Hello, everyone. I think we're doing this in English. Today is the English one. Hello to everyone. I hope everyone is well and in good health given the situation with COVID. I'd like to welcome you to the presentation of the financial results for the nine months of 2021 for Purcari Wineries PLC. Before we start, if I can ask everyone to put their microphones off and then put them back on when we get to the question and answer section. I think many of you are familiar with this presentation. I'll go quickly through the results and I'll try to jump as quickly as possible to the question and answer section so that we can explore some topics that you may find more interesting.
First, my name is Eugen Comendant. I'm the Chief Operating Officer at Purcari Wineries Group. With me, I have Eugeniu Baltag, who's heading the Investor Relations area. We also have Vasile Tofan, Chairman of the Board, Victor Arapan, CFO, and Mr. Victor Bostan, the CEO and Founder of the Purcari Wineries Group. I'll go through some quick slides on the group. Perhaps some of you are more new, some of you know our group better. I'll just do a sort of a quick intro of the group. We have here a slide that sort of comprises the key aspects and messages when it comes to what our group is.
You see here that at the bottom of the chart, or the bottom of the slide in fact, you see that we have five companies that are part of the Purcari Wineries Group. In previous slides, we had four companies. We had Purcari as the premium brand. We had Crama Ceptura, sort of a brand that extends from mainstream to premium. We have Bostavan, the mainstream to medium premium brand. And we have Bardar, the premium brandy producer. Purcari, Bostavan and Bardar are in Moldova and Crama Ceptura is our winery in Romania. We've added to this list a new company, and that's Domeniile Cuza. It's a newly founded company.
I'll get into perhaps more details in a bit, but basically the purpose of this company is to create a new brand and launch a new series of premium wines that are focused on capitalizing on our ability to create really fantastic wines at our wine making platforms in the south of Moldova. Quickly through the other points on this slide. We're very proud to say that in 2021, Château Purcari, part of Purcari Wineries, has become the most awarded winery in the world. Here we're speaking about the most important wine competitions in the world, such as Decanter, Mundus Vini and similar.
When we speak about medals and awards, we're also very proud to say that in the period of 2015 to 2021, Château Purcari remains the most awarded winery in Central and Eastern Europe at Decanter, which we call it the Olympics of wine. We remain a fast growing winery in Central and Eastern Europe. We dominate the premium segment in Romania. I think what's also important for other investors is to see that we have top-tier investors as part of our group of shareholders. Mr.
Bostan is the shareholder with 20%, and after that we have Horizon Capital, Fiera Capital, Conseq Investment Management, Pavăl Holding, Franklin Templeton, SEB and other similar top-tier investors. Currently as we stand, the sales mix is as is shown in the chart at the top, right. Romania holds 53% of the group sales. Moldova has recovered this year with now 19% of the sales of the group. Poland is at 8%. Then we have other markets such as Czechia, Slovakia, Ukraine, China, and other markets covering the rest of the sales. You can see that in the chart that shows the hectares. Well, let's say the kilo hectares or vineyards per region.
You can see that our group is situated in the region which ranks fourth in the whole Europe after France, Italy and Spain, and it ranks first in the Central and Eastern Europe when it comes to the availability of vineyards and of course, raw materials. From that perspective, if we do have that vision of becoming the champion in the Central and Eastern Europe in the business of wine, then we have definitely started in the right place. Very quickly on what I mentioned, the medals. We still see this as an important aspect of proving the quality of our wines. In here, we sort of see what the experts and the judges think of our wines.
From left you see that Purcari remains the most awarded winery in Central and Eastern Europe in the period of 2015 to 2021 at Decanter and on the right, you see that, you know, we are year-over-year increasing the number of medals that we receive at top five wine competitions in the world. That would be Mundus Vini, Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, Challenge International du Vin in Bordeaux, International Wine and Spirit Competition and Decanter.
We do see this as an important chart because, on one hand we do want to increase sales and increase revenues, but at the same time we are aware that we have a promise to keep to every customer that chooses a bottle of Purcari and with that we need to maintain and not only, but even increase the quality of our wines as volumes grow. You can imagine that doing this is not something that comes easy. That's why we do see that we have a competitive advantage here when comparing to our competitors in the fact that we're able to sell more, increase volumes, but also keep increasing the quality of our wines. That was what the experts think of us. This is what the consumers think of us.
I'll start with the right side of the chart. You know, one good platform that we like to benchmark against is Vivino. Many of you probably know. It is the leading wine rating platform in the world that many consumers use, where a consumer can just scan a bottle and will receive the information about the wine and will have the opportunity to give a score to the wine that he or she just tried.
Here we're proud to say that in Romania, which is the market with the majority of our sales, Purcari is leading with over 4.1 average rating for the winery and statistically very significant with close to 60,000 scores given by customers.
On the left, you know, as much as we believe that at the core of our success lies the quality of the wines that we produce and particularly the ratio of quality to price, we also understand that consumers like to associate with brands and we believe that we are good at creating vibrant and attractive brands and in the chart on the left we see that the mentions of Purcari is leading on Instagram compared to other wineries. We took Instagram because for now we believe this is where all the brands are present and this is where the cool stuff is happening. Probably in some future presentations we'll have to switch to TikTok. We'll have to see about that.
Remaining on Vivino, we are proud again to say that from the top 25 wines in the premium segment 30-60 RON in Romania, Purcari is taking the majority position with 12 out of this 25 and we've been keeping sort of this presence for the past years and we're planning to continue to do so. Again, on Vivino, a very nice chart showing the different geographies where there's an adoption and perhaps a loyalty and advocacy conversion of Purcari wines. When we speak about worldwide, Purcari, Château Purcari has an average score of 4.26 out of five. Now you can imagine this is an incredible high score, ranking us top 1% in the world.
Out of these scores, 83% of these scores are four or higher, and just this year in the first nine months, there were 78,000 scans of Purcari wines which is of course incredible. That's a 32% increase from the same period of last year. Just to give you another sort of perception on this, our wines have been scanned in more than 1,200 cities across the world. We'll move to the more juicy part. We'll go into the operational results. Again, I'll try to be succinct and to the point, and I'm expecting a good Q&A session after that. We're very happy to report the results.
We are showing 20% increase in sales in the first nine months versus the same period of last year. EBITDA has grown 32%, and we are now reaching an EBITDA margin of 35% and net income has grown 55% to RON 39.8 million now with a margin of 24%. Of course we are on one side aware that we are comparing to a relatively poor so to say, at least in our eyes, a relatively poor period of last year due to pandemic. We had the first time in a very long history a quarter which was the second quarter of 2020 which showed a decrease year-over-year. We had markets such as Moldova and China pretty much closing.
We know that we're comparing with a relatively modest year last year. Nonetheless, we do see these figures as very strong. What's incorporated also in these figures is let's say the fact that last year there was a more or less an unprecedented drought in Moldova, so the yield of the vineyards was very low, not only for us, but for other great producers. For that, last year, we have incurred a loss when reevaluating the fair value of the biological assets. This year, we have sort of a positive effect when comparing to last year. That's incorporated here at the EBITDA level and at the net profit level.
It's incorporated here, the effect of receiving another close to EUR 1 million from the sale of Glass Container Company , the year before that. Just quickly to cover this slide. I will not go through every line because I, in fact, I'm covering many of these comments in the slides to follow. Perhaps a few things to mention here is that we continue to have a very solid balance sheet. The net debt to EBITDA, in this case we're calculating the net debt to the last 12 months EBITDA, is at 0.67. This is a very good number, especially comparing to our internal benchmark of 1.5.
Just a reminder that what we've done in the third quarter was a dividend of 0.65 RON per share. We paid it on the 9th of September, and it accounted at the time of announcement as 5% yield. We've also offered and we issued the bonus shares. So one bonus share for every share that was held. We continued working with the market makers, and in fact, we continued working with the BRK Financial Group, and we extended the coverage of the market making services with BRK and Raiffeisen Centrobank starting in September.
In fact, this has led to an increase in liquidity of 8.2 times comparing to the period that preceded our cooperation with market makers. I think it's also worth to mention that Purcari is in the top five among the companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange when it comes to delivering or the yield generated by stock, with the price of our stock having increased by 40.91% from the beginning of this year.
Just one slide to add a bit of clarification because since we have some new entities as part of the group, we thought it was five, and to mention a few things about each of the companies that now are considered part of the group, and we are consolidating their results. The first one was Domeniile Cuza. I've already mentioned that this is, it's an important project for us. It's a project of premiumization of the wines produced at our winemaking facilities in the south of Moldova. And these are really the Crème de la crème, the best of the wines from that region.
So far, they are being in the process of being listed in Romania, and we're looking at listing them in other markets, too. Purcari Wineries Ukraine, this is an entity that we created in Ukraine, and the purpose of it is to provide to the group sales and marketing activities. We have now a team that is hired in a way by this entity. We have team members in the marketing area, team members in the sales, and team members in the trade marketing area. This is important because we do see Ukraine as an important market to generate a new platform for growth in the future.
It was natural that if we want to really take our presence to the next level is that we have a local team. The idea behind opening these local entities or starting building local teams is that there's the ability of us to grow exports into markets where we don't have presence may have maybe not a limit, but we'll have some friction over time when we don't have teams present in the field and on in the market. In a way, we're looking to replicate the formula of Romania, where a very strong local team has produced fantastic results and keeps producing them today as we speak. We have Eco Smart Life.
This is a company whose major activity is providing waste recycling management services. We were Purcari Wineries through Crama Ceptura was a 27% shareholder in this company starting March 2017. We have increased our participation in this company to currently 65.75%. One of the main reasons for this is that as the EU regulation and the EU requirements towards everything that has to do with sustainability with waste management is increasing. We know that costs on this side will be increased. Manufacturers will be forced to make use of such companies more and more in the future.
With the increase of this importance, we decided to increase our participation in this company and take more control of the process of how our waste is being managed. Bostavan, I'm mentioning it here just because we had a sort of, I'll call it a little cleanup, and we moved from 99.54% ownership in the company to 100% ownership, and we've paid a nominal fee to the party that was holding that small share of Bostavan. Okay. Let me see. That's the next slide. Now going a bit more into the grids of our results. Again, we're very happy just to post these numbers. 20% increase in revenue.
Cost of sales increasing slower than revenues at 16%, which have resulted in the gross profits increasing by 24%, now with a gross profit margin of 51%. One of the main reasons for the increase in margin was the change of the sales mix with more profitable sales were taking a higher share of our overall group sales. For example, China, for us, it's a very profitable market. As we started selling more in China, and particularly more Purcari wines, because in fact, there has been a shift now where more and more premium wines are being demanded in China. That has, for example, had a positive effect.
Other effects such as launching the Nocturne series with Purcari. This was launched in Romania and in Moldova. HoReCa being a more profitable channel than other channels, this has had also a positive impact. Overall, these different shifts in the sales mix have led to this improvement in the gross margin. On the SG&A, we have an increase of 29%. There's a few things that I incorporated in the SG&A.
We still have some reallocation from G&A to marketing and selling, but we also have the impact of the stock option plan that was approved by the AGM earlier this year, and it's incorporated as an expense in the SG&A. Nonetheless, it's worth to mention that we, yes, indeed, we have increased our marketing efforts this year in order to support the recovery in the markets such as Moldova, but also to make sure that we protect our market share and increase it further in markets such as Romania.
When it comes to the next year, I can mention that we do see the portion of the marketing expenses going further up because we, as you've seen here, and I'll show you a bit later, we have some important projects that require some marketing expense injection to make sure that we ramp up sales and we create a success out of them. Also here, the adjustment of the fair value of biological assets that I've mentioned before, it's at RON 0.4 versus the RON 3.1, so we have sort of a positive effect there when we go down to EBITDA.
EBITDA up 32% to RON 58.2 million, and net profit 55% up, RON 39.8 million. Again, in the net profit, we have also the effect of another close to 1 million RON received from the sale of Glass Container Company and this cash was received on the thirtieth of July this year. Okay, I think that slide is covered. Now moving on. Just I'll quickly cover each market separately. I've mentioned that for Romania, an important effect was the launch of Nocturne, the new series. It has had a tremendous success in the HoReCa channel. And the
In fact, the fact that Nocturne, the series, but also the Château is more profitable than our regular series. This has also led in contribution to the profitability. What's worth mentioning here perhaps is that we do have a certain issue with Lidl. Some members of the Lidl management in Romania have tried to get us into the discount game, and we have refused that because, of course, we understand that our brand is worth more than just generating some short-term sales. That has led to some, let's say, some halts in deliveries to Lidl Romania.
Unfortunately, this also has effect on Poland, so that decrease, minus 20% that you see in Poland, also is from the fact that the halt in this commercial freeze that we have with Lidl in Romania has also affected our deliveries of wines to Poland. Moldova, + 79%, so we're very happy to see this rebound. We're fairly satisfied with the sales. We're still 4% under the pre-COVID year, so 2019, we're still minus 4%. Nonetheless, we do see this as a very positive result, because there's still certain restrictions when it comes to HoReCa.
For example, even recently, weddings and other events with 50 or more people have been banned, and we in fact may see some effect of that in the fourth quarter. That's why we also will keep the guidance where it is as you'll see in one of the slides that I have prepared later. When we move to Poland, I've mentioned Lidl. Lidl is one effect of this negative number. The second effect is Tesco. As you know, Tesco was acquired by Netto, and in fact now the whole acquisition is complete. All the rebranding is happening or close to completion. All the Tesco stores in Poland are now Netto.
We are working now with Netto to reestablish our presence in those points of sale. The other contributor to a negative number here unfortunately was a certain reduced commercial activity with Biedronka. Similar situation, Biedronka, there was some pressure on price that already started in late 2020. Earlier this year, some of the SKUs they were interrupted, so they were no longer acquired and no longer delivered. The good news is that after you know quite a few months of discussion and renegotiation, Biedronka has agreed to restock again with our full portfolio.
We do see that the fourth quarter should see a positive impact from our partnership with the Biedronka. Other partners are all showing growth. Overall, even though Poland is showing a negative number, overall, we do see that our position is fairly strong. Nonetheless, we know that in Poland, the main product that, well, let's say the main winery from our portfolio of wineries that sells to Poland is Bostavan. These are still lower margins products. We are working on one side by launching new products, but also working with our partners in Poland to slowly increase prices, especially with some sign of inflation in the future.
I'm sure I'll get some questions about that later, so we can go into that in a bit. Asia, in China, we are still not recovered to the figures of 2019, so we're still -43% when we compare to the nine months of 2019. While we have increased versus 2020, +17%. It's still, China was always a difficult market, and I'm sure you've heard me saying this before, it's a continuous grinding, it's not the sort of market where you have a few steady importers or distributors. It's continuous work, and we do believe that the team here is doing a really good job in making sure that the sales are being pushed.
As I mentioned, the share of premium wines is increasing in China, which also is a contribution to our gross margin. Czech Republic and Slovakia, in fact here we're combining, but we do have some decrease in Slovakia in particular. That is due to some pressure from competition on price dumping, as well as a price reduction and many discounts in this period. But in Czech Republic, in fact, with our partners that are distributing on the territory of Czechia, we do see an increase, but with the effect of Tesco, so if we were to include here Tesco, then we do see a decrease in the numbers.
Ukraine, we have a modest +7%, but we are actually comparing to a very strong 2020. So these numbers are. They could be better, but now with the fact that we have teams on the ground, we do see that and it's the long battle that we are after. We do see that the long battle will be fighting well with the team on the ground. Very quickly on the brands, now Purcari is at 50% share of sales, so it has increased from 44% if I remember correctly the year before the year before that. So Purcari is showing that the adoption of this brand is very high in all markets. That's a positive thing.
Bostavan is at 22% share of sales. It has decreased versus the nine months of last year with 6%. In fact, as you can see here, Purcari going up 34%, Bostavan down 6%, and this mix in our group numbers has also had that positive effect on the gross margin. Similar with Kamchatka and Bardar.
Kamchatka up 17% and Bardar up 37% when comparing to last year, but still not fully recovered when we compare to 2019. From this perspective, you can see also the need for new directions and the need for products such as Domeniile Cuza and also products such as Wine Prime, which we have one snippet in the one slide, but maybe I'll also show you the product in a slide but before the analysis. In fact, you have the presentation, so you can see that. Worth mentioning, we are done with the harvest. The harvest was an improvement from last year. On the group level, we increased our harvest by 42%.
We know that we're comparing, as I mentioned, to a relatively poor year when it comes to the harvest last year, which was a year of drought, and actually the drought has started already in 2019. We have managed to supply ourselves with raw materials enough to supply a very ambitious growth next year and the year after that, because for the reds, we have to plan for two years in advance. We are satisfied with the result of the harvest. It's not as good as the harvest, as you can see here, from 2019, 2018 and 2017.
We have, as I said, we managed to fill up our wineries, and we are prepared to grow in 2022. When it comes to the yield, the irrigation system is an important investment for us, and we are planning to do this in 2022 and 2023, primarily for Bostavan and potentially for Purcari as well, because we want to, on one hand, protect the yields, protect the vineyards, because the ultimate risk is that they die or a portion of them dies. That's where the importance of the irrigation system is. Also, I was speaking to a quite prominent wine critic recently, and she has mentioned that...
I've asked her about you know is the irrigation of vineyards something that goes into the detriment of a premium wine? In fact, she said the opposite. In fact, it's quite accepted in the esteemed wine critic world for vineyards to have irrigation specifically because it's also possible to control the way the grapes react to stress, and then you have the more soothing, more palatable wines produced from wines that are irrigated. That was one of our concerns when it comes to putting a irrigation system at Purcari, but we had plans to do it anyway, but we had another confirmation from this person as well.
To mention on our work with BRK and Raiffeisen for market making services, you see here that we are very happy with the initiation of the cooperation with BRK, and we're happy to add on top of that or to that Raiffeisen Centrobank. We're looking at the efficiency of having two market makers because we were the first, and I believe still the only issuer or the only listed company on the Bucharest Stock Exchange that works with two market makers. We do see that, in fact, there's quite an efficiency in cost and the way we manage to structure the cooperation with both entities.
In fact, we see an increase from the addition of Raiffeisen as a market maker in liquidity. What's important to show here is that when we speak about liquidity as a percentage of the total stock, we are the second most liquid company on the Bucharest Stock Exchange after TeraPlast. Of course, when it comes to absolute numbers, perhaps that's not necessarily the case, but when we speak in relative terms, we are the second most liquid company on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. That's important because we have a sort of a milestone that we want to achieve, and that is the inclusion of Purcari in the FTSE Russell small-cap index.
I'll ring the bell one more time. Purcari is the world's most awarded winery in 2021. I believe to date, Château Purcari has received 367 medals. This is an amazing result. Even though it perhaps is not, it's not the absolute proof of us being the best of the best in the world, it certainly shows the strength of our Purcari and the ability to become a world you know a winery that competes on the world stage. I mentioned marketing, for us, it's important to stay relevant, to stay engaging with our consumers. On one side is to come up with or release new products that cater to perhaps different segments.
With Domeniile Cuza, we bring a beautiful story of Alexandru Ioan Cuza creating or making the peasants in the village of Alexander von Cuza the only sort of fully Romanian village that is in the Republic of Moldova. Alexander von Cuza, the ruler who has united the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, in 1864 he has made the peasants owners of their own land. This is when the beginning of the history of winemaking in that region truly starts to flourish. It's a beautiful story and a beautiful message that we bring with this series of wines coming from Domeniile Cuza. We have launched a product called Wine Prime.
It's launched on three markets for now. It's Romania, Moldova and Ukraine. It has shown very good, very positive signals from the market. In fact, we've heard we had the sales director saying it's the first time that I see the buyers being so excited and aggressive in asking for the product to be delivered as soon as possible because we did some teaser campaigns and some presence at events, and the consumers were already engaged and waiting for the product to arrive on the shelves. Also the Nocturne, the launch of this HoReCa series, has proven a great success both in Romania and in Moldova. It's undergoing.
In the middle there at the bottom, you see we've rebranded the DOR brand part of Bostavan Winery. The intention is to continue the path of making it a local national brand. So far we see a great potential. Then of course, we're doing fun stuff such as the Purcari Wine Run, and we are the sponsor. In this case, you see the sponsor of the National Olympic Committee. We are supporting sending athletes. We have supported sending athletes to Tokyo, but also we're supporting the community in many different ways through our CSR activities. We're getting to the outlook, basically the guidance that we have issued at the beginning of the year.
At the moment, we will maintain our guidance, so we will continue, let's say presenting a guidance towards you of a 12%-14% increase in the organic revenue. Now, just quick math, that would mean that in the fourth quarter, if we are flat versus the quarter of 2020, then we'll be at 14%. In fact, we do want to be that precautious. I know we have received questions about this, about are we being too precautious when it comes to our guidance of growth.
We prefer to remain precautious because, yes, there's still a month and a half left in this year, but for example, with Bardar, sales relying a lot on events in Moldova, and there's still uncertainty of what's going to happen with consumption in HoReCa, on-premises consumption in Romania and other markets. We prefer to stay cautious, and we'll continue with a guidance of 12%-14%. Similar on the EBITDA margin and the net income, there's still.
Yes, we posted the stronger margins for the first nine months, but we are still, let's say, relatively precautious when it comes to inflation, to pressure on prices, and to necessity to support sales with the trade activities in the fourth quarter of this year. For now, of course, we also, on the other hand, we didn't want to complicate things because in these uncertain times, for us to go into an exercise of trying to model it and fully come up with a new guidance that is well justified, we decided that it's the right approach to just stay with the guidance that we have offered before.
This is for me at the moment. I'd like to thank you for your attention. I'll just quickly show you the product, Wine Prime, which customers are so excited about. Thank you again, and I'd like to open the discussion with some question and answer. I think the way to do it, either we go and read some comments. How about the Russian market in the near future? All right. I'll take the first question. That's a very good question. We have started some efforts towards the Russian market. Of course, we have burned twice. Purcari Wineries has burned twice with the Russian market, one time in 2006 with the first embargo and the second time in 2013. Nonetheless, we cannot neglect this market.
It's an important market. It has a potential to create similar sales as the whole Europe. We are not neglecting. We have a cooperation going, but we're still, we're yet to see the sales to ramp up. We have made an initial delivery, so the sales have started, but we'll take it in a more, let's say, more paced way and yeah, we'll have to see how sales pick up in Russia, but we are giving attention to that market as well. What cost inflation are you seeing? So far we have not done any particular modeling on the cost inflation.
It's not final, but we are looking at somewhere between 5%-15% increase in costs next year. This is not official, so this is just our first internal look at how 2022 may look. We're taking a few things into consideration. We saw what happened with the situation with this gas crisis, so to speak. We're not a particular gas intensive producer, so we don't produce a lot of gas. It's quite negligible. Of course, our suppliers of perhaps glass and carton and so on may see some pressure.
Of course, we will make sure that we have the right relationships and the right negotiation, not only with one party, but with multiple parties that are supplying these elements of our products, to make sure that we do not have a strong impact when it comes to price increases from our suppliers. In the global inflation effect, the cost of COVID, what is the price policy for the following period? Will you pass through inflation to the end customers? How will you account for the inflation heterogeneity in the different markets? Yes, we will have to protect our margins, and most probably we will have to increase some of the price.
Of course, we will analyze this on a per market basis and per product basis. But overall, the answer is yes, we are foreseeing some price increases from us to our distributors in 2020. When did this commercial freeze with Lidl start? If I'm not mistaken, it was somewhere in February when the situation has started, and I think the last few months there was a bit of a freeze, yeah. Do you see a significant impact on sales in the fourth quarter and further on in 2022 due to this freeze? Do we see any effect in the fourth quarter? Now, of course, we value the partnership that we have with Lidl. To us, this is an important partner.
We would want to continue working with Lidl, as any one producer would say. This is an important chain in the Romanian market, but also it has effects for other of our markets. Nonetheless, we need to state our position when it comes to protecting our brand and to the way our products are being priced. You can imagine that, you know, there's quite a competition between the key accounts as well, so between retail chains when it comes to pricing. We cannot allow an imbalance in the price to be in any of the markets.
We make sure that the prices that we offer to one retail account is equal to the prices that other of our partners receive. We do foresee that probably most of the sales that are lost from Lidl will move to other accounts. In a way, I have to say that probably somewhere the loss will be more on the side of Lidl because again, well, we are already seeing that some of the sales are moving to other accounts. We do have our hopes are high that we will reestablish the commercial cooperation with Lidl in Romania. Hello, may we get an update on the premiumization of Bostavan?
For example, the product Wine Prime that I mentioned is a product of Bostavan, primarily from when we speak about exports, from Moldova to other markets. In Romania, it's actually produced by Crama Ceptura. For example, this is a product in the very high segment, so around 1/3 of our sales is in the rosé segment. In the fairly high segment of rosé, having this relatively high-priced product is important, both for creating premiumization from Bostavan but also even from Crama Ceptura. We also hear a lot about price pressures from retailers. Does that relate mainly to Bostavan, also other more premium segments? That's primarily Bostavan. Historically, Bostavan has played in this more mass market segments.
Even though now we've done many studies in different markets, I can tell you which in Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, and Moldova. It was obvious that for all of our brands, if we have a chart with the price on the X and quality on the Y, then consumers consistently perceive the products that come from Purcari Wineries Group above the average. It will be above this diagonal line of the average ratio of quality to price. Even Bostavan, even though at lower prices, is perceived as a higher quality. But we know that, you know, this price thickness is very difficult to create a price increase per se.
The approach is to come up with new brands that change the sales mix in the long term rather than just pushing the consumer to pay for the same product at a higher price. How much do you sell via Lidl in Romania? This is confidential, I'm afraid, I cannot mention that. In terms of future capital expenditures, could you provide some details on your guidance? When we speak about CapEx, for this year, we'll be in line with our budget and forecast. We were planning around RON 24 million of CapEx investment this year. It will be around that.
For next year, due to the fact that there's the irrigation system project starting, and we have some investment that are being also subsidized at Crama Ceptura. We will have somewhere around 25-30 million RON probably next year in terms of CapEx investment. I'm a bit losing the track. Yes, Domeniile Cuza is example of premium indeed. Domeniile Cuza is another example of creating premium wines. These are indeed really fantastic wines from the south. It's the same parallel as Bordeaux. The reds are absolutely amazing, but so are the whites, I will say. We have really high hopes for Domeniile Cuza.
Are you considering to reuse the bottles and invest in a facility to wash them in the case of Lăptăria cu Caimac? Not at the moment. It has not been something that we have taken into consideration because the whole collection may become a difficulty. With now being a majority shareholder in Eco Smart Life, which focuses on recycle on waste recycle services, there is one small part of its business; it's also the collection the collection of including glass. This may become a subject where we're actually looking into the option of becoming sort of closing a bit the cycle and collecting the glass and recycling.
Something to be looked at, but we have not looked at this at the moment, so I cannot say even how feasible this is at the moment. What was the effect of the participation in the online site acquisition? The, the investment in 8Wines that we have done earlier was on one side an investment, sort of a financial investment, because we believe that the company is going to grow and it has a high potential for growth because the purchases of wine will move more and more to the online channel. We can see that, for example, even Vivino being just a platform to rate wines now has moved aggressively into selling wines online.
This is definitely the future or if not the whole future, it will be a part, an important part of the future. That's why we are in the company. Secondly, it does give us certain insights in terms of what wines sell, how they sell, average prices, in which markets certain brands are being sold. It's an insight that may help us in the future. Hi, and congrats on the strong results. How do you see EBITDA margins evolve full year 2020? Is it sustainable or expect to revert towards guidance levels? We definitely, as I mentioned, we do see some potential pressure on the cost side. For that, we probably have to remain prudent.
Of course, we'll do our best to come out with the guidance for our investors. We would see some pressure on the cost side. I would remain prudent when it comes to our EBITDA levels. I would say the EBITDA levels would be what they have been historically for the last couple of years. Can you give an update on the expansion of production at Château Purcari? Yes, we have doubled our capacity. Moving from a 5 million bottle capacity, we have now increased to a 10 million bottle capacity. We are well geared to supply growth for the next, I hope, only a couple of years.
Up to 10 million bottles, we're able to produce at Château Purcari. Why was the irrigation investment delayed? How much euro is contemplated over what period? We're looking at around EUR 1 million, between EUR 1 million-EUR 1.5 million for Purcari, and around between EUR 2 million-EUR 2.5 million at Bostavan. That's the investment. They will be spread over two years, over 2022 and 2023. Now we do see the investment in the irrigation as a relatively, you know, high ROI. Well, let's say a very quick breakeven point from this investment.
Because if you were to just calculate, you know, the delta of yield, if you were to have the irrigation versus if you would not have the irrigation, then you see that the loss of yield, what I mean in grapes, grape yield, then you recover the investment in, you know, potentially, two years or maybe three, at most maybe four years. It's an investment that we generally see almost as a no-brainer. Capital structure is conservative. Any major investments or acquisitions M&A contemplated? Yes, we're very active on the M&A side. Now, of course, I cannot give you too many details, but what I can say again is that we're looking at a few areas, Romania, and Moldova.
These are the home markets we are looking for for M&A opportunities here. You've probably heard also in maybe some interview with Mr. Bostan and also me mentioning in other presentations is that we are also looking at Bulgaria and other markets which are closer to our geography. Because you know one approach to becoming the champion in Central and Eastern Europe is to export from your home markets into all these regions. Also another approach is to also have a foothold in those markets. The strategy would be to create local champions first. Following that is to create exports from those locations.
In terms of credit facilities, do you think that Purcari will continue to finance in RON-denominated loans or just in Moldovan lei, USD and euro, as it is in the last period? This is perhaps more a question for our CFO. At the moment, I know that the structure that we have is to a certain extent trying to, let's say, do this natural hedging versus our sales. Yes, it could be something to consider. Of course, we would imagine that if we were to have loans in RON, they'll be more expensive than what we have in euro.
Sure, you have the depreciation of the RON, you have the inflation being on your side, but that will be incorporated in the higher cost of the capital. Something to consider. Regarding the dividends, do you have a set dividend policy for the next year? Now, I'm not mentioning about the next year per se, but I will mention that our dividend policy is to pay out up to 50% of the net profits generated by the business. We have made one exception, and that was in 2020, and there was a reason for that because that was the moment of decision for issuing the dividend just as the pandemic was starting.
It was obvious that the decision was made with your support, of course, to not issue dividends and to make sure that we have a strong balance sheet during the pandemic. This year we have paid a dividend with a yield of 5% at the moment of it being announced. In the future, we do intend to keep our policy of paying out up to 50% because we understand the necessity of us creating a positive, strong yield to our investors. Also internally, you know, the discipline of making sure that we generate cash to be able to pay out such dividends.
Overall, we don't have a specific policy for next year, but we are maintaining our policy of paying out up to 50% of the net profits generated. What COGS to expect in the fourth quarter, 2021 as percentage of sales? Will the effects of last year's poor harvest be felt in the fourth quarter more notably? Not necessarily the effect of last year's poor harvest in the fourth quarter. It's not particularly that will be noticed in the fourth quarter. We do try to reflect, so we don't really try, but a portion of the effect of the poor harvest is reflected also through the adjustment of the fair value of biological assets that we do every year.
Last year we had, if I remember correctly, it was a 3.8 total, if I remember correctly, negative effect, RON 3.8 million, negative effect from the revaluation of the fair value of biological assets. Overall, yes, these higher costs go into the inventories and then go in COGS. Also as we sell more red wine, the red wines, they accumulate more cost through the depreciation of the equipment that is being used in the winemaking process. I do not expect to see a significant COGS movement unless there is a shift or some kind of change in the sales mix. Thank you for the response. It was really helpful.
My last question, do you think the working capital management can be improved, or the last years could be a relevant proxy for the next years? I would say the previous years is a good proxy for the years to come, especially with the fact that we keep increasing our stocks due to the fact that we have to fuel growth. The ratios of working capital to sales will probably stay the same in the future. Regarding Bulgaria, are you looking at potential candidates at the moment, or are you already working, negotiating on a deal? I would say we are in the potential candidates, but we do have some interested parties.
What drove the increase in gross margin in the third quarter of 2021? What should we expect in terms of sales for Poland going forward? Further one-offs expected for the fourth quarter 2021. I'll start with the last one. I do not foresee any other big one-offs because, for example, the fair value of biological assets that was accounted for, the stock option plan that was accounted for. The cash received from the glass container sales that was accounted for. We don't see any significant one-offs unless there's some reallocation. Again, if Victor Arapan, the CFO, needs to add, perhaps he can add, but I do not see any additional one-offs that will hit us in the fourth quarter.
When it comes to the gross margin in the third quarter, it was the mix of sales. Sales to China, the launch of Nocturne, and the increase in sales of Purcari—this has led to, and at the same time, unfortunately, some decrease in sales of Bostavan. This has led to a shift in the sales mix and an increase in the margins. What should we expect in terms of sales for Poland going forward? We do see some increase. October alone, we do see high double digits versus October of last year. The fact that we have resumed our business as usual with the Biedronka, that's also a positive thing.
We'll miss the sales from Tesco as they were before, but as I mentioned, the team is in discussions with Netto to get our presence back in those points of sale. Okay, if there are no more questions. By the way, I also welcome voice questions so that we get to hear each other. If there are no more questions, then I'd like to thank you for your attention today. Just to mention that you can count continuously on the commitment of the management of the company to continue delivering on your investment in Purcari Wineries. Thank you very much.