Good afternoon, and welcome to Unipar's Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Today, Maurício Russomanno, CEO, Christian Schnitzlein, CFO and IRO, and the IR team are joining. This event is being recorded, and all participants will be in listen mode during the presentation. We will have a Q&A session in the end. The presentation can be accessed through the MZiQ platform and the company's website, ri.unipar.com. You will change the slides yourselves. The audio recording will be available on the company's website after the call. Participants can send questions via webcast, and Unipar will provide answers in the Q&A session or after the conference is over through the IR team.
Before proceeding, we would like to clarify that any statements that may be made during this call regarding Unipar's business prospects, projections, operating and financial goals are beliefs and assumptions of the company's management as well as information currently available to Unipar. Forward-looking statements are not performance assurances and involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as they refer to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors and analysts should understand that general conditions, industry conditions, and other operating factors may affect Unipar's future results and could lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such future conditions. I would now like to give the floor to Mr. Russomanno, who will start the presentation. You have the floor, Maurício.
Thank you, Raquel. Good afternoon and welcome to our conference call. Operating and financial results were very positive in this second quarter, and we will go through the highlights of indicators and also actions and investments. First, I will discuss the sectoral scenario that directly impacts commercial variables, and I will talk about the deliverables that reflect our strategic pillars. The macroeconomic scenario, we have highlighted risks that had been foreseen in the previous quarter, which materialized, and other risks that are still present. We expect for 2022 to still present uncertainties in terms of global growth, inflation rates, and logistics chain variables that have already been affecting the economic activities in the markets where we operate. By the end of the second quarter, we observed a drop in demand and the PVC prices in global markets as a consequence of the acceleration of activities in civil construction.
Inputs such as gas, ethylene, and energy, input costs continue to rise and begin to affect margins and balance the logistics chain. In the markets where we operate, we're still monitoring the evolution of the demand of the civil construction and implementing the sanitation framework in Brazil and public construction works in Argentina. There are many uncertainties related to the second half of 2022. In slide three, despite the adverse scenario, we continue with our commitment of implementing our vision of the future, which direct to sustainable growth, operating excellence, competitiveness, culture, team, and sustainability. At Unipar, we believe in the future and will pursue our investments in our assets, expanding our capacities and new plants in new geographies. On slide four, we can point out that in this quarter we have maintained a high percentage of our capacity, installed capacity usage.
On average, the production of three plants was 87% in the second quarter of 2022, thus maintaining the same high levels for the past three quarters. The numbers reflect our commercial activities closer to our customers and continuous improvement in operations. Highlights of Bahía Blanca plant in Argentina reaching sales and production records in this half year, making up for the lower performance of PVC in the period caused by decline in international prices and demand in Brazil. I would also point out that the success of the operational excellence actions carried out in the three plants over the past three years played a key role for us to attain and maintain these performance levels. Besides the continued operating and commercial improvements, we had an important strategic action.
We announced the construction of a new plant in the northeast of Brazil to support the expansion of sanitation projects, investing BRL 140 million in the new plant in the Camaçari Petrochemical Complex in Bahia with an installed capacity of approximately 10,000 tons per year of chlorine. This is our first greenfield project in our geographic expansion strategy. The plant was designed as one of the safest, most modern and ecologically efficient production technologies with the optimization of energy consumption and resources. The second half of 2022 construction will begin, which is expected to be concluded within 24 months. Another important expansion step were the Artemísia projects, which began in Santo André. They were announced late in 2021. We expect to invest another BRL 100 million to ramp up 15% production in the Santo André plant.
On slide seven, we also continued to strengthen the culture of the company. In our first participation in the Great Place to Work survey, we were acknowledged as a great place to work in Brazil and Argentina. This made us very proud. It comes to show we're on the right track in the construction journey of Unipar. This is actually a result of the actions we have carried out to promote the culture that is people-oriented, that work in a high-performance environment, promoting inclusion, respect, acknowledgement, and trust. We also launched our inclusion diversity census to produce data that will guide us in our inclusion actions. Another important step that was concluded this half was the development cycle, which resulted in the succession map of the company and also the assessment of performance and providing feedback to our development plan.
We also had an important step in strengthening Unipar Academy. We launched LinkedIn Learning with learning paths that reflect the business goals in partnership with FIA. We also launched a scholarship program for employees to attend technical training and post-graduate courses. We also initiated our internship program, which seeks to prepare professionals for the first stage of their career at Unipar. On slide eight, we are also promoting social actions focusing on human development to reach 800,000 people in 2022-2023 biennium. In this second half, we would like to point out the project, the diagnosis of basic sanitation needs in the Jardim Encantado community, Santo André. The Mem podera Festival in Cubatão, three by three basketball in Santo André, certification of Pescar project, and the renovation of a daycare center in Caldas do Jorro, Bahia, in partnership with AES.
The Nutrition Education for Healthy Childhood program with the Fundación Cecilia Grierson in Argentina. MASP, MAM museums in São Paulo, the Imperial Museum, and the German Exhibition of the Geyer Collection, and the biennial itinerant exhibition in Campos do Jordão and Belo Horizonte. On slide nine, I'd like to point out we have made consistent investments in the sustainability agenda. This is part of the history and DNA of Unipar, and this is one more step. Unipar Sustainability Day will take place on September 14. We will present to the market our commitments and long-term objectives related to sustainability, as well as our guidelines and material facts, material guidelines and themes, and medium and long-term commitments. Also, the main projects and initiatives. You have all been invited to attend.
All of these actions are part of Unipar's transformational changes to continue its sustainable growth journey, generating value to all stakeholders with a perennial vision. Our results this quarter confirm we have remained on track. I'll now turn it over to Christian, who will talk about our financial results.
Thank you, Maurício. Good afternoon to all. I hope you're well. I will go through our highlights for the first half 2022, compared to the first half 2021, and afterwards the second quarter 2022 over the same period last year. We are consistently aligned to our strategic goals and prepared to manage adverse events in the market that might arise. As Maurício mentioned, the consolidated net revenue was BRL 2 billion in the first half 2022, also mainly driven by the international prices of caustic soda.
The consolidated variable costs are around 80% of our CPV, total CPV, reaching BRL 1 billion. Growth is 7.7% over the first quarter in 2022. Our EBITDA and net profit, we had growth of 4.2% over the first quarter and 21% respectively. Our revenue by product was also relevant. In the year to date on slide 14, we had an increase in the net revenue of 57% resulting from the variation of international prices and the increasing sales volumes of our products over 2021. This consolidated CPV growth was 44%, reaching almost BRL 2 billion. That is driven by increasing input costs, ethylene, electricity, and natural gas, mainly. Our EBITDA grew by 73% over the same period in the last year. We registered BRL 1.7 billion, margin 43%.
In relation to the net debt, we are disciplined and looking at our capital structure. We closed the period with a negative net debt, and the balance is BRL 662 million. Throughout the first half, we allocated BRL 30 million to the share buyback and have distributed BRL 235 million in dividends, and together with the BRL 500 million that were deliberated and approved in the last shareholders meeting yesterday, totaling BRL 875 million . The consolidated cash flow has a positive consolidation with a BRL 450 million variation in relation to December 2021. I would like to highlight our commitment to continue pursuing our strategic goals with discipline and commitment. I'd like to congratulate the Unipar team for the results. Now we will open the Q&A. In case we cannot answer the questions from the webcast right now, we will submit the Q&A answers afterwards. Thank you, Christian.
We have a question from José Bonati Junior. It came in by email. I would like to know how Unipar sees the operation in the Argentinian plant, if there are any concerns with regards to the crisis that could actually shut down the plant or are operations stable with challenging, however manageable consequences.
Good afternoon, José Bonati, and thank you for your question. Well, as I mentioned earlier in my opening remarks, this quarter we had an excellent performance in the Argentina plant with 75% usage. We have invested heavily over the past years to improve the plant and the operating conditions and therefore our productivity and competitiveness in the plant.
Argentina, the operations in Argentina is strategic because together with Santo André, we have the two plants that produce PVC for Unipar. With these two plants, we can. They can complement their operations in our markets in South America and our exports. The Argentina plant is a strategic unit. It is designed so that, well, much of its production can be exported. We, I believe that despite the challenges and the macroeconomic scenario in Argentina, we will definitely continue to operate as well as we can in Argentina with our improvement programs and operating excellence and competitiveness programs in place for the operations to continue not only serving the Argentinian market but also reaching the markets in the region and other parts of the world. Thank you, Maurício.
We have one more question from Heloísa Cruz from Stoxos.
Good afternoon. Congratulations for the results. Thank you for the dividends. Could you please talk about the supply and demand scenario for PVC and caustic soda for the upcoming months?
Hello, Heloísa. Good afternoon, Heloísa Cruz. Thank you for your question. Well, I will begin by talking about the scenarios. Well, we're not speculating what will happen in the future months, in the months to come, but it's important to mention our company serves three major markets, mainly the first one being the civil construction industry, which is for most of our PVC production. If there are any fluctuations, upward or downward in the civil construction ramp up or downturn, we are directly impacted as well as PVC. As also mentioned earlier, by the end of the second quarter, the global civil construction also had a decline, a downturn.
As a consequence, there was an impact in our pricing, in the international pricing of PVC. As for caustic soda, we, well, sell caustic soda to different industries: food industry, mining, pulp and paper. In the case of caustic soda over the past months, globally, there was a positive trend due to several reasons. First, being the higher energy costs driven by the Ukraine-European conflict. There were actually rising prices for the production of caustic soda in Europe, and there were also events and acts of God, force majeure in plants, stoppages that were not scheduled. Over the last year there were announcements and there were some cases of divestment in capacities, capabilities due to technological changes with the diaphragm that left the United States.
These were things that contributed for soda results in the first half of 2022 remaining at higher level prices. Another factor that is also relevant are the high logistic costs for the transportation of goods globally. There's also an important segment for Unipar being sanitation. We actually sell chlorine and derivatives to the sanitation industry, and we rely more heavily on the local market, Brazil and Argentina. This is a market that is still growing, considering the needs in the sanitation industry and in the country to improve the water supply and to also improve the wastewater collection in households.
Thank you, Maurício. We are checking if there are more questions. Thank you. This Q&A is now closed. Now I would like to give the floor for Maurício for his closing remarks.
Thank you everyone for joining our earnings release call. Feel free to request any further clarification you deem necessary. Please contact the investor relations team or Christian or myself. Before concluding, I would like to especially thank our employees. Once again, this is a deeply engaged and dedicated team. This quarter the team also made a difference once again, keeping up, moving forward with energy, and this is what makes Unipar day after day. We have also focused strongly on efficiency, safety and sustainability, and these also play key roles. Once again, I'd like to formally express my gratitude for the trust and partnership of Frank Geyer Abubakir, our controlling shareholder in the company and our Chairman of the Board until recently, through his leadership and vision, Unipar has become one of the leading companies in chlorine and soda in South America.
He has also been actively involved in drawing the strategies and defining the key points that Unipar should continue investing on in the future. Frank Geyer Abubakir made a succession process and appointed Bruno Uchino as Chairman of the Board. Bruno has been member of Unipar's board since 2017 and has been supporting our strategy and was also involved in designing the company's strategy. I wish him good luck formally once again, Bruno, and I wish you much success in your new roles to actually continue growing Unipar. Finally, I would like to point out that this is how Unipar's contribution to the future by making investments, working with consistency and responsibility. Our goal at Unipar is to be a company that creates sustainable value and for our stakeholders to always trust in us.
This is what we believe in, and our slogan is, "This is how we can make things happen." Thank you, and I wish you all an excellent quarter. See you soon. Goodbye to all.