Good afternoon, welcome to Alicorp's fourth quarter 2022 results conference call. I will now hand over to Manuel Romero to begin the presentation.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome and thanks for joining us today. I would like to start this call introducing Alvaro Rojas, who has recently been appointed as Managing Director of Corporate Finance and IRO at Alicorp. Alvaro has a notable professional career within the company, with approximately 16 years of experience in which he has led marketing and sales teams in our consumer goods vice presidency in Peru and Brazil, most recently working as our Regional Director of Marketing and Innovation. Alvaro, please go ahead.
Thank you, Manuel. Good morning, everyone. We are very pleased that you can join us today. As presenters today, we will have Mr. Alfredo Pérez , Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Manuel Romero, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Patricio Jaramillo, Vice President of Consumer Goods and Innovation, and other members of the senior management team who will join us during the Q&A session. Today, we will be discussing the fourth quarter 2022 results after the financial results and earnings reports we issued on Wednesday. If you have not received a copy of the earnings report, please visit us at www.alicorp.com.pe, where you will also find the webcast presentation to accompany our discussion during this call. Please be advised that today's call is for investors and analysts only. Therefore, questions from the media will not be taken.
If you're a member of the media and wish to direct any questions to the company, please contact us directly after the call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that forward-looking statements may be made during this conference call. These forward-looking statements are based on several assumptions and factors that could change, causing the actual report to materially differ from current expectations. We ask that you refer to the disclaimer located in the earnings release prior to making any investment decision. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Alfredo Pérez, Chief Executive Officer at Alicorp, who will begin the presentation. Alfredo, please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Alicorp fourth quarter 2022 earnings call today. In today's call, I will discuss the fourth quarter and the full year 2022 results. I would like to start by giving you an overview of the most important events that have taken place over the last few months, followed by an update on our cost structure, key performance indicators for the year, and a macro overview of the main geographies where we operate. We'll move forward on to consolidated results. Patricio Manuel will afterwards cover our financial research by business unit. As always, at the very end, before the Q&A section, I will take the floor again for an update on our guidance for 2023.
At the end, we'll start now with slide number 5 to cover the most relevant external factors impacting our business performance. As we have covered during our last calls, over the past year, Peru has been through several political crisis. In December 2022, after the former President of Peru, Mr. Pedro Castillo, failed in his unconstitutional attempt to dissolve Congress, as well as calling for elections for a new constituent Congress and the intervention of certain public entities, he was impeached by the majority of the legislative body, deriving in Dina Boluarte, the former Vice President, to take office as President of Peru, as mandated in the Constitution's succession mandate. Initially, President Boluarte showed her intention to remain in office until the end of the government period in 2026.
This was not well received by part of the population, leading to several product protests and violent events over the last two months. These protests have taken place mainly in the south of the country, where several roads have been blocked and there have been several attempts to disrupt critical infrastructure. This context has prevented the normal course of transit and economic activities in the south. It is important to mention that the distribution of our products, mainly in our consumer goods Peru business, has not been materially affected by these roadblocks. We have incurred in additional logistic costs. The impact on our crushing business in Bolivia has been higher, as we will discuss during this presentation.
While the debate in Congress for early general elections continues, it is unlikely that they will take place in 2023 as parties in Congress fail to reach consensus. If President Boluarte resigns as a result of the protests, Congress must call for immediate elections within six months after her resignation. Regarding the inflationary context, Peru's annual general inflation rate reached 8.6% year-over-year in 2022, while the food and beverage component reached 15.2% in the same period. Prices continue to increase, affecting Peruvian household disposable income, we anticipate consumers will continue prioritizing their expenses and reducing out-of-home consumption. Let's move on to slide 6 for an update on our cost structure. You know, since mid-2020, we've begun to experience significant increases in international commodity prices.
This scenario continued during the 2021 and 2022 periods, adding more pressure on our margins, mainly in categories with an important component of wheat, soybean oil, soybean meal, among others. Agricultural commodities became even more relevant within our cost structure, increasing its portion of total costs, excluding the crushing business, in 10 percentage points from 53% in Q1 2021 to 63% in Q4 2022. Total costs per metric ton, excluding the crushing business, increased 20% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2022. Despite those negative effects, we have been able to deliver a positive trend in our profitability over the last quarters. Gross profit per metric ton, excluding the crushing business, registered a 22% increase year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2022.
It is important to mention that the reduction versus Q3 2022 is mainly explained by losses related to obsolete products. On a full year basis, we continue to recover volumes outperforming pre-pandemic levels. As mentioned in previous calls, we continue to closely monitor international commodity market dynamics and practice active and constant hedging of our most representative agricultural commodities. This allows us to ensure optimal commodity procurement to minimize further increases in our cost structure. Our strategy aims at layering our exposure and providing the necessary visibility for our business units to react to the cost evolution through pricing, other revenue management initiatives, and efficiency strategies. These positive results highlight the resilience and competitive advantages of our business, the strength of our brands, our strong distribution capabilities, as well as our hedging strategy. Let's move on to slide seven to review some performance indicators for full year 2022.
The challenging context that we have been facing over the last years, Alicorp has adapted to constant changes and circumstances, showing its resilience and ability to deliver strong results by leveraging our competitive advantages strategically developed over the years. We are proud that all of our hard work has translated into positive results despite the headwinds already discussed. While consolidated revenue grew 56% versus pre-pandemic levels, reflecting mainly inflation, inflationary pressures, we highlight our EBITDA in 2022 outperformed 2009 EBITDA by 27%. This would not have been possible without the efficiency program launched in 2021. This program has allowed us to counterbalance raw material pressures within our costs, with SG&A representing a smaller portion of sales and gross profit. Additionally, efforts in SKU rationalization and design-to-value initiatives have played an important role in our path to recover historical levels of profitability.
Regarding our strategic initiatives, we're glad to see how our digital projects continue to consolidate, leveraging on our first-class capabilities. Insuma, Día a Día and DataPro Ventures aims to continue to put Alicorp ahead of the digital transformation. On the innovation front, our recent launch in the haircare platform, Amarás, has delivered excellent results in the first four months on the market. Later, we will discuss in detail the most relevant achievements of Amarás. We remain confident that these initiatives will continue accelerating growth in our current geographies and provide attractive returns in the medium and long term. Finally, regarding corporate awards, during 2022, Alicorp has been recognized as one of the best companies to attract and retain talent, and one of the most admired companies in Peru. Additionally, we were included in the S&P/BVL Peru General ESG Index.
These recognitions and achievements motivate us to continue working in line with our purpose of feeding a better tomorrow. Let's move on to slide eight to discuss economic conditions in the main regions where we operate. Most economies experienced a significant recovery during 2021 after a very challenging 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, economies of the main geographies where we operate, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, exhibited moderate growth in terms of GDP and private consumption, and a similar trend is expected in 2023. Current outlooks considers lower growth rates mainly due to higher interest rates to quell inflation and also because of social political turmoil. Peruvian consumer confidence, and therefore market dynamism, is expected to remain below an optimistic threshold, despite improvement exhibited in the last 2 months.
According to the Peruvian central bank, the estimated inflation rate for 2023 will exceed 5% for the third consecutive year. This scenario will continue to affect household disposable income and lead to certain market contractions and preference for products with the best value for our clients' money. Let's now discuss our consolidated results for the fourth quarter 2022 on slide number 10. Consolidated re-revenue reached PEN 4.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, outperforming by 16% the same period of 2021, mainly driven by solid performance of our aqua feed and consumer goods Peru units. B2B also exhibited an important increase year-over-year.
On a full year basis, revenue increased 26% year-over-year and volume 5%, reflecting higher revenue in our business units with a remarkable performance in aqua feed and crushing business. Moving on to profitability. Let's now review our consolidated EBITDA for the fourth quarter 2022 on slide number 11. Consolidated EBITDA exceeds a 13% increase for the quarter when compared to the same period in 2021, mainly explained by the strong performance of our aqua feed and Consumer Goods Peru units. This growth is partially offset by a decrease in EBITDA on the Consumer Goods International business, mainly explained by the continuous pressure on our cost structure, pricing regulations in Bolivia, and the investment to grow our go-to-market reach in both Bolivia and Ecuador.
Full year EBITDA increased a strong 23% year-on-year, mainly boosted by the performance of our aqua feed and crushing business units. Let's now review our consolidated net income for the fourth quarter 2022 on slide number 12. Consolidated net income increased PEN 408 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. It's important to mention that the increase is mainly explained by the base effect in the fourth quarter of 2021 due to the sale of our operations in Brazil or Argentina. Excluding the effect of the discontinued operations, net income reached a 19% increase year-on-year, mainly explained by higher operating profit, partially offset by the effect of our FX and hedging costs.
On a full year basis, net income increased PEN 562 million, excluding discontinued operations, full year net income increased 36%, reaching PEN 554 million. As mentioned in previous calls, we continue to focus our efforts on simplifying our business and prioritizing key initiatives to generate the most value and return to our shareholders. Let me pass the floor over to Patricio, who will discuss the operating results of our CGP and CGI businesses.
Thank you, Alfredo. Let's begin with an update on CGP market dynamics on slide number 14. For the fourth quarter of 2022, Peru's GDP is expected to grow 2.8% year-over-year, with private consumption growing only 1.9%. Despite signs of a struggling economy and constant political turmoil, Alicorp delivers again outstanding revenue growth of 22.4% year-over-year for the quarter. We are consistently outperforming the market and continuing to recover historical margins and volume platforms. The business strategy designed and implemented at the end of 2021 continues to deliver results, improving the performance of our businesses and strengthening our brands.
This path of recovery is reflected in our financial performance during the fourth quarter, in which we continue to improve year-on-year in key markets and financial metrics across the P&L, mainly driven by an effective revenue management efforts in terms of pricing, design-to-value strategies that helped partially mitigate cost impacts, and increased marketing investments aimed at recovering market share in key categories. In addition, we also executed efficiencies in our SG&A expenses that have allowed us to achieve an outstanding two times growth in EBITDA for the quarter when compared to last year. These results highlight that we are in the right track to recover our historical profitability levels. Our strategy will continue to be focused on defending our core brands in a more challenging social and economic environment.
We will strengthen our efforts on highlighting our value-added products, differentiation versus key competitors, coupled with multi-tier pricing strategies to maximize our top and bottom line. We have also reignited innovation across many categories, such as detergents, sauces, cookies, and stain removers. Regarding channel mix, our split continues to favor the traditional channel, which contributes to our profitability, allowing us to continue to increase our gross profit per ton while lowering our cost to serve. On this end, we will continue deploying digital strategies under the Día a Día initiative to accelerate its growth and double down on maximizing visibility, assortment, and product mix of key categories at the point of sale.
Finally, we continue to see positive results in our market share readings, especially in the modern trade when compared to last year, in which we have maintained or gained value share in 75% of our categories in 2022. We have gained share points in edible oils, cookies and crackers, cooking sauces, and bleach. We are starting to map important share gains in shampoo and conditioners after the launch of our new brand, Amarás, which we will comment next. Let's move on to slide 15 to comment on the first results and achievements of Amarás. Aligned with our goal of delivering first-class value propositions, and after several years of hard work and collective team effort, in October 2022, we launched our new personal care brand, Amarás, the first line of hair care products specially designed for Peruvian women.
This launch represents a milestone for our company, since global players and local competitors have not yet developed products with similar characteristics. This journey started with a very exhaustive research plan, where we discovered and addressed consumer needs in this segment during our consumer-centric innovation process. This is a clear example of our design thinking capabilities, which allow us to capitalize market opportunities through relevant innovation investments. Our differentiated value proposition combines the following features that will allow us to strengthen our position in the personal care market. First, we will use natural and local nutritious ingredients that were not present in products available on the market. Second, taking into account specific Peruvian consumer needs, we will have considered local weather and water conditions in Peru. Both factors in Peru are fairly unique and have significant impact on performance of hair care products.
First results achieved reflect our ability to develop top quality products directly addressing the specific needs of our consumers. After deployment of our marketing and sales campaigns, we have achieved almost 10% of value share in supermarkets during the first month of our introduction. In the traditional trade, we're now reaching more than 85,000 points of sales with an average of client repurchasing numbers between 30% and 40%, in line with our most successful launches. Finally, our digital marketing strategy has been outstanding, generating viral impacts of more than 300 organic videos with over 7.2 million views in TikTok. In other social media, our positive sentiment is higher than 85% with an average of a 15% engagement rate. Let's move on to the financial performance of our consumer goods Peru unit on slide 16, please.
For the fourth quarter, revenue grew 22% versus last year, predominantly driven by pricing initiatives in several categories to partially offset raw material increases in soybean oil, wheat, and palm oil, better call volume mix of products sold, and a channel mix improvement. Our gross profit per ton increased 40% year-over-year, with higher gross margin per metric ton of PEN 1,593 soles versus PEN 1,139 soles for the same period last year. On a full year basis, revenue grew 18%. While gross margin lost 1.9 percentage points, gross profit per metric ton increased 12%. These results show our strong focus on margins per ton as a guideline, since the significant increases in COGS challenge the viability of maintaining an increased percentage margins.
EBITDA for the fourth quarter increased almost 2 x versus last year, and 17% on a full year basis versus the same period of 2021. For the fourth quarter of 2022, EBITDA reached the amount of PEN 101 million. Let's move on to slide number 17, Consumer Goods International Market Dynamics. Regarding our Consumer Goods International unit, we continue to focus on our home care category expansion and strengthening our go-to-market initiatives to accelerate growth both in Bolivia and Ecuador. In Bolivia, we're delivering significant top-line growth in our home care platform, mainly driven by a 26% increase in volume year-on-year. We have taken several pricing initiatives in categories impacted by high commodity prices, such as large and margarines.
Our new decks in Cochabamba is up and running in our addition to our two new initiatives in La Paz and are already running initiative in Santa Cruz. As such, we continue expanding our direct distribution model, now reaching more than 15,000 points of sales using analytics as a key tool to deploy digital strategies to accelerate growth. It is important to mention also that we have implemented a new compensation model for direct sales team that will leverage an innovation, mix improvement and execution to boost sales. Finally, our pasta third-party local manufacturing for Nutregal started in the last quarter, which have helped us increase our category profitability, giving us more production flexibility while also improving our working capital. In Ecuador, revenue grew 20% on a full year base compared to last year, reaching monthly historic heights.
We continue to highlight the positive role of our go-to-market strategy that has enabled us to reach 15,000 clients. This is a significant increase versus the 5,000 clients we were reaching at the beginning of 2022 with our previous distribution model. Finally, we would like to highlight the airing of our marketing campaigns for Don Vittorio, Nutregal and Sapolio detergents. These have helped us achieve over 50% of volume growth as a sum of those brands compared to the monthly average we had before the campaigns. All in all, our go-to-market strategies in Bolivia and Ecuador are being rolled out successfully across both geographies. This is a consequence of years of experience and learnings gained in Peru and extraordinary efforts of strong local leadership teams that leverage corporate capabilities under the one Alicorp mindset.
Let's move on to the performance of consumer goods Bolivia on slide 18. Bolivia's revenue remained basically flat year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2022 and grew 4% on a full-year base. In our home care platform, revenue increased 22% year-over-year, and in the fourth quarter 2022, gross profit increased 22%, reflecting the positive results of the strategies deployed to increase the profitability and volume growth of this platform. EBITDA fell 71% in the fourth quarter 2022, and 46% on a full-year base when compared to 2021 due to lower gross profit in our edible oil category, explained by higher commodity costs and price controls in Bolivia. In addition, we had higher SG&A expenses. However, importantly, our EBITDA, excluding edible oils, reached a 9% growth year-over-year for the fourth quarter.
Let's move on to the performance of consumer goods, Ecuador, on slide 19. Ecuador's revenue grew 33% year-on-year in the fourth quarter, fueled by volume growth, pricing initiatives, and gross net efficiencies to offset higher commodity prices. Full year EBITDA versus last year same period decreased due to higher SG&A expenses. However, these were mainly related to marketing incurred to fuel future volume and revenue growth. Now, let me pass the floor over to Manuel, who will discuss the operating results for our B2B aqua feed and crushing businesses, as well as our liquidity and credit ratings.
Thank you, Patricio. Let's move to slide 20 for an update on our B2B market dynamics. The last quarter showed that the number of out-of-home consumers is still below pre-pandemic levels, impacted by inflationary pressure and social political instability. We are seeing a market size that is growing below our initial estimates and revising our expectations for the upcoming months as blockages and instability seem to continue. Unfortunately, this situation affects both the tourism industry and out-of-home consumption. In this context, our B2B business has defended its market share, thanks to our multi-tier portfolio, distribution footprint, and capabilities that enabled us to, as mentioned in the last call, successfully execute an aggressive plan to attract new clients, leading us to surpass our pre-pandemic customer accounts for the first time. Let's move on to slide 21 for an update on the B2B financial performance.
Despite the challenges faced in terms of out-of-home consumption, our revenue grew 12% this quarter compared to last year, fueled by pricing strategies aimed at offsetting the rise in commodity costs. Our volume declined 9% due to a decrease in wheat flour volumes and discontinued products that were not adding value. Excluding the volume of the discontinued products from the base year, the decrease in volume would have been 1 percentage point less. Fourth quarter gross profit increased 5%, primarily due to higher margins in flour and lard. This led to our gross profit return to an improvement of 15% over last year. Regarding EBITDA, excluding positive pandemic-related reversal of provisions last year remained flat.
On a full year basis, our gross profit grew 14%, landing near the PEN 400 million soles mark, a historical record, while our EBITDA grew 16% due to our different efficiency programs, which we plan to maintain and expand in 2023. We will cover the aquafeed market dynamics on slide 22. In Ecuador, shrimp exports grew 12% during the 4th quarter versus last year, for the 4th quarter, mainly due to the recovery of demand from China. China continues to regain ground among Ecuadorian shrimp exports, representing 59% of the volume in the fourth quarter of 2022. Although Ecuador also maintains significant volume exports to the US and Europe compared to previous years. In the full year 2022, exports grew 26% versus 2021, despite market constraints such as COVID-19 related restrictions and inflation.
Ecuadorian trade for shrimp continued to improve despite some COVID-19 related restrictions in China and inflation in the U.S. And Europe. In December, China announced the end of import controls, which led to higher demand from that market. In the same month, the Ecuadorian government announced the end of diesel subsidies for the shrimp farming, which led to an increase in production cost of around $0.16 per pound of shrimp, affecting 82% of the country's shrimp production area. Despite this, Ecuadorian shrimp farmers seem to have a strong market position due to lower structural costs compared to their Asian competitors. Additionally, in the fourth quarter, international prices for shrimp temporarily fell.
The price reduction, together with increases in the cost of production, has forced the industry to search for cost efficiencies. This is where Ecuador excels, thanks to the fast-paced technological adoption by many farmers. Thanks to this advantage, Ecuadorian farmers continue generating profits while other less efficient countries struggle. Farmers continue investing in automation and new technologies, which include Vitapro's new digital ecosystem, as well as aerators and automatic feeders. Exporters are also improving industrial facilities in order to produce value-added presentations to better cope with future demand from the U.S. and Europe. Regarding the salmon feed business, due to the strict enforcement of Chilean regulation that limits the amount of biomass that is produced in certain areas, Chilean farmers accelerated their harvest towards the end of the year. That translated into a higher yearly production of Chilean salmon than initially estimated.
This harvest strategy left less salmon in the water to be fed. In Norway, there are also concerns because of the government proposal of a resource tax of 40%, which could have a significant impact on Norwegian salmon producers. Higher global salmon prices during the fourth quarter were the result of lower harvest in Norway because of lower yields, concern on the Norway tax, lower offers of and lower offers of wild salmon. Despite these higher prices, demand seems to have increased in retail and in food service. These price levels are very attractive and healthy for Chilean producers and their profits, which could incentivize farmers to continue sowing. To compete successfully in the Chilean salmon industry, Vitapro is continuing to deploy its differential go-to-market strategy in order to capture new tenders in 2023.
All in all, during 2022, we continued to see growth in both the shrimp and salmon industries, and we expect this trend to continue throughout 2023. In summary, Vitapro continues displaying exponential growth, especially in Ecuador. This growth, plus our differentiated feed products and strong brands, allow us to continue to create value for Alicorp. Let's move on to slide 23 for an update on our aqua feed performance. In terms of business performance, Vitapro posted a remarkable 43% revenue growth, mainly explained by an increase in volume in both of our feed business units and by price initiatives introduced to compensate for the increase in our raw materials prices and a tiering up of our portfolio to value-added feed, mainly in Ecuador. Gross profit gained 53% year-over-year due to higher volumes driven by the same leverages that grew revenue.
Gross margin increased 0.9 percentage points. EBITDA increased 75% year-on-year, mainly due to the higher gross profit. We will cover the crushing business's financial performance on slide 24. During the fourth quarter, our crushing business faced supply chain disruptions caused by the blockages and riots related to the sociopolitical turmoil in Bolivia and Peru. Our sales volume to third parties declined by 11% year-on-year. Our revenue remained unchanged. Regarding EBITDA, the fourth quarter saw a decline of 39% caused by shipping delays related to blockages in Bolivia and Peru. On a full year basis, our total volume grew 5%, reaching 1.3 million metric tons, from which 1 million metric tons were sold to third parties, representing a 7% growth.
Our revenue grew 39%, driven by higher prices for soybean and volume growth to third parties. EBITDA reached $119 million, supported by our close relationship with farmers, vast business development expertise, and our hedging risk management capabilities, which enabled us to capitalize from soybean and sunflower market price fluctuations. Our agricultural solutions business reached $5 million, growing 6% year-over-year. Our soybean export program achieved $8 million, contributing to EBITDA while bolstering our solution portfolio for farmers as part of our consumer-centric strategies. Let's move to slide 26 to discuss our liquidity and credit rating. Regarding our liquidity levels, as of December 2022, we exceeded our comfortable cash position, which amounted to PEN 940 million, PEN 329 million less than as of September 2022.
The reduction is mainly explained by the share buyback program, where we required PEN 565 million to acquire 10% of Alicorp's outstanding shares, which was partially offset by our positive operating cash flow. During the quarter, we refinanced $31 million of short-term debt, improving our maturity profile. We will continue looking for ways to keep a debt structure that allow us to have financial flexibility. As of December, our cash position covers 1.07x our current debt. Including the committed credit line for $120 million, the ratio would be 1.59x .
On the back of a strong cash flow generation and after securing liquidity for more than half of our maturities over the next 12 months, thanks to a committed credit line, we shortened the duration of our financial liabilities as a way to mitigate the impact of interest rate increases over our results. These actions show our comprehensive and prudent financial strategy, which has been recognized not only by local rating agencies, who have maintained a rating at the highest possible rating level in Peru, but also by two global rating agencies, Fitch and Moody's, who have maintained our investment rate ratings. Moving on to slide 27 to comment on our debt metrics.
Regarding our debt metrics, on the back of a positive operating cash flow due to our working capital management, the rationalization of our CapEx and the increase in our EBITDA, our net debt to EBITDA ratio has stayed around 2.5 x range since the third quarter of 2022. The 2.5 x was achieved even after successfully concluding both our share buyback program and our regular dividend payment, which together meant an outflow of PEN 779 million. As in previous quarters, the impact of the readily marketable inventories continued to set the pace of the seasonality in our leverage.
If we correctly consider RMI as a cash proxy and subtract it from debt, the net debt to EBITDA ratio in the fourth quarter would have been 2.2 x at a consolidated level compared to the 2.5 x mentioned before. Let me circle back to Alfredo to wrap up today's presentation with a view of what we expect for 2023.
Thanks, Manuel. Let's turn to slide 29 to wrap up today's presentation with a glimpse of what we expect for our full year 2023 results. First, I would like to share with you our main assumptions behind our guidance. In 2023, we will continue to expect moderate economic growth in our main geographies as part of a challenging context for our consumer goods and B2B business units. We also continue to expect positive tailwinds for aqua feed through the solid growth of Ecuadorian shrimp export volumes. Regarding our crushing business, we foresee that the high cycle of commodity prices will slow down, which will impact our sales and EBITDA for the business. Taking the aforementioned factors into consideration, we expect revenue to reach a mid-single digit growth for the full year.
EBITDA should remain flat as our crushing business will take a step back from the record performance of the past two years due to more challenging market conditions. We will seek to offset that effect with a continuous recovery of our consumer goods business and the positive tailwinds of our aqua feed unit. We do not expect to fully recover margins to the pre-pandemic and pre-high commodity prices levels this year due to the slowdown in growth and the social political turmoil in our main geographies. In that sense, we will continue to be focused on gross profit and EBITDA per ton level metrics. As for our investments for the year, CapEx will reflect our efforts to accelerate growth through key initiatives, reaching $76 million excluding aqua feed. This represents almost a 10% increase versus 2022 levels.
Including aqua feed, CapEx is expected to be $145 million. For leverage, we estimate a 2.4 x net debt to EBITDA ratio by year-end 2023 on the back of a solid free cash flow generation capability. This conclude our presentation, we will now welcome any questions that you may have.
Thank you. We will now move to the question and answer section. If you would like to ask a question, please press star two on your phone and wait to be prompted. If you're dialed in by the web, you can either type your question in the box provided or request to ask a voice question. We have a text question from Alexander Flores Avila. By 2023, do you expect the contribution of the business lines to consolidated revenue to be similar to 2022? What are the main trends that will be present in the company's business in 2023?
Thank you for the question. I have, as I have just explained where our guidance will be for the year 2023, there will be some changes as to the different businesses that we are in. I commented on the fact that, for example, our crushing business will potentially take a step back in terms of profitability, given that the last two years have been have had record performance on an EBITDA level. The reason being because we're seeing more challenging conditions as the cycle for commodities will not be as high as it has been for the last two years.
As we have explained over the last quarters, in the last few years, this is a very cyclical business and our expectation now, sort of a cool-down period for that profitability generation for this year. We are planning on offsetting the impact of that profitability with the continued recovery of our consumer goods and also the aqua feed businesses. The aqua feed unit, as we have mentioned before, the industry overall, especially in the shrimp feed, is in a very positive cycle for the Ecuadorian product. We expect that to continue this year. We, as you know, we have been investing in this business, will have new production coming in early next year. Therefore, we will have certain limitations as to growth just because of that.
However, we expect very positive results from that business this year as well. Again, reinforcing the fact that we expect the consumer products businesses to continue the recovery in terms of profitability, but being all very cautious given the current environment that we're seeing on a macro standpoint and a social political standpoint in the geography that we currently operate. Meaning Peru, as you know well, as it is the case of also Ecuador and to a lesser extent, Bolivia as well.
Thank you. We also have a question from Julio Torres from Intéligo.
I would like to know, what are your perspectives about the shrimp market in the medium term? Also, if you could give us a breaking down of the use of CapEx, excluding aqua feed.
Of course. We mentioned, during the presentation that our prospects for this year and the medium term, especially for the shrimp market in Ecuador, is still very positive. We're seeing a demand from both China but also markets such as the U.S. and Europe, to be strong. There might be certain ups and downs in the years. However, the macros and all the dynamics in the industry are telling us that the consumption of aqua-based protein, it will continue to be strong, and that Ecuador is uniquely positioned to take advantage of that growth, given the competitive advantage that it has as a producing country of shrimp right now. Our views are positive in that sense, and the CapEx is obviously expected from our side to continue accompanying that expected growth.
We are, this year, forecasting CapEx, total CapEx for the company of approximately $145 million, of which 76 will be nothing related to Aquafeed. The difference basically is the Aquafeed CapEx program that we have already explained also on previous calls. I see here there's another question also from Integra. Basically, are you expecting more negative impacts in revenue for your business life in Peru due to social unrest? What strategy are you implementing to offset those higher logistic costs? We did makes a few comments on that on the presentation, but given the call, I will ask Patricio to comment a little bit more on that and give more color as to what our expectations for the impact on our Peruvian business. Patricio?
Patricio, we can't hear you, by the way. Well, I think we're having some connection problems with Patricio's response. Given that that is the case.
Can you hear me?
Yes. Now yes, Patricio. Please go ahead.
Oh, thank you. All right, Alfredo. Yeah, thanks for the question. Yeah, what I was commenting a little bit earlier on was that the main impact that we have had on logistic costs have been present mainly during this first quarter rather than the, you know, last quarter of 2022, since most of the, you know, protests and mobilizations have intensified during these, you know, January and February months. We are seeing some logistic incremental costs, mainly in the south, lands of the country, where it has been difficult, I would say, to source products from Lima.
However, the way that we are doing to offset this is by increasing our design-to-value initiatives and pricing initiatives in places where we still have opportunities to take prices. Also, you know, regarding productivities in other areas, such as SG&As and, definitely, advertising and overhead expenses. We do see increases in costs in terms of logistics, but we have, you know, a year ahead of us to try to offset those, so we don't expect those to materially affect as we continue to move forward. On the, on the more positive side, despite the protests that we have had during the earlier days and I would say, the entire month of January, February has softened a little bit in terms of the intensity of them.
Hopefully that will continue to reduce as the days go forward.
Thank you.
Thank you, Patricio.
Thank you. Just a reminder, if you have a voice question, please press star two on your phone and wait to be prompted. Our next question comes from Felipe Ucrós from Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Felipe, can you hear us? Please go ahead.
Yes, I can hear you. Thank you and good morning, Alfredo, and Manuel. Just a quick question on B2B. SG&A jumped as a percentage of sales quite a bit this quarter, and it didn't seem to be the same in some of the other divisions, like in consumer Peru, which I would have expected some correlation due to the protests there. Just wondering if there was something special in B2B that caused that jump in SG&A as a percentage of sales?
Thank you, Felipe, for the question, and I'll direct it to Lucho Estrada, who is with us to answer it. Luis?
Thank you, Alfredo, and thank you, Felipe, for the question. Basically it's probably the impact that we have because of the reduced volume of Felipe on flower, and also the difficulties that we had on the distribution and extra expenses on the logistics. Plus the fact that as we reduce the flower volume. The cost of the production on our operations impacted our per metric ton cost structure.
So, so.
That's nothing to do with.
Thanks, Luis, for the color. That gives me a good idea of the cost picture. Just wondering about SG&A. Was that all related to the protests?
Most of it was related to the protests, indeed, and the reduction of volume, as I mentioned.
Got it. Okay, perfect. Maybe if I can do a follow-up on crushing. You mentioned the logistics. I was just wondering what piece of the logistics was affected? I think obviously the Peru piece of it is pretty obvious. Just wondering if you could give us some more details about what happened in Bolivia and how do you expect developments for, you know, what you've seen this quarter thus far?
Sure. Sure. Most of the flow of the Bolivian exports, mainly soybean meal and soybean oil, flows primarily through the Desaguadero border, the Bolivia and Peruvian border. As you know, that's the area that we have had the most logistic disruptions. What we have been working to solve that disruption is moving the flow of exports through other through other flows, yeah? Mainly, Felipe, what we have been doing, it's moving soybean meal and soybean oil through Arica, through Chile, and then going inland via the Chile-Peru border. As you may imagine, that has incurred a couple of things. One, slowness on the distribution and an increase on costs.
That has impacted also the cost of warehousing of raw material, of beans in Bolivia. As we've closed down the logistics, the speed at which we are feeding the plants and the speed at which we're moving soybean meal and soybean oil out of the plants is lower than it used to be when we had the normal supply chain.
No, makes all the sense. That was very clear. The last one maybe for Patricio. Just wondering on consumer goods in Peru. You've been giving us some very good data over the last few quarters on how core was recovering in the mix, as compared to value. Just wondering how that recovery's progressing.
Patricio, we cannot hear you. You might have to unmute yourself.
Hi, Felipe. Thanks for the question. Yes, as we have been commenting a little bit earlier on our volumes in terms of, you know, the way that we are mixing internally have been trending more into the core, I would say, brands and categories, which is, you know, doing nicely in terms of, working nicely in terms of our profitability, of increasing our margins per metric ton. This has been done in spite the fact that the market is actually trending on tiering down, I would say, scenarios in many of the categories in which we do perform in.
For example, categories such as oils have trended from being 42% of the total market in 2021 to almost 45% of the total market in 2022, I would say the value propositions within that category. The same in detergents. 20% in 2021 and 25% in 2022. The market is trending on a tiering down perspective. However, even though we are keeping our share within that tier down, we are increasing our efforts in marketing expenditures and growth in our core brands. That has been progressing and has progressed very nicely during 2022 and has continued to progress during the early months of 2023.
You know, especially in detergents and home care as a whole, you know, we have been seeing those volumes perform very, very well.
Got it. That's really good color. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you. We have a question next, from Julio Torres from Intéligo. The question is. Oh, apologies. I think we've lost that question. We've got a voice question instead. Julio, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I would like to know, how much is the contribution in terms of sales of Insuma in business to business? Also, a week ago, it was published on the media that you're planning to enter certain provinces. Could you share us what size of market are we talking about? Thank you.
Luis, you can go ahead and answer the question, please.
Yes, sure. Thank you for the question. Yes, we're very excited with Insuma, that we finished the year in a little bit above 10% of our total B2B revenue is what Insuma is representing, and we're expecting to keep growing this year. As you have mentioned.
One of the growth avenues that we're expecting to have this year is going to be out of Lima. Basically, because we're going to be applying all the learnings that we have acquired by growing in Insuma in the Lima market and applying them into outside of Lima. We're probably going to start in a couple of provinces first because we have to understand that the dynamics on the provinces on the out-of-home consumption are probably different. One of, as an example, not necessarily the drivers of the bakeries and the drivers of the restaurants are the same in Lima and in Insuma. As you probably know, it's leveraging not only our own portfolio, but portfolio of third party suppliers.
Not necessarily the third party suppliers that we have relationships with in Lima are going to be applicable in the different provinces. We're probably going to start looking at what are those potential partners that we can find in these specific provinces where we're going to start growing.
Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you. Just a final reminder, if you have a question, please press star two on your keypads. We'll just give it another 30 seconds or so just to see if there's any final questions.
I think there's a question regarding the impact if Bolivia devalues sharply their currency, what could be the effect on our numbers? In Bolivia we have the crushing business, where revenues are in U.S. Dollars and obviously the consumer business that has more exposure to the Bolivian peso boliviano. Most of our debt in Bolivia is in peso boliviano. If Bolivia devalues sharply, we would probably see a positive impact in our P&L, especially in Bolivia. Given that we're constantly trying to maximize debt in Bolivianos to minimize that risk.
Also I would comment that, you know, we don't actually expect our competitiveness to be affected because this is an industry that, you know, if this happens, it would be a wide nationwide problem. Also it is important to mention that according to many of the economists that we have also been in contact with, a fast, the probability of a scenario of this magnitude is still very low up to this point.
Thank you. I'm not seeing any more questions, so perhaps I can hand back to the Alicorp team for closing remarks.
Perfect. Thank you. Once again, thank everybody for participating of our fourth quarter 2022 conference call. In case you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us. As was mentioned at the beginning of the call, Álvaro Rojas will now be heading our investor relations team, so please feel free to contact him and his team with any further questions you may have. Please stay safe and have a great day.