Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Jalles Machado's Conference Call to discuss the results of the fourth quarter and crop year 2021/ 2022. This conference is being recorded and is being simultaneously translated into English. The playback in the two languages will be available at the company's website at ri.jallesmachado.com. All participants will be on a listen- only mode, and after the presentation, we will have a Q&A session when further instructions will be provided. The earnings release and the presentation on the fourth quarter and crop year 2021/ 2022 can be accessed on the company's IR website.
Before proceeding, I would like to mention that any statements that may be made during the conference related to the company's business prospects, forecasts, operating and financial targets related to its growth potential are based on the company's management's expectations about the future of Jalles Machado. Such expectations are highly dependent on domestic and foreign market conditions and national and international economic scenarios and therefore are subject to change. Today with us are Mr. Otávio Lage de Siqueira Filho, CEO, and Mr. Rodrigo Penna de Siqueira, CFO. Now, I would like to turn the floor over to Mr. Otávio. You may proceed, sir.
Thank you very much, and good morning, everybody.
First of all, I would like to thank God for giving us the gift of life and an opportunity such as this to be here talking to our investors about the company's earnings in the fourth quarter and the crop year 2021/ 2022. I would like to thank you all very much for your confidence in our company and our management as well, and I would like to inform you that we have been striving for results, for great results, such as the ones that we are going to share with you today. I would also like to thank our employees because we wouldn't be able to achieve these results without them. They are the biggest asset in our company, our people, and we have always tried to interact and work hand in hand with our employees.
From the bottom of my heart, I would also like to thank Rodrigo, our CFO, who has been performing a great job. He's also our IRO, and thanks to his hard work, we have been able to achieve the great results that we are going to share with you. I would also like to thank the other executives, such as Henrique, for their hard work and for helping us achieve the wonderful results this quarter and the crop year. You will be able to see in our presentation the record-breaking numbers that we achieved. We have been investing and reaping wonderful results from those investments. The heavens also helped us with good rainfall. We put together a short video that we would like to play to you.
This is the first time that we are broadcasting this video, and the video shows some of our indicators. I hope you like it. After the video, Rodrigo, our CFO, will be presenting all the details of our results and answering your questions about our results and figures. Thank you all very much once again. I hope that we can continue moving forward together in this journey, in our 42-year-long journey in which we have been putting people first and as a result, reaping great results. I just wanted to mention one example. For example, when we decided to harvest sugarcane manually, we were very much concerned about unemployment. Our shareholders came up with an alternative, and that alternative is now very present in our region. That region is extremely important now in our region.
There was an effort that was coordinated by our company when we decided to use machines to harvest sugarcane instead of manual harvesting. We decided to plant rubber trees in our region, and that new business absorbed all of those people that would have been unemployed otherwise. Let's take a look at our video. Thank you.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for being here with us in our earnings call today. Let me just share the presentation. Bear with us for a second, please. Okay. Once again, good morning and thank you very much for being here with us today. Today we are going to talk about a crop year that was extremely productive. It was a watershed in our company.
It was our first year as a publicly listed company, and this was the year in which we started the investment plan that we designed during our IPO, which included organic growth in the two plants and also the recent acquisition that we announced. I would like to thank you very much for supporting us and for being with us throughout this journey. I would also like to thank the Jalles Machado team that worked so hard to achieve these results. I would like to thank Henrique, the Commercial Director, and Mr. Otávio as well. I'm going to go over the presentation very briefly. I believe that you all have access to this slide deck.
I'm just going to touch on the main points so that we have enough time to address your questions and so that we can talk about the recent events in the sector. I believe that this is one point that many of you are probably curious about. Shall we begin? These are the highlights. Our profit increased by 127%. Our adjusted EBITDA was almost BRL 1.1 billion, a record-breaking number. We are here proposing to the board. The board is actually proposing to the shareholders' meeting a dividend distribution of BRL 52 million. It is important to notice as well that our accidents and a lost- time accidents has been decreasing. You can see that this indicator is absolutely fantastic. It has been fantastic for many years now.
This year, once again, we were able to post a reduction in the number of accidents. Here we have some more details about crushing. Our yield was 93 tons and the TRS was 138. Now here on this slide, I would like to touch on two points. Our total TRS was 1.4% higher year-on-year with 739,000 tons. However, we had sales that decreased by 1.6%. That is related to a point that we addressed earlier in another earnings call when we said that we were not going to sell the entire volume. We would have an inventory after sales because of the container crisis. Although everything has been sold, we were not able to ship the entire volume due to international logistics problems.
Now, here on the slide, I would like to talk about prices. You can see that we had an increase in the price of ethanol from BRL 2.3 to BRL 3.6 per liter. That was a significant increase. The average sugar price had a slight decrease over the crop year due to a lower share of organic sugar in our total amount. Here we have the financial highlights. I'm not going to go into the details of slide 10. I'm going to skip ahead to slide 11. I believe that some of you are not seeing our screen right now, so for your reference, we are on slide 11. I'm going to skip that slide as well. Now we are on slide 12, and I just wanted to highlight the fact here that we had revenues amounting to BRL 322 million.
You can see that our revenue per ton was significant, and sugar accounted for 45% of our revenues. It could have been more if organic sugar had been sold on the same level of other years. We had 44% of ethanol, 9% sanitizers, and 2% with others. The foreign market accounted for about 12%. It is usually at 20%, but due to organic sugar issues, it was a little bit lower this year. Our EBITDA margin was 76%, a record-breaking number. I believe that we have already touched on the other details of this slide 13. Now here on slide 14, I would like to talk about the other operating income lines which allow us to decrease income taxes. This year we had BRL 153 million in other operating income tax incentives, and we had higher prices as well.
That is the main factor influencing this line. Now, cash income excludes the IFRS effects, allowances, MTM, and FX variations, and non-cash taxes. Considering all that, we always like to show this number because this is more recurring, and this number excludes the non-cash effects in our balance sheet, which are the lines that I just mentioned. Our ROE was 30% and our ROIC was 24%. Very high numbers. Our inventory, as I said earlier, increased. The total inventories increased by BRL 55 million, and that includes inventory of finished products, which increased by BRL 29 million and BRL 128 million considering selling prices. If we had sold that amount, that excess amount in our inventory, we would have had BRL 6 million in additional revenues if we had kept the same inventory level as last year.
Inventory in storage increased a little bit because we have an inventory of fertilizers that is a little bit higher year- on- year, and also because we had increases in the price of inputs. Now I would like to highlight the finished products. Organic sugar was the one that increased the most in inventory in 25,000 tons and anhydrous ethanol, which increased in prices in April. Now I would like to talk about our hedge policy. This is an update of our hedge status. We are on slide 16 for your reference. MTM per crop year, you can see that it was BRL 104 million and then BRL 36 million for 2023 and 2024, and BRL 6 million positive in 2024/2025. Now we are selling these amounts at the current prices of BRL 1,600.
Our MTM is higher because the current market is much higher than the 1.6 that you can see here. For 2024/2025, we can see here that 59% of the conventional sugar is hedged. Here we have some details about our foreign currency exposure with $15 million in the accumulated amount. Our CapEx was significant with BRL 495 million. Crop management is inventory to be amortized over the next year. BRL 141 million + BRL 96 million were related to expansion and operating improvements. 1.7 was invested in compliance and sustainability, and IT consumed BRL 3 million. Our planting CapEx amounted to BRL 92 million for renewal of fields and BRL 18 million to expand our fields and crush more next year. Our cash was a record-breaking BRL 1.3 billion.
We used our cash to acquire Santa Vitória, and we are probably going to see more transactions coming throughout the year. Net debt. Now you can see that even though we had higher inventories and CapEx being consumed with our Brownfield expansions, still our net debt fell by 25.9% with a leverage level of 0.1x. You can see that 80% of our debts are long-term, 20% is short-term. You can see that the average debt term on slide 19 went from two point four years to three point nine years. Now the main source of funding is CRA, capital markets and IFC, Rabobank, Santander and BNDES are the main sources of funding. Now on slide 20, you can see the evolution of our net debt.
You can see that we had a strong operating cash generation, and you can see where the cash was spent for renewal, expansion, crop management, dividends and JCP and working capital, which is mainly related to the increase in inventory. Now, in this section of the presentation, I would like to talk about our guidance. We disclosed a material fact yesterday, and we disclosed two different guidances to the market about production and also the expected CapEx. Starting with production guidance, and here are the two units, Jalles and Otávio. Since they are very similar, I'm just going to talk about Jalles, but you can extrapolate everything that I say about Jalles to Otávio Lage as well. We are on slide 22 now. The orange bars show the rainfall that formed the crop that we are harvesting now as of April.
You can see that we were very optimistic about the yields because we had good rainfall in October and November, which are very important months for rainfall because if we have good rainfall earlier in October, the sugarcane starts sprouting earlier. That actually happened. Our rainfall was very good up until December, and from December fifteenth to the end of January, we had too much rainfall and the weather was cloudy. Sugarcane stopped sprouting because although we had high rainfall, the weather was not so good and sugarcane requires rainfall and sunlight as well. As we said on other occasions, there was excessive rainfall during that period. The development of our fields was a little stagnant due to the lack of sunlight, and then we had good numbers in February. March, we had below average results.
What is important for our fields, we need, first of all, rainfall in October and also rainfall at the end of the period, because rainfall on the two ends help us extend the period in which the sugarcane sprouts. The same thing happened in Otávio Lage. That is why we disclosed a guidance that is a little bit below last year, even though the harvested area will be larger in about 1,000 hectares, which is related to our expansion last year. The amount of tons of sugar per hectare is 90-93 tons per hectare, especially because of the rainfall profile. Now average TRS, since rainfall stopped earlier in April, we started the crop year with high TRS, much higher than last year.
In April and May, the gap in comparison with last year was enormous, and that's why our TRS is 143 to 145. Now we are also investing, and that's why our TRS is better than last year. The total TRS will be higher than last year, and our guidance is 744 to 776 thousand in TRS, so we are more than offsetting the decrease in the yield. This is our mix between sugar and ethanol. We were able to take advantage of the beginning of the crop year, and the crop year evolved well because we didn't have any rainfall and the market had high prices, so we were able to take good advantage of the first months of the 2022-2023 crop year.
Because of that, we estimate that ethanol should be between 58% to 55% and sugar between 42% to 45% of our mix. This is our CapEx guidance. Here we have expansion in terms of the industrial side of our expansion and also biological assets. This is the operational improvement, CapEx and also, that includes also machine and sustainability compliance, and we also have the recurring CapEx. Now crop management is not considered as CapEx, so we did not include it because it accounts for as inventory to be amortized over the next year. You can see that this number does not include the crop management CapEx, which was BRL 189 million in the 2021-2022 crop year, just for your reference. Now let's take a look at the main investments made by the company this year.
This is our decanter at the Jalles Machado unit. You can see that we changed the layout of the conveyor belts. This is the new boiler at the Otávio Lage unit. Here we have the heaters and the evaporators, which will help us increase the amount of sugar produced there. This is a decanter, and this is the storage center, the storage and distribution center that we are building at the Otávio Lage unit to be able to reach 48,000 tons. The building is going to expand. You can see that this is the current layout. This is the current warehouse, and we are going to expand it all the way to the road on the left side of the picture. With the two warehouses, we are going to be able to store 1,000 tons. 1 million tons, rather.
This is biogas, the biogas project, which is being conducted by Albioma Codora. They're going to use our raw material, and that is going to be used. The biogas is going to be used to feed our boiler. This is our first effort involving biogas. It is a lower investment of about BRL 25 million, and it is going to generate an additional power that we sold under an auction that we announced last year. This is the end of the presentation. I wanted to be very brief in our presentation so that we could have more time left for our Q&A session. Actually, before we start the Q&A session, because I think that this could be a point that you are curious about, I would like to talk about the progress of the transaction between the signing and closing of the transaction.
The Brazilian Antitrust Authority has already approved the transaction, and now we just have to wait 15 more days for the decision to become final. The judge has already submitted the transaction to the prosecution office, and those are the two points that we were more concerned about. We also obtained, or we are conducting the process to obtain our waiver from the banks. Everything is going according to plan. The brownfield investments are also going according to plan. They are on schedule, both in financial terms and also in the physical construction itself. Now about the bill and the Bill to Amend the Constitution, I believe that we can address those two points in our Q&A session. I believe that you are curious about it.
I would like to invite you to take a look at our sustainability report that we disclosed yesterday. Please go take a look at everything that we've done in terms of sustainability, and you can see also in the report how well we are doing in terms of ESG. Just so you have an idea, out of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030 in the 2030 ESG plan Jalles is contributing to 14 of them, 14 out of 17. In the report, you can also see our carbon emissions balance. You are going to see that we were able to reduce emissions by 78%. Almost all the waste that we produce here, 98%, if I'm not mistaken, of our waste is recycled. Go take a look at our sustainability report. We can start the Q&A session now.
Ladies and gentlemen, now we are going to start the Q&A session. If you have a question and if you are connected over the phone, please press star nine. After your name is called, you will hear instructions to press star six and open your microphone. Please press star six only once. If you are connected via webcast, please click Raise Hand or enter your question in the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen. Questions in English will be taken only in writing. Please stand by as we collect the questions. The first question comes from Mr. Gabriel Barra with Citibank. Please, Mr. Barra, go ahead.
Good morning, Rodrigo.
Good morning, Gabriel.
Good morning. Thank you very much for the presentation, and congratulations on the strong results.
Although the sugarcane scenario was not so positive, you posted consistent results. I believe that the main points to be discussed are now related to the Bill to Amend the Constitution and the bill pending before the Congress. I believe that the constitutional amendments will be voted today, and that is very important for the sector. I would like to know about the potential impacts that you believe can happen on the sector in terms of competitiveness for ethanol, especially ethanol. What are you expecting from the decision from the Congress? The second question is about your organic sugar production. I would like to know more about your strategy for this year. Your inventories were a bit high. The carryover inventory for organic sugar was high, and the production is also higher than last year.
Taking a look at the higher inventories and also considering the production, do you expect to keep the same production level? Do you think that the logistics problems will be solved throughout the year? I would just like to have more color on the organic sugar situation for 2022, 2023, and what can we expect from organic sugar during this crop year? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Gabriel, for your participation, and thank you very much for monitoring our sector and following up on everything that we do here. Gabriel, I believe that many participants have the same question, so I would like to give you an overview about the discussions pertaining to the bills pending before the Congress. I would like to take advantage of your question to talk about that issue on broader terms.
There are three bills under discussion in the Congress. Bill 18 and bills to amend the Constitution 15 and 16. Bill 18 was voted yesterday, and it was passed by the majority of the Congress. This bill aims to limit the tax rate on gasoline in each state. For example, in São Paulo it is 18, Goiás 17, and Minas Gerais it is also 17. That is going to be the cap. That's going to be the cap on the gasoline tax rate. I believe that all of us thought that this bill would be approved, and the sector was concerned because that would harm competitiveness of ethanol, which has a lower tax rate than gasoline.
It is a renewable fuel that creates a lot of jobs in the smaller towns of Brazil, so it would be weird to provide incentives to a fossil fuel and not a renewable one. It goes the opposite direction of the rest of the world. The Senate, I believe, was sensitive to that, with the sector, was able to play an influence on the Senate. The rapporteur, Mr. Bezerra, was the creator of Bill 16, Bill to Amend the Constitution. What this bill does is to keep the competitiveness of the tax rate of ethanol in comparison with gasoline. The tax rates that were in effect in each state as of May 15th for ethanol and gasoline, that same proportion should be maintained after there is a reduction in the tax rate on gasoline, because ethanol is a renewable fuel.
That caused questions about maintaining the same gap between the tax rates or if the proportions will be kept. The overall understanding from the Congress and the government and what everybody says is that the same proportion would be kept. Let's say São Paulo has a tax rate of 25 on gasoline and 3.3 for ethanol. 13.3 over 25 amounts to 53% of the gasoline tax rate. If gasoline is 18, ethanol should be 9.58%. That would be the tax rate for ethanol in the State of São Paulo, 53% of 18. That is what the Bill to Amend the Constitution number 16 is aiming at, and it is going to be voted by the Congress today.
In the State of São Paulo, the biggest state of Brazil, what is the financial impact of that change? Of those two changes, rather. In net amount, and that is the most important factor, if we discount taxes, there would be an impact of BRL 0.34 if the tax rate on gasoline went down to 17%. At the same time, we would be able to offset BRL 0.21 on that. The actual impact would be BRL 0.13. In the state of Minas Gerais and the State of Goiás, that effect is a little bit higher than São Paulo. However, in Goiás and Minas Gerais, the effect is going to cause a change in the parity, because what's going to happen is that more ethanol will be sent to São Paulo, and the parity in Goiás is better than in São Paulo.
In São Paulo, it's usually 69.5%, and in Goiás it is 67% usually. That parity is going to change a little bit in Goiás and Minas. It is going to increase because if in São Paulo the drop is lower, then more ethanol will be exported from Minas and Goiás to São Paulo. The overall impact should be around $0.13-$0.15 on the net price. That is going to be the effect of PEC 18 and 16. There is another Bill to Amend the Constitution, PEC 15, and this bill would reduce federal taxes on gasoline until the end of the year only. It would allow also to bring the tax rate on cooking gas to zero if the states decide to do so. That is a state prerogative.
According to the same bill, ethanol could reduce the tax rate by 12% and the states would be compensated, but the states have to decide whether or not they want to do that. The sector is putting a lot of pressure on that, because if diesel and gasoline can have a tax rate of 0%, then why shouldn't ethanol enjoy the same benefits and the states be compensated for that? If that happens, that would also offset the effect of PEC 15. It is important to remember, as I said, this bill will be in force only until the end of the year, and that bill is related to decreasing the tax rate on diesel and cooking gas to 0%.
If it is harmful to us, Jalles Machado has just little ethanol to be sold from now to the end of the crop year. We wouldn't be harmed so much by this bill in case it is detrimental to us. Because now we only have 10-15 million liters to be sold that we cannot store to be sold next year. Another important point is that these measures cannot be sustained by the states. We don't know exactly how the day after will play out because states won't be able to make ends meet if they lose that kind of revenue. We don't know exactly how things are going to be at the end of the year. On the other hand, we know that the price of gasoline is not what we should be.
As I said, the net prices would be $0.13 lower in São Paulo. If that gap in the price of gasoline remains, we are going to be able to make more than those $0.13. I just wanted to summarize the situation to you because I know this is an important topic. If you have any more questions about this, we can talk about it more later. Now, Gabriel, you also asked about organic sugar. The exports inventory that we sold but did not ship, it is going to be shipped in June. Also in June, we are going to start the new crop season. How is it going to be? Well, since we have not produced yet, and we have already started selling the 2022-2023 organic sugar, we have already started sales.
It was a little bit delayed in comparison with last year because of the container issues. In about 45 days, we will be able to tell you more accurately how much we are going to sell during the crop year. If we realize that we won't be able to ship everything, and of course, part of the production will be shipped from April to June. If we realize during that period that we are going to sell 10,000 tons less, for example, we are going to reduce production of organic sugar so that we don't have any carryover inventory. We will be able to tell if that is going to happen or not, towards the end of the year. We believe that we are going to have a good volume.
The few deals that have already been signed, which do not amount to 50% of the expected amounts for the crop year 2022/2023, and we have already negotiated with some clients and some negotiations are still ongoing. We can see from those negotiations that the prices are above last year prices. It is not so significant, but it is higher. Do you have any other questions still, Gabriel Barra?
No, thank you very much. That was very clear.
The next question comes from Mr. Victor Poli with Levante Corp.
Good morning. What are the company's expectations about medium and long-term debts, especially when it comes to high interest rates? Thank you very much, and congratulations on the results.
Please, can you repeat the question?
Victor Poli is asking. Good morning. What are the company's expectations about medium and long-term debts or leverage, especially in a scenario with high interest rates? Thank you very much, and congratulations on the results.
Thank you very much for your participation, Victor. Well, I'm going to start with your first question about our leverage. We announced the acquisition of Santa Vitória. We also announced the expansion CapEx for this year. Despite those two factors, despite the acquisition and the investment, we are going to have a leverage level of about 0.7 or even lower than that until March 2023. The leverage level will still be low despite all of those investments, and that is thanks to the strong cash generation that we had this year and that we are expecting for 2022 and 2023.
That cash generation is going to be able to cover a significant part of those investments. For 2023/ 2024, that leverage level will drop even further. We are at a very comfortable leverage position despite the higher interest rates as we are expecting for this year and maybe next year as well. Those are the expectations of the market.
The next question comes from Mr. Thiago Duarte with BTG Pactual. Mr. Duarte, you may proceed.
Good morning. Good morning, Rodrigo. Good morning, Otávio. Good morning, everybody. I have two follow-up questions about the bills that you explained, considering your guidance, especially when it comes to the ethanol mix. The guidance shows that this crop year is going to lean more towards ethanol, and I would like to know more color about that, Rodrigo.
I would like to know more about the mix and also the ethanol prices, considering the bills that you mentioned, Bill 18 and 16. Considering those two bills and their effects until the end of the year, is that going to change the production mix? My second question is, you mentioned the effect in each state, São Paulo, Goiás, and Minas Gerais, and I wanted to know more about Goiás in terms of the tax benefits. We know that the tax rate in Goiás is higher, but companies like Jalles Machado receive different incentive mechanisms. I would like to know exactly what the tax rates are going to be if there is a cap of 17% on the tax rate on gasoline. You also mentioned your CapEx and how your brownfield investments are going according to plan.
Now, when we look at your brownfield CapEx industrial and agricultural, and considering the guidance that you disclosed for this year, we believe that with BRL 440-BRL 450, that is going to be enough to finish the investments that you expected. I believe that there's just a small amount left to be invested so that you can reach the guidance that you disclosed last year. Is that correct?
Duarte, thank you very much. Those are great questions. Thank you for participating. Now, first of all, about the mix, the production mix. We calculated the production mix guidance without considering the effects of the bills. Since the approval of the bills were not certain yet, we do not take that into account in the calculation of the guidance. That's the first point.
The second point is that we had a higher share of ethanol, and we produced and we sold everything that we produced in April and May in terms of ethanol. The TRS was higher and crushing was going well, and we did not build any inventory because it was worth it to sell more ethanol than sugar. That's why the company decided to produce that amount of ethanol, and we were able to sell the entire amount that we produced. Now, over the past 15-20 days, we actually increased the share of sugar because ethanol prices are at BRL 3.9, so the company decided to lean more towards sugar. You can see that white sugar prices are high. The domestic market is going well, we decided to lean more towards sugar.
However, my flexibility to produce more sugar when TRS starts to increase, which is already the case, that flexibility reduces. When you have more TRS, you don't have so much flexibility. You're not able to change that mix so much. Now the company is going to produce as much sugar as possible. That's what we are already doing. The interesting point about this is something that I mentioned when I was talking about the bills, and I'll repeat it because it is important. Since we sold a lot of ethanol at the wonderful prices of April and May, and since we already have contracts for anhydrous ethanol, the amounts that have not been sold are not so large. We have little inventory to sell from now until the end of the crop year that we cannot store. It's just about 15 million liters.
It's a small amount that I would have to sell more. We could wait until PEC 15 is voted to start selling that amount again. We are very comfortable about that. We are in a comfortable position. Now, about PEC 16/2022. The tax rate for gasoline in Goiás is 30%, and for ethanol it is 25%. 25 over 30 is 83%. If the tax rate is 17% for gasoline, then the ethanol rate would be 14.16%. Instead. Let's assume that it is 63%-64%. Instead of having 63%-64% of 25, we are going to have 64% of 14.16. If we do the math very quickly, you can see that we produced hydrous ethanol.
Considering hydrous ethanol, you are going to see that that is going to amount to BRL 15 million-BRL 20 million with a fiscal effect of 34%. This is just a high-level explanation so that you can do your math on your end. That is only related to ethanol. Lastly, you asked about CapEx, right? It was 141 + 18, which totals 160. For this year we would have less than BRL 100 million, and that is pretty much in line with the schedule that we announced. We will just have to invest a little bit more next year in boilers and the decanters and all of the other equipment that we have at the Otávio Lage.
They have already been installed, so we are not going to have too much industrial investment coming next year. We are going to invest on the agricultural side at the same level of this year. Because this year and next year are the two years in which we are going to expand our fields the most. We are indeed going according to plan with the BRL 517 million to be invested. If you remember correctly, you'll probably remember that we talked about an increase in steel prices, but we were able to reap some efficiencies. From what we are saying, we will be able to finish the investments that we expected according to the budget that we had projected, which is BRL 517 million. Just a follow-up question on this.
For next year, crop year 2023-24, can we expect any increase in crushing due to the brownfield expansions? If you could give us more color on crushing or if you could give us guidance or a range for crushing in crop year 2023-24, that would be great. Well, Duarte, this is related to something that we said on other occasions in other earnings calls. For this year, it was about 5.4. That's what we said during the IPO. That was our growth projection. Next year it's going to be 5.8, and 2024 would be 6.3. That is our projection. The expansion of the fields are going well, and they will allow us to deliver those ranges that we disclosed earlier. We are going to be able to follow our plan. We have been able to execute our plan successfully.
Okay. Thank you very much, Rodrigo.
The next question comes from Mr. Vidal Morato, minority shareholder.
Considering the new technological possibilities of using sugarcane and green hydrogen for the new cycles of the sugar and ethanol units, what is Jalles' perspective about using those options, those possibilities as revenue levers in the future?
Well, we are very excited about biogas. Of course, it is very valuable in terms of replacing biodiesel and trucks and tractors and other machines are evolving so that they can use biogas instead of diesel. This is a project that we are just starting. We are starting with Albioma, as I showed in the presentation. There is an even larger project to be implemented at the largest unit.
Instead of using biogas in boilers, we can sell biogas instead from that unit. We are thinking and considering that possibility for over 8 years now. We are taking baby steps because we want to have confidence on the return on the invested capital. It is something that we are considering. The company is paying attention to those opportunities. The second-generation ethanol, well, we still are not considering investing in second-generation ethanol or synthetic biology, but those are factors that are in the company's radar. Of course, we are always paying attention to what's going on in the sector. In the future, we might consider those possibilities in our future projects. When it comes to hydrogen, we believe that that would be a cheaper technology to replace electric energy.
We would be able to sequester more carbon and we reduce at Jalles Machado our emissions by 80%. We emit 80% less carbon, and you can see that in our sustainability report. Once again, I would like to invite you all to take a look at our sustainability report. Please, feel free to make suggestions. Last year, we had already disclosed a sustainability report, and we did it again this year. It was accredited by Veritas. We would be very happy if you could all take a few minutes to take a look at the report.
Our next question comes from Mr. Mateus Santana with EQI Investments. Mr. Santana, you may proceed.
Hello, Rodrigo. Good morning. I have two questions about the acquisition of Santa Vitória.
You were planning to crush 2 million tons in 2022 and 2023, but the capacity of the unit is 1.7. I would like to know how are we going to increase crushing? Are we going to keep 100% own sugarcane? Are you going to use third-party sugarcane? And also about the new area of Santa Vitória in comparison with the units in the State of Goiás. I would like to know more about the lease costs in that region and if you intend to purchase new areas. Thank you very much for your question, Mateus. I'll take this opportunity to talk more about Santa Vitória. I know that you all have many questions about Santa Vitória, and because of that, we are probably going to disclose some guidance after the closing about the acquisition of Santa Vitória.
Considering the guidance that we have already disclosed, the planned crushing was about 1.9-2 million tons for this year. The capacity is 2.7, as you said. Now, how are we going to scale that up? We can do that by increasing the planted area in about 4,000-5,000 hectares. The cost to expand the sugarcane field is BRL 13,000-14,000 per hectare. We would consider an increase in yields over the years. The yields for this crushing season, according to our numbers, will be 1.9-2 million tons. Because of that, the yield should be around 65 for this crop year. We have already disclosed those figures.
That increase will come from expansions and also from an increase in yields as the company renovates the sugarcane fields and as the company adopts management practices that are at the same level of the other Jalles Machado units in terms of varietals and management practices in general, and the preparation of soil, planting, and also irrigation management. All of those factors will be extremely important. We are very conservative, I must say. We are very conservative about the improvement in yields, but we would reach the 2.7 million at around 25-26. 25-26 crop year. If it is not in 2025, it is very likely that we can achieve that number by 2026. You also asked about leasing costs. The prices there are compatible with the average of the region.
It is a region that does not have crops. The main activity there is cattle farming. The lease prices are very similar to the Jalles Machado's average. It is actually a little bit below average because yields there are lower. It wouldn't really make sense to have higher prices. I think that's it, Mateus. I think I covered your questions about lease and increase in yields. Another point that I would like to mention, when I said that we are going to expand from 4,000-5,000 hectares at the price of BRL 13,000-BRL 14,000 per hectare, if you expand to 2.7 million tons, you will need more machines to harvest sugarcane and to prepare the soil and to also manage the entire crop, and that brings an additional cost, an additional investment in machines.
That means that you are growing by 500,000 tons, and you are going to spend BRL 75. This is not a guidance, by the way. I'm just mentioning the historical amounts. It's about BRL 75 per ton. Doesn't mean that is going to be the exact price or the exact amount that we are going to invest. It's just for your reference.
Okay, thank you very much.
Excuse me, there are no more questions, so I would like to turn the floor over to Mr. Rodrigo for his closing remarks. Please, Mr. Rodrigo, go ahead.
Once again, thank you all very much for participating. Thank you for following us in our journey, and I would also like to take this opportunity to apologize for any mistakes that we might made or for not being able to address all of your questions, but we are at your full disposal to answer any questions you might still have. Please contact us. Don't hesitate to contact us. Once again, I would like to thank the entire Jalles Machado team that works very hard to bring you transparent information. I would also like to thank our board, which has been very active. Once again, thank you very much and feel free to make suggestions. That is always very helpful. Now we are going to make the 2022/2023 crop year a record-breaking year once again. With that, we would like to finish Jalles Machado's conference call for today.
Have a good day. Bye-bye. See you next time.