusing ourselves as much as possible on online communication, using tools, AI-generative new tools that we implemented in the company to make the work more flexible and easy to do. Then we are continuing to create new content and collaborating with influencers and trendsetters of the market. Okay?
So one point about the new context that we closed this year. So we will be the first supplier of Amazon pasta, and the expected volumes are 500 tons. And what is already committed from their side is a volume growth +50% per year for the next three years. We are really pleased that we were able to list our Delverde pasta in Costco Canada. That means 108 stores. I remember that Costco is the second biggest retailer in the world after Walmart. Then we are launching and we are enriching our collaboration with the group Superunie that counts around 1,800 stores and the Salling Group that represents Netto, Bilka and other groups in Denmark. And we will be their supplier under their own brand of 22 new SKUs of pasta.
Then we are developing in the new countries a new market like the Middle East, North Africa market. As you can see some pictures of advertisements in Lebanon and in other countries like Dubai, so Emirates countries, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and so on. Then we have baby formula contracts, so new markets to be launched in 2024. And upon this, we are trying to be as strong as possible, creating extra studies on milk alternatives for milk powder for babies, for example, lentil-based milk. So trying to be always upon research and new innovation. This is the key of growth for us.
Then , if you can go to the next slide. So, U.K. Naked performance, the revenues are increased, and we increased our market share post-product improvement that is passing from the old Naked to the new Naked noodle, best-ever. France's growth since the product improvement.
And we had already an October campaign, and we will repeat it in the next months on the U.K. market, trying to establish our leadership in this segment of ready-to-eat noodles. We have, of course, a strong marketing campaign and new product development launching Q2 and Q3 of 2024 concerning new potential products like ramen or other products that we target that are really interesting for the market. Okay? What's new about the Mug Shot campaign? Mug Shot is a really well-known brand for pasta products in the U.K. So you see that we have this campaign in January 2024 that is the strongest that we can have. So we reached 3.8 million consumers.
We dropped in front of the door 100,000 consumers our product of Mug Shot. And we created a new campaign. Okay, Benedetta? So what is really important, was already mentioned, is that Germany is the year of records.
So we were able to grow still with Delverde despite the brand Delverde and the position of other retailers, sorry, other pasta producers, on the market. We are still number two growing compared with the first player. So we have a strong growth in revenue, +15% year-over-year, Lidl +31% year-over-year. And we are number one pasta supplier at EDEKA more than our main competitor that is Barilla. Everything, of course, that I mentioned is all based on Circana IRI data. So market share continued to grow in the pasta category, and we are in a leading position in Germany. What is really important is the new launch of the acquisition EM Foods that we performed in 2023. We were able to list the product in EDEKA, REWE, Markant, that is Kaufland plus other retailers, and in the U.K. in Waitrose supermarket.
So we are really willing to see what will be the outcome of this important listing that we have done in Germany. Okay? Yeah, as I mentioned before, strong growth. So Delverde is growing 1.5%. It's the one that grows the most. The other two players are the other two Italian producers that are on the market that didn't have the growth similar to ours. And even on the German pasta, we still confirm to be the first player in the German pasta segment with positive market share improvement versus the competition. In the German pasta, this is even more obvious than the competitors, as you can see from the chart shown here in the presentation. Okay? So the record of pasta sales, we are around 44,000 tons, so 44,000,000 kilos sold only of Delverde and almost the same quantity of Birkel and 3 Glocken.
So with around 90,000 tons in Germany, we confirmed that this was one of the most important years for the compound growth rate of 5% every year.
So now we're moving to the sales breakdown and analysis for the year.
Moving on to revenue highlights. As mentioned, we had an increase of 7% in terms of sales this year compared to last year. In particular, the last quarter of the year, so a slowdown compared to the initial part of the year for three main reasons. One being a higher promotional activity compared to 2022.
The second being a very challenging comparison base as the 2022 results were affected by inflation. So we had an average price of products, which was higher than normal. And we also had a series of industrial investments, which we will see later on, that were initiated mainly in the last quarter of the year.
In general, however, we can say that 2023 was a year of strong commercial and marketing activities, which resulted in a very good performance for the year and which is also expected to benefit the sales recorded in 2024. In particular, as mentioned, we highlight that we had a total investment of EUR 25.2 million, which is almost EUR 10 million more than last year. Most of it was invested in PPE. These investments are expected to reduce costs and improve efficiency in the medium term. In terms of main KPIs, we had an improvement in all the KPIs. Return on sales was 4.5%, return on investment 16%, and return on equity 10.5% as opposed to last year's results, which were lower. Moving on to revenue breakdown by business unit, we had an increase in most of the business units.
As regards to pasta, we had a stable performance in terms of sales, which is the result of a combination of higher volumes but lower average price compared to the inflated price of 2022. In milk, we had an increase of 6.7%, which was partially thanks to higher volumes and also linked to higher sales price. In terms of instant foods, we had an increase of 22%, which is linked to the EM Foods acquisition. If we exclude that, we had an organic growth of 4%. This organic growth was mainly due to an increase in products.
So we launched new products in this segment, both in the instant noodles and instant pasta and in the home baking category. We had an increase in marketing activities, which helped us improve our sales. And we've also been able to grow new markets in this category.
In terms of bakery products, we had a growth of 13%, which is driven mainly by the sales of Crostino, Rusks, and Melba Toasts, in particular by Crostino and Rusks because we signed some important partnerships in the private label sector this year. In terms of dairy products, we had an increase of 14.3%, which was driven by mascarpone, as usual. The markets in which we grew the most in terms of mascarpone sales were Germany with an 82% increase, France with a 25% increase, Netherlands with a 22% increase, and Canada with a 20% increase.
It is important to highlight that we had a slowdown of sales in special products, which is due to the investments that were planned for the last quarter of the year, which partially halted production. These investments, which we will see later on, will improve efficiency and increase our product offering.
We expect to have sort of a return to normal sales levels by the end of 2024 once all of the implementations are in place. Moving on to distribution channels. The period was quite positive in terms of increasing the main distribution channels. We had an increase, especially in the B2B partnerships, which is partially due to the acquisition EM Foods, so for the products that we produce for B2B partners. We also had an increase in the private label and normal trade business. In particular, in regards to private label, we had, as said earlier, some new partnerships in bakery and also in the dairy segment. For normal trade, we had an increase in the milk and milk business. Moving on to breakdown by geography. We had a positive trend in all our main geographies.
In particular, the revenues in pasta went up by 3% as a result of higher sales volumes in pasta, milk, and dairy, as well as instant noodles. As Giuseppe mentioned earlier, we had an increase in the net sales by 71% year-on-year. So we had a particularly good performance in this segment. However, our result was set back by the decrease in special products sales, which was recorded in the last quarter. In terms of Germany, we had an increase of almost 6%. This is mainly linked to the pasta that we saw earlier, as well as the dairy increase, which we also saw earlier. We've had, overall, a very good performance in this market for the period.
In terms of the United Kingdom, we had an increase of almost 9%, which is the combination of different factors, one being the instant noodles and instant pasta sector, which grew thanks to the commercial and marketing efforts that were put in place last year, as well as an increase in the pasta business. In terms of other countries, we had an increase of almost 25%. If we exclude the increase in France, which was 10% linked to EM Foods, we had a very good performance in some of other countries, which I'm going to show here. We grew some of our main export countries by 39%, for example, in the Netherlands. We grew in Denmark by 35%. Canada also performed really well with an increase of 25%. Belgium also increased by 13% this year.
We've been really focusing on the Middle East and North African markets as well. That proves the increase in sales of 12% for the period. As I said, France was up by 10%, mainly due to the acquisition of EM Foods. Moving on to EBITDA breakdown by business unit. As you can see, we had a very good performance in terms of EBITDA this year. In terms of EBITDA margin, we recorded an increase of 110 basis points, which brings us from 8% in EBITDA margin to 9.1% in EBITDA margin, which is along the same levels of 2021 EBITDA. In general, we had an improvement in most of the business units, aside from instant foods and bakery, which had a slight decrease in the period, which is not major. Pasta was the business unit that performed the best.
So we had an improvement of 410 basis points. So we went from 6% to 10.1%. This was done thanks to a better mixed contribution and designing of contracts that had a better setup compared to others. And we also had an overall better marginality as a result of our increase in prices. In terms of bakery, we maintained a double-digit EBITDA margin around 16.1%, even though it is slightly lower than last year, which was 17.3%. In terms of special products, although we did have a decrease in sales, we actually had an improvement in margins, which went to 15% from 12.2%. This is particularly thanks to some improvements in our contracts in the B2B productions of baby food. In general, we can say that it was a pretty good year in terms of marginality.
The year-to-date results of EBITDA margin up until February 2024 is very much in line with the 2023 levels. We've recorded an average EBITDA of 9.5%. Moving on to the investments, which we were talking about earlier in the Ozzano Taro plants for the special foods. We've been really going through a transformation period in the plants. We want to set ourselves apart from competition. We want to be the main point of contact for specialized nutrition in Italy and in Europe. In particular, we've had some development and efficiency run in the pasta area, especially under the Delverde brand for high protein and legume pasta, as well as gluten-free pasta, which was launched in Germany last year.
In terms of bakery, we are installing a new oven line, which will set us apart from the competition and which will enable us to have single-portion packaging for both infant biscuits and breast substitutes. This is one of the most consistent projects that have been going on. In terms of milk, we had some new collaborations confirmed for next year, in particular with national and international clients, for example, HiPP in the organic segment, and also lactose-free baby milk.
In general, I just wanted to give you an update on the contract that was signed for baby formulas in 2020, where we are having a very good performance and development of the contract, and we expect that it will come into full effect in the next year or so. We've also consolidated some partnerships that will start in 2024 with new clients in the Middle East.
We've also had some investments in the packaging lines, especially for the cap. We are going to switch to the cap, which is anchored to the bottle to be in line with the new EU regulations. Moving on to the next slide, we have just an overview of the investment that was done in terms of logistics in Germany. We acquired, in the second half of 2023, a plant, which is just next door to our existing Newlat GmbH plant, totally linked to an area of 20,000 sq m.
This plant is comprised of a warehouse and an office building. We are working on renovating the warehouse to make it completely automated. And this will help us save around EUR 2 million of logistics in Germany because at the moment, we're storing some considerable amount of pallets of our products at a third-party warehouse.
This will really improve our management of stock and of logistics. We expect the payback period to be four point five years for this particular investment. Moving on to just a picture of the improvements we've had in some main KPIs for the period. We said earlier, we've had an improvement of EBITDA margin and revenues. We've had a constant improvement in revenues, and particularly regarding EBITDA margin, although we had a decrease in EBITDA margin last year, we actually had an improvement this year, which brings us back to the same sort of level that was recorded in 2021-2020. Moving on to our sort of net debt and CapEx picture.
We've had, as I said, a pretty consistent, considerable increase in CapEx. However, this did not make our net debt or underlying free cash flow worse. Actually, we had a very good performance of both indicators.
Net debt was down, as you can see on the chart below. We can see that net- debt- to- EBITDA ratio actually went below one. So we are back to being in a safer zone compared to last year. We've also had an improvement in the gearing ratio, which is below 0.5. So we are at 0.37 for this year. So we can say that 2023 was a very good year in terms of risk management for the company and putting us in a position of more comfort. Lastly, we can have a look at capital employed and return on capital employed. So we've had a very good performance this year, which brings us back to the initial levels that were recorded in 2019.
Although we did have a decrease in the last three years, we've actually been able to increase the return on capital employed and bring it back to 13.06%. Just briefly going over net working capital and cash conversion cycle. So this year, we've had a really good improvement in terms of net working capital. In particular, we were able to lower inventory levels, which last year were increased because of the increase in prices. So we used to stock up on raw materials and products in order to lock in lower prices. This year, we've been more flexible in this, so we kept our inventory lower. Also, in terms of receivables and payables, we've been able to reduce those because of easier payment terms on both sides.
In terms of cash conversion cycle, however, we still are in a position of a negative cash conversion cycle, which means that we cash in before we cash out to suppliers. In general, we've had a normalization working capital compared to the 2022 result. Moving on to free cash flow. As we said earlier, free cash flow was EUR 20.8 million in 2023. However, we did have a very consistent amount of money spent into CapEx of around EUR 24.9 million. However, we've been able to have a very positive free cash flow thanks to an extremely well-positioned cash flow from operations, which was EUR 56.1 million. This is, of course, thanks to the improvements that were done in terms of EBITDA. In general, we've had very positive years in terms of working capital, as we said earlier.
This has made it possible for us to have a positive free cash flow and sort of underline our operational model and financial help with these results. Moving on to the last two slides, just some highlights on the current trading for 2024 for the first two months. In the first two months of 2024, we had organic sales increase of 7% at group level. And in particular, we had some very good increases in milk by 10%, in dairy by 23%, bakery grew 5% compared to last year, instant noodles by 5%, and pasta by 12%. These are year-to-date, year-on-year results. In general, in terms of revenues, we recorded revenues in the first two months of 2024 of EUR 135.7 million, as opposed to EUR 126.7 million in 2023. In terms of EBITDA, we've been able to maintain the same EBITDA margin.
However, we've been able to increase EBITDA to EUR 12.9 million, as opposed to EUR 12 million last year. EBITDA margin for the period was 9.5%, as opposed to 9.4% in the first two months of 2023. If we take into account that usually the first two months of the year are particularly weak, we can say that these results have been particularly good and set the ground for a very good performance for the year. This puts us in the perspective from a management point of view to be able to confirm that 2024 will have a very positive result. Moving on to the very last slide, which is the 2024 outlook.
We have five main pillars that we will be working on in 2024 and that we can confirm our commitment to. First one being the one I just said, which is positive organic growth.
So we expect that all the work that has been done in the last year to improve our position in different markets, especially in some contracts that were already signed last year for the next year, will lay the ground for a very good performance in terms of organic growth. In terms of margins, as we just said, our margins are expected to be higher in terms of absolute terms compared to 2023, but keeping sort of a margin percentage stable compared to 2023, although we have to take into account that 2024 will have more of a deflationary effect compared to last year.
In terms of innovation and investments, all the investments that we've done, which are not just the ones I showed you earlier, but we have a lot of different industrial efficiency investments, will help us have a positive contribution in the long and the medium term.
As said earlier, we've had an increased exposure to exports. So we expect to keep working on exporting our products, to increasing our exposure to international markets, especially in the markets that have the most potential to grow in terms of food consumption. So we've been really analyzing some key markets that we want to further develop this year. And lastly, about M&A, as we said at the beginning, we are considering four targets at the moment. So we hopefully will be able to show some of these details, sorry, later in the next month. So hopefully, we will have some good news about some other deals that we're currently analyzing. Now we move on to the Q&A.
As usual, I would ask you to either unmute yourself and ask the questions or write it directly in the chat, and we can read it out for you and answer your questions. Thank you. So we have a question from Arianna Terazzi.
Yes, in the chat, she's asking, "Could you please add more color on the price list? What do you expect over the course of 2024?" Clarification on special products, update on the spare capacity, also in light of the multi-country agreement, and more color on the M&A. Okay, starting from the first one, I want to tell you that what we saw in the first quarter is still a stable situation.
We grew driven by volumes, but it's clear that if the situations linked to the inflations continue to follow the current trend, that is, a decreasing trend, generally speaking, we expect to have a revision of the prices in the coming months. But at the same time, I remember you that our target is not linked to the price, but is linked to the profitability of the company. And in the current scenario, if the reduction of price will be linked to a reduction of input cost, generally speaking, this is something that we can face really relaxed, maintaining the level of the profitability of the company.
About the special products, this year, we face a weak year due to the several actions that we made into the plant to make this plant more efficient and ready to increase also and to diversify more the production capacity, also in terms of different specialty that we can produce there. And this because we have several opportunities also linked to a new contract, new customer to consolidate and to leverage these investments in the near future, starting from 2024.
And in 2024, yes, we expect to have also a contribution from the multi-country contract that we started in the past year. It's clear that the investments that we made are not, this is important to be clarified, are not simply investments linked maybe to the age of the machinery or to the age of the plant. We invested to try to create new and more important know-how inside the plant.
We invested also in R&D to create new formulations, new products. And on this basis, we expect, starting from 2024 and for the years to come, to leverage these investments with a good improvement in this particular segment. In terms of the M&A, what I can share at this stage is that, as usual, this remains an area on which we are very focused. You know that we were involved in an important deal until February. In any case, we are already working on four different dossiers. I can tell you that two of that are foreign potential acquisitions, while we have also two important dossiers in Italy. At the moment, I don't want to share more. They are important because they could allow us to diversify our portfolio of category and our industrial know-how. The size is very interesting.
The biggest one is substantially close to our side, around EUR 800 million revenues. And I hope we can share something more very soon, but at this stage, we prefer not to share additional detail for several reasons. Yes, there is Paola.
Yes, hi. Hi. Hello. Good afternoon. Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Fabio. I have, yes, a few questions. First of all, if you can come on the CapEx projected for 2024. So what stage are you in your total plan for this additional CapEx and if this is going to be over by 2024? And also, I was wondering because you mentioned sometimes in the past that part of the CapEx you were thinking about additional CapEx you were thinking about could have been financed by public subsidies, let's say. Exactly.
I was wondering if any of those or of the possible future ones could have this kind of contributions. Secondly, I wanted to have a bit more of color from you about the EM Foods relationship with Unilever. You said we have strengthened the relationship. I was wondering if there is anything you can share about your contract with them and what's the contribution we can expect for 2024. Also on working capital, I was wondering if, I mean, do you expect to maintain the good level you have reached or maybe to use it as a negotiating weapon with your suppliers or with your clients? If there's anything we should be aware of looking to 2024 on this side. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Paola.
About the CapEx, I have to say that this year, we reached the peak in terms of percentage of sales. We are a bit above 3%. We expect, since we have still an additional step of the project that we started, maybe to reduce the level around 2.5% in the next couple of years and then progressively to come back to below 2%. This because, for example, the automatic warehouse that we started in Germany is just in the first phase of the construction. There are some investments that need additional CapEx also in the next years, but not at the peak level of this year.
In terms of the public contributions, part of the Ozzano investments could be covered by these contributions. I don't have at this stage precise numbers to share, but part of that investments could be financed by the government contribution.
Roughly speaking, we could be between EUR 1 million and EUR 1.5 million, roughly. About the EM Foods and Unilever contract, what we wanted to highlight is the fact that we are developing, and we are very happy about this, the relationship with Unilever at 360 degrees with the new opportunity that we are developing also in other divisions of the group, like pasta, for example. We are speaking with them to develop additional projects in pasta and in dairy in particular.
Also about the relationship that we have in France for EM Foods, I have to say that nothing is going to change in the sense that we continue to produce for them all the productions that we had in 2023. There are no issues in terms of the relationship with them about the new launch that we made in Germany about the Minuto products.
So we are not fighting for competition, just to be very clear, but we are, on the other side, working to increase the collaborations, the partnership that we have also for other sectors. In terms of EM Foods, we are very happy. We work a lot to integrate the company. We plan the new system, a good connection with Germany, also helped by the fact that the distance is low in terms also of kilometers. There is a lot of collaborations with the commercial guy of the German division. We are very happy for this first step that could count around, roughly speaking, 2,000 tons of production.
But this is just the starting point for the business that we have in mind to develop not only in Germany but also in the U.K., where we start with the first orders for that market, and why not maybe also in Italy for some products. So we have a good view about the potential future of EM Foods in terms of own brands, not only in terms of B2B or private label productions. We enter also, for example, in an important retailer in France. So we are doing a very important job in terms of business development for this area. In terms of net working capital, this year, we reached an improvement.
But our idea is that, starting from 2024, net working capital needs to become, again, a positive contributor for the free cash flow generation. And we are absolutely confident that this will happen this year.
So we expect to have, as it was in the past, EUR 5 million-EUR 7 million positive contributions from the working capital and not even if very small, a negative contribution in terms of cash absorption. So this is the expectations that we have.
Okay. Thank you very much. Just a clarification, when you said the 3% incidence of CapEx on revenues, you were referring to 2023? So the peak has been 2023.
Yes. Yes. 2023. Yes. It was EUR 24.7 million, so close to EUR 25 million versus the revenues we are at the peak of the historical trend of CapEx.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much.
So if there are any more questions, you can unmute yourself or write it in the chat. Otherwise, we can go here. So maybe we can wait a couple of minutes to see if something comes up.
In any case, if you have a follow-up tomorrow and on Thursday, we will be in Milan at the STAR conference. It will be a pleasure to answer personally to your question.
Okay. Okay.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks for joining. See you.
Thank you. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye.
Thank you, Bastian.
Thank you very much.