Welcome everyone to our first virtual Camil Day. It's a pleasure to have you all with us. I would like to start by telling you a very brief history of our growth, which I divided into three cycles. The first from the company's inception until the end of the 1990s, when we experienced organic growth mostly. By the end of the 1990s and early 2000 until 2017, we not only had organic growth, but also very strong inorganic growth. Throughout this period, we had three private equity funds who assisted us, and the company learned a lot from them through this inorganic growth process.
Throughout these past 20 years, not only the company entered into new categories, like in Brazil, our sugar and fish, but we also entered into new countries, Uruguay, Chile, and Peru, and all of these are leadership positions with leading brands, not only here but abroad as well. This third phase, which I consider to be post-IPO, is when the company started writing a new chapter of its history. We faced two very hard years. Not only Camil, but all of the rice industry faced the same dire moments, which was in 2018 and 2019, and now in 2020, when we were faced with the challenges posed by COVID-19. During the pandemic that started at the end of March, the first measure taken by the company was the introduction of a crisis committee that met on a daily basis. That crisis committee operated in three fronts.
One, we had to ensure the ongoing operations. Not only I'm referring to maintaining the operation of the industry, but also maintaining the entire supply chain, direct and indirect inputs, as well as the entire logistics. Also, we had great focus on maintaining the liquidity of the company. There was another very important front involving the safety of our employees. We introduced several safety measures during the entry and exit of our employees, and we had to provide a lot of training because of the pandemic protocols, and these trainings are still ongoing. This is one of our ongoing concerns because we don't know whether the second wave will come or not. Anyway, the company reinstated all that previous work. The third front involves social responsibility. The company focused on helping the communities where we operate, where we have our plants.
This is our first focus of operation. Camil also participated in several donation companies, and we donated a lot of food products in an attempt to minimize the impact of the pandemic. This slide shows an overview of the company in the last 12 months, ending in August. Just as a reminder, our fiscal year goes from March through February. Our first half of the year ends in August. In the last 12 months, the company's net revenue was BRL 6.6 million. EBITDA in the last 12 months, also ending in August, was BRL 674 million. The company sold 2.2 million tons. Our operation in ballpark figures, 70% is in Brazil and 30% is abroad. Our main brands in each one of the categories and in the countries, as you can see from the slide, shows that we hold a leadership position or we are number two.
In rice, our main brands are Camil and Namorado. In sugar, União and Da Barra. Fish, Coqueiro is the main brand. Here in the other countries, we have Saman in Uruguay, Tucapel in Chile, and Costeño in Peru. Here down below, this is just a breakdown of that 70/30 ratio. We see the revenue in Brazil of BRL 4.6 million and revenue abroad of BRL 1.9 million. Our business model is extremely resilient, and if you look at the chart on the lower left part of the slide, we have a long series of almost 12 years, and that shows that our EBITDA margin during this period varied between 10% and 11%.
Even in years where there was a drop in GDP or during a very recessive scenario like 2015 and 2016 and 2020 as well, we clearly see that the company continues to perform its margins and still remains between 10%-11%, despite the dire scenario. It's also important to mention our segment, obviously Camil is able to transfer prices, this is why our operation is so resilient. Any spike in prices or price reductions in raw materials are transferred in a very short period of time. To illustrate that point, we have at least rice prices, where the company posts a new price almost every week. For beans, sometimes we have more than one price a week, this shows that this transfer dynamic is very quick. Speaking a little about our growth strategy, we have three major front or three major objectives.
The first is the market consolidation. When we look at the rice market, Camil has 13% market share. The second player has 5%. This is a very fragmented market. Therefore, the company works hard to consolidate this segment both for rice and beans. Also, the company wishes to enter into new categories, as we have done in the past with sugar and fish. The company has many synergies with the wheat chain, coffee chain. All of these categories are in tune with our company, just like it was with sugar and fish. Also, we want to grow our footprint in South America. We are already present in Uruguay, Chile, and Peru, and we now wish to enter into other countries like Colombia, which is a country that, in our view, could be very interesting.
To conclude, in summarizing everything I said, I believe that Camil's strengths are that we have a very large distribution network, not only in Brazil but also in Chile and Peru. Our brands are leading brands, all of them with high brand recognition, with premium prices. Our business is very resilient, and this resilience comes from this capacity to transfer prices and also the fact that we are able to promote a diversification of categories, and also we can diverse in geographic areas. We follow the same lines that we did in the past 15 years. We want to consolidate some of our segments, and we enter into new categories, and we want to look for new categories outside Brazil in the countries where we are already present and other countries where we are not present yet.
In addition, our team is very prepared to continue managing the company the same way we have been doing so far. We have a very sound leadership with very strong ESG standards. I'll give the floor to Flavio. Thank you.
Luciano, thank you very much. Good morning to everybody. It's a pleasure to be with you today to share some of what we experienced in 2020. This has been a very unusual year to all of us and in regards to what happened to the company. We will elaborate a bit about our results this year. In the food industry, it was a very positive year for Camil. There were some important highlights.
Just to list a few highlights in regards to dividend payout this year, we recently announced an interim dividend payout of BRL 150 million, BRL 20 million interest on equity in December, and this is combined with the BRL 45 million that we already paid out from January through September. Certainly, this shows that the company is capable of generating cash. Distribution of proceeds has been done in a rational fashion, and this is also combined with our fourth buyback program that was announced in the last quarter of 4 million shares to neutralize any effect of the call option of the officers of the company.
This year, in financial terms, we maintain our focus in the operation. Liquidity was something extremely relevant in the first quarter. We rushed to raise approximately BRL 1.2 billion to face any contingency that we could encounter. More recently, we already started doing some asset management.
We did some funding in Brazil. We had another debentures issue to expand the tenure and fund our costs. Something that we did, and it's in the radar of the company and our stakeholders and the board, is the introduction of an ESG committee. We are putting together this ESG structure in all governance spheres, starting from the board, going all the way to our operations. In addition, we are doing some extensive work to be closer to our investors. This year alone, with our NDRs, online conferences, and live sessions, we were able to reach over 2,200 investors. We received a lot of acknowledgment from the market. We received some awards as a company from our suppliers. Despite being a difficult year for everybody, this was also a year where our work has been acknowledged. Talking about the financials of the company.
This year, we encounter very positive dynamics for our business. The pandemic put a spotlight on the food industry, because it had been a bit forgotten in the past years. Now the year stressed the importance of being a company that provides basic staples. We started our fiscal year in March, and that was precisely when the pandemic was announced in Brazil. At first, we noticed an increase in demand coming from all of the stages of the chain, starting with consumers, then retailers, and this then was replicated throughout the industry. Basically, in all of our markets, we experienced a positive impact in terms of volume, both in grains, sugar, and fish, because fish is a seasonal segment, but we had a positive performance, and the same dynamics was noticed in the international market.
This has combined with an increase in prices of the main inputs, mainly due to supply and demand conditions in Brazil. The depreciation of the Brazilian BRL. The company had a significant performance. By the same token, the company was able to recover its profitable levels. By the end of 2020, when we look at the results for the last 12 months ending in November, we arrive at almost BRL 6.6 billion in revenue. This is a significant recovery in terms of our EBITDA, reaching BRL 674 million in the last 12 months. Also this shows the recovery of our profitability level that now is close to 10%, which is the historical average of the company. To elaborate in some of the different segments in Brazil, rice was the segment where we were able to post a more clear recovery.
In March, on the onset of the pandemic, we noticed a very strong increase in demand coming from consumers and therefore affecting the entire chain. This together with this very unique dynamics in the market because there was strong demand in the domestic market, at first Brazil became a very cheap country and we started to export rice. Because of that, prices had an important recovery, which allowed us to recombine our margins due to this additional volume. With that, we were able to post record volumes in the company, mostly stemming from this unique demand. As we were able to transfer prices, the company, in turn, was able to recover its historical profitability levels when compared to the results from last year, because things were different this year when compared to last year. Now, looking at the beans category.
With beans, the dynamic was a bit different this year, maybe not as severe as in rice when it comes to demand, but by the same token, the demand for this basic staple was quite high and the company and the segment posted a positive performance throughout the year. When we look at the sugar segment, União brand remains very strong. We also noticed that this year in the sugar segment, things were a bit different in regards to volume. We've been operating at a sales level that is very similar to what we had in 2017. There was a recovery of volumes, a significant one when we draw a comparison with the last quarters of last year. What happened in this segment in regards to profitability is that our profitability is slightly below our historical levels.
Despite sugar prices in international markets, the gross price of sugar internationally has recovered. This year, we were not able to see the same recovery dynamics that we experienced last year. When we look at the fish segment, we also had a very positive scenario financially speaking. First of all, in regards to volumes, we noticed an additional demand in this segment, during the pandemic months, well, I must remind you that this segment is seasonal and on average, it had a better performance than expected during a period where demand is lower. Now financially speaking, we are reaping the benefits of all of the adjustments that we made in the past years. We did some important work to improve industrial efficiency. We also adjusted prices in our go-to-market strategy, all of that combined allowed the company to post significant results in this segment.
Before I move forward and give the floor to Renato, I would just like to conclude this summary of the year on a positive note. It was a difficult year. Not only the company, but I think the entire world had to adapt. This different reality showed how important it is for you to be a company that offers basic staples and the capacity to recover of the company. We were able to have good volumes and also to make all of the necessary price adjustments that when we look from now backwards to the past, we will close these last two quarters posting historical numbers of the company in almost all of our indicators. We were able to show operating resilience. We also showed financial resilience because we have the support from our main partners.
We are in a leverage trench that allows us to pursue our strategic goals. Having said that, now I give the floor to Renato, our operations officer, who will talk about what we did in this past year. Renato, welcome.
Good morning. My name is Renato Accessor. I am the operations officer at Camil, and I cover industries and inbound and outbound logistics of the company. I would like to give you an idea what is it when we talk about Brazil operation. We cover North, Northeast, Midwest, South, and Southeast. We have 14 plants all over the country, 13 distribution centers, and most of them belong to our own units. We have two drying centers where we receive the rice, we store it, dry it, and then we send it for processing in one of our units.
We basically have about 500 suppliers, more than 500 SKUs produced through our plants. Just to give you an idea about the transportation facility and what we do in company, we load more than 11,000 trucks a month, and we perform over 22,000 deliveries. In addition, we have a transportation company that works both with our own fleet and third parties. In our case, this is a very good opportunity to learn more about new technologies, to get pricing opportunities, and to understand the chain much better. We have approximately 16,000 customers, and we produce 125,000 tons a month. This is just to give you an order of magnitude of what we do here. Now moving to our next slide. Last year, I had a presentation about the main focus and the highlights of my area of responsibility. I'll start from there.
I'll tell you about what happened, what did not happen, and what still remains the focus of the company in 2021. Just as a recap of the previous presentation, we said that our focus was productivity, automation, the energy grid, and routine management. We made a lot of progress throughout 2020 in all of these fronts. We deployed productivity using control items and the efficiency control of the plant. We introduced that process in our newest plant at Barra, and now we are maturing this routine to later unfold it to the other units. At Barra also, we focus on automation. We introduce robots to increase our operation efficiency both at Barra and in the grain plants. We can say that all of our units are already fully automated in terms of palletization, and with that, we were able to increase our operating performance in the plants.
We have a pilot project, and we are now developing the executive project of an energy grid for another power generator based on the burning of the hull. This is a project to be deployed this year. Routine management was something that we implemented in all of our units, all of our indicator management, PDCA, results analysis. This is something that we do every day through PDCA. With that, we can manage our results and make the necessary corrections. Now, to talk about the indicators and what happened in the last year. Last year, I mentioned three pillars, safety, quality, and operating efficiency. In terms of safety and accidents in the last three years, we did some significant work in the company. We paid a lot of attention to that, and we were able to lower by 75% the total number of accidents.
We deployed PDCA, meaning that we analyzed everything that had happened. We made decisions based on the Pareto curve, based on accidents. We defined golden rules together with the people management people, or the dos and don'ts of safety. Based on that, we also elaborated the behavior part of the team. Now we have to maintain all of that and also convey that to our leaders because the leaders are responsible for our safety. While I am in charge of the safety and security of all the plants, the manager of the plant, supervisors, and so on and so forth. This is not something that you start and then you stop, because our ultimate goal is zero accidents. This is the goal of the company. We already have several plants with zero accidents for over 365 days.
With quality, we introduced SAC or customer service, based on the number of complaints of our products. We were able to post a reduction of 45% through management practices and processes. One of our plants was certified and recertified this year at FSSC 22000, and we are very proud of that. This is one of the only rice packaging plants to be certified, and we are very proud to be part of the selective team. Now we are about to introduce a standard checklist. Once management is in place, we have to ensure that all of these standards are constantly reviewed in order for us to continue to grow in management year on year. In terms of operating performance, we had an improvement of 10% in cost, mainly by reviewing tariffs.
We had a lot of bids for service review. We worked hard to reduce energy consumption by 19%. We also increased our performance with labor. We are doing more with less people, producing more tons per person. This is how we regroup the management of our units. We reduced by 30% the number of overtime hours. There was something that was not so good because our maintenance expense was 5% higher than what we would like, but our focus this year is to reduce that KPI. In terms of raw material, we were able to improve our industrial production. We have to constantly focus on reducing all these KPIs, but we made good progress. For this year, we still maintain the same focus. We have to take OER and unfold that to the other units.
Our grain plant should roll out this technology to help people learn and have all of the measurements on the plant. Not only it's important to talk about volume but also line efficiency. Automation, we are rolling out a lot of automation processes in our units, particularly with the use of robots for palletization and information management for decision making. We are now in the executive process to build a thermal plant. The idea now is to start the licensing and execution phase. It's a longer process, but it should be ready in early 2022. We are just concluding a new plant. We are moving our former plant in Vila Anastácio to Osasco. It's a state-of-the-art plant. The bulk of the production is for beans, but the plant will also produce some rice packaging.
This new plant has all of the routines that we already deployed with efficiency management, indicator management, and all of the automation that we had in the other plants. With that, we will give important leaps to reduce costs further in this unit after it moves to this other new address. This should be finalized early next year. Now talking about logistics, this is another area under my responsibility. We focus on three major pillars: service level, inventory management, and cost reduction. In terms of service level, we utilized OTIF last year, and we were able to grow 35 percentage points in that regard, and this led us to receive some awards from some of our suppliers as one of the best suppliers in the delivery chain because we're able to improve our service level.
This was basically due to optimization and tracking of our deliveries in São Paulo and Rio. We are just concluding the pilot phase, and until the end of the year, we're going to roll that out to all of our other operations. In terms of control tower, this is something that is already starting in the new plant, but we want to centralize all of the tracking of our deliveries in a single room. This will be developed throughout next year. This is one of my own individual targets, and all of the delivery management of the country will be fully automated. This will improve our performance because it was difficult for us to manage all the deliveries, but with the new process, we will be able to improve our service level and quality as well. Finally, the cost to serve.
Last year, I told you that we were focusing on the cost of our production allocation, meaning where to package some brand, while at the same time we would optimize freight cost, utilizing tax incentives, and also optimizing the location of the plant. This year, we will also focus on the cost to serve. The moment I leave the plant, what is the delivery cost for every order? We want to be able to measure that so we can make improvements in terms of truck occupation and the opening of white areas, and what will be the most interesting white area, firstly, thinking about this cost to serve. This is a very important initiative. We have to do that work together with the sales team. In terms of inventory management, we reviewed our inventory policy. We deployed a system to optimize the grade.
We also introduced S&OP, also based on artificial intelligence. We build a demand plan that looks at previous years and makes a forecast for the future together with the sales team. When we get together, we cross all the information and make a decision about what to produce and what to deliver the following month. We are just beginning with this process. It was initiated in the middle of this year, but we already had all the back office ready before the system was in place to have systems to analyze demand and where you would place your collaborative demand. Further down the line, we will be able to have a more assertive decision in terms of inventory management and have a better service in the supply chain. We included Power BI in the rest of the company.
All the management of my area is now in the Power BI system, and we can make better decisions. The focus is to improve further because we have to improve our sales forecast, because with that, we believe we still have a lot of opportunities to further reduce costs and improve the service level. In terms of cost reductions, last year we focused on freight because this was one of our major challenges. We were able to have a 13% reduction in freight per haul. This was based on the numbers of last year. You can say, okay, you reduced that because your earnings were higher. Okay, true, but we were able to post a 28% reduction in terms of BRL per ton.
We focus on optimizing truckload, improvements in minimal orders, and load charts and daily control of freight prices through controlling the carriers and truck hook, which is having all the trucks parked to make better distribution and deliveries in the fixed routes with the port. We also have better management of our fleet, and we are now initiating another process to acquire fuel through our own transportation company because we want to eliminate all of the intermediary margins, and that amount can be captured internally. We are running a pilot plan, and the idea is to roll that out next year. In summary, all of the logistics initiatives for this year, for 2021, is that we will put a strong focus on the cost to serve, looking for margins optimization, looking at the orders through the simulations from the plants.
We want to be more efficient in our deliveries, and we are still maturing S&OP. We just gave the first steps, but we still have a long way to go in this process in the organization. The control tower will be deployed next year, and that we will be more accurate in terms of delivering information, and we will digitalize logistics because this is an ongoing trend in the market, and we want to do the same thing and work towards having a more digital logistics and more efficient one. The rollout of our fuel station, this is something that we capture from one of our operations, and we believe we can extend that to the entire country. Basically, these are the projects that we have in the pipeline for this year.
I think we made enormous progress last year. We are certain that we still have a lot more to do next year and the years ahead. I think we have a long way to go to look for better operating efficiency, both in logistics and in the industry. All in all, we make important progress to continue to grow. That's all I have. I would like to thank you all very much for participating, and certainly, I know we will have some time for Q&A.
Hello, my name is André Zíglia. I am the Supply Officer and Export Market of Camil Alimentos. I will start by talking about the purchase of indirect materials. We operate with 2.2 million tons of raw material in addition to packaging and services. We continue to work, as we told you last year during Camil Day.
We work on the freight tables for international and domestic freight, port, brokers, demurrage, and port storage. We are also pursuing the procurement bids, as we said last year with Ariba and the bids. We are just concluding the last bids for IT, telephony, IGP, and other packaging items, smaller packaging. The market landscape has also favored exports. The depreciation of the BRL from March onwards allowed us to double our export volumes, both for rice and sugar. It's important to mention the effect of COVID and how it impacted our company. We experienced some difficulties with supply or several segments in March on the onset of the pandemic. The packaging companies were not considered to be essential activities. This was a cause of concern because we had to increase our inventory to prevent a stock out.
In March, when predictions were very bad in terms of GDP, many plants that are very far away from our own plants, like steel, plastic, and cardboard, they decreased their activities. There was a decline in their inventory levels due to the GDP drop. In April, the government came with the emergency aid, where that injected more than BRL 200 billion in the economy. Because of that, demand increased substantially, whereas supply curve did not move as fast, because companies had to resume their activities, reconnect their blast furnaces, and supply of cardboard, plastic, resins, and other inputs also increased, like soybean oil, which is an important input in the fish segment. Now going to raw materials with rice, the landscape was highly impacted by COVID-19. There, I look at expectation for supply and demand. We knew that the year-end inventory was low, 144 million. Production was normal.
Import was normal, slightly above 1.1 million tons. Estimated consumption, we had been correcting the numbers because we experienced a growing consumption of rice and exports of 1.5 million tons. What do we see now at the end of the agricultural year is that exports exceeded our expectations. Brazilian exports exceed 1.6 million. Our projection is that it should reach 1.8 million. The year-end inventory, that by the end of this year, by February 28th, 2021, was supposed to be 18 days. The estimate is that this year-end inventory should fall to between nine to 10 days. The crop season 2021 will be very short in terms of inventory, mostly aggravated to what I show you here on the side, which is the impact coming from Mercosul. Production declined both in Brazil as well as in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
Mainly in Paraguay, they will experience a significant drop of about 300,000 tons-400,000 tons, and the entire block should experience a drop close to 600,000 tons in their harvest for next year. This will certainly impact prices. Here, I show the Brazilian map and the participation of every state in the Camil ranking for rice processing. Rio Grande do Sul is the largest hub of Camil's processing, with 85% of the total processing capacity, and we use the three major allocation models of plants in Brazil. The model that applies to Rio Grande do Sul, Tocantins, and Maranhão, that's where the bulk of the rice production is located. The São Paulo and Rio model, that's where the rice consumption is located. We have a model for zones that receive high incentives, and that is Pernambuco and Goiás. These three plant model is applied very successfully.
I would also like to highlight an investment in Rio Grande do Sul last year, and that was the investment on a plant for rice origination in Pedrito. We went from a purchasing zone where we process 85% of rice, covering 70% of the competitive rice purchased to almost 82% of a very competitive purchase because we are located in the midst of one of the largest producing areas. This plant of Dom Pedrito is not an industry, but it's only for drying and storage. We believe that with that, we will be able to improve our performance of competitive supply prices. Here, we have a chart that shows the evolution of rice prices during this year. We started the crop season, in February, the exchange rate was approximately BRL 4.40.
As of March, with the pandemic, there were several other aspects that came to change that curve. One is the depreciation of the Brazilian reals, and the other is the year-end inventory shown in the previous chart. The other fact is that the government injected a lot of money in the economy, and this increased the consumption of the basic staple. Also, many ports around the world were shut down, especially in the main rice exporting countries, and they did that in an attempt to increase food safety. With that, Brazil became more competitive in exports, and the Brazilian rice denominated in U.S. Dollars was very competitive.
The market started to face an increase in prices because of high demand in the domestic market. The price continued to grow. It grew into August very strongly with a lot of sales in the domestic market, a lot of exports. Prices were spiking until in August it came to the same levels of Mercosul. Until August, Brazil was much more competitive than Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay. In August, Brazil had to go to Mercosul to buy rice because it realized that it wouldn't have enough inventory to face sales until the next crop season. When it went to Mercosul, it realized that Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay were in the same situation because they were also exporting to other markets, and they didn't have enough rice for us to buy.
The Brazilian market, not only the Brazilian market, but the market in the rest of Mercosul, because as Mercosul could not supply all the rice needed by Brazil, we would need to acquire rice from other markets, mainly markets from India, Thailand, and the U.S. The government acted quickly in order not to impact prices to consumers. In September, they removed all of the import tariffs on rice coming into Brazil. Import tariff is about 10% for rice in hull, the government zeroed the taxes, and it included us in an exception list and gave us a quota of 400,000 tons. What we saw was that this was a very prudent measure from the government because it stabilized prices around BRL 115, and this is what we see now, we see flat prices.
For next year, we see that due to the year-end inventory, La Niña will continue to be very firm. We see that unless we have a very serious exchange impact, next year prices will be flat with no major variations, because this year variations were really strong. Prices vary from BRL 45-BRL 50 to BRL 115. This has been one of the highest price variations in rice prices. Next year, price levels will still remain high, the variations will be much lower when compared to this year. Moving to beans. I would also like to talk about our plant distribution from last year to this year. The highlight is that we put together a plant in Castro, in Paraná, and we concluded the plant in Aparecida de Goiânia.
Aparecida de Goiânia not only has some tax incentives, like we said before, but in beans, that area has a vocation to work with beans. Goiás is probably the third or fourth largest producer of beans, and the plant in Paraná. The reason why we chose Paraná is that Paraná is the main producing region in the country. Our plant is located in Castro, is a very modern plant, very efficient, and they are right in the middle of the beans production region in Paraná. With that, with beans, we were able to get the same thing we have for rice. Great capillarity. We are present in the major producing states of the country. With that, we have greater capillarity. We have a good structure for beans and rice, and we have buyers in all of the units of the country.
That gives us real-time information, in addition to knowing where the market is heading to and regions where it's easier, others that are more difficult. This allows us to plan our supply and to have tax gains. This is important for beans. Now, as of next year, we expect to see still high prices. Well, we don't like it very much, but there are a lot of speculators in the market. CONAB is anticipating a small acreage reduction. The crop season would go from more than 3.1 million to 3 million. Therefore, there will be a significant yield reduction. Also soybeans. People are fixing soy prices around BRL 140, BRL 145. Because of those prices, people will not be so encouraged to plant beans. Growers believe that soybean worth BRL 140, beans should be two to one, so they should be worth BRL 80.
Well, this variation is not so direct because you have to factor in consumption by price. Prices being as it is, there might be some drop in consumption. Another important aspect is climate. This lack of rain that affects rice crops and bean crops is affecting both crops because of the drought. When we look at beans, we think that prices will be more sustainable. Sugar, once again, there will be a global deficit of around 2.2 million tons. Brazilian production will be good. Sugar is more attractive than ethanol. The mix used to be 65% ethanol and 35% sugar. As sugar prices are good, this mix should change. We should see 55% ethanol and the rest is sugar. Because of that, the Brazilian crop will increase to about 41 million tons.
The sugar market is fixated in the New York Exchange and the London Exchange, but it's mainly fixed in New York. Our next crop season to be harvested in April, 55% of the prices are already fixed and the crop to be harvested in April of 2022, about 20% is already fixed at very good prices. The New York historical levels was about 12.60, and this year the average was 13 lb weight, and this is very attractive to sugarcane producers. It will be bullish. Well, there is an issue with India, because once again, India may introduce subsidies. Well, it's not certain whether they will introduce subsidies or not to help the population in the field because they use subsidies to help growers in the fields. If India introduces the subsidies, this may lead the market to go down.
Climate, again, with La Niña, maintained the weather very dry in São Paulo. This should also lead to lower yields. In turn, we believe that the market should also be firm with sugar. All of the agricultural commodity have a bias of being flat in the next crop season. Looking at the fish segment, as I said in the beginning of my presentation, that was the segment of the company that was the most tense because of steel and cardboard and also the fish raw material. We buy from the domestic market. For four years in a row, Brazil did not produce sardines. We had to buy from Morocco, where we have long-time suppliers, 10 to 12 years. We also developed suppliers in Oman. Of course, life there was not easy either because they had problems with the pandemic. The ports were closed.
They had to introduce protocols. Around May, we were able to grow our volume and prevent stock out issues. We have a domestic fleet that is very loyal. We have the best tuna fisheries. They've been our suppliers for a long time. They're loyal to us, and the tuna fishing in the domestic market was good. We also have a viable alternative, which is to buy tuna from Ecuador. There, we already have a lot of certified producers. Certainly, the competitiveness of Brazilian tuna is much better. To conclude, I would say that our expectation for next year is quite positive, with almost all of the agricultural commodities posting sustainable prices. In order to mitigate risk, we are still very attentive to the market behavior.
I believe that having plants all over Brazil with our capillarity and the fact that we take advantage of all of the tax benefits and the real-time information we have, we are able to anticipate moves. With rice, not only we are in Brazil, but we are in Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, and in all of these locations, we have good suppliers in Argentina and Paraguay. In all of these areas, we are increasing our capillarity, and with that, we can anticipate moves and then be more assertive in the market. We are also very much concerned with technology. We deploy the Ariba system that allowed us to have a better management of all of the indirect inputs. We have a better management of all the categories. With freight, we can anticipate moves. We use the different logistic modes, both in terms of international freight, highway freight.
We are very much alert and attentive to the market moves, and we are humble enough to learn and continue to grow. That's it. Have a good event, and thank you very much.
Good morning. My name is Christina Larroudé. I am the marketing officer of Camil Alimentos, and I'm here to talk a little bit about our plans of 2020 and the outlook for 2021. 2020 was a very unusual year, and Camil once again showed the relevance of its purpose to feed relationships with the strength of its brands and a strong relationship with consumers. Brazilians had never cooked that much. Everybody went back to the kitchen, and Camil, as very few companies knew how to support this move with brands that are part of people's everyday lives. With Camil, we were quick to adjust our campaign, and we adopted the theme Home Cooking with Camil.
Home cooking is so good. The base of our new diet is rice and beans. To do that, we partnered with Rita Lobo, who is our ambassador, to talk about the importance of rice and beans, the different ways to prepare rice and beans, and the different varieties with that combination of rice and beans. We have whole rice, capeto rice, oriental rice. Rita, more than anyone else, through a hub of content, was able to bring all of these range of different preparations of food, teaching people how to store and prepare the food. We had a marketing program during the entire quarantine. Every two weeks, Rita would produce a live showing how to prepare the food and with some important hints. In the other weeks, we had another influencer working with niche strategies like vegans, flexitarians.
With that, we were close to our consumers throughout the year. União, this beautiful brand that has just celebrated 110 years of existence, we produced a new campaign called União Transforming Your Days. What is our tradition? União transforms the sweets, and the sweets transform our days, bringing those good memories of happy times around the table. The campaign began during the pandemic. It was initially filmed remotely with small stretches of lives of consumers and the sweets that are part of the lives of these families. With Coqueiro, we were betting in the frequency of consumption. There are innumerous nutritional benefits when you combine tuna and sardine in the diet of families. There is still a very small portion of the population who has that weekly habit.
We decided to leave the individual consumption of a can for one person and to say that sardines and tuna can become important ingredients in a recipe like moqueca, like they can be used in risottos. This is the avenue we decided to pursue. With that, our brands have never been so strong. They are now known as top-of-mind brands with feijão, with beans, with Camil, and sugar with União, as the most remembered brand in the Southeast, according to all of the audited categories. That made us very proud, and we should be thankful to our consumers and clients who make these brands so relevant. This year as well, the brands had a good performance in terms of market share, and with sardines, we were able to recover our market leadership. The company also understands that there are many other opportunities that go beyond that.
We have a full portfolio of brands. We operate in different market tiers, and we also embrace regionalisms. We have a brand like Carreteiro is a very significant brand in Rio. Pai João is another leading brand. We also believe that all of these brands have a certain space catering to different needs of consumers. At the same time, we understand that when consumers go back home, new opportunities will appear, market opportunities, and we knew how to address them through distribution and scale. Also added value like whole wheat items, addressing health ability, cake mixes, and this is one of the categories that grew the most during the quarantine because people went back home, and they needed that cozy feeling of drinking coffee with a piece of cake.
Also Asian food, the natural sugar lines like brown sugar and botanic sugar, all of these lines posted impressive growth during this year. We are not only talking about products. We prepared our marketing strategies to address all of these consumer trends. We embrace four trends this year: practicality, health ability, and rationality. Therefore, in our social media strategies and strategies over the web, had a lot of posts and content through Rita lives or other influencers who talked about all of these aspects that add value to the lives of our consumers. We also took this opportunity to structure the digital ecosystem of our regional brands. Now, brands like Da Barra, Pescador, Pai João, Namorado, et cetera, they have their own website and their own pages on the social media, activating and being closer to consumers.
This year, bringing entertainment to consumers was also very important. We were betting on our content strategy with all of our brands, but at the same time, we partner with other movements in society, with lives from singers, where we participated, donating products, and also bringing entertainment to our consumers. Those were huge projects with Luan Santana, lives from Diogo Nogueira, still addressing regional business, and we supported that with Carreteiro. We had Joelma in the North. Mainly, we participated in the actions by Copa UNICEF, and now on Christmas, this is the third year that we support an action called Christmas With No Hunger.
Now, looking towards 2021, we believe that people will continue to cook at home, either due to food safety or because it's safer for them to be home, and we will continue to support them through our social media strategies, our influencers, and lives. To make this Christmas even sweeter, we are responding to all of the media posting, and we will launch a book of 110 years of União. It's a big book. It can be used as a coffee table book. In that book, we will have some iconic recipes from so many decades of recipes. This is a brand that co-creates with consumers, products, services, and so many other things that people like.
We will also talk about the most requested recipes on our website and the stories behind it. This Christmas, many families will not be able to be united, but we will try to make them to feel united through that special recipe that they share every Christmas, that now everybody can make it because it will be on the book. This brand also has a very strong strategy from influencers that will talk about the book, the paper packaging to recall our history, and everything will end with a major promotion. This is the way we found to thank all of our consumers, and we want to leave you with a sweeter world. With that, I say goodbye. Thank you very much.
Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you today. I am Max, the Commercial Officer of Camil.
I will briefly tell you a little bit about our strategy, how we navigated through the year, and how we dealt with this very unique and unusual year, commercially speaking, and how do we see the market looking forward. Well, starting with the way we are operating in the market, we divided our strategies, always remembering, of course, that we keep in mind that we want to pursue relevant organic growth. Therefore, we have different strategies to different objectives. To that end, we created three blocks. One is called share, the other one is synergy, and the other one we called white areas. With that design then, we drew up our strategies to pursue our objectives in each of these areas. Very briefly, these blocks were divided into regions, products, and relevance, the relevance we have in every area.
When we talk about protecting our share, we are talking about São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and the Northeast. When we talk about synergies, we are talking about the South and the interior of the state of São Paulo. I would like to refer to the meaning of synergy for us. That means regions where we have a relevant brand or a relevant product, and then we use this relevance of that brand or product to leverage the sale of other products so as to gain relevance in these regions. White areas, this is a major challenge we have. We then listed the North, Minas, and the state of Goiás. Then we move to the second phase of the strategy, which consists of how we would operate in each of these blocks in terms of channels, customers, and certainly actions.
Here, looking at this example in this slide, in terms of protecting our share, we focus on cash and carry, large retail, and distributor. Our strategy to operate in these areas where we have larger relevance, being also market leaders. We have a much more effective presence. We work with JBP as one of the largest customers. We participate in the activation of networks with Pabbly platforms and also food tasting in the sales area. All in all, we have a whole package of allocation of actions and market investments in a much more intensive way. In regards to synergies, we focus in the large retailers and distributors, and distributors are more focused on distributing fish and other added-value items. We had several campaigns with distributors. We carried out some promotions. We had promoters in the shops, and we increased the store base of our promoters.
In regards to the white areas, our strategy focus mostly in large customers, basically cash and carry and large retailers. In this regard, we have logistics optimization due to the low sales volume in some regions. Therefore, we started operating in regions where we are not so relevant, but we were very effective working with less customers, but with high sales volume. We have a plant in Goiás, and there we work to activate customers to help us expand our strategy from large retailers and the cash segment. Now, regarding processes, what are we doing in that area? Processes. We've been working to facilitate the lives of people in the field. We understand that the less attrition on the side of seller, the better will be the productivity on their side. We are also working to improve our sales processes.
What we want is to make the lives of sellers a lot easier. We try to improve order taking. We try to give them better management information so that it will have better information to give to their clients. We had already several upgrades and a good development of our Salesforce, which is our automation sales tool. We were able to leverage the number of SKUs sold inside our customers. We were also able to leverage products that intentionally we want to promote. We also created suggested products, because oftentimes we see within the same region, some customers selling a different mix than the other. The suggested item allows the salesperson to clearly see what type of product that customer wants, or they should buy and that they are not buying, or maybe they are not buying a good enough volume and the volume could be increased.
That is facilitating sales and increasing volumes. In regards to sales processes, we are focusing a lot on that 360-degree view, allowing the salespeople to see the status of the order in every given moment, and therefore, they can respond to customer much faster. They have better visibility of the order. They know where the order is, what's the status of the order, and this automates the entire process, and by the same token, it facilitates the entry of orders, the flow of orders as well. We are working to deliver orders much faster. In terms of KPI management, we made very good progress in terms of managerial information. We are enabling sales KPIs in our sales system, which is called Salesforce. Sales reps can easily see their sales status and synergies, meaning products and the several categories purchased by the same customer, and what their goals are.
It is much easier for the salesperson to monitor his or her own performance. With that, we have productivity gains. It is easier for us to analyze the information. This is updated on a daily basis, and now we are working towards having all that updated online to gain time and be more efficient. Finally, I think it's important to highlight how we navigated through the year. With the pandemic, I think it's worth mentioning that we were, after all, present in segments that experience higher consumption, higher demand. People were home, and therefore, they consumed more food. That was very good. On the other hand, when we look at the entire world of sales, there was a big shift. What we saw was the appearance of more e-commerce, especially in regards to basic products, and food staple was not so strong back then.
Even much so with basic products. With the pandemic, e-commerce really picked up. How did we deal with that? We began to have a stronger participation on e-commerce of our own customers. We have encouraged and participated with them in their own e-commerce, and at the same time, we are also selling through other channels like Amazon, Mercado Livre, which is B2C and B2B as well. Within the platform of Compra Agora, just as an example, that's a tool that sells to small retailers. We are working with that as well. We are also looking at some market gaps, and with all of that progress, we had an increase in demand of niche products like risotto rice, and these products increased on a monthly basis. We are trying now to leverage sales in these niche markets.
In terms of the structure of the company, we introduced a new management area for the development of new businesses. The main purpose of this new area is to look at market opportunities and take advantage of them. The second point I would like to mention, which was also a big challenge during the pandemic period, is how could we have our salespeople working from home? We were used to traditional sales when the salespeople would visit our customers. They go, they offer the products, but all of a sudden, everybody is home. Customers are at home, the sales reps are home. We were posed with the challenge of creating a routine to our salespeople, and at the same time, we had to be efficient enough to set up a contact with all of our customers, and that contact had to have the adequate frequency.
At the same time, we had to be able to offer our entire portfolio and make sales. To be honest, I was really surprised when I saw the results. I think we managed to do that quite well. We have a large number of salespeople, individuals and firms. I think that the agility we have and our capacity to convey to our sales team what the new routine was going to be, this really helped us to have a strong footprint in the market and be very active, even though we were distant from our people. Another aspect which reflects the strategy that we had in our blocks is how we are operating with trade marketing. We had to make important adjustments to our service model, the way we serve the market regarding activation, promoters, and merchandising.
All of that had to follow the strategy outlined for each block. We now have different models. Just to mention one example, in the case of promoters, we have some service models that check frequency, type of supply product, channel for every region, and according to the commercial strategy that I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation. We also created a regional trade marketing. Our service level is very unique when you compare it to Greater São Paulo, where we hold a leading position. Our service level is different when compared to what we have in Goiás. That is a white region. With all of that, we managed to deliver good results. We still have a lot of improvements along the road. we made great progress.
right now for the commercial area, adaptability is a very important buzzword, and we had to be quick to make the necessary adjustments to our strategies because this has been vital to us at Camil. Thank you very much for your participation and attention, and we are now available, I mean, to clarify your questions and to answer your questions.
Good afternoon. I'm Erika Magalhães, Director for People in Management at Camil, and today I have some highlights about our area of people in management during this Camil Day. We are more than 100,000 employees between Brazil and Latin America. This year, we ranked among the 35 best companies in terms of people management according to Mercer Valor survey. We also ranked among the five best companies in the segment between 3,000 to 7,000 employees, with an engagement rating of 92% and 80% in the Prosperity Index.
We grew in all aspects and questions of the survey. Our social initiatives this year donated more than BRL 1.5 million in campaigns with the involvement of our employees through volunteering actions. We also adhere to the movement Do Not Fire on the onset of the pandemic, and that had the purpose of avoiding an unnecessary turnover in our operations. Our competence mapping cycle is on its third year. In this year, we expanded the scope, we increased the number of people, and the process was 100% concluded. We also reinstated the engagement of our communication, introducing Camil Comunicação, which is a communication app that allows most of our employees to increase engagement, and with that, communication becomes more fluid. As part of that app, in the last few months, we added Camil Valoriza.
Camil Valoriza is a program that acknowledges the work of our employees within the scope of the recognized program of Camil. We also intensified the communication this year due to the prevention protocols of COVID-19. We sent a lot of communication, we made campaigns, and all of that as part of our quality of life improvement, as part of the Camil Saudável program. At Camil Academy, we consolidated the sales and business schools and knowledge multipliers. In addition, we increased our technical capacity building program, offering programs related to the business school. This is our own initiative where our employees talk about our business to our other employees. We expanded the Management Minute, and we introduced Camil Flix, that's a platform for onboard capacity building following a 360-degree model through virtual reality.
This year, despite the fact that our volunteer turnover being below 3% with a 30% reduction vis-à-vis our lost time accidents vis-à-vis the year before, we had an investment of BRL 12 million a year. All of that aiming at improving working conditions and increasing capacity building in our units. In terms of management, we are now in the second cycle of our strategic drivers, and this is due to the work we do to define targets and defining priority projects with 100% of eligibles with defined goals and other registered through performance models. We reinstated all of our management rituals. We had enormous challenges with digital this year, and we consolidated our monthly results meeting even on online mode. Our spotlight meeting, that's a meeting where we point all of our KPIs, and we were able to maintain our morning manage meetings even though they were online.
Still talking about projects, we utilized the agile methodology for planning and execution of other projects. All of the projects were very successful with significant results. We were able to also train the career track of Camil. This happened in the past few months, and this is a tool that will help improve the career of our employees. As part of ESG, we also reinstated our capacity building and inclusion. We have a working group for inclusion within Camil with a whole agenda of actions for the entire company. Along the same lines, here I have some pictures. This is just an example of our school, 100% digital. We do not want it to be 100% digital because we believe when all of this is over, we will favor a more hybrid mode, which is a trend to help develop our team.
Also here I have some other examples of Camil Conexão. We then move on believing that education and leadership are important pillars for Camil's management.
Good morning, everyone. This year, as in any other year, we always face new challenges. This has been quite unique because when the pandemic began, not only in Brazil, but in all of the other countries where we operate, that coincided with the beginning of the rice harvest. This is a very unique moment. This is a moment that is very busy, and by no means we couldn't afford to lose that moment, which involved receiving the harvest that usually in all of these countries it happens just once a year except for Peru. Therefore, we just encounter a brand new situation.
Nobody experienced that before, and therefore, we had to put in practice a lot of new protocols to contain the situation. We had to introduce new operating standards in order to preserve the health of our employees, and with that, to maintain the work in motion. This posed an enormous challenge, and we were able to overcome that challenge. We did that very successfully. We did not encounter any problems during that initial phase of the harvest. We introduced important operating and hygiene standards in order to limit the spread of the disease. This was used as an example to other companies in the industry and even the Ministry of Agriculture of Uruguay when they wanted to put in place some operating standards for the agricultural industry. They found inspiration in our own standards in Uruguay.
In Peru, it was very difficult to operate because there were too many restrictions on the part of the government. The Peruvian government at first decided to be very restricted in terms of the movement of people, operation of companies. We were always classified as an exception company because we work with food, but with all of the limitations, it was even difficult for us to comply with all of the requirements in terms of authorization for our people to move around. There were limitations of time. We had to have our own transportation for our employees. In Chile as well, there were very limited government standards. This was very much present in the lives of people and companies, and also in Uruguay. Amazingly enough, Uruguay was the country that thus far had the lowest level of contamination.
In Peru, the most restricted one, this is where we see one of the largest numbers of the pandemic. In fact, right on the first months after the harvest, after we overcame all of the difficulties and we were able to put all of the rice into our silos, we experienced a spike in demand. At that time, we didn't know whether it was just speculation in people that wanted to anticipate their purchases because they knew that they didn't know what would happen or whether people would be able to leave their homes. Whenever they had an opportunity, they will stock up. Right at first, we experienced an extremely high peak of demand, not necessarily consumption, but a high demand on our sales. We were positively surprised because we were able to maintain a higher sales flow when compared to previous years.
Well, in fact, for several reasons, not only local reasons, but international reasons as well, this led prices to increase, particularly produce and rice. In turn, this at first gave us the opportunity to improve our gains over our current inventories, but after that, there was some restriction in consumption. Demand came down vis-a-vis the final demand from consumers. Yet our sales to supermarkets and other distributors continues to perform well because they were getting organized in terms of maintaining good levels of inventory. At the beginning, when things were not yet very organized because the market had to react, some of our competitors found it difficult to buy their supplies. In our case, we took advantage of that opportunity, and we were able to grow sales and increase profitability. With time, things became more normal.
They became more normal in terms of demand and prices, but prices then were much higher when compared to the previous crop season, and this is now impacting consumption. Every country has a different situation, but let's say in the case of Chile, where we have greater economic stability, it is difficult for the supermarkets now to accept because they are very concentrated in their purchasing power. Even consumers are having a difficult time to accept all of these price increases in commodities, kitchen oil, et cetera. Consumption is also lower now. In turn, this allows us, let's say, not to buy merchandise. Unlike in Peru, where the per capita rice consumption is much higher, and it's also in Peru where we're able to transfer the costs, not completely, but on average, we were able to transfer most prices.
We're stumbling on consumers because consumers saw their income level come down substantially, and the economy has been quite affected by the recession. In Chile, people have money, but they are not used to eating a lot of rice and legumes, and therefore, it's difficult for us to transfer prices because consumption is low. In Peru, where demand is higher, but on the other hand, people cannot afford to pay higher prices. In the case of Uruguay, where we are merely exporters because what we produce, 92 or 90% of what we produce there is exported. The domestic market in that country had a normal behavior with regular transfer prices. In terms of exports, which is our main business here, I would say that this is where we find the best behavior as a result of this pandemic.
Problems in the 50 countries to where we export all the time and every year, they encountered a lot of supply issues. We were able to fulfill much of that demand and the competition, especially with Argentina and Paraguay and the U.S., and we have also some competition coming from Asia. Even though Asia has a lot of rice. They experience a light drop in production, but they are having logistic issues, and important logistic issues, and they are having problems in terms of exporting because of lack of people, a large spread of the disease and a lot of contamination, and that's why the ports are not fully operational. There is also lack of containers because the containers are not returning to the markets where they came from.
I would say that in other destinations like Central America and Europe, our sales are starting from Uruguay are performing quite well with price increases that cover our cost of raw material. Therefore, with this backdrop, Uruguay, some include Uruguay, is the company that is posting very good performance when compared to the same period of the year before, and this stems from this international demand that we were able to serve. In terms of Chile, where there are some restrictions in consumption, it's a more mature market with a better income level, and there we were able to transfer prices to consumers. consumption is dropping in that region, but we were able to maintain good profitability despite the lower volume.
In the case of Peru, which is our major challenge, where demand would have been higher, but the population cannot afford now to pay for this more expensive rice or more expensive produce and vegetables. I think they're eating products of inferior quality. They're eating probably more potatoes because Peru produces a lot of potatoes. With that scenario, we are performing well year- on- year. I said, not only in volume, but also in terms of profitability. In this next part of the year, I think we will see volumes and profitability returning to normal levels because things are, I would say, quieter, and the price levels are historically really high, one of the highest, and this in turn affects the cost for the population of lower income. People are migrating from leading brands to other brands with lower prices.
Lower costs, this does not exist because raw materials are also more expensive. At times, some brands are experiencing severe losses in profitability. Well, in our case, we are performing well. As the raw material is not so abundant, we have to value it and put it in some of our most important brands. If we only think about share or market value, we did not have any issues with our market share. Our market share has remained the same or is even higher. By looking at the opportunities, you could think that we could be selling more. We stumble into the aspect of profitability. The expectations for the next crop season that should start in March of next year, February and March. Our expectations mirror the planting season that happened now, and the most important issue now is lack of water.
There is scarcity of water in the south of Brazil, including Uruguay and in the north and northeast side of Argentina and Paraguay. This really affects and impacts the largest rice-producing area of Mercosul. There may be an issue of acreage reduction in these regions. Productivity or yield will be good because this scarcity of water is followed by good lighting and good average temperatures, and this is what rice requires. Now, in terms of grains like beans and other crops, the crops are mostly irrigated with central pivots, so yield should be good. The trend for next year is that the supply. It will be business as usual, but maybe slightly slower when compared to previous years.
The major thing that could affect the market and could probably keep prices still high is the lack of an initial inventory from one crop to the next, because in view of this present demand, probably the carryover from one crop to the next will be very low, historically speaking. Therefore, we will have to count on the future harvest to supply the following year. This is true for the entire Mercosul region and in part, is true for the U.S., another competitor. I would say that in terms of our next crop season, the supply would be stable or flat worldwide. In Asia, they still have some surplus, even though it has been carried over in the past years. The production in the year experienced some reductions.
In Mercosul, that is an area where production and yield will be lower in comparison to previous years, and without the carryover from one crop to the next. This will have an impact on price levels regionally, and probably the determining factor to establish relationships from one crop to the next will be the exchange rate, particularly in Brazil, the main producer and consumer. This is what will lead to some possible lack of rice in the domestic market. If the exchange rate is favorable in terms of reaching, let's say six reals for one US dollar, this will generate exports of rice. By the same token, there will be scarcity in the second half of the year.
If the exchange rate performs the opposite, it goes in the opposite direction, countries in Mercosul probably will experience some expectations of lack of rice, and maybe we will have to resort to Mercosul. Well, with that scenario in mind, in a couple of months, we will put together our budget plan for next year. I would say that today the biggest uncertainty is the exchange rate. Well, with that, we are then available to answer your questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Renato. Thank you to all of the other directors. We would like to thank you very much for joining us during this Camil Day. This year, unlike previous occasions, we are using an online platform, so this event is being carried on online. In case you have questions, please use the platform to send your questions.
We are compiling all the questions that we have already received, and just in a few minutes, we will open for Q&A so that our officers can answer your questions. Once again, please post your questions in our webcast platform. We will then proceed with the reading and the answer of all those questions. We had a small issue during the transmission of André's presentation. André, I would like to ask you to continue your presentation where you stopped, which was when you were talking about beans. We will listen to your presentation again, starting with the beans part.
To the year-end inventory. We see that the year-end inventory in La Niña will continue to be very firm, and we see that unless we have a very serious exchange impact serious any difficulties.
Next year prices will be flat with no major variations, because this year variations were really strong. Prices vary from BRL 45-BRL 50. This has been one of the highest price variations we've ever. Next year, price levels will still remain high, but the variations will be much lower when compared to this year. Now moving to beans. I would also like to talk about our plant distribution from last year to this year. The highlight is that we put together a plant in Castro, in Paraná, and we concluded the plant in Aparecida de Goiânia. Once again, Aparecida de Goiânia not only has some tax incentives, like we said before, but in beans, that area has a vocation to work with beans. Goiás is probably the third or fourth largest producer of beans, and the plant in Paraná.
The reason why we chose Paraná is that Paraná is the main producing region in the country. Our plant is located in Castro, is a very modern plant, very efficient, and they are right in the middle of the beans production region in Paraná. With that, with beans, we were able to get the same thing we have for rice. Great capillarity. We are present in the major producing states of the country, and with that, we have greater capillarity. We have a good structure for beans and rice, and we have buyers in all of the units of the country. That gives us real-time information, in addition to knowing where the market is heading to and regions where it's easier, others that are more difficult. This allows us to plan our supply and to have tax gains. This is important for beans.
Now, as of for next year, we expect to see still high prices. Well, we don't like it very much, but there are a lot of speculators in the market. CONAB is anticipating a small acreage reduction. The crop season would go from more than 3.1 million to 3 million. Therefore, there will be a significant yield reduction. Also soybeans. People are fixing soy prices around 140, 145, and because of those prices, people will not be so encouraged to plant beans. Growers believe that soybean worthing 140 beans should be two to one, so they should be worth it 2 80. Well, this variation is not so direct because you have to factor in consumption by price. Price is being as it is, there might be some drop in consumption. Another important aspect is climate.
This lack of rain that affects rice crops and bean crops is affecting both crops because of the drought. Therefore, when we look at beans, we think that prices will be more sustainable. Sugar, once again, there will be a global deficit of around 2.2 million tons. Brazilian production will be good. Sugar is more attractive than ethanol. The mix used to be 65% ethanol and 35% sugar. As sugar prices are good, this mix should change. We should see 55% ethanol and the rest is sugar. Because of that, the Brazilian crop will increase to about 41 million tons, and the sugar market is fixated in the New York Exchange and the London Exchange, but it's mainly fixed in New York.
Our next crop season to be harvested in April, 55% of the prices are already fixed and the crop to be harvested in April of 2022, about 20% is already fixed at very good prices. The New York historical levels was about 12.60, and this year the average was 13 lb weight, and this is very attractive to sugarcane producers. This will put upward pressure in the market. It will be bullish. Well, there is an issue with India, because once again, India may introduce subsidies. Well, it's not certain whether they will introduce subsidies or not to help the population in the field because they use subsidies to help growers in the fields. If India introduces the subsidies, this may lead the market to go down.
Climate, again, with La Niña, maintained climate. The weather very dry in São Paulo, and this should also lead to lower yields, and in turn, we believe that the market should also be firm with sugar. All of the agricultural commodity have a bias of being flat in the next crop season. Now, looking at the fish segment, as I said in the beginning of my presentation, that was the segment of the company that was the most tense because of steel and cardboard and also the fish raw material. We buy from the domestic market, but for four years in a row, Brazil did not produce sardines, so we had to buy from Morocco, where we have long-time suppliers, 10, 12 years, and we also developed suppliers in Oman. Of course, life there was not easy either because they had problems with the pandemic. The ports were closed.
They had to introduce protocols. Around May, we were able to grow our volume and prevent stock out issues. We have a domestic fleet that is very loyal. We have the best tuna fisheries. They've been our suppliers for a long time. They are loyal to us. Tuna fishing in the domestic market was good. We also have a viable alternative, which is to buy tuna from Ecuador. There, we already have a lot of certified producers. Certainly, the competitiveness of Brazilian tuna is much better. To conclude, I would say that our expectation for next year is quite positive, with almost all of the agricultural commodities posting sustainable prices. In order to mitigate risk, we are still very attentive to the market behavior.
I believe that having plants all over Brazil with our capillarity and the fact that we take advantage of all of the tax benefits and the information on time, in real-time information we have, we are able to anticipate moves. With rice, not only we are in Brazil, but we are in Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, and in all of these locations, we have good suppliers in Argentina and Paraguay. In all of these areas, we are increasing our capillarity, and with that, we can anticipate moves and then be more assertive in the market. We are also very much concerned with technology. We deploy the Ariba system that allowed us to have a better management of all of the indirect inputs. We have a better management of all the categories. With freight, we can anticipate moves.
We use the different logistic modes, both in terms of international freight, highway freight. We are very much alert and attentive to the market moves, and we are humble enough to learn and continue to grow. That's it. Have a good event, and thank you very much.
Good morning. My name is Christina .
Thank you, Andre. Now we will proceed with the Q&A session. A reminder, if you have questions, please use the webcast platform and our investor relations team. They are also receiving questions through WhatsApp and our IR page. The first question comes from Isabella Simonato from Bank of America. After such a strong 2020 in terms of volumes for sugar and rice, what is your expectation in terms of volume for next year? As part of that expectation, how much of that you think will come from market share gain in both categories?
That's a very good question. In fact, our first half was very strong. We think that this probably or obviously came due to the pandemic and also lower consumption through the food service as well, because everybody started cooking at home or eating from home. There was a decline in inventory during that period. I think during our last quarterly results call, we talked about the effects of Coronavoucher overconsumption. Our expectation is that this additional money was mainly earmarked for lower priced rice. People that didn't have that much access, but as they received their emergency aid from the government, they could afford to buy other products. As in our main brands and Camil is not that much present in that market, we didn't have any direct impact.
We also believe that with the end of the emergency aid or the food voucher, the impact to our company will not be so strong. As we see high spikes and declines in GDP, in our industry, we do not feel a lot of impact in terms of increases or decreases in consumption. This is due to the resilience aspect of our sector. The effect that we are seeing now or this increased sales in the first quarter shows that some of the countries experience an acceleration, but soon we should resume regular sales levels. Now we see because of inventory levels, there will be smaller sales, and I mentioned what happened in the industry in October. Now to be more direct in terms of answering your question after putting things into a perspective, the company is constantly looking for a 4%-5% growth in volumes.
This is our aim. In order to do that, we are constantly investing to gain scale. In the past years and months, we've been focusing quite strongly in this area. As André was saying, we had new plants last year. We also invested in a new plant for sugar packaging. Just to mention a few examples to illustrate what we do to increase our efficiencies. Certainly as a result, this brings about more profitability and it helps us consolidate our intent to consolidate the market. I believe that the number I mentioned between 4%-5% is what the company has performed historically. Also, removing the recent past, after the IPO, we had a strong move. Just as a reminder, maybe I may be anticipating the answer to another question, which has usually happened. Raw material prices usually have a very strong impact in our segment.
Our industry usually transfer prices, therefore the significant increase of over 100% in the prices of rice that we had this year, it's done. In the two years following the IPO, which were hard years, were years where we experienced price drops or price levels that were extremely low. At the end, this is bad for the entire industry, not only Camil alone. Just to mention a few numbers. In 2018, 2019, rice experienced an average price varying between BRL 40 to BRL 45. This year, the average should be BRL 80. The price for 50 kilograms of rice and beans throughout 2018, the price varied between BRL 100 to BRL 120, and currently the price was between BRL 250, BRL 300. Sugar that used to be about BRL 1,000 per ton is about now BRL 1400 or BRL 1,500 per ton.
These are the costs of our raw materials. This shows that the company is now at a new level, and this level is very good for the entire chain. Not only our company, but our suppliers, our retailers. This helps us to dilute costs. Once again, the company worked diligently in an attempt to get more efficiencies, and certainly with that, we gain competitiveness. Once again, without giving any guidance, this demonstrates what we see looking forward in terms of volumes.
The next question comes from Yuri Kitiki from JP Morgan. I think you already talked about the pricing expectation for rice next year, but we also noticed that this year, Brazil exported a lot of rice during the year. Ian wants to know whether we believe that this will continue to happen next year, and maybe this will limit the supply from Mexico, and how would this impact prices.
That's a good question. Speaking a little bit about the rice crop season, I think André already talked a little bit about that, and I did so during our last earnings result call, because it would very much depend on rainfall the end of October, November, and early December. In fact, rainfall was not as expected, was very weak. Because of that, I think we should expect a lower crop season in Rio Grande do Sul. I heard a reduction in yield of approximately 3.5%, and therefore production and Brazilian consumption should remain fair. Obviously, exports depend on the exchange rate and international prices.
During our last earnings results call, we mentioned a price expectation for next year ranging around BRL 70-BRL 80. considering current conditions, I think we lean more towards 80 than 40. we still have to see any impact on production in the next coming days. Exports should then increase the effect of lower yield and higher supply in the Brazilian market, and this should lead to a similar effect that we saw this year when Brazil had to import, and this caused internal prices to go up. Being more conservative, the company remains with that range between BRL 70-BRL 80, but leaning more towards 80 today.
Thank you, Luciano. Our next question comes from Felipe. He's an individual investor. The question is about IBGE's survey that show that rice and beans consumption has been dropping in the past years. How does the company see that in terms of demand and also the fact that you operate in this industry?
I have two comments here. This is also a very good question. The first comment is that our industry, I mean, the rice industry, conducted a survey a few years ago showing that there was a slight decline in per capita consumption. When we look at historical data, CONAB, population of growth, this lead us to conclude that there is a slight decline in per capita consumption. Despite the fact that there has been a slight reduction this year, the market has not been growing or the reduction has been very mild. This does not change the expectation or the ambition of the company, because our market is highly fragmented. As a reminder, Camil's rice market share in Brazil is around 13%, the second competitor had around 5%.
Therefore, our consolidation possibility is very large in the Brazilian market, even considering this slight decline in per capita consumption. This is not a concern of the company. The trends that I just mentioned of a possible stability or possible reduction is something that we've been monitoring for the last 10 to 15 years, and the landscape has been the same. During all this period, we were able to grow and we were able to move towards consolidation. Eventually, if there is further reduction in per capita consumption, this could also be a trigger for us to increase the pace of consolidation. This may, at the end, lead to the exit of smaller players in the market. Therefore, this is not an issue of concern for the company.
Thank you, Luciano. Our next question is from Clarissa Fernandes. She's also an individual investor, and maybe Flavio can help us here. The question is that company has been delivering extraordinary results, especially during this year, and what will be the projection looking forward? We announced a dividend payout, an interim dividend payout of BRL 150 million in addition to interest on equity on the third quarter. How does that combine to the results of the company, and what is the outlook looking forward?
Fernandes, thank you very much for your question. When we talk about capital allocation policy in an optimum structure, what is our policy and our best practices? Camil does not have any written policy about dividend payout. In practical terms, since the IPO, we've been paying approximately 25% of the accounting net income rather than the adjusted net income of the company.
This year, in terms of result, we performed very well, therefore our results were good. This debate about how much capital we will allocate for the payouts to our shareholders, this is a constant issue debated by the board. In view of this exceptional result that we delivered, we decided then to pay out BRL 150 million of interim payout, which is in addition to what we usually do. This comes as a result of the positive earnings and results posted by the company this year. The question also is: What do we see looking forward? I think that what we see if we look towards the future is paying that 25% dividend payout on net income. Certainly, we are constantly monitoring to see whether there are further possibilities to pay anything extra.
What I would like to reinstate is that even though we had a very significant interim payout, the company continues to have a very good and sound financial position. This year, because of this result, the company has reduced its leverage. When we look at the remainder of the year, we believe that this will continue to be so in view of our positive results. Seasonally, this is a period where we release working capital and we release cash. Therefore, our leveraging should remain low. Once we combine that with significant results, this gives us more breadth to continue to pursue our strategic objectives and to make acquisitions. Therefore, the size of the check we can sign today is higher than that of last year.
Therefore, to conclude, in terms of dividend payout, we had this interim dividend payout, but this does not remove our possibility to continue investing in organic or inorganic growth for the company.
Thank you, Flavio. Our next question from Luciana Carvalho of Brazil. Her question is about the company's growth strategy, whether you could give us an update about the acquisition of pet food in Chile. If you could tell us a little bit about the main opportunities you see in the period post-pandemic. Luciana said that we intend to enter into new categories like wheat and that we intend to expand into South America. What will be the categories or the geographies where you believe that you have better opportunities?
Well, thank you. I will start answering your question, and Luciano can add. In terms of our acquisition in Chile, it has not been concluded yet.
There has been a formal approval by the regulating agencies authorizing the acquisition. What happened is that earlier this year, the company had a quality issue in its main product, and that led to a recall of the main brands, leading to a reduction in the company's operation until they were able to take all of the necessary measures to adjust the formulations of the products. This had then an operating impact on the company. Therefore, all of the conditions of the contract were not met. Therefore, we continue to wait until the company gets back on speed and has good results in terms of sales and production. We will discuss again and see how we will conclude the transaction. On strategic terms, we still believe that this is an acquisition that makes sense. When we look at Chile, the pet food market in Chile is growing.
In Chile, that industry had a lot of synergies, both commercially and logistically. Even though it may not seem to be an obvious target, it made sense in Chile. Therefore, we are still waiting until the scenario clears up, and then we will sit down to revisit that agreement. Now, speaking about the company's growth strategy, it remains the same as in the past years. We intend to consolidate the grain market in Brazil, and this can come through organic growth or through acquisitions. We also wish to enter into new segments in Brazil, as we did with sugar and fish, and that was a very good experience. Therefore, the company believes that high turnover categories have very good synergies with our operations. Coffee makes sense, wheat makes sense, because the company, therefore, has been looking for opportunities in these areas.
Now looking outside Brazil, Chile, as the example of the pet food, is an example of diversification. In Peru, we also have great opportunities to consolidate the market. We have a good market share in the market packaged rice. In Peru, more than 80% of rice consumption is still in bulk. In Brazil, it was like this back in the 1970s. Therefore, we are getting ready for this migration, and we believe that this will also happen in Peru. In addition, the company is looking at other countries in South America. I've been saying that Colombia is an old desire of the company. We've been monitoring the Colombian market for quite some time, and we've been constantly looking for opportunities in that geography. As Flavio said, the company is financially sound to do that.
We are more prepared than ever, and we are constantly looking for these opportunities. This is our growth strategy looking forward.
Thank you, Luciano. There is another follow-up on Luciana's second question, adding to what you said when you referred to your growth strategy and your capital structure, that throughout the pandemic period, the company was concerned to preserve its cash and liquidity positions. Flavio also talked about the leverage levels that are coming down, that they are being reduced. You talked about the dividend payout issue, but how is your capital structure from now on, and how does that relate to your strategy to grow, expand, and to make acquisitions?
Well, thank you. Just as a recap, earlier this year on the onset of the crisis, we adopted a conservative position to preserve our liquidity.
Back then we got some funding in Brazil and abroad, we were able to raise almost BRL 1.2 billion. At the time, that was a short-term debt. It was expensive. The cost was high, but that's what was available. We, mainly in Brazil, we are now starting the refinancing of the debt. We are now extending the payment terms. From the BRL 650 million, we basically refinanced that amount to four to five years at lower cost. This also shows that the company is capable of adjusting itself and to managing things better, doing all the liability management so that our capital structure can be well-supported. Looking at leverage levels, we understand that today we are at the suboptimal level in terms of restrictions in our contracts or agreements. It's up to the limit of 3.5 times net debt over EBITDA.
Today, that level is much below that. Once we look at the alignment of our capital structure, our capacity to leverage, and our strategic objective, we would like to find ourselves in the leverage level above what we have today for some good reason, because we were able to conclude some acquisition that is relevant. We always say that the priority in an acquisition is through leveraging or net debt/EBITDA ratio, when we can generate higher value. Looking towards the future, we wish we could work with higher leverage because of our capacity to execute some acquisition that can be relevant.
Thank you, Flavio. Our next question from Leandro Fontanesi from Bradesco. Just changing gears a bit, he would like to learn more about the company's strategy related to your channels. Throughout time, we are seeing the consumption migrating towards cash and carry. How do you see that, and how did you see that during the pandemic period and looking towards the future?
Well, cash and carry is a channel that grew substantially in the last few years. Camil is very strong in distribution in the Southeast region, where cash and carry has been very important and with a very good footprint. Therefore, this experience with cash and carry is something that the company has experienced for a long time. I believe that this will grow also outside the Southeast region, and we also believe that we will be able to surf on that growth wave because we've been living with that for a long time. There are two major features in this cash and carry system, and one of them is that obviously, they are some of our largest customers, but I always say that it's like we mutually depend on one another.
We have this one very large customer, and they need us because they need to have some good suppliers, and therefore, there is a balance. We have them as our partners, and our expansion process to outside the Southeast is also helped by them. They are helping us with this because of this longtime partnership we have with them. I just forgot the second point I was going to mention. Okay, let's move on. They are important. They grew a lot, and they continue to grow. They are good customers to negotiate with. Above all, they are good partners. This relationship has been around for a long time. I remember now what was my second point. The company, unlike other companies, Camil with them, we never try to have a different brand or different packaging.
This is not so common when we hear other companies and the way they want to operate in this cash segment. We try to exploit this strength point from them and the growth also. This was the second point I couldn't remember earlier.
Thank you, Luciano. Let's get into a topic that has received a lot of questions, and this is related to ESG. We have a question now from Sandro Mattos. How is the company positioning itself vis-à-vis green policies? We see a lot of move in that direction towards a sustainable society. Gustavo Troyano from Itaú BBA said that this is a topic that is gaining a lot of momentum in a short period of time, and we would like to hear from Camil how the company is getting prepared to face this new reality. We learned that Camil just introduced a new ESG internal committee. Probably if you could give us some more light in terms of what you're doing and whether you would also have any evaluation targets from the board or the company vis-à-vis ESG.
Thank you very much. In fact, this is a very current question. As you said it yourself, this topic has gained momentum. It's present in all of our conversations with investors and conversations with members of the board. This topic is increasing in relevance. Once we look at Camil and our governance and sustainability practices, this topic has been amongst us from the very beginning. It's part of our DNA.
When people started to provoke us and to ask us about what we do in relation to ESG, we arrived at the conclusion that we were doing a lot of things, but we were not so well-structured, and even to be able to answer to all of your questions, this is a very diversified topic because it is present throughout our organization. In order for us to structure this topic better, we put together a committee. This topic, it's present from top to bottom of the company. Our board has talked a lot about that. Whenever we talk about governance has to do with how we can make this company perennial and have all governance structures working independently from the controlling agent. Because of that, we revisited all of our committees and all of our initiatives.
As of next year, we will have an ESG committee that will focus on these three topics. We will also introduce a strategic committee to monitor and to evaluate, to do strategic planning and results monitoring, evaluation, M&A screening. We also have a financial committee in charge of risk assessment and a policy of hierarchical authorizations. We have a committee for people in management that will do an evaluation not only of the company, but all of the incentives plans and how we include this management culture in the company. We also have an auditing committee, and this past year, we turned that committee into a statutory auditing committee that complies with all of the requirements set up by CVM. We also introduced our tax committee, and even though we are a controller company, in our board, we have seven board members, and four of them are independent members.
We have some independent board members that have the skin in the game. They also have a stake in the company's capital, and all of our board members have extensive experience, and they're interested, certainly, in the good performance of the company. Therefore, ESG has been a constant concern of the company. When we refer to the ESG committee, we also put together very clear guidelines. For us, ESG goes beyond being just an internal debate of the company, but it also involves all the other stakeholders, being our shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees, and we are very pragmatic in the company. We are putting some magnifying lenses to discuss some actual topics. We want to make our choices and understand what matters to our stakeholders.
Focus on what matters, because we understand that as the system is so broad, certainly we won't be able to embrace the world, but we want to make an impact on the things that we decide to do. To that end, we are putting together some working groups that will report to that statutory committee that responds to the board. Just to give you a few highlights of things that we are already doing. In regards to the environment, 95% of our energy, of our power is renewable energy. 40% of it comes from our own production through the burning of the rice hull. In terms of supply, we are very much concerned with the origin of the grains. We also look at how we can foster growers.
Here we give more than BRL 150 million helping growers, small and mid-size growers or people who has a higher credit risk. This is part of our contribution to society. On the social front, particularly this year where we had the pandemic, we offer more than 200 tons in donations. We picked as a focus the communities surrounding our facilities where we operate, in the geographies where we are present and where we think that we could make a difference. Giving back to society. In terms of people, we are concerned with diversity and inclusion. Erika just talked about all of our initiatives in terms of health. Work safety is on our priority list. That involves not only Erika's department, but everybody else's as well.
When the employee goes to work, they want to be sure that they will go home at the end of the day sound. Nobody wants to see accidents in the company. Still on the ESG topic, for the next fiscal year, we decided that the entire executive, all of the executives would put ESG in their own areas, and therefore the entire company put their hands in the pocket, because at least part of the variable compensation for next year will come once all of the goals are fulfilled. We tied the goals to the variable compensation of our management, and we decided to monitor that through some metrics. Today, we are still in the initial stages of this process.
We are discussing what are the most relevant topics. The idea is that we will elect some projects and some indicators, and also that we elect the targets and then that we start communicating these goals to the market so that everybody can monitor our evolution.
Well, I'll try to combine some questions because I see four questions on the same topic. Maria Limika, she is an individual investor, Carmen also, Isabella Simonato from Bank of America, and Kitiki from JP Morgan. The question is about the company's acquisitions, how is the pipeline for next year and where it would make more sense for the company to invest given the acquisition of pet food in Chile, whether you're also interested in investing in pet food in Brazil. Moreover, how do we see the timing and the main categories that we see looking forward?
Which ones would be more feasible, and whether the investments would come not only through acquisitions, but organically as well?
Well, most of the strategy in the industries that we believe to be interesting, I think that pet food, as Flavio said in Chile, that was an operation that had great synergies with our distribution and our operations in Chile. In Brazil, as we did in Chile, we can evaluate some opportunities that may be out of the box for us, just to use a different expression. They also have to be in tune with our strategy. We are not going to get into different segments just for the sake of the opportunity. In fact, it has to have some strategic alignment, it has to make sense to us, and it has to have synergies.
As I said before, the company is very well prepared now to give the next steps. Every time the company looks at a new segment, we try to enter this new segment through acquisition, never organically. That thing also happens when we enter into a new country. It's always through acquisition. We believe that this accelerates our learning curve, and it helps us operate better in that segment. That's how we enter in Uruguay, Chile, and Peru, and this is how we enter the sugar and fish segments, and it will be the same way. This is how we will enter in these new segments in the countries I mentioned before.
In summary, we remain prepared more than ever, as Flavio said, with low leverage, which allows us to seek for larger opportunities.
The company is now at a new level of results, therefore, opportunities can even be better. In my view, what's more relevant is that the company will follow on the footsteps of what we did in the past. We have our metrics to value the assets and to do the valuation of the new opportunities, and we will not let go of the way we've been doing it in the past. It may take a little bit longer than maybe we wanted, but we will do things the way we have always done it, because this mitigates risks and possible mistakes. I think this is what I had to say about that question.
Okay, we have just one more question from Renê Ouriques from Infinity Investment Group. What is the ROI level that the company looks for whenever they analyze a new project?
Well, thank you, Rene.
That's a very good question. When we look at any investment, we try to be very analytic when it comes to approval. We look at payback and all of the other metrics. Our objective is to have a 15% ROI, ROIC. Historically, this is what the company has delivered. I think that as an additional comment, this is part also of what is the appeal of Camil as a company. When you look at our business model, we have a growth pillar because of this dynamics of organic and inorganic growth. There is another very strong pillar that is resilient. That is the chart we always show that shows a 10-year line EBITDA of around 10 and 11. This resilience and result stability is one of the strength features of Camil.
Therefore, when you combine a company that has resilient results, we don't really have that urge to invest. Our conversion index of EBITDA to free cash flow is quite high. Let's take a reasonable result. If you take a reasonable result and stability, this generates further leverage capacity that in turn is translated into a very interesting return on equity. To make a long story short, I think this ROE is very much related to our business model and all of the strengths that Camil has as a company.
Thank you, Flavio. Well, we finalized all the questions we had. If there are further questions, please feel free to do so. Our IR team is here available to you after this event through all of our channels, be it through our website or the IR area. Now I'll turn the floor back to you for your final remarks, if you would like to say anything else.
I would like to conclude by thanking you very much for joining us. I've said it in other occasions that for us as executives of this company, and I can also say that in my capacity as a shareholder, this year we had mixed feelings because we are going through this pandemic. On the social point of view, we have large economic issues. by the same token, the company is posting record numbers at levels that we've never experienced before. this is a mixed feeling of a great accomplishment because of our performance, whereas at the same time, we're very much concerned with the population and with the economic and social aspects of the country.
being more pragmatic, the company has always prepared itself to face diversity. As Flavio said, resilience is part of our DNA. We've been posting stable results. The company tries to always be better prepared and ready to face competition, and at the same time, deliver growth. In a year of great difficulties, this was a big task for us. We have this feeling of mission accomplished, and we acknowledge our good results. That's it. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for participating in the event. As Guilherme said, we are available in case you have any additional questions. Thank you very much. Thank you, and have a good day.