Good morning, everyone. Welcome to presentation of our annual results. The results of Lotus Bakeries Group. I'm Jan Boone, CEO of the group, and next to me is Mike Cuvelier, the CFO of the group. He still looks in very good shape, although they were tough weeks in closing the annual results. We are always one of the first to re-release our results, so I'm very grateful to Mike and his team to again, have a smooth closing of the annual results. Most of you have probably read the press release that has been launched this morning. So we're very proud on the results and we're very proud to present them. The revenue growth in 2022 was unseen. We realized a growth of EUR 127 million.
We were able to combine this with a very strong profitability. The EBITDA, recurring EBITDA, for the full year ended with 19.4%. This brings us to a total revenue of EUR 877 million. We are proud on the internal growth that we could realize in combination with a strong profitability. That also brings us to a EUR 100 million-plus net profit for 2022. The first time that the net profit went over the EUR 100 million. You can also see that the cash conversion was strong. We have invested more than ever. We have invested more than EUR 150 million last year.
Although that record year of investment, we were able to keep the Net Debt EBITDA level below 1, being 0.9, which is the same as last year. We also are proud on the fact that our two most important strategic pillars being Lotus Biscoff and Lotus Natural Foods realized strong growth, consistent growth. Now if we go back and look back, Lotus Biscoff realized an average growth rate of 15%, and Natural Foods even 16%. That brings me to the next slide, and that gives you an overview of the revenue of the group of the past decade, 10 years. You see that our average growth of the group amounts to 12%.
That's a higher percentage than last year, where we also looked back in time, and where we also looked back to the last 10 years. We were able to increase that average growth rate to 11.8%, which is challenging because the numbers become every year bit higher. On the next slide, we have our timeline. Of course, the past years didn't change. This year we've put some highlights, being the record revenue growth of EUR 127 million. Also the facts, we come back on that point later. The fact that we announced our third Biscoff plant in Thailand for the Asia Pacific region and also the acquisition, the full acquisition of Peter's Yard. These are some highlights.
Some of them I did discuss already a minute ago. You can see the organic growth of 17%. We see also that the EBITDA increased to 12.5%. In absolute value that's EUR 19 million. Although in turbulent times, challenging times, we were able to increase our EBITDA. As said, and that's something which is important as a company, that's the cash flow generation and the ability to invest more than 150 million in our company. Still the net financial debt remains very low and remains less than 1 times EBITDA. Also the dividends increased from EUR 40 to EUR 45 per share, which is an increase of 12.5%.
It's more or less the same increase as our net recurring earnings, net earnings. That's pretty much the same increase we see on that level. If we look now at our three strategic pillars, first of all, we have Biscoff, and you see 54% of the total branded revenue consists of Biscoff. We will see on the next slide that the year before it was only 51%, which means that the Biscoff-Parts increases year by year. Same can be said of Lotus Natural Foods, and there you see 23% of the total branded revenue consists of Lotus Natural Foods, which is the same level as the Local Heroes. The same level as our brands in Belgium, Netherlands, France, and Sweden.
That consists of the waffles and the cakes, and the gingerbread and Anna's Pepparkakor. It's quite a unique moment in time for us, that Natural Foods equals in revenue to the Local Heroes. You also see the difference in growth rates. Last year, Biscoff grew with 25%. Natural Foods almost with the same growth rate as 24%. You see the Local Heroes remained stable. That's also the strategy. We put a lot of investments into the global Biscoff growth, and same counts for Lotus Natural Foods. This being said, we still invest in the Local Heroes.
We are convinced that we need to support the Local Heroes to keep them at least at the same revenue level, preferably with a slight increase, which was also the case the last 10 years. Local Heroes did increase with about 2%. The next slide, here you see the comparison with last year. Biscoff parts in our branded sales increases from 51% to 54%, and Natural Foods from 22% to 23%. Equals now the Local Heroes. If you look at our total branded revenue again, you see that 1 order been realized in the UK. That's of course, Biscoff and Natural Foods all together. You also see that the top 5 countries do represents almost 75% of our total branded sales.
If you look at our top 10 countries being UK, U.S., Belgium, France, the Netherlands, China, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and Korea. If you take all of these together, you see that in the top 10, 7 countries are considered as larger consumer markets. It's good to see that in the top 10, you see more and more larger markets and larger consumer markets with great potential for our company. This is a global production footprint. Not a lot of changes there. Mike will also elaborate on that. We have made quite some investments in Land Baker, Lebon, and Wolseley, and we are about to make strong investments, significant investments in building a new Biscoff factory in Thailand.
That as a general catch- up, if we zoom into Biscoff, here you see that one quarter of the Biscoff revenue has been realized in the United States of America. Second country is UK, and France is number 3. Also here you see that the top 3 is more or less 50% of the total Biscoff sales. Again, if you look at the top 10 Biscoff countries, here again, you see that 7 are larger consumer markets. Again, that shows the potential. You also see some larger consumer markets coming up and entering the top countries of Biscoff.
Just to show you an amount of cookies, total number of Biscoff cookies that we have been selling in 2022, total is almost 7.2 billion Biscoff cookies. That's without spreads. If you add the spreads, eh, you have to add more or less 2 billion more cookies. You see in North America, we do sell 1.7 billion cookies, Europe 3.7 billion, and then Asia, almost 1.5 billion cookies. That gives you also a good idea where the cookies are being sold, and that makes it also very logical, eh, that the third Biscoff plant has to be built in Asia. You see very clearly Europe as being, and the Europe, Middle East. It's really an important area for us, in volume.
Same counts for North America. You see also more and more Asia-Pacific being important. To anticipate on that, we decided to buy a piece of land in Thailand. The land that we have bought is very close to the large international port. It's only 40 minutes something like that from the port. That port gives us access to all these countries that you see on the slides without import duties and with less transport costs. We can enter with fresher Biscoff cookies. Lots of advantages. We are only at the beginning of that project. It's a large project. We certainly do not want to underestimate it.
We. It's a greenfield, literally, and we need to find the good people. We have to build the plants accordingly to the local standards. At the end of the story, we want to have Biscoff cookies that taste exactly the same as the one in Lembeke and in the U.S. The consumer can only taste maybe fresher Biscoff cookies, but cannot taste the difference compared to the Biscoff cookies he or she ate before. That's our mission. As you know, for us, quality is very important. We have a good pace in building the factory in Thailand and we're still according to the timelines that we have shared before. 2026, we want to be operational.
That's still the applicable timeline. If you go too fast, the quality and the performance of the plant would be affected. On the next slides, we have here an overview of pretty much all the countries where we are active with Biscoff. That's, yeah, almost 70 countries that are plotted here. Certain countries are got a gray circle around the flag. That means that they moved up a step, and that they moved up a phase. Good examples are Korea, Canada, Australia and Spain, and they moved from create to build. They crossed the 5% border. Same counts for Singapore, Qatar, Kuwait, and Lebanon.
They crossed the border from build to accelerate. They are now part of the accelerate phase. These are some examples. Also from create to build, Sweden, New Zealand, and the Emirates. Saudi Arabia is quite important for us. You see quite some countries that's moved further down to the right. That's good news, and that confirms also the volume growth that we have seen in these different markets. That brings me to the ranking. You know that every year we calculate the ranking, the cookie brand ranking. We were number 7, and great news, we moved up a position, and we moved up to position number 6 end of 2022.
Still far away from our ultimate ambition to become cookie number three of the world. Okay, we're moving in the right direction. That's good news. Other exciting news is the fact that we will bring a new design, a new Biscoff design, on our original Biscoff cookie, but also on the spread, ice cream, and all the Biscoff products. On the left side, you see the current design, where you see Lotus and Biscoff almost equal in size. We wanted to make a decision, and we've chosen, and it's certainly probably not a surprise. We have chosen Biscoff as main brand endorsed by Lotus. You can see the execution on the right-hand side. That's the new design. You see Biscoff.
The logo is different. The logo is a bit more contemporary, more modern. And we think it's jumping out of the shelf. We've made some exercises where we brought new and old designs in the shelf, and it looks really nice. We have done some studies in a couple of countries to test the reaction of the consumers. They're very enthusiastic. And also internally, if we've shared it now with our teams just before the weekend, and everybody is very enthusiastic. So that's a good confirmation. It's a massive work to really change all the packs. We have lots of SKUs. As you know, we sell in more than 70 countries with me, which means different languages.
We are starting to execute all that work, and you can expect end of this year, the first new design, 250 grams and other packs in store. Okay. That concludes the part of Biscoff. Just one thing I'd like to add is, this is pretty much the same design, but here, this is for Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, where we put the original Speculoos underneath Biscoff. It's an additional point of recognition for the consumers in these three countries. That brings me to next chapter, Natural Foods. Good news there. At the moment that we acquired the Natural Food brands, they were UK brands. They only sold within the UK.
They realized about EUR 60 million and almost 95% of the sales was within the UK territory. What we did as Lotus, we grew the brands from 60 now to EUR 175 million, whereas the UK parts increase, but also the international part is becoming quite important. That was always the strategy asked from the start. You can see that also in this slide. On this slide, besides U.K. and outside of the UK, we're looking at the international part. You see that the U.S. is 40%, maybe there. The Netherlands, France, Australia and Belgium, these are the top five countries. You see more and more international spread of our Natural Foods brands, which is good news.
Another way to present the EUR 175 million here is on the dark green, you see, our internationalization of Natural Foods to the U.S., to Australia. Another highlight of last year was the acquisition of Peter's Yard. Peter's Yard entered in Lotus Bakeries through the fund. We had a minority stake, we were in their boards. We followed the company. We really like the brand. We like that it's a very specific product. It is specific because of its taste, but also because of its process. Sourdough crackers are quite a unique position. Peter's Yard has listings in most UK retailers, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, and Ocado. Still a lot of potential.
There's still a lot of potential within the UK, and that will be the short-term focus to really grow in the UK Then we can look also outside of the UK in years to come. We are proud that Peter's Yard is now part of Lotus Bakeries. Another important event last year was that we brought all the teams of Natural Balance Foods, of BEAR, of Kiddylicious and Peter's Yard. We brought them all together in St. Albans, more than 100 employees. We have not left the idea of focus teams. They're in one building and we have one huge floor, but still there is a focus in company, per company and by a managing director and marketing team.
This being said, being together in one office brings dynamics, or increases the creativity amongst each other, shared values, shared ideas, shared data of the category. We are more than ever convinced that that was a good idea. We closed a couple of offices, and now everybody's together in St. Albans. St. Albans is also well located for people who live in London with and transports. St. Albans is Accessible. Our teams, we're very happy also with that decision. Kiddylicious will move in a couple of months also there. Kiddylicious is not yet part of the St. Albans team. Soon they will move too. Everybody is together in that one office space.
Our funds, FF2032, assets, historic moment. The first investment has now been acquired and fully part of Lotus Bakeries. That leaves us with 5 other minority stakes in Love Corn, Partake, Oot, The Good Crisp, and IQBAR. 4 of which are U.S. investments and one in Holland. We are looking in Europe, throughout Europe, in U.S., Canada. Today there are lots of interesting companies to look at, we are very selective. We are now in total with these 5 participations doing well. They're all growing, we want to increase our amount of participations to 8-10 in total. No hurry there.
Priority is to make the right investments. You've probably read that the last investment was in IQBAR, a functional food bar, and strong growing brand. It's part of the protein bar shelf, but it's more than just a protein bar. It's really a functional food bar and doing well. Doing really well and growing strongly, we are very happy that we could take minority stake in IQBAR. They focus on the U.S. I think that's wise. It's large enough for these smaller companies to focus on. Hopefully we can help them also further grow the years to come. This concludes the first part of our presentation.
I will now give the floor to Mike, who's gonna discuss the financials and non-financials, partly of 2022.
Thank you, Jan. Also from my side, welcome everybody. On the first slide, we summarize the highlights of our, again, strong financial performance of 2022. As Jan already mentioned a couple of times, it's a strong performance on actually all financial performance indicators of the business. We realized an unprecedented growth of EUR 127 million, 17%. We were able to translate that into a strong recurring EBITDA growth of almost EUR 20 million, 13%. We were able to keep a lot of the cash flow free by controlling our working capital and limiting the working capital increase, given the volume growth and also given the fact that there is net inflationary pressure, of course, on all its components.
Also the maintenance CapEx remains stable, well below the 2% of sales. That means that we've been able to execute a record investment program over a 12-month period of EUR 153 million. The majority of that is expansion CapEx, and very importantly, we've been able to do that timely and successfully. The investments as we laid them out before, have been commissioned and are up and running and are extremely important for the future growth. At the same time, given that free cash flow conversion, we've been able to keep the net financial debt below one times EBITDA.
The strong operational results have also fallen through in our net results, allow us to increase also the dividend again, with EUR 5 per share to EUR 45. If we put the revenue growth into perspective, it's of course massive. EUR 127 million. We were already extremely proud on the EUR 87 million last year. This is of course, this is raising the bar again. I think important, as already mentioned, it's quality growth. It means it's a, it's a good combination of strong volume growth at the same time, also the responsible pricing actions that we've taken. It's also very broad-based geographically. We've grown in a lot of different countries.
We've grown in all continents, both with Lotus Biscoff and with Lotus Natural Foods. We are able to do that with a REBITDA % level that remains very high. If you go back in time five years, and remember those five years have actually approximately two COVID years, and then the recent two years are years with high inflation, years also with challenging supply chain conditions. In that challenging five-year period, we have been able to grow our revenues double digits, and also we've seen our profitability, and our recurring EBITDA grow double digits. That's of course, again, outperforming also the industry and a lot of our peers.
If we take a bit of a deeper dive into our income statement and more specifically, our cost by nature, the first line is, of course, a very important one, the line of raw materials, packaging and co-manufacturing. You can see in percentage increase of more than 20%, with at company level, a volume growth of about 8% for the full year 2022 means that we've seen double- digits cost inflation on ingredients, raw materials, packaging and co-manufacturing. We have been able to offset those EUR cost increases by price increases. That's actually exactly also what we were set out to do at the beginning of the year. That's also what we confirmed at half- year. That's also now playing itself in the full- year figures.
On the services and other goods and employee benefit expenses, our percentage increases are a little bit lower than the top line 17%, which is actually a combination of, on the one hand, being able to leverage, still on the volume growth, but at the same time also we continue to invest, and we must continue to invest also in the brands, in the organization and in the people, to maintain that growth going forward. That remains, of course, a priority for us. If you look further down the income statement, our operating results, EBIT, is increasing with 14%. That's the EUR 136.4. Our profit before tax is increasing a little bit more, 14.3%. Just, well, 30 basis points below the last year.
With an income tax rate just south of 23%, which is in line with company guidance, we end up with a net result, as already said, well above EUR 100 million for the first time, and a growth of almost 14%. This again gives these cost components as a percentage of net revenue and basically confirms what I was referring to before. We see the inflationary pressure on all components, and we have been able to leverage on those components in the through the volume growth and the efficiencies. Our recurring net profits grew with more than 13%, again above the 5-year CAGR of 11%, and that's also the basis for our dividend policy distribution. Our investment program, as said, was unprecedented also.
We spent in capital expenditure alone, expansion capital expenditure alone, EUR 120 million. I think we talked about that in detail before. We also referred to it in the press release again, what that all entails. Basically, very importantly, is that we've been able to timely and successfully implement the projects that we were working on, because they are extremely important, again, for our growth going forward. Our maintenance CapEx remains stable at 1.6% of sales. For 2023, we estimate CapEx in the range of EUR 100 million. This EUR 100 million is the range. That can be higher if the greenfield in Thailand is moving faster than expected.
According to the current planning, that's our estimate. Again, that will be primarily focused on Biscoff and of course, on Lotus Natural Foods. We will continue to invest or see investments in Lembeke. We will see significant investments in U.S., and we will of course also see the start in Thailand. The total CapEx project, which is for the phase that we described, the first phase in the period 2023 to 2026, is estimated between 125 and 150 million EUR. Also importantly is that in 2023, we will continue with capacity expansion projects for our Lotus Natural Foods activities in South Africa and in the U.S. Again, record investments, both CapEx and 90 million EUR of acquisition and fund investments. We talked about the cash flow generation.
Basically we've been turning 87% of our REBITDA into free cash flow. Which as already mentioned, a small increase in working capital, especially given the inflationary impact of course, which is important to point out. Also the maintenance CapEx still stable and below 2%. Which allows us still to do this EUR 120 million of expansion CapEx and still do that from the REBITDA it generates. Our net financial debt remains at the same level as in June at 0.9. Obviously has increased in absolute terms somewhat. This is the number excluding the IFRS 16 lease obligations. Our balance sheet remains strong and as strong as ever.
We basically of course see in our long-term fixed assets, a significant increase through the investments that we did. Our retained earnings and our equity of course is supporting that primarily. Our working capital requirements and our net financial debt remain well under control. That means, of course, that we are creating strong shareholder value. Our earnings per share increase of about 14% is above the 5-year CAGR again. It is the 21st consecutive year or 21 consecutive years that we're increasing the dividend, this time with 12.5% to EUR 45. This is in line with the policy that we started now 5 years ago.
Dividend policy stating that we will at least take one-third of the recurring net profits and distribute to the shareholders, means that the majority of the net profit is being reinvested in the business. ESG, very important, still very much at the heart of what we do. I think also deliberately referring to financial and non-financial reporting at the start of my part of the presentation, because it is becoming more and more integrated. That's also, let's say, in terms of reporting requirements and legislation, what is going to happen. On the environmental side, a couple of call-outs. We still have, of course, the ambition to have our packaging 100% recyclable by 2025. We are close, and we have a number of projects defined now to close the gap.
We are and remain carbon neutral, Scope 1 and 2 in all 12 sites. We also have a CDP rating since this year and which is available. We have, and this is more to, towards financial reporting now or integrated reporting. We've done our first communication on progress as being the signature of the United Nations Global Compact. We've, we've issued together with our annual report of 2021. We published that in April 2022, a so-called GRI report. The GRI will or is becoming, let's say, also the basis or the foundation for the non-financial reporting requirements that are set at EU level. On the social side, we remain very much at the top of the pack in gender diversity.
On the community side, it may be important to call out that we keep our Sustainalytics score, and we've increased it a notch, or improved it a lot, a notch, in recent years. We are in the top 5% of the packaged food companies, which is the sub-industry that we fall under. We are 100% RSPO certified in terms of palm oil, and we continue to invest in educational projects as part of our corporate social responsibility, both in Belgium, South Africa, and around the world, where we think we can make a difference for young people. This concludes the presentation of the results. I want to thank you for your participation. At this time, we would like to open the call for questions.
We can take the first question, Maxime Sznajer from ING.
Hi. Thank you. Good morning. A couple of questions on my side. First of all, if I do the math, looking at your results, it would imply that your revenue of private labels have increased by 10% compared to 2021. Do you see any trends in terms of down trading in your key markets for the time being? That would be the first one. Secondly, looking at energy costs, could you shed some light on what's the percentage of costs actually, well- linked to energy prices? Finally, looking at your guidance, you mentioned in the past an adjusted EBITDA margin of at least 20% and revenues of Biscoff between EUR 465 million and EUR 530 million by 2025. Do you stick to this guidance, or you see some up or down side to this guidance in the near future? That would be all for me. Thank you.
Thank you. First of all, in relation to private label, you've seen that in the three pillars. We talked about o ur branded products being Biscoff, Natural Foods, and Local Heroes. That excludes the private label business, which is about 10% of our total revenue. Also, there were no disruptive elements last year. Otherwise, they would have been mentioned in our press release. Your second question in respect of energy costs and frost in general. As discussed today during the presentation and also in the press release, indeed, all costs have increased last year and will also continue in 2023 having an impact on that annual year. Energy cost is a part, is only 1 part of the increased cost. Let that be clear.
The impact of the raw materials and packaging, and labor is more significant for us than the energy costs. We think that at the end in 2022, we made a correct agreement with our customers. I think we have put forward a correct price increase, whereas we could deliver these results. We have always said that it's important that we as a company make sure that we organize ourself as efficient as possible, supply chain- wise, commercially, that we look at every cost to make sure that all cost increases are limited. That's what's executed last year. Therefore, the price increases were a bit more moderate, thanks to the good efforts we have done.
A couple of examples are, the fact that we brought all the UK teams, Natural Foods UK teams together in, well, one building. There is still a very strong focus on each brand, but human resources is now one team for the Natural Foods brands in the UK. I think other efforts are more supply chain- focused. I think in the factories you always find little details that you can do just a much better. That's important. That's also our responsibility towards our customers and towards our consumers. Then your last question with respect of guidance. I think in the press release we elaborated on our vision for the next years.
We stick to the fact that we want to increase 10% with Biscoff. We find it also important to have that same increase in Natural Foods international. In respect of EBITDA, today we are at 19% EBITDA, just much higher than 19%. I think that's more than a correct figure to aim at in the future. Important is also that for 2023, we really have to support our brands commercially and marketing wise. In the last two years were for everybody, for the whole society, for different companies, for consumers and customers, quite turbulent.
We have seen that our consumers and customers love our brands, support our brands. That gives us also the confidence that we are willing to invest in the future. On the one side, that's capacity, and on the other side, that's also commercially supporting our brands, and probably a much higher than the last years. I'm talking about the marketing investments.
Very clear. Thank you for your answers. I will leave the floor to others.
Next question, maybe Alexander Craeymeersch of Kepler Cheuvreux.
Yes. Good morning, and congratulations to Jan and Mike and the whole team on the nice set of results.
Thank you.
I was just wondering, could you maybe give us a bit of a timeline or a view of the timeline of the expansion plans in 2023? When can we expect this to be operational? Second question would be regarding the retailers. How are you right now in terms of pricing power? We heard competitors saying that they've had tough negotiations going into 2023. My question is a bit like, is that the same for you? Just to know, like what do we pencil in or what are you aiming for as price increases? That's it from my side. Thank you.
Yeah, maybe on the expansion plans for 2023. As we mentioned, we estimate CapEx in the range of EUR 100 million for 2023. That's focused on a couple of things, but primarily again, also on Biscoff and also Natural Foods. As far as Biscoff is concerned, the investments are focused on the U.S., and of course, the start of Thailand. To the extent that the greenfield investment in Thailand would proceed faster than anticipated, we would go a bit beyond EUR 100 million. That would actually be good news, in fact. Those would be the two main investment poles for Biscoff. Of course, we continue also to invest in Lotus Natural Foods, both in South Africa and the U.S.
To confirm, is it that the timelines then Q4 2023 all live, or is it a bit earlier? For example, when you plan to invest.
No, that's not necessarily earlier, but there's not. We don't give a very specific timing on every part of the investment. There are also investments that are continuing, let's say, throughout the year. I think very importantly, is that for 2022, the investments that we've made in 2022 today are all operational. Those have all been going into production. Meaning, we have the two lines in the U.S., we have the Courcelles in Belgium, we have the additional sandwich line here in Belgium, which is operational. Those are adding capacity as of today.
Irrespective of the retailers in your question, you know, the tough negotiations, always tough negotiations with retailers, higher or low price increases. We are quite satisfied and happy with the outcome. Also our customers, I think are satisfied with the outcome that we that we have. One important element is that our customers know by now that if we come with a price increase, that it's a correct one, and that we keep our words, and that we keep the price for 1 year. We only come once, whatever happens, we keep the price for 12 months. We have done in 2022, we are doing now for 2023.
That's important for our customers, that reliability and also responsibility on these prices. With respect of price increases, it's a bit more complicated than that, just to call out one number. You have in certain countries, price increases start from the 1st of March, like in France, in Belgium, they start at the beginning of this year. In the U.S., it's also a different timeline. It's not easy to say, "Look, that's the price increase you will see in the figures." We have disclosed that for 2022, and the foreign exchange and inflation effect was more or less 9%, 8.9% to be exact.
With the foreign exchange effect, that was positive. We expect for 2023, a rather negative foreign exchange effect on our revenue figures, mostly related to dollar and pound effects. In total, that 9% in 2022, foreign exchange and price increases included, we expect more or less the same effect in 2023. Price increases and foreign exchange effects included. This being said, and that's also for us difficult to assess, what will be the reaction of the consumer. Prices will increase. We have the position of affordability, mainstream products. We hope and we think that the consumer will still find our product, buy our product at the same velocity as before.
That's not guaranteed. As you all know, Mike and I showed you the figures in respect of which countries are important. For us, the UK is very important. You see one quarter of our business, our branded business is in the UK. In the UK, today, the economic situation is maybe a bit more difficult nowadays. On the other hand, as said in 2022, we agreed the prices with our customers. We kept our word, that helped a lot in our relationship with our customers. That was very important to them.
We have a good feeling about the relationship today and also the willingness to work together and to work on the further growth to realize our 10% growth in Biscoff and our 10% internationally on natural foods.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Next question, Guy Sips from KBC Securities.
Yes. Thank you. Two questions from my side. First is on labor cost and the effect of the indexation in Belgium. How much of that already did you see in 2022? Will you see a kind of a jump in 2023 start as for some segments, I think like yours, the effect will be 11% in January. The second question is on Biscoff. You were talking on the repeatable model of success that you saw some countries going from left to right. Did you ever see a country going from right to the left? From accelerate to build or from build to create again. How would you react on that if something like that would happen?
Okay. No, thank you, Guy. Indeed, labor costs they decrease significantly everywhere, and a bit higher in Belgium with that 11%. More or less 50% of our salary costs are located in Belgium. It has a significant impact on our costs. Let that be clear. As discussed before, we made our calculations. The first of January, the 11% was not a surprise. We could prepare, and we could prepare that also in our pricing for 2023. It's an important aspect of the price increase.
On the other hand, we are more and more automated in our factories. I've always said, to be successful internationally, you need to have very automated plants. If you want to have plants in Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, you need to have automated lines, and the labor part should be as low as possible. Otherwise you can never be competitive around the globe. On your second question in respect of Biscoff and our repeatable model. Of course you have countries that stabilize on the 70 countries that most of them do grow. I cannot remember today, did one go back a phase. Looking at Mike. Not really. Maybe it will in the future. Let's hope not.
Today they are all going to the right-hand side. Not that all countries increase. We've seen that the key and crucial markets, we've seen an increase. Also, it's based on the cookie consumption, and it helps, of course, to add the sandwich cookie. It helps to generate more traction and to attract more families, more younger families. To be able to offer the original Biscoff cookie and Biscoff Sandwich helps indeed, to have that wider scope of household penetration.
Okay. next question, Fernand de Boer from Degroof Petercam.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions, and congrats on the results.
Thank you.
I have two questions, actually. One, in this strong volume growth in the second half, clearly accelerating, is there has been any front buying or front- loading ahead of this price increase you were planning to pass through? That's the first one. The second one, I'm not sure, but did you ever provide the penetration rate, penetration household rate in the U.S.? That's the third one. Of the second one. On the 10% growth, because I have been a little bit away of the file. This 10% growth you give for Biscoff and your international natural business, natural food. Is that volume or is that price plus volume?
Okay. Thank you, Fernand. Yeah, the second half of the year was extremely good. There was no front- loading. It was the whole second semester that showed a very good performance. Overall, we realized that the 17% of increase, which was spread over the year, with a very strong second half, no front- loading there to take into account. Household penetration in the U.S. is quite close to the 5%. Results were very good in the U.S. We hope that maybe next year we will cross the bridge of 5% in the United States. It would be nice moment. In respect of your question of the 10% growth, that is a mid- long-term target, that includes volume and price, it's on revenue.
Okay. Maybe one last question, if I may. I think that in the past year of 2022, actually, palm oil prices came down, I think also sugar. I guess you are ahead, so actually you will still see relatively high palm oil prices and sugar prices in your accounting in this year.
I think all raw materials are at a very high level. Certainly, sugar and palm oil maybe had a little dip, but states remain at a very high level. So all these prices are included in our pricing, in our calculation. We try also to hedge when we think it's a good momentum to hedge. That has a couple of advantages. An important advantage is once you have your pricing ready, you also know that that pricing is pretty much correct because you know your costs, and you know your raw material costs that are hedged, you know your packaging costs, and you know your labor.
That's why we also can give 12 months commitments to our customers because the majority of the variables are hedged.
Okay. Thank you very much for the answer. It's clear.
Thank you. Maybe one last question. Gert De Munter.
Yes. Thank you, Mike. I have a question on the Local Heroes. Nobody has asked anything about it, so allow me to do that. Yeah, of course, you have been increasing prices of those local products, but there was no sales growth, so in fact, volumes have declined. What can you say on that? Maybe, have you lost some part of your market share in that field? Are you in fact prepared to lower your price in order to protect your market share? Do you say, "No, we stick to our prices, lower or higher market share is not a problem for us"? In that field or in that, here with these Local Heroes, yeah, what about the Netherlands again? I asked also last time, the question, in this field. Thank you.
Thank you, Gert. I'm gonna answer both of your questions in one answer. Indeed, Local Heroes remained stable in EUR. Also almost all Local Heroes are in Europe, so you don't have any foreign exchange effect there, so no positive foreign exchange effect there. We did increase prices and same rules apply for Local Heroes as they do apply for Natural Foods and Biscoff. We calculate, we come to a correct price increase. Prices have been increased for Local Heroes too. In some countries, because Local Heroes, we talk about Netherlands, where we have Peijnenburg and Snelle Jelle, Belgium, where we have the waffles and the cakes, Sweden, pepper cracker, and also France. In these four countries, we increased prices in a correct manner.
This being said, sometimes the supermarkets did not list the full assortments. Then you see indeed an effect on the total revenue of the Local Heroes. You also have to know that in some countries, Local Heroes, we have close to 100 SKUs, certain retailers. Then you can, you can have the discussion and prices and that they say, "Okay, look, we're gonna decrease the assortment with 5 SKUs." Then you have, then you see a bit of that effect. To answer your question, will you not increase prices to protect your market share? No. I think it's important to have correct margins.
That has always been the long-term policy within the group. The profitability level is where we want it to be and gives us also the possibility to invest commercially and invest in additional capacity. That applies also for Peijnenburg, of course, in the Netherlands. That's Snelle Jelle.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. I think this concludes the presentation and the Q&A session. Thank you, everybody again, for your participation and your questions, and we will talk soon. Thank you.
Thank you.