Good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased to once again welcome you guys for our earnings call on the second quarter at Grupo Ambipar. Once again, we are here to, in a very positive and optimistic way, come and share with you with this feeling of a mission accomplished because we were once again able to achieve the targets and goals we had intended to reach since the beginning of our IPO when it comes to revenue as well as return on invested capital for our shareholders and investors, as well as with the EBITDA. This is all very important when we're talking about this. It's really in both vertical, that environment where we've been for this quarter having a strong growth with organic growth.
At Response, we've also had significant organic growth, which all demonstrates more and more how our strategy was really assertive and how the national and international teams have really been engaged in how the company really looks at our growth in both verticals and how all of these businesses are being synergetic. I really like highlighting this to help you understand that we are in this journey, and it's very important as we conquer results and we try to bring in sustainability to Brazil and the world, and this will always continue to be Ambipar's purpose. This is our strategy, and the strategy of all of the executives and each of our employees are all engaged in this mission.
Now I'll let Thiago start off talking about the numbers because I think that's what you're all anxious to hear about, and we'll continue to be available for any other information.
Great, Cris. Here, I'm really happy to once again disclose these earnings. We've been around for quite a few editions, so ever since the IPO, I remember the first one, how we were quite nervous with that, but now we're quite comfortable with the whole process. As Cris mentioned, sharing these results are always something very comfortable, and we're really confident and happy with the deliveries we were able to achieve, where we've been above expectations where we had surprising funding cap raised. Here beside me, I have Cris, she's always sitting next to me. Guilherme from Boomera. We invited him.
We always want to bring someone here to really share value and share how these acquisitions happen. People are always quite unsure about this, and Guilherme is going to talk about the post-consumption platform and how we can capture synergies and how it's really been transformational for the acquisitions. On my right side, you have Denis from Response as well, and he's always here to talk about how emergency response business is moving along. Ricardo, our IR leader, he joined right after the results in the first quarter. He's going to complete his three-month period, and we're really happy with the work Ricardo has been doing with us. As I mentioned, our results are quite surprising. We had an EBITDA that was very good. If we could move on to the next one, please.
This was growth compared to the second quarter of 2021 of 139%. If we look at the first quarter of 2022, as I mentioned, the company is growing a lot in the first quarter and the one exactly afterwards. We always want to highlight because it's significant growth. We grew 8%. When we look at the revenue as well, it's more than double our revenue when it comes to the second quarter of 2021, and we grew 11%. I want to highlight our organic growth because we had one acquisition in the second quarter of 2022, which from a financial material perspective was very. This growth, which is double-digit, is really 100% organic, to be honest.
Of course, we had some depreciation as well in the second quarter. Now we have exposure to the currency. It's quite strong, and the result was very surprising. The gross profit was also in line with the growth of the revenue. We were able to keep our operational margins in line. EBITDA was growing 127%, as I mentioned. I think there's some things we should highlight here. When we talk about the results today, people maybe didn't interpret this very well and how our earnings ended up behaving, especially in regards to the financial results. Throughout the presentation, we'll be here also to when we start the Q&A, and we'll be available because certainly this leverage was within expectations. The interest curve reached its peak in the second quarter of 2022.
In the last month, we had the last peak of interest. Now we have a trend for drops, and we've looked at many different opportunities for reprofiling and improving costs. We're always very careful about this because we're at the peak of the interest, and it tends to drop. We have this very precise strategy of accelerated growth. Of course, now we're here to share our results that are part of our growth, and this tends to improve in the bottom line as well substantially as the plan is being very well executed. I also want to highlight the second quarter of 2022, and soon after the second quarter, of course, in the deal we had with HPX within the Response segment, this deal is already pretty much done, and I'm going to give you some more details on this.
Here we have the strong capitalization in Response that also reduces our leverage by half, and so we're quite comfortable about the cash flow for growth. We're really capturing this revenue that's very, very strong now in the second quarter as we capture what we've mentioned so much about, the anticipated CapEx in the fourth quarter and the first quarter that we've been capturing in revenue. It's important to mention always that we work on the CapEx, but as you have the engagement, besides the issue with the demand for equipment, you also have the mobilization for the contract. Until you bill all of this, you have this very strong operational cycle.
What's important when we talk about CapEx is that we talk about the CapEx considering the numbers and the results, but we look at this CapEx as an important opportunity for growth in the company. When I look at Boomera, I wanted you to talk about this a bit. We see talks about this, the machine we bought from Germany that's gonna really leverage their business. In the other segments, we've also been able to implement and deploy these equipment and these machines, and then you have this an increase in manufacturing. You have the process with the imports and the arrival of these machines. You also have this process, and it's a journey.
This business is, well, you have the CapEx now, and then the actual activity of the results will partially take place this year and partially next year. That's why it's so important for you and Ricardo Garcia to give these examples. In Response, it's the same case, right? In all of the segments, we had some acquisitions, but of course, they will happen, and they'll reach greater profitability after a certain period, and then they become stable. That's why it's so important to always have these positions and these CapExs and how much they're gonna add to the business as a whole. In our release, we tried to also improve how we're presenting this.
Of course, suggestions are always welcome, and we want to demonstrate this always in the best way possible, how we're gonna capture this over time. Of course, we have the CapEx performed, and then we want to capture all of the growth. We had another topic, which is a bit of a EBITDA margin pressure, which was very slight due to inputs and especially fuel. If we eliminated the fuel line during the entire process, our margins would be flat. Just as the interest rate, fuel also reached its peak in the second quarter of 2022, and now it's dropping, not only in Brazil but also abroad as we've seen in the North American market. The margins should get better, a lot better due to these factors in the second quarter.
We are very optimistic about the near future as well, and our results when it comes to the bottom line. Operationally, the EBITDA has been perfect, and this is something that makes us very proud. People call us to congratulate us. It's like we just consolidate this and share it with the market. The people that actually make this happen are the people that are on the table here, and their capacity for execution is huge, and we're really proud of this. Let's move on to the next slide. We'll talk about results, and then I'll let my friends talk about the operation. A bit of the financial performance. As we mentioned, the net revenue reaching about BRL 853 million.
In regards to the second quarter of 2021, there was a growth of almost 150%, and the first half already reached 619. We can move on to the next one. The gross profit, we've been able to stabilize our margins. The strategy has been really well conducted. There's always a bit of uncertainty when a company comes in if the curve of synergies and everything will work well. We've been doing this in the D+1, so it's impressive as how when a company comes in, we are always buying good companies to make them even better in the ecosystem. We buy companies with good profitability, and we can improve them over time.
If we don't have any drops, we can always keep our margins and our gross profits at really good levels. Here just about the gross margin. In Ambipar Environment we had an increase in the margins. We had a slight drop. But in the second quarter of 2021, we already started to have Ambipar Environment LATAM. But we've been able to do some excellent work when it comes to scale, and the margins have gotten better. We've been able to have really good work with Ambipar Environment. And then with Ambipar Response, there is a bit of a slight margin pressure, and then there's some issues with inputs.
Since the business of Response out of Brazil has more of an industrial service characteristic, and we use this to scale and stabilize the bases and, besides, the standardization of these at this moment in the operation. What we're looking at is in the short term, the operations in North America and Europe are going to have margins that are very similar to Brazil. Once again, we don't have anything that substantial. It's, of course, within our planning to have this Response margin. About the EBITDA, we can move on to the next one. We were able to have the maintenance of our margins, which demonstrates acquisitions are coming along. Now we've been able to keep up with this with no integration issues. We've had in the second quarter of 2022 an EBITDA of BRL 220 million versus BRL 97 million in the second quarter of 2021.
We're more than doubled. When we look at the half of the year, we also kind of see the same picture, which would be BRL 424 million in the second semester of 2022 compared to BRL 170 million in the first semester of 2021. I'm going to elaborate about the EBITDA margin. We had the effects in Environment for LATAM in Response when it comes to operations out of the country, which have margins that are a bit lower than what we practice here in Brazil. Here we've had the market really consolidated. Now what we're doing is working on all of the standardization of this operation, which will certainly converge and we'll be able to start operating with about 27%, as we've already had this historical presentation. Just a bit more light on the issue of the fuels.
We, in the second quarter, we had a percentage of fuels that were on the revenue, which is a lot higher than any other percentage compared to the net revenue of our historical series. Of course, the fuels, they're an important cost component for third-party services, which is also another important COGS for us. That's why it's so important for us to understand that the pressure that we have within the margins due to the fuel, just to mention the example that Thiago mentioned on the maintenance of these margins, if there was no line with expenses and with fuels, we would have maybe something that's quite flat. This is a moment that we've already seen in North America and Brazil.
With the second semester being the peak of the diesel prices and petroleum subproducts, we believe that we won't have that much pressure anymore from the next quarters onwards. Okay, perfect. Ricardo, thank you for complimenting that. We can move on to the next one here. Just another point about diligence. When we take a look at the EBITDA calculation, and just to make it clear here, we are following the CVM instruction where part of the net revenue and plus depreciation. Since this presentation is going to go on to the websites and other opportunities to have this clear EBITDA calculation, we can move on to the next one, please. When we take a look at the financial results, as we mentioned, there was some pressure when it comes to the peak in interest. We're quite conscious of this leverage as expected.
Once again, mainly due to our growth strategy. Ever since June 2021, we definitely leveraged the company. We've always been very diligent using rates for acquisition that really can compensate this looking at the peak in interest rates. Once again, we've reached the peak and now we're imagining a drop trend. Of course, assessing some opportunities and alternatives to improve the financial results in the short, medium and long term. We can move on to the next one, please. Here we have the net income due to the financial results. In the second quarter, we had a bit of margin pressure. When we look at the overall semester, we had a profit of about BRL 53 million, which is very similar and above the previous quarter. About the debt, it's in line with what was expected, especially when we look from June onwards.
When it comes to the acquisition, this started off with Environment LATAM, which would be to be Disal. Up until 3x is an index that we consider to be healthy. Of course, we're always looking at the leverage and interest rate. We're quite comfortable with this and certain that we have a very healthy leverage position. Of course, making this third-party capital very productive on behalf of our shareholders. One thing that's really important to highlight also is that the debt is, of course, an indicator that's very important for the entire capital market. Investors are always keeping a close eye on this indicator. The company has also been finding great opportunities in the market. The interest curve, on one hand, is a bit harmful for the financial expenses, which, of course, pressured a bit of the net margins.
We can still see that despite the higher interest, there's still some opportunities. The company does not plan to let these go by. This is very important to create value in the long term for our shareholders, although initially it may require a bit more leverage than the average historically or what we consider to be a more comfortable capital structure, according to the understanding of all of our shareholders. Perfect. We can move on to the next one, please. Just about our debt. About 12 months ago, as mentioned, we performed some fundraising initiatives, and then as Ricardo mentioned, from these acquisitions, we wanted to put this third-party capital to work on behalf of the company, and we've always been very diligent with the interest rate curves and the returns with these acquisitions.
We're here at an accelerated growth, very strong. Once again, we're reinforcing the fundraising and a deal that was already anchored. Of course, the binding agreement with SPAC that will make this debt drop. Of course, we have opportunities to leverage this if necessary, so we don't lose these opportunities, as Ricardo mentioned. The company has a very strong growth curve, and I always mention this, it's a blue ocean. We're navigating on this on our own. We're not gonna lose opportunities, and we're gonna continue to keep up with this pace when we look at the returns for our shareholders. Moving on to the next one before we go on to our acquisitions. I wanna talk about CapEx.
We brought in some notes about the line, which is really the actual share value, which is the accounting effect of the recognition of IFRS 16, which has no cash effect. Also here we added this to try to specify this with greater clarity, and this is in our explanatory notes at the end of our notes with the acquisition mobilized through funding, which brings in a CapEx excluding these funding examples plus IFRS 16, so that you can really consider this a cash effect when you set up your modeling.
Still about the CapEx, it's interesting to highlight that in any of these metrics that are being demonstrated, whether it's the accounting metrics or the other adjustments that we presented in the effects related to IFRS 16, really presenting the acquisition of fixed assets through funding. We really see a reduction of the CapEx considering what we had presented in the previous quarter. This does not mean that the investments are gonna be interrupted or reduced. Investments will take place so that we can really have the expected return. Our pricing departments have metrics that are really precise to really compensate this capital that's invested. Of course, we see that the growth demonstrated in this, especially in the release when we demonstrated organic growth of approximately 25%.
This is only possible because of all the CapEx investments that were made back then, as Cris mentioned in the beginning of our conversation. It's important to mention that this is another item that's also very sensitive in the market when we observe the numbers overall. We can, in a less in-depth way, sometimes there's not all the insights we would like to share with you, but we wanna demonstrate the same in another way. Of course, we are at this curve, this learning curve together with the market and with investors that also demand this so that we can always improve our level of disclosure. Of course, in other quarters, we may reach a level that is in line with what investors expect, especially when it comes to future forecasts. Perfect.
We can move on to the next one, please, now. Just a bit about the acquisitions, and I wanna highlight here that we already had 42 ever since our IPO in June 2020. This demonstrates that the company knows how to do this, and we do this very well. Once again, these positive results. In the second quarter, we had the acquisition of Boomera, which happened at the end of the second quarter of 2022, and it was more strategic also when it comes to the financials that are very relevant, considering a very interesting strategy. I'm gonna pass this on to Dennis as soon as we finish the acquisition phase so that Cris and Guilherme can talk about this.
It's a really interesting acquisition that brings in this analysis from a laboratory perspective so that everyone from Ambipar and the current Ambipar Response is being underserved. We can move on to the next one now. It's important to highlight the acquisitions we made right after the closing of this quarter. Now in June or August, we bought CTA. Dennis is gonna talk about how this works within the group. The Ridgeline in Canada, one of the biggest acquisitions in North America, making about CAD 47 million. It's a very interesting structure that started off just like Ambipar Response in the consulting field. There's a portfolio of customers that's really complementary to all of our asset structure in Canada.
We're gonna use all of these leads that are created because at the moment they're subcontracting a lot of this. We're gonna use our asset structure as well. Which is really interesting in Canada and it tends to have significant gains and one thing that's been working very well with our plan in North America. Here also in Canada, Yuri is not here actually because he was there at Graham once again visiting there after the acquisition and he just called us and he was very excited with this opportunity that was given to the founders of Graham that will remain with us. It's an acquisition that took place in the Ambipar model, keeping up with the founders of the business. C-Tank, which is part of the naval and industrial cleaning, especially for chemical products.
The response platform and Blue Ambiental, which is an acquisition in the Northeast that will complement Ambipar Environmental Nordeste, helping with the geographic footprint that we're always really committed to in the Northeast. I'll move on to Dennis, Kees and Guilherme to talk about our operational aspects and he can talk about how Ambipar, Boomera and the post-consumption platforms working with synergies, et cetera.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here. Great. The idea here is just to show a bit of what we mentioned in the last year about when we sold to Ambipar and what our objective was, which is really transforming waste and especially plastics into high added value products that could be really demanded by the market currently. Especially with the post-consumption resins, which we call the PCRs.
These are high-performance resins that transform waste in the post-consumer from cooperatives and other locations as well as industrial waste that comes from Ambipar, transforming this into resins that go back to the industry, closing the cycle at the actual customer, which generates the waste. We invested a lot in new equipment and now we have a second plant in Paraná and we're going to double our productive capacity and also with some acquisitions of other equipment for the verticalization for industrial products. The connection with Ambipar is really proving this previously designed thesis about really verticalizing the treasure that the group has that's really being valued, which is waste, both industrial and post-consumer. Our main role is for the integration and connection with all of the companies in the group and also bringing in new technologies from other waste to have verticalization.
The speed of decision is really making this a lot easier because maybe 10 years ago when we talked about recycled materials, a major group was almost something that was like a no-no or prohibited. Now all of the big companies have global commitments to using 25% or 50% of recycled material in their compositions of their packaging or other products. What the group is presenting with this new industrial front. They really invested in research and development and all of our products are validated and approved by major companies and certifying bodies. Besides this, each of the products that are sold in Ambipar are going to be certified as carbon neutral with the group through Ambify.
We offer not only high performance recycling, but also guarantee that we'll have a product that's already offset, which is the objective all the company's been working on. Now we're just growing and the market's really strong for recycled material. Now we're going to start delivering high scale through this partnership we established. I think the sky's the limit for us. Thank you, Guy. I think that I also want to highlight and we talk about this a lot with the guys at Boomera Ambipar about the bankability and the capital structure that Ambipar brought with primary resources and also access to really making it possible to deploy the plan when it comes to CapEx, et cetera.
We always talk about this and the opportunities that are going to be arriving and that we're really able to make not only Boomera Ambipar with all the post-consumption platform and everyone else that's coming around as well to have growth that is always exponential. The companies arriving in the group, but the companies that arrive also are making the group have cross-selling opportunities. It's really true, Thiago, when you listen to what Guilherme says in your own speech, it really justifies the growth of 16% organically in Environment. This is not only in one business or the other. When we set up this platform, and I always talk about this, you have the management and repurposing, circular economy, carbon and everything else.
We see this organic growth and it's exactly due to these trends and these movements everyone's been doing inside the business and the visibility we've been having as well in the market. This all makes it possible for the market to search for us as a complete solution. This, of course, justifies this growth organically. Once again, I would like to really have people try to understand that this CapEx is directly related to this growth and these results that could not maybe not be immediate, but it could be in a quarter from now or a semester from now. I need to prepare for this demand from the market. This is a growing demand. Then, of course, this justifies the investments that we've been working on here. I believe, Dennis, that this also happens in response.
This organic growth, these acquisitions and this CapEx response is, as many of you have already visited our site at Nova Odessa. You've seen our volumes and how we organize our services. We've had some organic growth that's very significant. We have at least three major contracts that are being deployed with major operations. This is very positive. Besides all of this work we've been having commercially and the growth in the operations with response and emergency. The acquisitions are really in line with our operations. Even C-Tank, which is super important, it's a very strategic deal. They've been around for over seven years in the market. They're really specialized in the offshore market with the cleaning of offshore stations of the FPSO and all of the production stations and storage stations for petroleum and oil.
They really have strong know-how in this type of operation, so we can have operational synergies that are very strong and bring this into operation. Working on shore as well with other types of platform, not only in oil and gas, but also in all of the chemical industry. We've been talking to the C-Tank team as well a lot, and next week they're gonna spend some days with us in Nova Odessa, so we can work on some points besides what we've already been doing in the operation in CTA. A very strategic deal and really connected to the offshore market for oil and gas.
Today, it's a requirement from the environmental agencies that you have a specialized team for fauna and flora, and this is connected to the actual licensing of these developments and also in emergencies and all of this platform for response for fauna and flora. CTA has strong know-how in this field, really in line with our operations. These are all acquisitions that are really connected to the emergency response operation, and they're also connected to the operation of Ambipar Response. This is an acquired company as well, which is Constellation, and in the licensing projects they also connect their operation. This of course brings in a lot of synergies for us.
Of course, then you have a third line which is so important and synergy from an operational perspective, it's so important. Next week we're gonna have another immersion with the Dracares team in Nova Odessa, and we've been able to consolidate some controls working on this platform at the control tower at Ambipar to be able to reduce operational costs and bring in more integration as well. Then we can work on this. I think these are some of the main points. We're really excited. We have a lot of work and really happy with all of the team and the operations that are underway. About response, once again, before we get into Q&A, but last but not least, we're gonna talk about the business combination we had.
As I mentioned in the beginning, it was very important, right? We had some significant work, but this brought in access to funding at a moment that was so important, where everyone in the market really kind of on a downturn, it's really difficult. We were able to have this business combination that will really bring, besides the funding, which is of course our main objective, the visibility we need, which is, maybe two months from now, we're gonna be on the American Stock Exchange market. We're gonna bring in a very important team from HPX. They're Brazilians, but they have a lot of experience in North America expanding major companies. They are gonna help Ambipar Response to grow as well and join the team and help it become even better.
Of course, we'll also bring in CFO, which is Rafael, IR, which is Pedro. We're super optimistic with this business combination. Once again, the opportunities are around the corner and having access to this funding in the market that's so difficult as it is, will make a huge difference around Ambipar as a whole, and especially for Ambipar Response with this avenue for growth that's so significant in the North American market. This is a deal that's already anchored with $168 million with the potential post redemption, which is another $58 million till the closing. We're in this period that we call between the signing and the closing periods. We're working on the offering documentation. We've already almost completed this process.
It's a challenging process, but we've been able to complete this. Now we're also completing all of the reference form as well from the SEC, which is Form F-4. We're continuing to work on this, and till mid-October we should have this completion of the process and Ambipar Response will, besides having a very interesting level of funding, already addressing many different things with these acquisitions in the third quarter. We already were able to address all of these avenues we have and we'll also start having an important opportunity for access to the American capital market, which is also, of course, a major avenue for growth. Let's move on to the Q&A now. Since we are already pretty advanced on the schedule, we have another 15 minutes. We have some questions already, so I'm gonna go through all of them.
The first one is from Alexandre, and he asks us to disclose anything about the CapEx for maintenance and expansion CapEx, and what's the breakdown or the difference between these two CapExes? Although we do not have this disclosure in the release, I think Thiago can talk about how this dynamic works. This is something that we're gonna be studying as we're considering the disclosure in the future releases. We also wanna consider how this could maybe confuse investors even more. The dynamic of the company is a really strong expansion CapEx because we have this characteristic of strong growth. At the moment, if we look at ever since the beginning of our disclosure results before the IPO until now, we can see that there's like a breakdown between expansion about 70%, maintenance 30%.
This curve could have some modification as you have expansion becoming bigger and bigger. The second question here is from Jonathan. He asks about the following: How are we looking at this listing abroad for Response and the deal as a whole, and how this can help reduce our situation of leverage? Well, as I mentioned here in the last slide, we're looking at this as a huge opportunity, especially at a moment like this, where more opportunities appear in a very interesting way to add a lot of value to our business. The assets are once again coming back to very interesting multiple levels. We're not only looking at multiples, we're also looking at the discounted cash flow and returns on invested capital.
It's a really good moment for acquisitions, and even better, it's a really unique opportunity now. Not only access to the market, but also the funding bringing in a lot of opportunities and the reduction of leverage is something that's also very important. We see that two point should drop like 50% as this cash comes into the company, going to a level about 1.4 times. Still to complement the first question, Jonathan says about the reduction of the margins that were noticed in this quarter, how are we looking at this drop? Is there a concern in the continuity of this margin loss?
Well, we talked about this a bit, when it comes to a good part of the costs that reach their peak, especially fuel, third-party services, and within the inflationary environment as well across the board in all the sectors. We understand that the margin issue related to cost pressure should probably not happen. There may be some variation up ahead, that's more connected to the mix of services that are gonna be provided in Environment Response or even in this mix between the markets. The actual topic related to growth and always having new services, new products, and new regions we're operating in, there is always a bit more differentiations in the mix that can kind of keep up with this and have some variation in the margins perfect.
We have one more question now about this. This is from Alain, and he's asking about what explains the drop in the margin in the quarter of 12% in the international waste management. Well, part of this drop is due to the currency issues. The currency, we're talking about the quarterly revenue of one specific business line, which is international waste management, and this is directly connected to our operation in Latin America. Of course, this has a foreign currency, and half of this, or at least 5.7% of this is related directly to the currency issue. I don't know if there's any other comment that you have about waste management besides this issue related to the currency variation. Well, certainly there's not seasonality in that business.
We have services in Peru, and it was down in the third quarter, it will now recover its normal levels because of the construction that we work on the management and repurposing of a construction site of a big mining company in Peru. It's a mix, as Ricardo mentioned, the currency variation, but also with the trend in the third quarter really being strong. Operations there have actually been doing very well in Environment LATAM, and in the next days, we should even be visiting them soon to kind of certify and confirm and strengthen this. It's the owner's eye that can make the cattle better, right? We're gonna go there and visit him on site as well and improve this even more. There's another question about CapEx from Leonardo, also about the first half.
When you add up the last quarter plus the first one, 370 million in CapEx. We've been demonstrated that part of this is just an accounting effect based on IFRS and adjustments to IFRS 16. Another part is also financed. His question is, from the CapEx that was made in the first semester, so these BRL 370 million, do we already have part of this generating revenue in line with what Cris mentioned, that it takes a little while, right, from the acquisition of the CapEx, then the actual direction into the operations? Well, there's some details. Some of the CapEx takes place.
For example, when I have like a delivery of an equipment or machinery, this, I have the CapEx, and it immediately starts, beginning operation and generating some revenue on this, CapEx. There's some other types of CapEx, which are the most important acquisitions, which are the production lines and manufacturing lines, which is where we're really focused on the circular economy with Boomera, Drypol, and Ciclo. These are the cases where I have to buy abroad and wait, install, and start the production line. I can't say, look, 100% of the CapEx is already starting to produce. That's why you have some that have maybe immediate operation, and others may have a lag of three or six months. There's a line, of course, depending on the profile of the equipment or operation.
If I could contribute here about the industrial aspect. You're setting up a production plant. You have all of the commissioning work, the purchase of equipment, the manufacturing of this equipment, the installation of this equipment, and then the certification of the products in the market, and then you can start actually selling the product. We've been able to do this in historical timings, like three months with a high production capacity. We're buying equipment abroad. The lead time for equipment due to global aspects is having a lot longer timing for deliveries due to lack of raw materials, especially steel. We're experiencing this a bit, but with the CapEx that we've bought, especially in the area we're focused on, which is more industrial, this is all acquired through contracts and projects that are being developed.
This is not CapEx that we're buying to then search for businesses. It's the opposite. We close the deal and then after we acquire the CapEx, we have the lead time just for the deployment. This is really an industrial aspect. Industries have many different requirements that we need to consider, especially a company with Ambipar size and all the customers we work with as well that are very demanding when it comes to quality and licensing, et cetera. It's just this mismatch, but the CapEx is always connected to an actual business or an actual project that's already signed. There's nothing separate from this. Response also kind of follows the same rationale. We have the issue with the deliveries that's really connected to trucks, deliveries of vehicles. There's also the delivery time and all the CapEx that takes place in response.
We've been associating to the contracts a lot that are growing and that are already connected to specific revenue. Even this issue with the CapEx in the last quarters due to some of the amounts that this CapEx actually ended up having in our operation, we've been very much questioned. We're talking about, well, Cris and Dennis mentioned this and we have even Guilherme and others. We have different types of CapEx, machinery, equipment, trucks, heavy duty items, and the lead time for the delivery of these and the actual deployment of this equipment is also very different. Normally the market and the investors are always used to having some kind of industry or company or service that demands a lot of CapEx, which is the same type of equipment or vehicle that's being acquired at the same time between the acquisition, delivery and deployment.
This of course considers a linearity that really you can't really do it in that way. It's important to know that CapEx varies a lot when it comes to different equipment, machines, purposes, lead times, utilizations and beginning of the operations and some other types of CapEx, especially for environment, which are contracts that have a CapEx that should have returns with a really good interesting tier and like five-year contract. It's interesting. It's so clear when someone asks me about this, about CapEx. For me, CapEx is directly connected to growth. It's directly connected to returns on invested capital because when we talk about like, oh, we stopped investing CapEx, that means we stopped growing. It means that we stopped bringing in new contracts and we stopped innovating.
Once again, we have to really look at this so people can understand that CapEx is directly connected to my growth. Also when we talk about maintenance CapEx, it's also related to renewals of contracts. I have a five-year contract, 10-year contract. When we think about maintenance CapEx, it means that Grupo Ambipar is bringing in maintenance CapEx because the company has been able to preserve and renew customers in its space. I think this is the important exercise we have to work on to make things a little more clear. We also report and disclose growth on an annual basis compared to the second quarter last year, which are over 100% EBITDA, 100% revenue. This growth would never be possible if it weren't for the CapEx investments, right? Here we have some other questions.
Let's try to move a little quicker here. We have a question from Gabriela and she would like to know about the operations with carbon credits and what have been the sales volumes in the last quarter, the average sales prices, if we could give a little more granularity on the carbon market in the last quarter. Thank you, Gabriela, for the question. Certainly we did have a session with the guys at the sell side and with Plinio as well on carbon credits because people are really, they really have a lot of questions. It's a different market, but we've learned a lot. We are sure that this is the future in the waste market because carbon is a waste, a form of waste. Maybe it's not solid. It's transparent, it's not visible, but it is waste as well. We're very excited with this opportunity.
We just had a meeting with the board at Biofílica and projects are really booming. When we take a look at the different types of credit, now we have the REDD+, which is one of the main engines in Biofílica. On average, we have like a $15.5 per ton, which is the trading value. We've already had this traded at about $18, but now we have a bit of pressure due to the supply and demand curve. We are seeing that the growth curve and the carbon credit price really surprised us ever since the acquisition of Biofílica. It has brought important results for the company. About volumes, it's really just the revenue we've disclosed in our release versus the average price of the tons. Then we have a question from William and it's about something we've already mentioned previously on organic growth.
If we would be able to have this kind of sensitivity towards how much was the growth coming from the acquisitions in the first quarter versus acquisitions. Well, the second quarter didn't have acquisitions. This question, it has been quite frequent, and we normally say that it doesn't really make sense for us to separate the results of these acquisitions to demonstrate organic growth. Because our strategy is kind of moves both ways, where the company, Ambipar, is leveraging the businesses of the company that's been acquired and vice versa. So there's benefits both way, and trying to separate this effect is something that doesn't really happen. Guilherme is here, and he can even talk about this a bit.
Before Guilherme says this, comments on this, I think you were very clear because if I'm performing an acquisition for it to be synergetic and complementary, it means that I see that a business that I'm acquiring will actually generate value. Boomera grew a lot due to the possibility that they have more access to raw material. In exchange, she also brings this possibility of another level of visibility because they can access other markets that they didn't access before. At the moment on D-0, which is when you have the actual acquisition, that's when you merge, and there's no way to say like, "Oh, what would he be like without us or vice versa." That's the company strategy really at the end of the day.
I want to once again reaffirm that it's been an excellent strategy, and that's why you're seeing such significant growth. Isn't that it? Yeah. If I could just add on. That's pretty much it. We were at a moment in the market where we needed capital, we needed strategic partnerships, we need raw materials, which is the biggest bottleneck for any recycling company. From the moment when you plug into an Ambipar ecosystem, your project will now just be able to set up factories itself because you have the necessary inputs, and you have the people and the customers waiting for the product. It's really synergetic.
It's one thing plugged into the other, and for us, it doesn't really make sense to separate this because it's a new business that's being created, and we are really just taking advantage of the speed of this growth that we were able to have with this acquisition.
Perfect. We have another question here from Adishan. He talks about the cost of inputs, including fuels, and there's already a peak effect. Well, our contracts, they have clauses of annual adjustments in contracts in Environment. Some of these contracts, the ones that are longer, have an average term of five years. In Response, the contracts have an average term of about three years, but they're always being renewed. Of course, they have other inflation indexes to be able to replace this transfer of inflation, price, and costs.
We've had a lot of success. We haven't had any type of loss of customers, and we also have some financial balancing clauses that can also be used if necessary. A quarter that really has been explored, and especially considering this issue with the margins pressure due to the cost, we've been able to transfer this throughout this, which is what the contractual clauses allow us for. The challenge is timing because the opening, and you're very precise with your answer, Ricardo. We've had a lot of exposure and opening opportunities to renegotiate and talk to customers, and they really understand this because this is a topic that is very clear for the overall market. At the same time, we have timing.
These are big companies, multinationals, and I can't just arrive and transfer sometimes until you reach the term you have a negotiation. Sometimes the billing and receipt terms are different, so you have like this mismatch and the timing issue.
Yeah, it's more of an issue of like a matching the negotiations and the quarter. We haven't had any problems with transferring these adjustments. There's another question about organic growth. We've already talked about this and which would be the main drivers. We've already talked about this and this pathway. We even gave the example of Guilherme and Boomera. There's another question about the impact of fuel and the cost, which we've already explored a bit, and how we could protect ourselves against this kind of adverse effect.
Actually, based on the contract, but also, diesel and gasoline, there's now like a future contract they can hedge to justify this kind of cost, for the value. This is also, kind of, what happens in other industries with commodities, that even consider, foreign exchange exposure. Then you also have Marilia, a question related to currency exposure. She's saying, considering, the, exposure with the response revenue, could the company consider a debt in dollar as an avenue for reducing the cost of debt? Yeah, it's one of the opportunities we're looking at. Now with this access to the American, exchange, the market, we are gonna be ready as well, with the filing and all of that. We're gonna look at this opportunity as well.
To be very careful, of course, because we believe the interest rate curve is now gonna be lowering. Great. Now we also have a question from Felipe about the growth targets in North America. What we're looking at when we consider the targets and the size of these targets with the EBITDA, since we've been doing some due diligence and some targets, and with the recent acquisition of Ridgeline, which was an asset that was a little bigger, well, we could talk about this pipeline of acquisitions in the U.S. Well, the pipeline continues to be really full and really focused on North America, as you already mentioned. Certainly we're looking at not only assets that we've historically acquired those $10 million in revenue, but we're looking at assets at the bigger level.
They were actually restrained a bit for the third quarter because we were really negotiating them. Now we've unleashed this, and we have this pipeline that's already been pre-approved, and we're really strong with this, which is also one of the reasons why Yuri is not here, because he's visiting Ridgeline and Graham and also looking at other targets there, so we can accelerate this even more. Soon we'll have excellent surprises. We have another question from Vagner that's really interesting, which is about how we'll be operating, and how this is happening with this joint effort between Ambipar and the executives at HPX.
Actually, they're already physically present at the Avenida Angélica office.
Since this is a negotiation that was also long term, about seven or eight months in negotiation, now they're already integrated in the company, and they're helping us with these deals and helping us perform all the negotiation work and really helping with the structure for funding and how we can guarantee the growth that we don't miss any growth in the signing and closing. We also set up that executive committee. That's something that works really well. We exchange a lot of ideas and knowledge. Certainly in the short term, but also in the long term, we'll have a partnership that will bring in a lot of value. Besides of course, the situation, which is that they also join a bit of the operational area. We even have some training for emergency operations with the HPX team.
In the next weeks, they're gonna have a training session on chemical emergencies at our CT, and they're gonna spend a week with us. Who went there to the field knows what it is like there.
Great, Dennis. Vagner also adds on with another question, and he's asking about how you transfer the increase of fuel costs on the response chart in North America. The price table, right? I talked about this dynamic in North America. We saw that in the second quarter, there was a peak also in fuel costs, and now it's starting to also lower down, especially for diesel. There's a gap.
There's a bit of a lag, though, and a mismatch also between the need of using this fuel and the need of having to expend this cost until the moment we're able to transfer this to the price tags for customers. I think Dennis can talk about this as well and how this works in the U.S. since they don't have like a subscription model as we have that we do plan to implement in the future, though.
Well, actually, the price adjustments done according to the pricing with the pre-scheduled services, and as we provide like the technical scope of the service provision, we automatically analyze the amounts of the inputs and materials at that moment, and that's already priced. The impacts are all absorbed, and the price adjustment's already done.
We have two more questions here, because we've already gone over time, but we would like to answer them, the last two questions here. One is from Pedro, which talks about what the dynamic for the closing of new contracts in this quarter was, and if the interest rates has been in line with the increasing costs and about the new contracts. I think Cris can talk about this and about the duties. They've actually been keeping in line with this. Normally, there's an internal rate of return that's kept. That's the minimum rate, actually. This is in our pricing department. Of course, the new contracts also have to reach this minimum return rate. About the adjustments, we've already talked about this a bit. If you wanna talk about new contracts, Cris, feel free.
Yeah, it's pretty much the same process in the pricing area, the targets, the ROIC, the tier. When they're within the company's metrics, they haven't really changed. What we had before is still valid. If there's any very strategic aspects, then the company needs to bring this out, and we need to understand if we're gonna mess with anything. The business continues to be the same, and the pricing area with the tier and the ROIC that are very well-defined.
Also, about the dynamic for the closing of new contracts, and the results of the second quarter demonstrating this, how we've been able to capture these opportunities that appear, when it comes to new contracts and really supplied by the cross-selling efforts and the acquisitions, where, the post-consumer guys also have, a contract with a big company, and we're able to perform the total waste management and also the software for carbon credit work. This has worked very well. In this quarter, it's not different.
We've had pleasant surprises about what comes in as demand and also the active sales force we've implemented ever since the IPO, what arrives as opportunities for cross-selling, but also people asking and understanding what Ambipar does and how we do this as an actual solution, within the circular economy concept. This is something that has really leveraged this, and we're finally reaping the fruits of these results. Now it's important to mention also the dynamic of the closings because we're only able to close these contracts because CapEx was done beforehand. If we didn't have the CapEx beforehand, it would be very difficult for us to have this dynamic, feasible, and we would maybe not even have the conditions to close these new contracts, and even the profitability could be compromised because we would maybe have to rent this equipment.
Finally, the last question from Mahenki is about the price transfers and if there's some difference between the markets in Brazil and abroad when it comes to pricing and this inflationary scenario that we have in Brazil and abroad. Well, when it comes to Environment, it's very similar because these are long-term contracts and the pricing aspects are very similar. Then, of course, you also have the guidelines that Environment LATAM really follows this process with the tiers. Price transfers follow this contractor condition. Of course, you have negotiations, and there could be a timing issue. For response, we have the subscription aspects that allow customers to not only have the inflation adjustments but also changes in the price charts. Abroad, the
What we call the scheduled work is a little more common. Of course, we have big companies that have those umbrella contracts. Since we're an essential service and very sensitive for customers, we've been able to transfer these price adjustments in a quite comfortable way and with these prices and the inflationary adjustments. We finished the question session, and it was a real long list of questions. We're really happy that we had over 100 people present online, and we're really thankful for everyone's presence. I would like to pass on the word to Cris for final remarks and Tiago.
Once again, I just want to thank you all for your presence, and I want to always state our commitment as Ambipar, as a commitment that we have even with the company itself and our employees, our investors, and shareholders. This trend and this movement we're working on is really something new in Brazil, and it's a topic of really delivering solutions and adding this to the emergency response services. This is something that we're really revolutionizing in Brazil and the world. We've been here together with Guilherme, a major multinational company saying, "Look, I really need you guys. Join us," because the circular economy is a reality in the world.
Everyone around the world is looking at COP27, and all the big guys are gonna be there, and they're gonna have really important commitments for the protection of the environment and proposals to not exploit the planet and bring so much of this waste and post-consumer and post-industrial impacts into the supply chains. This is the purpose, and these are the platforms that we have at Ambipar that make it possible for us to really be here disclosing these results and saying, "Look how much it's important for us to grow. Look how important it is for us to have the perennial aspect of this business," because we're looking ahead in the future.
That's why we're gonna have our feet on the ground with all of these agendas, from the global compact and, saying that Ambipar is maybe ten steps ahead when it comes to environmental preservation. We're here with our doors open and I'd like to invite everyone to come and visit our operations and really have a tangible understanding of what we do and clearly understand the assets there and see how things work, understanding exactly how we're looking at a Response in Brazil and around the world and seeing what our labs like to be able to generate value for the company. I wanna thank you so much. Of course, we're always available and always firm here to work hard and really believing in this company that's really making a difference in the world. Tiago.
Perfect, Cris.
I just wanna thank you all once again. As Ricardo mentioned, we had a great level of participants, and we're available, of course. Ricardo and all of the IR team are also actively available to clarify any questions you may have about the earnings. Once again, we're really optimistic about the future with these earnings as we deliver more and more and really create this unique ecosystem that brings in a lot of entry barriers. We're of course available to anyone else that has any more questions. If you wanna visit Nova Odessa as well, we love welcoming guests, and it's really where we can give some tangibility to everything we're saying.
Of course, our challenge of always presenting this different business and this different strategy with a lot of certainty that we're gonna have the guaranteed returns, for our shareholders. Thank you very much. Bye. Take care.