Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome to our Half-Year 2024 Results Call. Certainly exciting against the background of our ad hoc release a fortnight ago. I would also like to welcome the two members of our executive board, Oliver Schwegmann and Ralf Brühöfner. As always, Oliver and Ralf will guide you through the presentation and answer your questions afterwards. You can start with your questions even during the presentation. Please use the chat window for this. At the end, I will read out your questions anonymously. And one last note, we record this call and will publish it on our website. That's it from my side. Oliver, Ralf, let's start!
Yeah, thank you, Thorsten. Dear ladies and gentlemen, this is Oliver Schwegmann, the CEO of the Berentzen-Gruppe speaking. Together with my colleague and CFO, Ralf Brühöfner, we, as the executive board of the Berentzen-Gruppe , would like to welcome all of you to our Half-Year 2024 Results Video Call. We hope that you are all well. With today's publication of our half-yearly financial report, we can look back on eventful months. The publication of our new corporate strategy, Building Berentzen 2028, toughest negotiations with some of our retail partners, an ongoing challenging market environment, and the divestment process of our Grüneberg production site in our non-alcoholic beverage segment, are just some of the key topics that have defined the world of the Berentzen-Gruppe so far this year. We will refer to all of these topics in our presentation.
After our presentation, Thorsten, our Director of Investor Relations, who has already given the introduction to this call, will share your questions, and Ralf and I will do our best to answer to all of them for your satisfaction. With our new corporate strategy, Building Berentzen 2028, we are pursuing the mission of awakening the thirst for life. You will all recognize this slide, especially in the context of our new strategy. However, it is important to keep this in mind to understand who we are. Through tradition and innovation, Berentzen delights people with a wide variety of beverages from morning to night. We are part of people's life and accompany them from morning to night. We wake people up in the morning with a healthy and freshly squeezed Citrocasa orange juice. We quench their thirst with our natural mineral water, Emsland Quelle.
We offer a refreshing moment of pleasure in the afternoon with one of our delicious Mio Mio varieties. We get the party crowd going with our Berentzen shot liqueurs, and we indulge our consumers at the end of the day with our premium products like Tres Países. Let's start our review of the first half of the year with an overview of our financial key figures. After a strong 12.7% increase in revenues in the first half of 2023, mainly due to necessary price increases, we were confronted in H1 2024, with an ongoing inflation-induced consumer reticence and with tough price negotiations with some of our main retail partners. In this dynamic process, some conflicts could be solved quicker, some a little later.
However, there was mainly one key retail partner in Germany who decided to stop high revenue promotion activities to put us under pressure. Nevertheless, increasing profitability is a fundament of Building Berentzen 2028, and price increases are key to regain our margin quality after years of cost explosions. Temporary conflicts with an impact on revenues during phases of intensive negotiations are part of the game. However, we still managed to keep our revenue almost stable at the previous year's level, with a slight decline of less than 1%. Our profitability strategy is beginning to bear fruit. We are very pleased with the massive increase in our key earnings figures, Consolidated EBIT and Consolidated EBITDA. We were able to increase EBITDA by 29.2% to EUR 9.4 million and EBIT by remarkable 55% to EUR 5.1 million.
We have always emphasized over the past year that the most important goal at this moment is to regain gross profit power. We have now succeeded in doing so for several quarters in a row, with increase in our relative gross profit margin in the second quarter of the 2024 financial year being particularly impressive. Looking at the first half of 2024 as a whole, we were able to increase our gross profit margin by 250 basis points year-on-year to 44.1%. The reasons behind this development will be explained to you a little later by my colleague, Ralf Brühöfner, with a deep dive into our P&L. All of you have already seen these figures a fortnight ago when we announced them in an ad hoc release.
In this context, we also informed you about a first major project of our new strategy, our divestment decision of our Grüneberg production site in our non-alcoholic beverages segment. I would now like to explain a few details of this process and our motives to you. What has happened in recent years? As all of you know by heart, we were hit by massive cost increases as a result of the war in Ukraine. From 2021 to 2022, material costs increased by 17.7% and by a further 18.9% the following year, from 2022 to 2023. That means a material cost explosion of 40% within two years for the entire Berentzen-Gruppe . As you can imagine, products with low margins, such as mineral water, have been particularly hard hit from this development.
As a result, the segment non-alcoholic beverages, which has been under observation for some time in terms of profitability and liquidity, has moved even further into our focus. We decided to resolutely review all our structures and processes in this business area. As all of you are well aware of, one of the five pillars of our corporate strategy, Building Berentzen 2028, is to transform our non-alcoholic beverage business to remedy its below average profitability and make it a strong financial pillar of one of our group. Therefore, ambitiously diving into the value chain to review production facilities, logistic flows, product portfolios, and many more, is a crucial step on our way to excellence of this business segment. So what is the status quo? Our non-alcoholic beverages products are currently manufactured at two own production sites of our subsidiary, Vivaris.
These are located in Haselünne, in Northwest Germany, and in Grüneberg, close to Berlin, in Northeast Germany. In addition, we are working with two contract filling partners to produce Mio Mio in order to cover distribution of Mio Mio to the south of Germany at competitive logistic costs. The Grüneberg site has already been a burden in terms of earnings and liquidity, not only for Vivaris, but for the entire Berentzen-Gruppe. This situation has become more and more dramatic due to the massive cost increases, especially for energy, as a consequence of the war in the Ukraine. In addition, the product portfolio of the Grüneberg site, mainly consisting of regional mineral water, does not match our strategic focus on Mio Mio.
Therefore, to continue such a kind of a non-strategic portfolio, it either has to deliver healthy margins or it needs to be discontinued to execute on our Building Berentzen 2028 agenda. The continuation of the Grüneberg production site was therefore not an option for us anymore, neither from an economic nor a strategic point of view. We then developed various scenarios, like a Mio Mio-only operation, shutdown, or divestment. From an earnings and liquidity perspective, the divestment is the best option that also offers positive prospects for our employees in Grüneberg. We have therefore been looking for a buyer who is willing to invest in the future viability of this site and to continue the business.
We are very pleased that we are now in final negotiations with a strategic, well-known player in the non-alcoholic beverage market, who will not only take over the site, but also our regional brands, like Märkisch Kristall, to strengthen his own branded business. In the medium-term perspective, the divestment will have a positive impact on both our earnings and our liquidity. On an annualized basis, we expect an increase in EBIT of up to EUR 1 million per year, despite an associated reduction in the segment turnover of between EUR 8 million-EUR 10 million on a 12-month basis, due to the discontinuation of our regional brands, business around Grüneberg. I'm sure by this, every one of you understands the current profitability issues of the Grüneberg site and the respective potential of this divestment.
Besides the consolidated EBIT, in the midterm view, we also will see a significant improvement in free cash flow because of lower investment requirements. But it's also part of the truth that the group's profit for the 2024 financial year is expected to be burdened by one-off special effects on earnings, mainly non-cash, of approximately EUR 4.9 million. I will come back to this in more detail in a minute. First, let me please explain one more consequence of this deal. Besides the asset purchasing agreement, we will fix a contract filling collaboration with the buyer to continue manufacturing our Mio Mio products at the Grüneberg site.
This means that besides our own non-alcoholic beverage facility in Haselünne, we will have three contract filling partners in the future to cover the production of Mio Mio throughout Germany, and to ensure capabilities for the further growth we are aiming for. As I mentioned before, the transaction will have a negative one-off effect on the results, but this is largely not cash effective. According to IFRS 5, the assets and liabilities held for sale are classified as a disposal group. The impairment loss totals EUR 3.6 million, which is non-cash. The transaction costs amount to approximately EUR 1 million, mainly consisting of consultancy costs and remaining maintenance obligations. Until year's end, we expect another increase in the transaction cost of around EUR 0.3 million in connection with the conclusion of the contract negotiations.
The planned divestment of our Grüneberg site is a first important step in our Building Berentzen 2028 element, reshaping and profitabilizing our non-alcoholic beverage segment. It is the first step towards achieving an even more efficiency excellence, which will directly contribute to our medium-term goals. Many other steps will follow in the time to come. Now let us return to the operating results and take a closer look at the performance of the segments. Revenues in the spirit segment declined slightly by 0.9% to EUR 53.3 million. This was mainly caused by the performance of our Puschkin brand. Due to the cancellation of promotions by a key customer following tough price negotiations, the brand's revenues fell by 19.2% in the first half of the year.
In addition, we see on the market as a whole, that the necessary price increases have often exceeded consumer price thresholds, which generally leads to temporary subdued purchase behavior. This is a quite normal effect as a first consumer reaction, and we currently see many food categories suffering from this. However, consumers will adjust after a certain time, especially when their net income situation is also developing accordingly. Despite this general situation of subdued consumer behavior, the Berentzen brand, many thanks to our latest spirits innovation, the Berentzen Smoothie Shots, increased revenues by 6.3%. The other areas of our spirit segment developed unevenly. While our export business grew by 11.3%, mainly driven by growth in the Benelux market, revenues in the private label segment declined by around 2%.
This is mainly due to the standard private label business, while our strategic focus within this business, the premium concepts, are almost stable in terms of revenues. Revenues in our non-alcoholic beverage segment reached EUR 21.1 million, a decrease of 7.5%. This segment is heavily influenced by the end of artist cooperations and the development of the Mio Mio brand. Quite similar to Puschkin, our Mio Mio revenues performance was impacted by the negative effects of the tough price negotiations with one key customer that I mentioned before. Also, same as for the spirits, the Mio Mio brand, too, exceeded a significant consumer price threshold of EUR 1 per bottle as a consequence of our price increase towards the trade.
Even though this was essential for the brand to regain margin quality, it surely also leads to a temporary subdued purchase behavior until consumers adjust to it. Nevertheless, our Mio Mio brand has continued to significantly outperform the market of modern lemonades, which overall was characterized by significant declines due to inflationary consumer restraint. Revenues in our fresh juice system segment were stable in comparison to previous years' period, at a level of EUR 9.5 million. While the turnover of our fruit juicers and bottling systems are declining, our fruits business is growing. As our strategic focus is on the machines, we cannot be satisfied with this development. As you remember, the segment has suffered the most from Corona. Unfortunately, juicer sites have not yet recovered since the pandemic.
Inflation in general, but also the significant lack of staff in the stores of our retail partners since the Corona years, still lead to reluctant investment behavior, as these machines need service staff to operate them efficiently. This is not only true for our core market, Germany, but evident across Western Europe. However, we have started several initiatives to revitalize this business. We are still in the launch phase of our totally new machine generation, xPro, with many innovative features to defend our quality and premium leadership. We are restarting our German sales organization, and we are in advanced negotiations for a market entry in the regions Middle East and Southeast Asia. These are only a few examples from our project pipeline. Let me briefly summarize how our business and performance have developed in the first half of the year.
As a result of the continuing slump in consumer spending and tough price negotiations, our revenues have declined slightly. But in terms of earnings and gross margins, and this is our current focus after massive cost explosions in recent years, we have significantly improved our profitability. In addition, negotiations for the sale of the Grüneberg plant are well advanced. The Grüneberg plant has had a negative impact on our earnings and liquidity in recent years. We expect the deal to be signed short-termly and closed during the fourth quarter of 2024. I would now like to hand over to my colleague, Ralf Brühöfner. He will provide you with more detailed information on our financial KPIs.
Thank you, Oliver. Good morning all together, also from my side. In the following, I would like to explain to you how our earnings, cash flow, trade working capital, and return on capital employed, the so-called ROCE, have developed in the first half year of 2024. At the end of my presentation, among other things, you will have a better understanding of the main effects in our P&L that led to the significant improvement in our operating result, the main reasons for the improvement in our free cash flow, and the background to the adjustment of our forecast. As you can imagine, we will find effects of the planned divestment of the Grüneberg site in some of these topics. First of all, I would like to emphasize that the Berentzen-Gruppe continues to show financing stability and good solvency.
Having said that, please take a look at slide 19 of the presentation, which provides a deeper insight into our P&L. As Oliver mentioned, our consolidated revenues declined slightly by around 1% to EUR 88.1 million, due to the continued weakness in consumer spendings and a promotion stop of one main customer in Q1. Although having managed very successful price increases, these effects did at least not overcompensate the lower sales volumes, with a consequence of stagnating turnover in the first half of 2024. Nevertheless, we improved our consolidated gross profit massively by 6.9% or EUR 2.6 million in total. Besides the price increases, declining material costs had a very positive effect on this development. The recovery of the absolute, as well as the relative margin quality, was the main driver for the significant increase of our operating profitability.
Our consolidated EBIT jumped up by 55%. By the end of the first half of 2024, we had already generated an EBIT of EUR 5.1 million, compared to EUR 3.3 million in the same period last year. Despite, firstly, further increases in personnel costs of EUR 0.9 million, which were not driven by more FTEs, but higher wages and salaries. Despite, secondly, higher marketing spending of EUR +0.2 million, and despite, thirdly, higher amortization costs of EUR +0.3 million, we were able to manage our operating costs in such a way that they were only around EUR 0.6 million higher in total than in the previous year.
Together with a slightly lower other operating income, this increase of EUR 0.6 million meant that EUR 1.8 million of the EUR 2.6 million increase in gross profit ended up in our consolidated EBIT. But despite these very satisfying operative results, we have burdens on our consolidated profit, which didn't appear at all or not to the extent as in the previous years' period. A bigger negative effect with an extraordinary one-off character as a result of the planned divestment of the Grüneberg site. The costs, Oliver already explained it, reflected in the half-year accounts amounted to EUR 4.6 million and will be largely non-cash effective. This effect consists of depreciations of assets and general transaction costs.
The IAS 29 effect for our Turkish subsidiary is already known from previous years, but compared to H1 2023, the amount has now doubled to EUR 0.9 million, mainly due to improved business activities in Turkey and an ongoing inflation. The extended negative financial result is mainly due to higher interest rates on euro-based debts as well as on Turkish lira-based debts. As you all know, the three-month Euribor, which is the reference interest rate for our debt financing, rose massively in the course of 2023 and has remained at a high level ever since. The first months of 2023, Euribor was still much lower. The increase of interest costs will now come to an end as the Euribor has come down since May 2024. Actually, it is lower than in the previous periods.
Furthermore, the extended financing needs of our growing and successful Turkish business also led to increased external interest costs. As a result of all these effects, our consolidated profit has fallen to -EUR 2.9 million. Despite the negative consolidated profit due to the exceptional effects, our cash flows have improved. This is due to the fact that only a small part of transaction effects is cash related, and that there are lower cash outflows for investments in trade working capital. The improved consolidated EBITDA and positive tax effects led to an improved operating cash flow by 74%, 74%, so that the operating cash flow amounted at least to EUR 7.4 million. The operating cash flow was in so far able to generate sufficient cash to finance our investment activities of EUR 3.0 million by our own.
As a result from lower additional investments in trade working capital, we improved our cash flow from operating activities as well as our free cash flow, whereas these numbers are still negative. This is mainly due to the temporary lower pre-financing effect of alcohol tax during those seasons in which the spirits revenues are relatively smaller in comparison to the year's end business. Thus, the Berentzen-Gruppe's free cash flow is always negative at the end of the first half of the year. However, compared to the weak cash, weak, free cash flow at the end of H1 2023, we were able to improve it by almost EUR 12 million. Compared to the average free cash flow from 2019- 2022, it was increased by more than EUR 5 million.
The figures presented on this chart show the importance of our profitability strategy and also its success in the first half of 2024, not only in terms of earnings, but also in terms of our financing situation. In addition to improved profitability, lower investments in trade working capital has a significant impact on this cash flow situation, as I mentioned before. Due to seasonal effects, trade working capital basically increased compared to the end of 2023. However, compared to the first half of the previous year, the trade working capital level is almost unchanged. In our half year financial results for 2023, I told you that massive increases in purchase prices have permanently driven up the inventories by almost EUR 50 million, from EUR 39 million to EUR 40 or to EUR 54 million between the end of 2021 and the first half of 2023.
At the end of H1 2024, the inventories totaled to EUR 53.1 million. That shows that the period of high material cost increases is coming to an end, and that, as a result, substantial additional investments in trade working capital are not required. On the next slide, I will give you—would like to give you a brief information about the positive development of our return on capital employed. At the end of June, our ROCE was 9.2%, a growth of 170 basis points since the end of the first half of 2023. It is significantly higher than our weighted average cost of capital, which is to be calculated at approximately 5.6%. This means nothing less than that we have added value on our business in the last twelve months.
The increase of ROCE is driven by a far better LTM EBIT of EUR 9.55 million instead of EUR 7.9 million at H1 2023 on the one hand, and by a lower value of capital employed on the other hand. In comparison with other companies of our size or our business also underlines that we have been able to generate a satisfying return on capital employed. Our ROCE is higher than, for example, Campari or Molson. However, there is still room for improvement, as you can see from A.G. Barr's ROCE of 18.3%. As capital employed will be further reduced by selling Grüneberg, we basically expect to have positive effects on ROCE from this transaction. Please let us finally move to slide 24.
In light of our half-year results, and taking into account the impact of the planned Grüneberg transaction, we have updated our outlook for the 2024 financial year. As you can see, we have increased our earnings guidance. We now expect consolidated EBITDA to be in a range of EUR 18 million-EUR 20 million, compared to our previous forecast in the range of EUR 17.2 million-EUR 19.2 million. Consolidated EBIT is now expected to be in the range of EUR 9 million-EUR 11 million, compared to EUR 8 million-EUR 10 million previously. This reflects the increase in our earning figures of recent months. For consolidated revenues, we are lowering our expectations to between EUR 185 million and EUR 195 million in the light of a future lack of business activities with regional products around Grüneberg.
Lowering revenue expectations on the one hand and raising earnings expectations on the other hand means, of course, higher EBIT and higher EBITDA margins. I hope our explanations have given you a clear picture of the situation at the Berentzen-Gruppe over the last few months. Thank you for your attention. Now we are happy to receive your questions.