Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining, for being here today, for attending physically. To those connected remotely, thank you for joining today's call on our earnings call, on our earnings results for the year 2024. I'm Benedetta Mastrolia. I'm the Business Relations Manager for Newlat Food. I would like to introduce you to our speakers today. Just going from the closest to me would be Simon Harrison, Princes' CEO; Giuseppe Mastrolia, CEO and Commercial Officer of Newlat Food; our Chairman, Angelo Mastrolia, who just gave his introductory speech; and Fabio Fazzari, Group Financial Director. We also have our CFO, Rocco Sergi, here sitting at the front. Before starting, I would like to make the usual disclaimer that this presentation might contain certain public statements that neither report the results nor reflect the company's maximum current views of future events and financial operational performance.
These forward-looking statements are based on Newlat Food SpA's current expectations and projections about future events. Any reference to past performance of Newlat Food should not be taken as a representation of this or any indication that this will continue in the future. This presentation is not an offer or a suggestion of an offer to buy Newlat stock. We are gone with the presentation. We go directly to the agenda for today. We have five main areas. The first one will be the financial highlights and the structure update on our group. Then we will have the usual results breakdown and analysis. We will go over the Princes integration and the future plans for Princes. We will head over to commercial, giving you a commercial update.
Finally, an update on our business plan, on our business plan and our future opportunities with the group. Now we move directly to the financial highlights. This time, as we did for the nine-month results, we will present the combined figures, which means that the Princes, because Princes financial year was ended in 2024 in March 2024, we had to combine them. This is not a usual pro forma, it is a combined result. From including Princes from the 1st of January of both 2024 until the 31st of December 2024. The same happens for the 2023 results, for the comparison year. This will allow us to shift the reporting period for Princes from 2025 to be aligned to that of Newlat from the 1st of January to the 21st of December.
Going over to the next slide, we have the financial highlights for the period. I would like to say that we are really happy with the results. These exceeded our expectations and the guidance that we gave a couple of months ago. Really happy with the results. We are really happy with the way that our management team has been able to develop and integrate the companies together. In terms of revenues, we had basically a flat performance versus last year. As you know, 2024 was affected by a deflationary situation. We had to lower our prices compared to 2023. That means that despite this, we were able to basically keep a good performance, meaning that we had some increase in volumes as well.
Looking at Q4, we actually had a very good performance both at Newlat standalones and including Newlat, CLI, and all the other companies that are included within the group, excluding Princes. We had an increase of 8%, 8.3% versus Q4 in 2023. The same has happened within Princes. Princes actually had a very good performance of almost plus 6% in Q4. Looking at the earlier results, we had some categories that performed really well. We have milk, which grew 6% versus last year, especially in the second half of the year. Dairy also grew 5.2%. Fish grew almost 9%, especially in the U.K. Drinks also grew 5%. Italians, so all the Princes Italian products, meaning the pasta, sauces, and olive oils and Italian legumes, grew 2.4% year on year. Really good results.
In terms of EBITDA, we actually also had a pretty good result considering the situation and so considering the integration that is going on. We had an increase in terms of EBITDA margin, which is 6.4% compared to 6.3% last year. We also had an EBITDA of EUR 177.6 million. This is also really good in terms of the progression from the nine-month results. Just to highlight, as we said earlier, these figures are in line with what we gave as a guidance back in November with the nine-month results. EBIT, which of course is, let's say, influenced by the business combination income from business combination, was really positive. We had an increase of 10.1% versus last year. Same with net income, we had an amazing growth of 5.3% compared to the 2023 results.
I would say one of the most striking and the most exciting parts of the business was actually the free cash flow generation because we had an underlying free cash flow of EUR 225 million. Really high, especially comparing it with the EBITDA results. This is due to many factors. One is, as you know, if you're here, you know that we have a good cash generation just as a business, but also because of the integration with Princes and the strong work that has been done on the working capital position within Princes. This led to actually also having a very good improvement in our net debt. Looking at the net debt figures, we had the net debt excluding IFRS 16 liabilities of EUR 246.2 million as opposed to EUR 332.7 million just at the end of September.
We had almost EUR 90 million improvement in just the span of three months. Same if we look at the net debt including IFRS 16, EUR 346.2 million as opposed to EUR 436.8 million at the end of September. EUR 90 million improvement in just three months. Also looking at the net debt to EBITDA ratio, we have an amazing result. If we look at the one including IFRS 16, we had the result of 1.95 times, which is well below the guidance that we gave as the target that we gave a couple of months ago of being below 2.5 times. Now just to remind you who we are as a business today after the acquisition of Princes.
As we explained also with the video and also how our Chairman said, we are one of the leading producers in the European food and business sector. We have 31 state-of-the-art facilities. We are a very industrial, heavy asset company. We are able to produce pretty much virtually anything that we have in our portfolio is produced by us, which means that it gives us also a competitive advantage compared to competitors who sometimes need to resort to other manufacturers. In terms of numbers, we just said EUR 2.8 billion in terms of revenues, EUR 177.6 million EBITDA, a workforce of over 8,000 people, and 31 plants, as I just said. The plants are distributed as follows. Fifteen plants in Italy, we have seven factories making milk and dairy, four factories for pasta and special products, and some meals as well.
11 factories in the U.K., which produce oils, produce canned foods, instant products, and more, and drinks, and more. In terms of Mauritius, we have two plants in Mauritius for the processing of tuna. So we are one of the biggest tuna producers, I would say, in Europe for sure. I would say one of the top ones in the world as well, but in Europe for sure. We have one production facility in Germany for German pasta, one in Poland for oils, where a joint venture, and then one in France where we produce home baking products. Looking at this, we can see a bit of the breakdown of our channels as well. We are mostly selling through large retailers, both through branded and private label products.
We also have been increasing our share in the B2B partners channel that would be co-manufacturing, so producing for other companies that come to us, as I said, because we have a lot of potential in terms of production capacity. Normal trade, which would be traditional shops, and then food service, which is hotels, restaurants, etc. In terms of revenue breakdown, after the Princes acquisition, we've shifted to being more present in the U.K. More or less half of the revenues are generated in the U.K. Then we have 23% in Italy, 16% in Germany, and 7% in the rest of the world. We would like to increase, of course, our exposure to international markets, especially through the new group assets and the new opportunities that we have of cross-selling our products worldwide.
We go over this slide, which is what we have done, what we've been working on for the last couple of months, trying to combine Princes and Newlat within just one strategic vision and for guiding our mission and our strategy in the next five or six years or so. We have come up with our purpose, mission, and vision, which will be applied to the whole group. Our purpose is making the right choices never tasted so good. I think that explains it all. Our vision is bringing everyone together to enjoy quality food and drinks. It's pretty straightforward. Our mission is proudly producing authentic and affordable, high-quality store-keepable essentials from across the world. We have, as I said, an international vein. We want to export to many countries.
We are able to offer products that go from breakfast to lunch, going through snacks and everything. We can literally cater to any needs in terms of dietary needs and etc. We have also found six strategic imperatives to reach our 2030 ambition. One is unlocking our competitive edge. As we said, with the enlarged group, we have many more opportunities across the group. Understanding our competitive edge and understanding our abilities and capabilities helps us really proceed and gain market share versus our competitors. Driving commercial value, which goes hand in hand with what we just said. Leveraging our industrial know-how also goes hand in hand with what we just said. We have a big asset of industrial facilities. We have to recognize that there is much more potential to unlock just by using our current facilities. Driving a winning culture among our people.
Really infusing in these people the fact that we are a big business, a growing business, and we have many opportunities to grow in the future and to be proud of who we are and what we do. That goes without saying that, of course, we operate sustainably and ethically. That is something we have to recognize as a business. There are emissions and things we have to take into account. We're really continuing to improve our position in terms of sustainability. That's something we've been doing for the past few years. The last one is integrating and leveraging our group capabilities, which again, after the Princes acquisition, has been, I would say, one of the most important focuses for the business as a whole. We have our values. I won't read everything, otherwise it will take too long, but I'll just read the headlines.
Customer first always. Lead with integrity and transparency. Invest wisely. Grow boldly. I think this one is pretty consistent with who we are and what we've done. Act with purpose and then perform with pride. Moving over to the group structure, which I think will clear some ideas. Newlat Food is still called Newlat Food, but we will change our name legally on the 28th of April with the shareholders meeting. Newlat Food will be renamed NewPrinces Group on the 28th of April NewPrinces group slash Newlat Food will remain the main company, and it will continue to have the same companies underneath. 67.6% of Centrale del Latte d'Italia, which is listed. 100% of Symington's and 100% of Princes France, which is EM Foods, because we changed the name on the 1st of January. And 100% of Newlat Deutschland.
We have 100% of Princes Group, which at the same time owns 100% of Princes Italia, 51% of Princes Tuna Mauritius, 50% of EOL, so the oils company in Poland, and 100% of Princes Foods BV in the Netherlands. Now we want to share some of the changes in our structure, let's say, in the last couple of months. From the 1st of January 2025, Newlat Food, NewPrinces Group, has leased its assets to Princes Italia, so the ones you see are elected. It has leased all the pasta, bakery, and special product sites, as well as the employees under Princes Italia. Newlat will remain, as I said, at the top, but Princes Italia will be the operating company, operating pasta, bakery, dairy, bakery and special products, etc. Same with Symington's and Princes. Symington's has leased its assets to Princes Group.
Symington's remains the legal owner of the assets, which have been leased to Princes, and will remain the owner of the trademarks and the brands. However, Princes will be operating these assets and using the brands, and also the employees have been transferred from Symington's to Princes. Why is this? We have some really good opportunities in terms of cash in. On a standalone basis, Newlat Food slash NewPrinces Group will benefit from a really good cash flow from the operating assets under these lease contracts. You will see that we will have a cash in of EUR 10.5 million, which is split by a fixed income coming from the early rents of EUR 5 million, and then a 1.5%, so a variable on revenues, which will be around EUR 5.5 million, coming to EUR 10.5 million as a result.
Plus, we will have the full amount of depreciation, which will be paid by the lessee to the lessor. In that case, we will have an additional cash in of EUR 8.5 million per year, coming to an early cash in overall of EUR 19 million. It is important, of course, to highlight that Newlat food/NewPrinces will remain and will maintain its strategic control of the full group, so nothing will change in that regard. As an owner of the brands, Newlat Food will remain the exclusive beneficiary of the potential value creation coming from the future development of the business. At the same time, Newlat Food will remain the owner of the tangible assets and the real estate. Now we move over to the sales breakdown and analysis for the period.
We're looking, as we did for the nine-month results, first at the Newlat categories and then at the Princes ones. From next year, from the next reporting season, we will be trying to combine these into bigger categories to make it a bit easier to present and to understand as the overall group. In terms of pasta, we had an improvement compared to the nine months 2024. As you know, we had an impact coming mostly from the decrease in average selling prices and also a slight drop in volumes. However, we had good performance compared to the nine-month results. We are really hopeful that the 2025 results will be positive compared to 2024. The 2025 results will be positive compared to 2024. For milk, we had a really good performance of +6% compared to last year, as we said.
Especially in the last six months, we had an increase of 64%, and especially in normal trade, so traditional shops, where we had an increase of plus 36%. Ready meals, which is the Symington's, so instant noodles and baking mixes as well, improved compared to last year, to the nine-month results, and had an improvement of 3.6%. We will see a good contribution coming from ready meals in the next year because of some restructuring in the sales of the Symington's, let's say, group, and also thanks to new opportunities coming from the repositioning of Naked, which is our main brand, and the launch of new products such as chips and boats in the U.K. again. Bakery products had a slight decrease as well. It was pretty slight compared to the nine-month results. This was affected by lower volumes and lower average selling price in Italy.
However, we see a stabilization in the last quarter, so hopefully next year we will see a positive result. Special products, as you know, we had ongoing investments last year, which lasted from the last quarter of 2023 to basically a couple of months ago. We've seen a very good improvement in terms of sales and volumes as well. We had an increase of 17.5% as opposed to the nine-month results. We also had an increase of 44% compared to the last quarter of last year. Really good performance. We should see more coming in from new contracts and new opportunities coming as a co-manufacturing business, and also potentially from future opportunities, let's say, that we will share later on. Moving on to Princes. The Princes categories are the ones you see here. Foods, as I said, is canned beans, processed canned meals, and soups.
The foods business was affected by a slight fall in volume because of the very challenging comparison base that we had in 2023, because the year 2023 was performing really well. That was also affected by lower average selling prices, which were applied to retain some key contracts. However, in this case as well, we will see some good growth with some initiatives that we will see in the next slides in the commercial section. Drinks, this has been a really good, I think, period for drinks. We had an increase of 5% year on year. We also had a very impressive contribution coming in from the Capri-Sun co-pack contract, which was signed last year and which started in October 2024. In just three months, it gave us GBP 3 million in contribution.
We have more volume expected coming from this particular contract, but also from other contracts that have been signed in the drinks business, both at co-manufacturing level but also at private label level. For fish, we had an impressive growth of almost 9% year on year. We had a good performance both within Princes BV, so in the Netherlands, mostly with B2B contracts, in the U.K., both for industrial and also within the large retailers area with the canned foods business, but also in the EU because we started to explore more opportunities in the EU after the acquisition. Lastly, Italian products. No, lastly, sorry, and second to last, Italian products. We had an increase of 2.4% year on year. An especially good performance if we compare it to the last results of the nine months.
We had an increase in sales of the tomato products under the Napolina brand, especially also some private label and pulses, with a slight decrease in olive oil, but overall a really good result in terms of the Italian category. Lastly, we have edible oils. Edible oils were slightly down compared to last year because of an offset between the U.K. positive performance and a slightly weaker performance in Poland. However, we have, again, more opportunities coming in the next year. Moving on to distribution channels. As we said, we have four main distribution channels. The large retailers channel had a good performance compared to last year because of the higher sales in fish and dairy.
B2B partners had a slight decrease because of some lower sales in some categories, such as pasta and special products, because of what we said earlier with the special products investments, and also some lower sales in foods. That was mainly because of the pricing. However, we see a really positive performance in the B2B channel for the last quarter with a 3% increase year on year. Food service was slightly down, but we had a really good performance in the last quarter, especially because of the milk and dairy business, with a plus almost 15% increase. In general, most of these channels, of course, as we said at the beginning, were affected by a lower average selling price. We expect 2025 to be a much better performance because of the easier comparison base compared to the 2023 results. Moving on to geography.
As we said, we have three main countries and then the export channel. Again, all the geographies had the deflationary effect. However, we had some really good performances nevertheless in some categories within these markets. In Italy, we had a very good performance in milk, dairy, and as we said, special products in the last quarter. We had some slower, let's say, delivery of volumes in pasta and bakery. Again, these will be picked up in the next month. Germany was very positive, especially because of an increase in the sales of dairy, with that and the Italian products as well. All the tomatoes that we will see also with some new opportunities coming next year, we've had a really good performance of plus 13%. The U.K. was slightly positive in Q4 with an increase of 1%.
Really good performance nevertheless because of the fish, especially, which I think carried, let's say, the growth. Again, we will see more growth coming in the next months. EBITDA breakdown by business unit. Moving on, we have again split by Newlat and Princes. Looking at the Newlat EBITDA, we had a good performance in the year, especially considering the lower prices. We were able to retain most of the margins. In some cases, we even increased these margins despite the deflationary environment. Really good performance, for example, with pasta, with 9.7% in margin. With instant noodles, we were up by 40 basis points, so from 7.4% to 7.8%, which is the beginning of a revolution, let's say, in the instant noodles and instant products category because of the acquisition of Princes.
We have a really good performance in the dairy EBITDA as well with 9.1% in margin. It is also maybe worth highlighting that we had a very good result both in bakery products, with 14% in EBITDA, slightly down, but still very good performance considering the environment and considering the lower sales. With special products, especially if you think of the impact that we had from the ongoing investment within Ozzano Taro, we had a really good margin of double-digit margins anyway, at 13.1%. Moving on to Princes, it is a bit easier here. We have a few fewer categories. If we look at results, we can say that there was a slight decrease in margins compared to last year, which was mainly due to the lower average selling prices.
However, if we compare these with the nine-month results, we can see a huge improvement, a huge jump in margins compared to the nine-month results. We are starting to see some of the, I would say, the effects of the strategy that has been put in place in terms of group. We can say that, for example, if you look at some of the main categories, if you look at drinks, we had a very good recovery margins compared to the nine months of 90 basis points. That is because of the new contracts coming from co-manufacturing, especially Capri-Sun, but others as well. In foods, we also had an increase of 1.7%, going from 7.9% to 9.6% margin. Again, this is showing an improvement compared to the beginning of the year because of the lower average selling prices.
Italian products had a huge increase compared to the nine-month results, where we had a lower EBITDA margin of 1.9%. We went up to 7%. Last year was 8%, but this is completely, let's say, in line because if we take into account some other things, such as the provisions that were put aside last year of EUR 2 million, and we add that up, basically our margins have remained stable or even increased in some cases. We had also an effect in terms of pricing because of last year. We had sold some older stock, which cost less. We are still seeing, we are already seeing some impacts from the rationalization of our portfolio, of our customer portfolio in this case, or our contract portfolio in this case. Lastly for me is the working capital improvement within Princes.
As you know, when we presented Princes and when we saw Princes, we recognized that there was a really good opportunity in improving its working capital position because it had a very positive net working capital of around GBP 400 million. This was a great opportunity for us to generate more cash, especially when we compare it. If we look at the top graph, you can see that the net working capital position of Princes was much, say, lower than the other ones. That was really an opportunity to increase the days of payrolls that's sending to really work on the net working capital. We can see that from the bottom graph that we had a huge improvement in terms of working capital days, going from 85 at the end of 2023 to 95, which was when we acquired the company in July 2024, going down to 54 days.
A huge improvement of 41 days in just a couple of months. This was done again through some of the actions that were put in place at group level. We will have more on that in the next slides. Now I will move away and I will introduce Simon as a speaker. Thank you, Simon.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Simon Harrison. I'm CEO of Princes. Delighted to be with you here today to share some of the key focus areas within our business, starting with procurement, which has absolutely been a key focus area for us over the last six months. We've centralized our procurement. It was decentralized previously and created that central focus now on procurement. That's had some great benefits to us in many areas of the business.
By centralizing our procurement approach, we've been able to leverage the scale of the group and also drive some synergies and consistent terms across the group. Starting with kind of cost reduction, we've been able to take a group approach to our procurement contracts. That has seen more consistent terms applied to all of our key suppliers. Through leveraging our scale, we're starting to see lower cost of goods coming into the business, which certainly benefits us, but also benefits our customers in our private label contracts. The other thing we've done is start to use the data and analytics we have much better than before. We have an SAP system to manage our procurement activities.
Through there, we're able to analyze where we have some risks or opportunities in our supplier strategy and de-risk some of those areas where we have perhaps over-reliance on any one supplier to have some contingency approaches to make sure that we don't carry too much risk on our supply of inbound goods. It's been really useful. The other area we've really focused on within our procurement team is around sustainability and innovation. By having a more strategic approach to our procurement function, we're able to talk to our suppliers about how they can help us reduce our carbon footprint. Interestingly, about 90% of our carbon footprint comes from our supply base. Working with them really carefully and strategically is probably the best way and quickest way that we can get towards our own net zero targets.
A real big focus on procurement, centralized, leveraging our scale, and driving through some of the commercial benefits that Benedetta has just shared. A big focus for us over the last six months and a continued strategic focus on procurement moving forward. The other area of focus for us is operational excellence. As Benedetta said, we've got 11 factories in the U.K. Actually, we produce in our factories almost everything that we sell. We're not a big trader, unlike some of our competitors. We see the fact that we own our end-to-end supply chain as being a real key competitive advantage for us. Why is that? It allows us to focus on our cost base. The fact that we make everything we sell and deliver everything we sell gives us total cost ownership, and we can really drive efficiencies through manufacturing excellence.
The other thing it does is it allows us to focus on service. As a big private label supplier, service is one of the number one priorities of our customers. The fact that we have focus on our own supply chain allows us to really focus on delivering on time in full to our customers, which helps us retain contracts and win new contracts moving forward. Of course, having a real focus on operational excellence allows us to improve our quality levels. That is good from our customer's perspective. We are right first time, more than ever now with our focus on operational excellence. It is good from a cost avoidance. We waste less products in the production cycle. A real laser focus on being a manufacturer.
You have seen in the plan on the page that Benedetta shared, leveraging our industrial know-how is one of the strategic imperatives. This is why, because as a large manufacturer of private label, operational excellence has to underpin everything we do. A continued focus on this area. We also are focused on growing our top line. That is very, very clear throughout our business. We have to get our top line into an accelerated growth. Part of the way of doing that is just to win more within our core categories.
If you look at our kind of go-to-market model on the left there, the left-hand side of that chart is really around our existing product categories, either on the bottom left, winning more share of the existing product categories with existing customers, or selling our existing products into new markets, which are easier to do now as being part of the NewPrinces Group. The left-hand side of the chart is very important to us. The right-hand side of the chart is also very important. We want to diversify and innovate to expand our portfolio. That is very important for the long-term future of our business. We have a plan to do just that. We have identified five category drivers that we think we will focus on for diversification and innovation. We want to expand our participation in Italian food products.
We want to look at new pack formats and modernize our food business, our tin food business. We also want to move away and diversify a little bit more within our seafood business, away from just standard tuna, for example. In drinks, we only participate in a small number of consumption occasions. We know there are more occasions out there for our drinks business that we can take advantage of. Finally, entering into new segments, complete new segments. There are drivers. That's what our team are absolutely focused on in terms of driving innovation and diversification. The good news is it's not just a plan on a PowerPoint chart. We have a very precise and very granular plan to deliver across those five areas. Importantly, when you look at those five areas, that will grow significantly our top line.
We estimate there's about GBP 110 million of additional revenue from these five areas of innovation alone. I won't run through all of them as much as I'd like to because I'm very passionate about them, but I'll just pick a few just to dwell on. Maybe starting with winning in Italian. At the moment, we are installing a new capability into our tomato plants in Foggia to make cooking sauces to complement the range that we sell. We obviously already sell pasta. We sell tin tomatoes. We sell olive oils. Cooking sauces is a big gap in our portfolio. Investing in providing that capability will completely round and complement our Italian food portfolio. Maybe on the second one on ambient foods, most of what we sell in our food division is tin food. That's very successful for us.
There are other opportunities outside of tin food using the same ingredients. What we found quite interesting is when we came together as part of NewPrinces is that within the Newlat group, they had capability in Simingtons in some interesting pack formats. Pouches and microwavable pots. We are starting some trials already. In fact, those trials are underway to look at what of the products, the pulses, the beans, the peas, the pulses that we sell in tins could be sold in alternative pack formats. We have started some really interesting work around that to modernize and expand our packaging portfolio. Maybe I'll skip just to the last one, which is new category entry. Again, been great to be part of this new group to see some of the capabilities that we have within Newlat.
Categories such as baby food, which Newlat have been extremely successful in, we're starting to look at, why couldn't that be sold in the U.K. as well? Looking at new category entries for Princes as well. Hopefully what you can see is a very precise, granular, detailed plan to drive innovation alongside winning our core market share. We need to win our core market share as well. What are we doing about that? One of the things that characterizes Princes Group is the large amount of private label or customer-owned brand contracts that we have. They're very important for our factories. Our factories are very big, high-volume factories, and private label gives us that scale in our business.
Historically, those private label contracts have been quite short, and both ourselves and our customers spend more time renegotiating those contracts than talking about how to drive value for us and our customers. By expanding the terms of these contracts and moving across multiple categories, it puts us in a very different strategic partnership with our customers. By having a contract that expands multiple years, it allows us to do a number of things with those customers. It allows us to talk about recipe formulation. How can we maybe either add new value into a recipe or take cost out of a recipe? Packaging. What can we do about lightweighting packaging to really help with our customers' sustainability objectives? By having these longer-term contracts, it works for us as Princes.
It gives us stability and security, but it works for our customers too, as it allows us to move to the more value-added conversations and strategic conversations about developing their business with them. We are doing that both across the U.K. and our European customers. Maybe the final thing just for me to update you on, and Benedetta mentioned it earlier, is our drinks business. Our drinks business, if you look back over the last 10 years or so, has been quite a volatile and unpredictable business. We have won contracts and lost contracts. We started about a year or so ago reevaluating our drinks business and the strategy behind it. We made some key choices. We decided not to prioritize our own brands. Competing against global, powerful drinks brands is very difficult.
We decided not to really focus on owning our own brands in drinks, but rather than that, focus on manufacturing other people's brands. We started to talk to many drinks manufacturers and brand owners about them outsourcing their production to us. The benefit of that is these are typically very long-term contracts. We lock in together as a partnership. We had some great success. The most notable success very recently is Capri-Sun. Capri-Sun is one of the world's biggest children's drinks brands. For many decades, those Capri-Sun pouches had been produced by Coca-Cola. As of last year, they moved their business from Coca-Cola to Princes. We have installed four production lines. Two are operational right now and started up in October last year. The other two lines go live over the next two or three weeks.
This has been a huge success for us. It utilizes our factory in the north of England, where we had spare capacity and spare space. It gives Capri-Sun, our partner, a really focused and invested business partner in Princes. It has worked for both parties. Outside of manufacturing people's brands, we continue to focus on private label and really look at how do we create more value-add for our private label customers. We are doing that in a number of ways. Firstly, we are investing in some new production facilities at our juice factory in Cardiff. We are putting in some new production lines that will allow us to produce more premium and differentiated packaging. Secondly, we are looking at different occasions in drinks that we do not currently participate in. That could be functional drinks. It could be low or zero alcohol drinks.
Looking for new opportunities to work with our retail partners on expanding our private label drinks business. Hopefully a bit of a flavor of some of the key focus areas for Princes. I'll now hand to Giuseppe to talk about our commercial strategies.
Thank you, Simon. Hello. Hello everyone. It works. Hello. Thanks, Simon. It was really exciting. Now I will speak a little bit about what is the commercial update, what we do, where we see the synergies. What I want to highlight is that I've seen that thanks to Princes and our integration between Newlat and Princes, we are working a lot on integration and innovation. I will take you through all these points that we are trying to optimize between the company. First, a quick win that we have done is the integration of Napolina.
Napolina was sourced by Princes from a third-party manufacturer. From July, we were able, just in three months, to install the machine, start the production, and deliver the products directly to Princes, U.K. It was a really strong success. We are really happy, and we want to grow in the Italian business, continuing to be the number one Italian brand on the shelves, Napolina. We are now working on new product development. As Simon said, one of the key factors would be the integration in the production facility of Foggia of the sauces product that are complementary to our current portfolio, adding new opportunity for the current market, but even to be expanded to other important markets. This was a really huge success. You can see here some of our new product development projects and what we want to increase as our capabilities. Okay.
Another quick win. The first two slides are quick wins we have done in the last months is the integration of Delverde into our German portfolio. As you know, in Germany, we have a leading position in the pasta business. It was immediate for all the large retailers to accept us as a supplier of tomatoes as well. We will be in the stores now in a few weeks with the launch of five SKUs, mainly tin tomato, concentrated tomato, and passata. We are already listed in the major retailers. We will have now the first challenge in the supermarket, but we are sure of a great success. I think the commercial strategy behind that is really well structured and will take us to, hopefully, a good win.
As you can see, Germany for us has been, in the last years, always growing an average of +4.5%. We are implementing a new warehouse to enlarge our portfolio: pasta, tomatoes. We are talking already about tuna and all other segments that we have in our portfolio. It is really exciting. Talking about Italian products, in Italy, we are really strong in the bakery, in the milk, as you know. We are now working on innovation and sustainability on our bakery products. As you can see, one of our main products is the Crostino Dorato that we sell under the Delverde brand and our Rasks, in which we are both in the top three producers of these two categories. We made a packaging innovation with a 100% recyclable packaging on Crostino.
We are on our way to do it with our Rasks business. We are investing in new packaging lines in the Rasks business to improve our offer in the next years. New product development, we already developed. We talked about 2023 investment. We already developed several products in our new oven we installed in the factory of Ozzano Taro, in which we have several new potential and strong projects, of which now we launched the new Sfoglie that is a growing market in the bakery business in Italy. MPD on milk. Milk, we have a lot of products of new product development. As you see, we are working a lot of new trends. You see all the barista special, for example, or the lactose-free products. We're increasing in high-protein products.
We have milk now launched with 70 grams of protein, all on 100 grams of product, and on healthy snacks as well. We will be the first on the market with the kefir, with the top hat that contains and adds some cereals to your kefir yogurt. Of course, the last one is coffee plus milk. Double espresso, double shot espresso, and triple shot espresso that are really famous and are becoming more and more popular, even on the Italian market. These are some commercial updates and some just to show you what we do in the U.K. Our Branston is the brand of beans. I would say it is one of the is the best is one of the best brands in beans in the U.K. I am showing you some activation that we are doing in the stores.
We see an increase on AWOP in the stores that we want to do. These are some applications we are doing on the U.K. market. Talking about fish that we produce in our factories in Mauritius, we have two main brands in which we are market leaders. Princes is leader in Holland and the U.K. Together, Princes and Statsman are number one in Holland, and Princes is number one in the U.K. In terms of volumes, we are getting tuna shoppers to prefer Princes versus the private label. What the retailer asks us is to improve our brand strategy in a way that we can sell much more brand compared with private label. We are doing that. We are improving all our quality, and we are improving our shares in the U.K. On Vier Diamanten, that is a really well-heritaged brand in tin tuna.
We are market leader in Austria. Of course, we are looking to new opportunities in other markets in the DHCH geography. Oils, just to show you, we are activating influencers' campaign and TV ads on Crisp 'n Dry. It was already done last year, was really successful. The uplift of sales was really strong. We are willing to let the consumer pay more for the brand compared with the private label. We are in a good way, I would say, to do that. We have some new opportunity and new innovation that we are doing, really important in the instant food. We can't share what we are doing, but now we are relaunching Naked totally because now we analyze and we are following new trends and evolve the brand positioning. The brand will be positioned in a new area of this category.
The retailer is really willing to sell those products. We are already listed in the major U.K. retailers. The same is done with Mug Shot, where we are trying to increase our penetration and increase the number of buyers per trips. Minuto, that is our home baking that we produce in France, is the brand that we launched in Germany last year. We were awarded Product of the Year. Now we are trying to optimize on that. On these two segments, instant food and the bakery products, what we want to do is to enlarge the portfolio to all our commercial branches: Italy, Germany, France, Netherlands, Poland, to integrate everything and try to sell as much as possible on these brands in the European market.
To show you a little bit what we do in Italy, some consumer advertising, some outdoor advertising, and some things that were done last year. I would like to underline, we made some good charity for hospitals and for babies last year in Florence, thanks to Muchi collaboration. There is a lot that we do even in CSR. Just last slide from my side. We are really strong in shopper marketing. What we want to do, we want to be present where the consumer makes their choice. That is why we are investing in the best and the more high-performance and ROI marketing that we can. On the place where the consumer makes their choice.
As you can see, our shopper marketing team is really active to be persistent on the shops and on the supermarkets to let the consumer be attracted with good offers and good presentation of our products. That is everything from my side. Now I leave the stage to Fabio Fazzari. Thanks a lot.
Good morning, everybody. Thanks to be here and also thanks after one hour presentation not to leave the room. We start now speaking about the future, about the numbers that we plan to get through the strategy that Giuseppe and Simon explained to you before we plan to get. Before to speak about the future, I'm very proud to summarize what happened in the past. That is very important because sometimes it seems that we have an exciting and challenging target on the table.
The reality is that this happened also in the past. Fortunately, we achieved this target. I want to start when five years ago in this building, Mr. Mastrolia, Giuseppe, and Benedetta rang the bell with the IPO of Newlat Food. At that time, the company was a very small company compared to today, with EUR 321 million revenues and only EUR 28 million of EBITDA. During that presentation, Mr. Mastrolia said that we aim to reach EUR 1 billion revenues in the medium term. Today, we can say that it was a good plan. We were able to reach that target. In these five years, a lot of things happened. First of all, immediately after less than six months, we made the first acquisition, which was Centrale del Latte d'Italia.
CLI reported at the end of 2020 an EBITDA of EUR 6 million, while at the end of 2021, the EBITDA of the company inside our group was EUR 18 million. In August 2021, we made an important acquisition in the U.K., was the first important step. We acquired Femington. In two years, the revenues increased to EUR 625 million and the EBITDA got EUR 58 million. It is also important to highlight that in three years, we got a 55% increase in the EBITDA of Femington standalone, thanks to all the initiatives that we put in place on the cost base, on the commercial side, and the integrations with our part of our structure. We faced difficult years considering the strong inflation waves that impacted all the players, not only in the food business, but in all the businesses in 2022 and 2023.
Despite that, in only six months, we have been able to get again a margin above 9%, recovering all the temporary impact that we needed to face considering the strong inflation impact. In 2024, we got the very important step with the acquisition of Princes Limited. Our revenues at the end of 2024, EUR 2.8 billion. Our EBITDA, EUR 177 million. This means that exactly five years after the IPO, we increased revenues by 750% and EBITDA by 550%. A good, very good result that we hope to replicate in the next five years. Another important point I want to highlight is the feeling that the group is creating with the market and also the strong answer that we are receiving from the market. We made in February the second bond issue of the Newlat Food history. At the beginning, our plan was to issue EUR 300 million.
It was a challenging target because last time the issue was EUR 200 million. It was EUR 100 million more than the bond issue we made in 2021. Fortunately, after only one year, after only one day of trading, we close. We collect all the EUR 300 million, and we decided to reopen for an additional EUR 50 million that have been collected in the second day. We are really satisfied for the answer that we received from the market because this means that this appetite could support further the liquidity also during the trading days of the bond. We are also very, very happy because this issue allows us substantially to reduce materially the cost of debt, the average cost of debt, considering that we reimburse fully the acquisition financing.
It is also important for the higher flexibility that we reach because now the full reimbursement of this EUR 350 million is bullet after six years, so in 2031. This will allow us to have a lot of flexibility for additional strategic steps. This is what we expect for the future. This is the slide that we presented last June. Compared to that date, we can confirm what we expect on the revenue side, supported by what Giuseppe and Simon explained before. Product innovation, increase in branded product sale contribution on the total revenues, and increase of the average duration of private label contract. These are the main three pillars of our strategy. Most important, the fact that we continue to look for external growth. Our plan through acquisition is to reach EUR 5 billion revenues in 2030.
The EBITDA, the target was a bit improved versus the previous target announced last June. The driver for the EBITDA remained the delivery of the integration synergies. Part of that I am going to show was already achieved. Important saving in procurement that we planned already for 2025. The operating leverage. On the net financial position, I think that what we deliver in 2024 obviously supports the confirmation of the target we have. We expect to reach 0.5 times net debt on EBITDA already in 2026. In terms of free cash flow, in 2030, we expect to reach EUR 170 million without any working capital contribution. This is just for the operating activity. Starting with the revenues, it is clear that this big improvement that we expect on the profitability will be driven by several different actions that we already start to put in place.
Just to show you what we expect for this year in Princes, this is the movement of the EBITDA level in Princes. You can see that on procurement side, on price mix, on direct material deflations, we have a lot of drivers that could materially improve the result for 2025. This is a very important chart because it is a summary, first of all, of what we expect in terms of strong cash flow generations and the leverage that obviously is supportive for the M&A activity that we aim to do in the next months. The second chart is very important to show that we already start after six months of the acquisitions to go out from the J-curve effect on the return on capital. We are still growing with the aim to reach the 27% in 2030.
This chart is very important if compared with this one, the value map that substantially summarizes what is happening in the food sector, Europe, U.K., in terms of return on capital employed and the valuation of the company. If we consider the return on capital employed that we expect for 2025, it's clear that the valuation of Newlat Food should be more close to the 10 times EBITDA than the valuations that we have today into the market. This substantially is to support, I would say, investors that the stock is still a good opportunity with a lot of potential increase in terms of market valuations that at the moment is not substantially considered by the market. The other target also is very important because I like that our aim is to have in 2030 more than EUR 1 billion cash available.
This means that along the period of time of five years, we have a lot of flexibility to go on with additional acquisition. This is the chart that substantially we are very proud to show you after six months of the acquisition of Princes because despite this big step, we are ready and we are already involved in several discussions on the M&A side. The first one, it's an acquisition that we hope to close very soon. I think that all the newspapers, even if I don't mention it, but all the newspapers spoke about this opportunity and we can confirm that we are inside this deal. The other are opportunities on which we are already in discussions, especially in the B and the D side.
As you can see, are important milestones not only to further diversify our portfolio and our platform, but also to continue to grow versus the target of EUR 5 billion in 2030. To conclude, 2024 guidance we gave is achieved as we explained. We can confirm what we told you at the end of the nine-month result as a guidance for 2025 with more than EUR 2.8 billion of revenues and EBITDA between EUR 210 million-EUR 220 million. On the consolidated net debt, you can see that we are very close to this target and probably we expect to improve further. All in all, I think that we are fully satisfied and we can confirm all the aims of growth that we announced in the past month. Thank you.
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Yes, just to clarify. We will take the questions coming from the room first, and then we will open the questions coming from the online tool as well. If there's any questions coming from the room, please go ahead. I think we have a mic there, so you'll be able to answer your questions, to ask your questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Salvatore Verdoliva, Canaccord Genuity Agrifood Analyst.
Obviously, you talked a lot about white labels, so I was wondering, and now this is a big part of your business, I was wondering how much. 10%. About 50% of the total revenue. Yeah. So I was wondering if how much CapEx you need to kind of implement and increase the production capacity or how much is the capacity at the moment in the U.K.?
Capacity is very important. The CapEx is very low because in particular Mitsubishi to invest a lot before our acquisition. In fact, we buy the very factory sector in very good condition for growth without particular investment on the CapEx.
Okay. Maybe Simon to confirm this.
Y eah, absolutely. Private label or white label is still a growth opportunity for us, but we're very clear on where we have existing capacity in our factories.
Whilst our factories are relatively full, there are certain lines that have capacity, or there are certain lines which changes in shift patterns can release capacity. We have headroom for growth without any further CapEx through better line utilization or better shift patterns. Our first priority is to fill the capacity that we already have.
Maybe I want to clarify that our strategy is very different from many multinational corporations because in the last year, the multinational corporations, they invest on the factory, on the produce capacity. Our strategy is totally different. We buy the big capacity to produce the product, and we buy the factory. In this situation, we believe we are the main company in Europe with big, big capacity to sell the product to our customers with brand, with private label or B2B. Do not resist at the moment the capability producer company in Europe.
We have this big portfolio to capacity to offer from our factory, not just to brand.
Obviously, maybe a question for Fabio as well.
I would like to add one thing. It's very important on what Mr. Mastrolia said because multinational corporations try to have a different strategy because for the management, it's very important to improve in a short period of time the return on capital employed. It's very easy to improve the return on capital if you don't have assets. What I want to highlight is that what we are trying to do is totally the difference to improve the return with a lot of assets, real estate, factories, a lot of assets.
We buy the factory, we don't sell. This is the difference.
That's very clear. Maybe also on Fabio, also you're sitting on a pile of cash now.
Are you thinking to do any buybacks or any dividend payments anytime soon? Obviously, you did not mention anything about that.
Honestly, like main shareholder, maybe also for me it is interesting this idea. At the moment, we want to create value for to grow. The next five years, I am excluding the dividend because I believe we create more value with investment. In any case, we have a very strong activity on buyback. This is indirect activity to create value for our shareholder. Thank you.
Thank you.
On the cash side, because I want to get these occasions to clarify, because I know that investors are always focused on the right balance between debt, between cash and whatever. It is most important, it is very important to understand the strategy that we have. I want to highlight one thing.
If we didn't have the portion of cash that we had in April, May last year, and sometimes someone says, "But why you keep all this cash in the balance sheet?" it would have been impossible to buy Princes. If you have a strategy so focused on M&A, it's very, very important to have this kind of flexibility. Otherwise, it's impossible to think about these kinds of deals.
Buongiorno, Paola Carboni from Equita SIM. I have a few questions. The first one is about the impressive job you made with working capital, especially in the last few months. To understand, I mean, to what extent is this sustainable? If there is maybe further room on some of the main lines. I have a second question on the start of 2025. You mentioned good start of the year with the positive trend in revenues.
I don't know if you can give us more color on that. Also, what are you seeing in terms of pricing environment in your main markets? The last one is on the synergies. You had guided for EUR 36 million. We understand that you are well on track with your plan, but just to have an idea where we are, let's say, in this total EUR 36 million up to now. What further room is left? Thank you very much.
Our answer about the sustainability is on this data. This is comparable. We have the space to improvement in the future, the cash, because we remain at the moment with 85 days positive. It's correct. 54. Comparable, you see the competitor, like we never like, you know, premium food is a negative. This is a normal situation in general of the company.
In fact, when we buy the Princes Group, the main focus in this, there are some people know this. I see immediately the Japanese approach is to pay very short term. We expect the 60 days to coming, you know, the payment from the customer. This is not in line with the market. We have the space, I believe, about plus EUR 100 million in the next six months for to balance to networking capital is totally sustainable because we don't have any stress with our supply. If we imagine in 2020, 2020 to Princes Group to give approach with some supply, I pay immediately because please you give me the small discount. This is a Japanese approach for this. And this remains until when the interest rate to change. This is approach when the interest rate is zero. But they maintain this approach is not in line with normal markets.
This is my other question. Maybe I don't remember, Paola, what the.
The start of 2025, start of the year, trending revenues, let's say, and the pricing environment?
The start of the year was satisfying. I can say that it's absolutely in line with the expectations and we don't have at the moment any particular pressure on the price.
The first two months is particularly strong in Germany, in also Italy for main business, also in some business in the U.K. We have the first two months is a very, very strong start with the volume and with the revenue. At the moment, we have all the feeling is very positive. Thank you. What's that?
The total synergy is EUR 36 million. Now, where are we at the moment?
At the moment, we believe we have in this year, the strong put in place all synergy because we started with new organization, integration. We have the very strong synergy regarding different aspects to integration the Princes Italia with the rest of the business in Italy to eliminate many overlapping costs. We have the very positive fiscal impact because in fact we have the Princes Italia, we have the very good situation regarding the previous losses. Also in U.K. with the Simmington, we have a very, we eliminate many functions because in fact when you make the merger with the two entities, you don't need the W for example, also on the IT system with the first of the. Generally, we integration on the subsystem on the Princes Italia, all our system from Newlat. In fact, we eliminate one totally cost on the IT system.
This has an impact only on the IT system, EUR 4 million every year. Also the figure, also the people to involve in accountability to general service for the on this year, we believe we have a very, very, very strong synergy we have on the table to registration in the next period.
Arianna Terrazzi, Intesa San Paolo.
I have a follow-up on networking capital, in particular in inventories. We know that days on inventories increased. Sorry if I stress the point, but I was wondering it is related to the centralized procurement policy. Could we have more granularity on that?
No, the situation of the inventories is just linked to the seasonality in the sense that in the two bulk at the beginning, fiscal year 2023, this is end of March 2023 and July 2024, while December 2024 includes substantially the full season of tomato, for example.
Also in Tuna, we have a seasonality that creates a peak of inventories in this period. Going forward with the sale of these productions that are tomato is one shot of productions during the year, obviously we will have a decrease in inventories. Inventories is an area on which, in general, in this contract, we do not have the fixed price. We have the open book approach, maybe to please you, spreading the model.
Yeah, absolutely. We have extended the length of contracts for the strategic partnership so that the contracts are not being tendered continuously. We have a very flexible approach in terms of how we manage the commodity price changes. We have very different approaches from fully open book transparency to track commodities, and we have fixed windows within each contract when we agree the new pricing for new season or anything substantially changes.
Whilst the relationship is over a long period of time, we still have a very flexible approach to how we pass on either inflation or indeed deflation in those fixed windows.
Are there any more questions coming from the room, or should we take one or two questions from the online tool? Okay. We just have five minutes left, so I'll read the question, which says, "Could you provide more details about the acquisitions you're currently negotiating, particularly any that involve tuna or seafood category?"
No, the acquisitions that we presented in the last slide are not on tuna and fish area for now because obviously we are fully open and we can consider also on this area. At the moment, no.
I think that generally speaking, this could open us to new sectors in which we are at the moment not present, but with important synergies with the sector in which we are playing. It could be a big opportunity to reinforce our leadership in pasta and in baby food, as we said before.
Okay, are there more questions coming from the room? Okay. We finished right on time. Thank you to everyone for coming over, as I said, and thank you for connecting to the online tool. We will have a lunch being offered just outside the room, and we will see you next week. We will be at the Star Conference next week, 25th and 26th of March. Hopefully we will see many of these faces again next week. Thank you. Any questions, let us know. Thank you. Thank you.