Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Lotus Bakeries announcement of the full year 2021. My name is Josh and I will be moderating today's webcast. Please note that this conference is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, for the people that were invited to call in, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. If you need assistance at any time, please press star zero on your telephone keypad, and you'll be connected to a technical assistant. I'll now hand you over to the presenters of today's conference, Jan Boone, CEO of Lotus Bakeries, and Mike Cuvelier, CFO of Lotus Bakeries. Thank you.
Thank you very much, and welcome to everyone to our call. I'm Jan Boone, CEO of the company, and next to me is our CFO, Mike Cuvelier. We hope that this presentation will give you further insights of our 2021 results. As has been discussed, there is a possibility for Q&A afterwards. We're gonna go to the first slide. I hope everybody sees the same screen. On the first slide is a snapshot of our company, Lotus Bakeries. We are very proud today that we reached the EUR 750 million milestone, and it's quite a historical moment for our company. How did we get there? An internal growth rate of 30% in 2021, or an absolute value, a growth of EUR 87 million. That was the reason of reaching this milestone.
That was for sure also above our own expectations starting the year. We were able to combine this organic growth with the same strong profitability level as the years before, being 20% of EBITDA. Our net debt EBITDA ratio improved further to 0.6, thanks to the strong cash generating years that we had. On top of that, we take also social and environmental responsibility towards all our stakeholders very seriously, the stakeholders being the employees, consumers, customers, suppliers, our local community. I think we can proudly state that ESG is fully embedded in our organization. Mike will elaborate on this topic later on in the presentation, but I want to highlight packaging. Packaging is probably the most visible part in being a consumer goods company.
We've committed ourselves to get to 100% technical recyclable packaging by end of 2025. We're getting close. The last percentages are the most difficult ones, but we will get there. Changing packaging is to be done very diligently. It needs to fit on the packaging line, it needs to protect the products properly, and we need to be able to claim sufficient shelf life also. We have a dedicated team within Lotus Bakeries working on that part of ESG. On the next slide, you see the timeline of Lotus Bakeries. We're not gonna go through all the details. Just wanted to highlight this year, 2021, is a milestone year because of its overwhelming organic growth, and that's how we will remember this year. Now entering 2022.
2022 is and will be a year full of challenges. I wanted to highlight a couple of these challenges for 2022. The first one is cost inflation. As you all know, cost prices of labor, raw materials, packaging, energy, and transport are increasing significantly. At the end of last year, we have announced our new prices and explained the increase to our customers. We have implemented fair new prices, and we want our prices towards the consumers to remain affordable. Offering our products at an affordable price is part of our strategy, and it's a very important part of our strategy. That's why we also use as a KPI household penetration. This being said, we want to see our incremental costs to be fully compensated by these price increases.
On top of that, it's our goal to find additional cost improvements within the supply chain through optimizations and efficiency gains. That's the first big challenge for this year: cost inflation. The second one is COVID. COVID is not gone yet, unfortunately. It might be less powerful, but it has still an impact, an important impact on absenteeism levels in our factories. Today, the impact is present in all of our factories, but still manageable. Hopefully, we do not get a significant COVID outbreak in one of our plants. That's really very important. So far, so good. The third challenge is capacity. We need to increase capacity of Biscoff to be able to realize our growth targets.
Therefore, we did announce beginning of last year our expansion plans. According to the timings agreed upon, we will have the investments operational in the third quarter of 2022. We can still increase capacity in the meanwhile by increasing efficiency in the plant in the United States and optimization, specific optimizations in Lembeke. Mike will give some more details in relation to CapEx in a minute, in his part of the presentation. Three major challenges, cost inflation, COVID, and capacity. This being said, we believe that Lotus Bakeries can cope with these three important challenges while realizing its growth ambitions. That brings me to the next slide. It brings me to slide number four, and this graph proves that Lotus Bakeries has grown consistently over the last decade. Our average growth rate over that period was more than 10%.
Now splitting up all our branded sales in the three strategic pillars. We're very proud to see that Lotus Biscoff and Lotus Natural Foods, the growth rate in 2021, was extremely high. 15% for Biscoff and 20% of Lotus Natural Foods. The Local Heroes, they'd also performed quite well with 3% increase. Normally in the years to come, the parts, the Lotus Natural Foods and Lotus Biscoff part in the total sales will increase the years to come. Today it's 51% for Lotus Biscoff and 22% for Lotus Natural Foods. Close to three-fourths of the total turnover. Our belief is that this percentage will grow. This split up is based on all branded sales. Let that be clear.
On the next slide, you see a global overview of all our different plants. Not gonna go through all the different plants, but when we talk about expansion plants, we're talking about the two Biscoff plants in Lembeke, Belgium, Europe, and Mebane in the United States. Also in our factory in Kusel, our waffle factory, and Wolseley, our natural foods plant in South Africa. These four plants, the majority of the CapEx, the EUR 100 million, will relate to these four locations. On our next slide, we see a little bit of a summary of our growth strategy, and that strategy is quite clear. We want to globalize Biscoff, we want to internationalize natural foods, and at the same time, respect all of our stakeholders. Now let's look at our achievements and ambitions for Biscoff. What is the secret of success of Biscoff?
Many people ask me, how come it grows consistently, significantly, and in all geographies? The first aspect of the success of Biscoff is a strong cost price. We are able to produce Biscoff in a very efficient way. This enables us to bring our product to the consumer at an affordable price. You can never become a global mass consumer brand if you don't start from a strong production cost price. Biscoff wants to be attractive for all families, and therefore, you need that affordability. That's the number one priority or number one aspect and the reason of success of Biscoff internationally. The second one, it's Biscoff has a long shelf life, being one year. That's really the minimum you need to be successful in international markets.
We have many other products in Belgium and in Holland, but the shelf life is not sufficient to be able to become an international product. Third important aspect is that Biscoff has a unique, and on top of that, universal appealing taste. Unique texture enables also a versatile way of using Biscoff. Besides the cookies, we have Biscoff Spread, we have ice cream, we have chocolate. Also our consumers at home have different recipes with Biscoff as an important ingredient. They also use them as toppings or in milkshakes or whatever. Very versatile usage. These three aspects are crucial. Strong cost price, long shelf life, and that unique universal appealing taste where we allow versatile usage. The fourth aspect is also important. We know how to repeat success. We created based on all these years of experience, a repeatable model.
The leading KPI is household penetration. How many households do buy and use Biscoff? There are four main phases, as you can see on the slide: create, build, accelerate, and expand. There is a specific playbook that we link to each phase. On the slide, you can see that we plotted all the countries, almost 70 countries in total. In the top row consists of our top 11 focus countries. These countries are the larger consumer markets in which we can target on all of the households. In 2021, so last year, nine out of the top 11 countries have shown double-digit growth. In general, in the last years, the different countries are gradually moving to the right-hand side. We believe that this consistent way of working, where the different countries make use of the global commercial experience, is extremely valuable.
This is, on this slide, this is a different way of presenting it, and it indicates the level of household penetration per region, and the darker the red, the higher the household penetration. You visually can see our potential, and you can also see why we say we have just begun. What is our ambition now with Biscoff? Today, we've realized EUR 332 million sales with Biscoff. That includes cookie, chocolate, spreads, ice cream. We will continue on this growth path. Our ambition is to grow at least to 10% per year to get to 0.5 billion Biscoff sales in 2025, end of 2025. This is a dual challenge, commercially and also operationally. We believe that we can do it.
It will not be a walk in the park, because every year, 10% on higher figures, because each year 10% is an absolute value, a higher challenge. We believe with the elements we know today, that we can realize that 10% growth to get to EUR 0.5 billion in 2025. This is the geographical split up of our Biscoff sales. Number one country is the United States, closely followed by the U.K. U.K. did very well the last years. Number three, France, Belgium, China, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Korea, Switzerland, et cetera. You see our product is getting more and more international. You also see that some very large international consumer markets are doing and performing extremely well.
You also can see that we still have a lot of work to do in the years to come. Another way of presenting it is in this slide. In already 28 countries, we do sell more than EUR 1 million. This is the top 10, the ranking of the global cookies in the world. We are the fastest- growing global cookie brand within that top 10. That growth brought us now to number seven spot. Still a long way to go, but our vision in the long term is to get to spot number three. This is based on retail sales value. A nice jump to spot number seven, very, very proud of that. That was an update about Biscoff. Now we're gonna talk about natural foods, our second strategic pillar.
Here you see some pictures of our wonderful Natural Foods brands. They're nākd, TREK, and Kiddylicious. This is a bit of our growth strategy. We acquired these British brands, and they were all British market leaders. They gave us a unique better-for-you platform, a British platform that we will internationalize. You will see that we're doing quite well in that mission. We are able to offer internationally a variety of healthy products for all ages. Kiddylicious for babies, BEAR for children, nākd and TREK for adults. All of these brands offer also a healthy snack for different consumption modes, home, work, school, while sporting, et cetera. Our ambition is very clear. We want to internationalize these brands. Outside of the U.K., many retailers show also interest in healthy snacks.
That's what the consumer is expecting from its local store or e-commerce channel, to find these healthy snacks. The category is an evolution and fully on trend. It's also our mission to bring innovations. Within these brands, we do bring a lot of innovations, and that's what the market also expects. Talking about acquisitions, we are on top of the market. We follow the marketplace very closely. If there are interesting companies to acquire, we will investigate it. If it's a real opportunity, we might go for further external growth. We'll either go for a majority stake, and a majority stake means also that we will integrate it within those Natural Foods, or we will go for a minority stake using our fund FF2032. On this slide, you can see where we started.
We started with more or less EUR 60 million of sales, combining all these brands, all these British brands. 6% was outside of the U.K. Actually when we acquired it, the founders just focused on U.K. They did a terrific job bringing it to a higher level and creating market leaders within that segment. It's our mission to bring it to an international level, and you can see that now 26% of the total sales is now outside of the U.K. There's a lot of potential, but we're going, we're on the right track. Here you see also a split up of our Natural Food brands. Also here, U.S. is the number one country, mainly with BEAR. BEAR is doing extremely well in the U.S. Second country is the Netherlands, then Belgium, Australia, France, etc.
We produce these BEAR snacks in South Africa, where we can locally source from the best apples and pears, and we export these to the U.K. and also to the United States, where we pack locally. For both of these most important markets for BEAR, we pack locally. It's very efficient to transport BEAR in bulk. Next slide is snapshots of FF2032. You see that we have invested in already five different companies. We have foreseen more or less EUR 40 million to invest the years to come. We want to invest in scale-up companies, so brands that have already a certain track record. It's not our intention to invest in and seed money.
We find it very important that we believe in the product and the product concepts, and that we believe in the founder, because we will not mingle in an operational aspect of the business. It's the founder who has to do that. It's crucial that we believe in the founder. We take minority stakes, and most of them, we also have a board seat. In most cases, it's our CEO Natural Foods, Isabelle Maes, who takes that board seat like the one we just acquired, The Good Crisp Company. That's, again, a chips company commercializing better for you chips. It's a very fast-growing brand within the interesting chips category, and are fully focused on the United States. In FF 2032, it's also with our window to the world.
For us, it's so important to understand the new trends, innovations, what's going on in the market. It's for all of us, and also for me personally, very inspiring to talk and to meet and to learn from all these different companies. Here you see a picture of our newest acquisition, and great tasting chips of The Good Crisp Company. Okay, my part of the presentation. Now I'm gonna give the floor to Mike.
Thank you, Jan. Good morning from my side. I will briefly go into some updates and progress on our ESG ambitions. Then of course, in the final part of the presentation, I will go into more details on the financials. As already mentioned, ESG is really also at the heart of what we do. It makes an integral part of our way of doing business, and also is becoming more and more integrated into our reporting. Hence also the reason why even today also we want to give a short update on our actions and our ambitions. We also will use the annual report that is coming out in April as a medium to elaborate on that even more.
If you look at the updates on the different pillars on the environmental side, Jan already elaborated on the ambition and the status on the packaging. At the same time we of course remain carbon neutral in all our 12 production sites and offices. We have been carbon neutral since 2015. What is new is that we in 2021 initiated a so-called screening on Scope 3. We will also give more details and more actual numbers on that in our annual report that is due in April. Also linked to that we will formalize in 2022 our commitment to the Science Based Targets Initiative, which will also mean that we will define a carbon target reduction.
On the social pillar, gender diversity and equality is kind of already guaranteed as part of, again, the way that we do business. At a company level, we are at equality. 52% is female, 48% is male. What we believe is even more differentiating from a lot of other companies and also peers is the equality, or close to the 50/50 equality between female and male in the leadership team, and the leadership team being a group of general managers and corporate directors in the company. On the community side, I just want to reiterate again that we have a strong Sustainalytics score. A score that brings us in the top 3% and the top 10% of the packaged food and food products companies respectively.
Our palm oil, which is an important raw material for us, is 100% RSPO certified, so guaranteed in terms of origin. All our key suppliers need to sign and commit to our code of doing business and our code of conduct. Our Lotus Biscoff chocolate has the Rainforest Alliance stamp and certification. We also again want to talk about our Lotus Foundation for Education. Basically our community efforts and our support to community is always focused on education for children and youngsters, because we believe that education is the key to escape poverty in some countries or progress socially. In the next part, I will go into the financials. If you look at the key performance indicators, they are all green. Our sales is increasing with 13%, as already mentioned.
Our EBITDA is increasing almost proportionally to EUR 150 million. Our free cash flow before expansion CapEx is also increasing with 17% and is a very important element of why we are able to reduce our debt further. We are at EUR 82 million of debt and below 0.6x EBITDA. Of course, this also allows us with a strong net result to also give a dividend to the shareholders, increasing this year with 13% to EUR 40 per share. Looking at the next slide and putting the sales growth in a different perspective. The 13% is one thing, but the absolute sales growth has never been higher than this year, EUR 87 million.
We come from very strong growth years in 2019 and 2020, where we realized growth between EUR 50 million and EUR 60 million. This year, EUR 87 million is actually quite a number. As already mentioned, we continue to do that with the same level of profitability of 20% EBITDA. We have a very strong top-line evolution, and our EBITDA is also further expanding. We are always between 9.5% and 10% CAGR on all these parameters. Going a little bit more into detail on our income statement.
If you look at our income statement on the cost side, I think we already talked a lot about the sales, but if you look at the cost side, you first have the line raw materials, packaging, and co-manufacturing. Actually, if you look at raw material, packaging, and co-manufacturing as such, inflation in 2021 of course existed, but has to a large extent been able to mitigate. We've been able to mitigate that because we have fixed contracts with suppliers over extended periods of time. What we do see though, in this line item, is an important increase in transport costs. More specifically, the ocean freight component of the transport, the cost component whereby we bring our products into the different areas of our sales offices, has increased significantly.
Of course, that part of the cost cannot be mitigated as such with fixed price contracts. At the same time, if you look at the services and the employee costs, they have increased, but they have increased at a pace which is lower than our sales increase. They have been able, again, to mitigate also the cost increases that we've seen. The services line also includes increased marketing spends for media, which we said is EUR 5 million higher for the full year compared to prior year. It is included primarily in that services line and is as such also absorbed in terms of cost increases.
Labor cost increases are there to support the growth of the company and invest in the organization, but again, also there, we do that very diligently, and we are able to pace that according to the sales growth. The other operating income line and expenses line is showing an evolution which is related to a movement, a reclassification of intermediary sales of half products in 2021 as compared to 2020. The underlying cost components are similar. If you then go below the recurrent operating results, we have the non-recurrent result, non-recurrent expenses. In prior year, those expenses were primarily related to COVID-19 expenses to keep our plants safe and operational. In 2021, those costs are made up on the one hand for preparation and start-up of investments like in the U.S.
At the same time, also we've done a restructuring in Natural Foods offices in the U.K., where we merged offices, and we will be able, or we are able as of today, to realize synergies by doing that in back office and warehousing activities. The profit before tax is actually at exactly the same level as prior year at 15.6%. The reason why we have a somewhat lower net profit at 12.1% is the taxes. The effective tax rate in 2020 was exceptionally low because we had some one-off positives. If you look at the effective tax rate this year, 22.6% is actually in line or even slightly below the guidance that we gave on our effective tax rate being 23%.
This 23% is still our ambition, but it is clear that this rate has a tendency to go up in the future. To give a very important example for our group in the U.K., where we have a considerable part of our business, it has been announced and also enacted that the tax rate will increase to 25% as of 2023, compared to the current 19%. In the end, we realize a recurrent net profit of almost EUR 49 million, 12.5% on sales, and that's also the basis for our dividend distribution. As already mentioned, we have a stable cost structure, and you can see that also in the different percentages of the cost components on the sales.
Our evolution of the recurring net profit follows the same CAGR as we've shown before, anywhere between 9.5% and 10% in terms of top- line recurring results, but also net profits. Then we go into the next slide, quite important, talking about CapEx. First, on 2021. In 2021, we've had about 12 in total, we had a CapEx of EUR 60 million. EUR 12 million of that is so-called maintenance CapEx, and that 12 million is in line with prior year and with the low number as a percentage of sales of 1.5%. We keep basically that base level of maintenance CapEx very consistently also towards the future.
Of course, our expansion, CapEx has increased significantly from prior year and is all part of the expansion program that we already announced in the beginning of last year. For next year, for 2022, we've called out an expansion budget of EUR 100 million. This is a record amount of CapEx for the group, and it's actually the continuation of the expansion projects that we already talked about and which are very important for Biscoff in the plant in Lembeek, a dough room, and a new sandwich cookie line. In the U.S., of course, the doubling of the capacity with two additional Biscoff lines in a new plant. At the same time, we will finalize and make operational a new waffle line in Courcelles in Belgium.
Given the significant growth of Lotus Natural Foods and also very specifically BEAR in United States, we will invest in expansion in our factory in South Africa and the U.S. for Lotus Natural Foods. Our total investments apart from the EUR 60 million of CapEx includes also the additional EUR 6 million or close to EUR 6 million that we've invested in the fund this year. As already mentioned, we show a very nice decreasing net financial debt level despite the significant amounts of expansion CapEx that we've done this year and we are below 0.6x REBITDA. We have a very strong balance sheet, very low leveraged, a very nice evolution of our equity.
As you can see, we are able to grow with a small amount of additional working capital, which again gives us the possibility to generate a lot of free cash because we have a record operational cash flow of EUR 151 million with the limited investments in additional working capital, with a very well- controlled maintenance CapEx need of 1.5%, as already mentioned. It gives us a cash conversion before expansion CapEx of 92%, and even after the expansion CapEx that we've had this year, still at 60%.
Our earnings per share growth follows the same CAGR trends of close to 10%. Our dividends, if you look at the evolution, is of course ever increasing since 2001. At that time, about EUR 1 and now at EUR 40. That also is in line with our guidance in the sense that our dividend as a percentage of recurring net profit will be at least, and in this time also close to one third of that profit. If you look at our medium-term financial ambitions and also, looking back at 2021, we can actually say that we realized all those ambitions. Of course, more importantly, also, we continue also to have these financial ambitions for 2022 and beyond.
Meaning that with Lotus Biscoff, we will realize a double-digit growth, and also with Lotus Natural Foods on the international part, we focus on similar growth. Our EBITDA margin needs to remain at least at 20% on sales. Our maintenance CapEx needs to be below 2%. We continue on our expansion CapEx spend, and we are on track to realize also these new investments in the second half of the year and our dividend, as already mentioned, at minimum 1/3 of the recurring net profit. This is the end of the presentation. I will give it back now to the moderator and the people that can ask questions.
Thank you very much. We will now proceed to the Q&A. Please press star one on your telephone keypads in order to ask a question. You'll be connected with the operator, who will then invite you to ask your questions. Please press star one on your telephone keypad now, please. Our first question comes from the line of James Targett from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I'll start off with two. Just firstly on the call, the inflation outlook, could you maybe talk about what level of inflation on your cost level are you expecting for raw materials and transportation, et cetera? Related, what level of pricing you expect that you have negotiated with retailers you expect to land in FY 2022, and when that will kind of hit the P&L to try and think about the timing during the year you expect your full cost recovery. That was my first question. My second question was just on the inventory write-down of EUR 3.4 million. Just, can you talk about what that referred to?
That'd be helpful. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, James. Interesting questions. Yeah, first of all, about the price increase and price negotiations. We have, as said, announced our price increases a couple of months ago to our customers. We explained in detail the underlying cost increases for our products. No need to say that these cost increases are real. As a manufacturer, we need to increase the prices accordingly, right? Fair, but consistent. At the same time, we need to make sure that the affordability of our cookies to our customers remains strong.
Our goal is to compensate fully by these price increases all the cost increases combined with higher efficiency and looking for optimizations in our supply chain which we believe we will find in 2022. We are also looking diligently at our overhead costs to make sure that Mike just mentioned it that we can keep the 20% of EBITDA for the future. Given the significance of the inflation, we also can see today that the discussions with retailers are tough. On the other hand, we are also more firm than ever before because we need these price increases, and they are necessary to keep the sustainable margins that allow us to continue to invest.
We hope that we conclude the agreements with the customers in the coming weeks and the coming months. Some of these negotiations, and that's normal, are still ongoing. I hope this gives you a bit of insight or an answer on your first question.
Can I just follow up on that, if I may? Just to try and get, is there any sort of color you can give on the magnitude of the inflation, though? You know, are we talking double-digit cost inflation for the year, maybe mid- to high single-digit price increases? Anything you can sort of give clarity on that would be very helpful.
It's below double digits. I hope that gives you an answer to your question.
The inflation's below double zero?
Inflation.
Yes. Sorry. The inflation
No. Our costs or our price increases-
Okay.
-towards our customers are slightly below double digits. That's quite an accurate answer on your question, I hope. To your second question, I'm gonna give t he floor to Mike.
I think as far as the inventory write-downs , as they are called out in our income statement by nature, this is kind of the, let's say, a normal way of inventory reductions. On the one hand, we have the inventory which is being operationally managed, and which throughout the production process there is some waste, and that's one aspect of it. On the other hand, we continuously have a broad assortment of products, of course, and we continuously need to monitor the shelf life, and so it's quite a normal level of also at finished product level taking inventory out of there.
This being said, it's not abnormal, but at the same time, it is a big amount. It is a big number. I think it's also something when we talk about efficiencies, operational efficiencies. That's also definitely an area where we think we need to seek the opportunities.
Thank you. Can I just check, do you include that in your REBIT figure?
Yeah. Yes, of course. Yeah.
REBIT, okay. Thank you.
REBIT is all included, yeah.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Maxime Stranart from ING Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you and good morning. I hope you can hear me well. Three questions on my end. First of all, looking at the working cap and especially the payables, we have seen quite an increase in terms of percentage of sales compared to historic figures. Is it level you see sustainable going further? Secondly, on Lotus Biscoff and the 15% growth, could you provide some more granularity on the impact new products, new geography had on this as compared to existing markets? Finally, you mentioned that the U.S. is both for natural foods and Lotus Biscoff, the big markets, well, one of the biggest markets today. Could you enlighten on the upward performance in terms of sales you see in the country right now? That would be it for me. Thank you.
Thank you, Maxime. We did not hear your question super clear, but we think we got most of it. I think he first one is for Mike.
Indeed, Maxime, in terms of working capital, like I think what is very important is that we manage the different elements of that working capital, and in the end, I think we can again show nice growth with a low level of working capital. The payables are somewhat higher at the end of this year. This is also very much related to the ongoing capital expenditure initiatives that we take. That's the reason why that level of payables does not necessarily follow the sales level evolution. On the other hand, I think all the other parameters do show also an improvement. Is this sustainable?
Well, I think with the capital expenditure program that we have, I would say in the short term, yes, it is sustainable.
Okay. I think your second question was related to Biscoff and the new products and categories. We are today active in four categories: cookies, spread, ice cream and chocolate. We've seen in 2021 that on four different elements we could show growth. The larger pillars are of course the cookies and the spreads. Certainly within the cookies, the sandwich cookie or the filled cookie did extremely well. We see that that filled Biscoff cookie is put next to the regular cookie on shelf. It helps increase also the shelf visibility of Biscoff. We see that that filled cookie is very appealing to younger public.
Getting listings for that product is not quite easy, but we don't have to explain too much to our customers. Therefore we also want to and we need to increase capacity for that cookie. Irrespective of spreads. Spread is still going really good. It's going in different geographies very strong. As I said also, not only the cookies but also the spread has a very versatile use. In the beginning, when we brought it to market in Belgium, it was used just to spread on your sandwich.
Now we see that they use it as topping, they use it as ingredients to make tarts, et cetera, et cetera. Which is nice that we see that Biscoff taste is present everywhere and on different occasions. We are selling more and more also a taste, a Biscoff taste, and having a unique taste helps in that. We brought innovations to ice cream. We see that the sticks are doing very well. The sticks have also a very strong Biscoff taste as well as the pint. The original pint has also very strong Biscoff taste. We see as a learning within our categories, our Biscoff categories, that Biscoff flavor needs to be very present.
If it's only a slight Biscoff flavor, it's not good enough, and it's not differentiating enough. The chocolates. The chocolate we introduced in Belgium, as you know, and now step- by- step, we're bringing internationally. Of course, no need to say that chocolate category is a very competitive market. Not only in Belgium, but all around the world. It's also a way for us to bring the Biscoff brand to be visible everywhere in the store. It's also a reminder of the brand. Yes, four categories new are doing well. For next year, we're really gonna focus on these four categories. We still have lots of work to do in that.
We don't regret that we stepped into the ice cream and the chocolate category. I thought your third question was in relation to the United States and natural foods. There, as I mentioned also in my presentation, it's mainly BEAR. With BEAR, we bring something new in the U.S. We bring a super clean fruit snack. That's something new. That's something none of the other U.S. brands has brought to the market. That's, I think, one of the reasons of success. Also, the playfulness of the packaging is really attractive for our U.S. consumers. We have seen now in the U.S. that we reached a certain volume.
We are progressing in distribution in the U.S., and we are very hopeful that we can bring BEAR to one of the largest fruit snacking brands in the U.S. It's looking good there.
Yeah. Just to follow up on this one, my question was also on the basically absolute level of sales you see in the U.S., both for Biscoff and for natural foods. I don't know if you can give any, well, detailed information on this one.
Yeah. Well, we don't give it in detail, but if you take the slides and the percentages of the countries, you can more or less calculate it in absolute value.
Yeah.
We don't give it per brand and per region.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you for that.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Alexander from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Do you hear me well?
Yes, yes, perfectly, Alexander.
Okay. First of all, congratulations on the nice results.
Thank you.
I just had some follow-up questions on the CapEx. I guess at mid-year, you said EUR 150 million over the next three years, and now in 2022, there will be EUR 100 million of investments. Can we assume that the EUR 150 million will also be increased somewhat? If so, is it mostly related to inflation or not? That's the first question I have. I'll forward that.
Yeah.
I think the EUR 150 million was specifically for the, let's say, first investments of Biscoff in Belgium and the U.S., including also our waffle plant in Courcelles. The EUR 100 million for next year also includes some other items like, for instance, Lotus Natural Foods, South Africa and U.S., to also deal with those expansions. The EUR 150 million as such is still valid and has still the same scope. But the bulk of that will indeed be spent this year and next year. The tail of that in 2023 will be rather limited.
Okay.
Mike means indeed, this year being 2021. Sorry.
Yeah.
2021 and 2022, that's indeed the bulk of the EUR 150, eh?
All right.
2023 will be rather limited, based on what we know today. As announced in Q3, most of the major expansion plans should be finished. In COVID times, we also have to make sure that the timings can be reached. Today, the different project teams have confirmed us that the timing is still valid, and that hopefully they can keep that timing. It's a strict timing. We need that extra capacity for Biscoff and also the waffles.
Okay.
The project teams know that it's important.
If we talk in capacity, I remember, I recall that in 2020 you made 6 billion cookies. Now, these investments in these additional lines, how many, I mean, I know it's different, like, different products, but in broad terms, how many extra cookies can be produced?
As you mentioned yourself, different type of cookies. Cookies, it's a bit difficult to say, but there is one waffle line additionally. We'll have two lines in the U.S. and also in Belgium, we will have an extra line ready.
Okay, how much capacity? Just to have a little bit of a view on how much capacity is going to be increased because we know the numbers of how the dollars that is gonna, or euros that's gonna be invested, but not on the actual relative capacity.
It's not so. I would love to give you a very accurate figure, but it depends a lot on the efficiency of these lines from the start. If you compare with the lines in Lembeke today are extremely efficient. In the U.S., the factory is quite new, and we are still scaling up that efficiency. The two lines in the U.S. will take some time to get to the same efficiency as the ones in Lembeke, which is normal. Then you have the waffles, which is another category. It's very difficult to say how much capacity.
Let's say that in Biscoff you have well three lines. Today we have about 17 different Biscoff lines. To give you a bit of an idea.
Okay, thank you. That's very clear. Maybe one last one.
Maybe just.
Yes.
John, maybe just one more. Let's say something on that is the dough room. If you look at the total expansion CapEx budget, the dough room, as we already mentioned, is a very important element of that total. Don't take the number as such and refer it to the capacity increases. The dough room is a step- up investment which is also important and needed. That gives us the opportunity now in the future to attach again more production lines to it, because that basically needs to prepare the dough to feed those lines. Just wanted to give the comparison to the budgeted numbers that we talk about now versus the capacity.
It's more than just a plain cookie capacity.
Yeah. Absenteeism is also a very important element now. We have high absenteeism today, we can cope with it. If that further increases, it impacts also the capacity. That's why I said I cannot give you a clear cut number. There are more than the lines elements. It's the efficiency of the lines, it's the dough room that is added, it's the absenteeism, etc.
Okay. Thank you very much. Maybe one final question from my side. I just saw that Austria moved from create to build versus y our last presentation. Just could you elaborate on what then the different approach is in moving towards more build category?
It's good that you noticed, huh? We were thinking, "Oh, would somebody notice that, Austria made the jump?" No, I think in Austria, what we have done very well is out-of-home market. Being present at the restaurants, cafes, hotels, etc, already for a couple of years. Of course, during COVID times, that didn't help too much for our retail sales. Now opening up, HoReCa opening up, hotels, etc, it helps a lot for our retail sales. The household penetration is of course only based on retail sales. You see that, based on the authority that we have built in out-of-home, it helps to get listings in retail, it helps the rotation specifically in that retail market in Austria.
Yeah, it's doing well, keeping doing well. We have now an own sales office also for a couple of years in Vienna. We hope that they will show increase the years to come.
Okay. Is the out-of-home already completely, I mean, completely back into the figures? I remember it was 10%, but...
You mean, back to the level of pre-COVID, eh?
Yeah.
It's still if you look at its total sales, it's still more or less 10%. Or it's again more or less 10% of total sales.
Okay, thank you. That's all from my side. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from a line of Kris Kippers from Degroof Petercam. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Can you hear me?
Good. Yes, perfectly. Hi, Kris.
Great. Thank you. Good morning. Congrats also on the nice growth numbers. Indeed, very, very good.
Thank you.
I just had a couple of questions that have linked to each other. Firstly, on Natural Foods. It grew very strongly. Of course, the internationalization is also taking place, which is good. What about the U.K. situation? Could you give us an update on any competition there still? Do you actually have some volumes there that could result in some more vertical production going forward? Of course, linked to the balance sheet on Natural Foods, if you would go for M&A, is it still the case, I guess, that multiples are quite demanding with everybody looking at those jewels, of course, in the organic food business?
Could you shed some light on that, what you're willing to pay, or are you currently in a group that I would say has gained a certain size, and as a result of that, you could indeed leverage sales much more than you could do 10 years ago when you started in this niche? Thank you.
Thank you, Kris. The U.K. in 2020 for Natural Foods had a difficult year. Now we've seen in 2021 that they not only recovered, but that it's better than pre-COVID. We're very happy with that situation. Happy that our original U.K. brands are doing really well. I think in respect of synergies, as Mike mentioned, we brought the offices of nākd, TREK, BEAR together. Still marketing teams are split, but we're looking more for synergies. You also see these people together in one location, and that's also good for conversation amongst each other, because they're acting more or less in the same category.
It helps also to act as a category captain within Natural Foods in U.K. We still can show growth in U.K., and we will also show growth in U.K. this year to come. In respect of M&A, we acquired these brands five, six years ago at nice multiples. Everybody back then said we paid it very expensively. I think now everybody says, "Oh, you were able to buy these brands very cheap." Multiples certainly for fast-growing healthy snacking brands in larger consumer markets like U.K. or other larger markets are high.
That's why we think it's a smart way to work through the funds, investing in scale-up companies, and hopefully one of these companies could become a core of Lotus Natural Foods in the years to come. This being said, we also look at M&A in general. Preferably, we would invest in a Natural Foods or healthy snacking brands rather than traditional biscuits. We want to fully focus on biscuits, on Biscoff, internationally. We think today that if we add too much more other international brands, that it would dilute the attention of Biscoff. In healthy snacking, we still think there could be in certain subcategories interesting companies or targets.
On the other hand, everybody is looking into that space. Also the very large consumer goods companies, they're looking into that space. Five, 10 years ago, they did not look at companies that had a turnover of EUR 20 million, EUR 30 million, EUR 40 million. These targets were too small for these very large corporations. Nowadays, they also look at that size and that type of company. The competition is high, and multiples are also quite high in that space. This being said, we don't need external growth. We show and we have proven that we have a very nice internal growth path, that we have brands also that deliver that internal growth. Okay.
Okay, thank you. Just a second question. Could you share with us perhaps just as a for modeling and private label, where are we roughly today? Could you elaborate on that? Because given the fact indeed that too, Biscoff and Natural Foods are growing so rapidly, and of course, local brands a bit less, but I think that private label should be quite minimal nowadays. Is that correct?
Yeah. I think more or less private label is more or less 10%.
Okay, thank you. No, these are all my questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. We have no further questions in the queue, so I'll hand you back over to the speakers for any concluding remarks.
Okay. Now. Thank you all for your attention. I hope it gives some more details to the results. Thank you also for the interesting questions we were able to discuss with all of you. Have a nice day and talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye.
Thank you to our presenters for the presentation, and thank you to all the participants for listening in to the Lotus Bakeries announcement full year 2021 results. We wish you a very pleasant day. Thank you.