Okay. If we can make our way back in for our next presentation. It's my pleasure to welcome Kerry Group back to CAGNY this year. The company has a unique position within the B2B ingredient solution market and a business model that has evolved over five years. Joining us today are Edmond Scanlon, Group CEO, Marguerite Larkin, Group CFO, Marcelo Marques, President and CEO of Latin America, and Head of Investor Relations, William Lynch. Edmond, I'll turn it over to you.
Thanks, Bryan, good morning all. It's great to be back here in person in Boca, and it certainly makes a welcome change from the Irish weather. A lot has happened since we last presented here back in 2020. In this timeframe, we have significantly evolved and grown our business. Which brings me on to our key three messages for today. Firstly, on growth. We are a growth-led organization, and we have a very strong track record in this regard. Secondly, evolution, which has always been part of Kerry's DNA. We've evolved our position and our business significantly over the years. Today I'm gonna give you an overview of our most recent business developments.
Thirdly, our winning strategy and how we work right across the spectrum of Taste & Nutrition while delivering a sustainability impact as we aim to solve our customers' most complex challenges with differentiated solutions. Beginning with growth and a quick business overview. In 2022, we had group revenue of EUR 8.8 billion, which we've grown consistently over the years at a 9.5% CAGR, as you can see here from the chart. We have a group EBITDA of EUR 1.2 billion, which we've grown at a double-digit rate. We have grown and developed our footprint to over 147 manufacturing facilities, supported by 70 technology innovation centers across 50 countries. All means that we're able to meet the local demands of our 15,000+ customers in their markets where they operate.
Of course, this is only possible through the dedication and commitment of our 23,000 talented people across the organization. The impact of all this is that we now reach 1.2 billion consumers around the world with our positive and balanced nutritional solutions. Moving to Taste & Nutrition and looking at our business across five dimensions, and this is how we run our business and this is how we manage our business. Overall, we have a strong track record of consistently delivering mid-single digit revenue volume growth, whether you look at it either through the lens of the short term, the medium term, or the long-term horizon. This has been made possible by the diversified nature of our business across markets, customers, geographies, and channels. Starting with our end-use markets across food, beverage, and pharma.
Over the past number of years, we've had really strong growth in beverages, in snacks, and in the meat markets in particular. Our customer segmentation is well diversified and breaks down pretty evenly as we aim to act as their enablement partner across global, regional, and local customers. From a geographical standpoint, we have a broad spread. We have a leading presence across our emerging markets where we have delivered strong volume growth over the years. Our Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa region has grown strongly over the years, and in 2022 became our second largest region. We've continually evolved and invested in our product technologies and in our process technologies, and I'll touch on those in a little bit in a minute. Across our channels, firstly in the retail channel, where we've grown at good mid-single-digit rate in recent years.
In Food service, which has been a dynamic, fast-growing channel for Kerry for a long time. We have a strong track record about growing this market as we support our customers right across the board from innovation to renovation, limited time offers, seasonal products, back-of-house improvements, and sustainability initiatives. With the diversified nature of our business, combined with the breadth of our channel, customer, and market access, and our ability to pivot and grow where the growth is, we believe we are very well positioned for more growth out into the future. Moving on to our evolution. We have shared before at CAGNY how we started out as a dairy co-op more than 50 years ago. Through the 1990s and 2000s, we built out our ingredients and flavors portfolio. Over the past couple of decades, we have evolved and developed our leadership position across Taste & Nutrition.
Today, I want to give you an overview of our evolution over the past five years. Looking at our Group revenue development. What this slide shows is that we have undertaken a significant evolution of our portfolio while at the same time delivering strong organic growth. In 2017, we had Group revenue of EUR 6.4 billion. In the five years since then, we have rotated over EUR 2.5 billion or almost 40% of our corporate portfolio, while at the same time growing our business organically by over EUR 2 billion.
We have achieved this through business divestments of EUR 1.4 billion and strategic acquisitions of EUR 1.1 billion, combined with continued revenue development of EUR 2.3 billion, resulting in overall revenue increasing in 2022 to EUR 8.4 billion on a pro forma basis and EUR 8.8 billion on a reported basis. Just to highlight another dimension on this recent portfolio development and how it aligns with our, with our strategy. Starting here on the left-hand side of the page, the divestments we have made in this time frame have been accretive to our growth, our margin, and our sustainability metrics.
On strategic acquisitions, what you can see here from the center of the slide is how our Business Development activity over the past five years has been strongly aligned to our overall strategic priorities of taste, nutrition, and emerging markets. Just to give you one further level of detail and how this evolution has enhanced our technology portfolio across a number of areas. We've highlighted four technology platforms here on the left, where we have significantly developed our business profile in recent years. Firstly, on authentic taste. We've continued to develop and further enhance our local natural taste capabilities in China, in Southeast Asia, in Mexico, in Africa, and in other markets to ensure that we can continue to evolve to help our local customers meet the local consumer demands in those markets. On proactive health.
In the past few years, we have significantly expanded our portfolio of clinically backed health ingredients that deliver a range of benefits across the need states of digestion, immunity, cognition, joints, and women's health as consumers continue to seek to look to address their health needs through Food & Beverage products. On biotechnology, on the previous slide, we've added to our portfolio of enzymes and through c-LEcta, we have advanced our development capability in the areas of precision fermentation and biotransformation for high-value targeted enzymes and other ingredients. We see this capability platform as key to the development of next-generation solutions for our industry. Finally, on preservation, we have significantly enhanced our portfolio footprint over recent years as we support our customers and their consumers to reduce food waste right across the supply chain, which is one of our industry's most pressing challenges.
This evolution and the investments that we have made in our technology portfolio we believe position us well to do more now for our customers than we ever had before. Moving to our strategy, which has remained very consistent over the years. The markets where we at Kerry focus are on food, beverage, and pharma. This focus drives a very targeted deployment of resources. Our overarching strategic priorities, as you've seen, are taste, nutrition, and emerging markets, and they're underpinned by our key growth platforms. What reaches across all this is our commitment to sustainability. We have outlined our sustainable nutrition spectrum before, and we see this as a roadmap of the various steps our customers are currently taking or will be taking over the coming decade.
These steps involve both enhancing the nutritional profile of their products, such as cleaner labels or proactive nutrition, and improving the environmental impact, for example, through climate positive or circular solutions. Our breadth of solutions and our leading business model are key enablers to support our customers to achieve their sustainability goals. We use a variety of tools to support our customers. Just to call out a few, our Nutri Guide tool is used to advise our customers on how ingredient changes and recipe changes improve the nutritional profile of their products. Our proprietary food waste calculator can calculate how much food waste could be avoided through shelf life extension. Our Kerry Health & Nutrition Institute is a key resource for our industry and for anyone interested in the science behind healthy food.
Helping our customers to progress along the sustainable nutrition spectrum is central to our vision to be our customers' most valued partner, creating a world of sustainable nutrition. Finally, before I hand you over, this slide gives you an overview of how we aim to play our part in the end-to-end supply chain. Supporting our customers to meet the multitude of complexities and challenges that the Food & Beverage industry faces every day. I will now hand you over to Marcelo, he's our CEO of our LatAm business, and he will bring our strategy to life for you here today with a number of examples showing how we're working with our customers across our emerging markets and supporting them to achieve their goals and their ambitions.
Thanks, Edmond. Good morning, everyone. Beginning with an overview of our emerging markets, where we have a leading presence with over 9,000 people, 43 manufacturing facilities, and 35 R&D centers spread across over 20 countries. Kerry has been progressing at pace in emerging markets, growing strongly over the years and holding many leadership positions across our markets and countries. Our unique business model and fresh review of these markets, combined with our capacity to bring relevant consumer insights and deploy our technologies locally, have created the foundation to enable us to continue delivering on our double-digit volume growth ambitions while outperforming our competitors and markets. At Kerry, we always start with the consumer, and here we see some of the macro trends impacting our industry in most emerging markets, with some also observed in developed countries to a certain extent.
What's noteworthy in emerging markets is the speed at which consumer habits and behaviors are evolving. Over the following slides, I'll share some live examples that connect some of these dynamics, including love for local, accessible price points, health and well-being, and sustainable consumption. The first example is in snacking. The snacking equation has been gaining relevance. Two-thirds of global consumers now prioritize snacking throughout the day over traditional meals. Savory snacks is a highly attractive segment, growing at 3 times the Food & Beverage market average in our region. Healthier snacks are on the rise, as low in sugar, sodium, and fat are top concerns for Latin America consumers. In LatAm, around 60% of the population are obese or overweight, so governments are introducing food regulations and taxes to address this.
As the leader in Latin America in snacks, Kerry has been outperforming market growth, driven by three key factors. First, our strong dairy and savory taste leadership, providing us differentiated creation and process capabilities. Secondly, we have a large and active snacks consumer base of leading local, regional, and global players and brands in the region. We support them locally through our teams and our leading development, applications, and manufacturing footprint. Thirdly, because of this presence, we have deep local knowledge of local taste profiles and preferences. Every year, we showcase to our customers the snacks trends and new seasoning collections, from indulgent, impactful Latin profiles to improved nutrition solutions, such as sodium-reduced recipes or free of trans fats.
As a result of this, last year, in partnership with our customers, we prevented the consumption of more than 430 tons of trans fat by consumers, or around 11 million kilocalories across nine countries in Latin America, showing that it's possible to improve nutrition without compromising taste or performance. This is just the beginning. In this next example, I'll share how we are partnering with a key emerging local customer in Southeast Asia. The emerging feel-good, better-for-you energy drink category is gaining more popularity, growing at +15% from 2017 to 2020, and is set to continue to grow double digits in this region. This healthier energy drink category is attracting the new age digital consumers in Southeast Asia, who demand more functionality and health benefits from the products they purchase and consume to improve their performance.
Partnering with a customer who is investing in a brand that's driving this category and expanding in this region, we co-created a winning product line that meet those digital key consumer need states, delivering functionality and health expectations, including improved energy, enhanced mental clarity, reduced sugar with all-natural clean ingredients, and also including our Wellmune immunity-boosting solution. This is a great example of how we can deploy many of Kerry's global technologies together for a customer in their local market, providing significant product differentiation and allowing them to launch this innovative new product first to market. The final example we will share is in the Foodservice channel. As Edmond referenced earlier, we have a truly unique capability set when it comes to the Foodservice channel. We work on a full menu development from meals to beverage and desserts.
We support our customers as they meet consumer demand for more nutritional, great taste menus with less environmental impact. One example of this in emerging markets is with a leading quick service restaurant in Southeast Asia. This chain is focused on enhancing the nutritional and sustainability profile of their menu, while at the same time introducing new exciting menu options and ranges. As their innovation partner, Kerry has been working with them across their business and recent innovations include four key areas. First, extending their chilled beverage menu with new flavor options and lower sugar. Second, minimizing food waste in bread and meat with our clean label food preservation technologies. Third, reducing sodium in meat and meat alternatives. Fourth, launching plant-based alternatives with great taste and texture profiles.
This is just one example of how we are working holistically with Foodservice customers in emerging markets as their taste, nutrition and sustainability partner. With the three examples we have shared in these slides, you can see that by leveraging our technology portfolio, we are working with the industry on a healthier, more nutritious and more sustainable future, Better for People and for the Planet. I'll now hand you over to Marguerite Larkin, our Group CFO. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone, and I'm delighted to be here with you again, in person after so many years. Thank you very much, Marcelo. I think some really great examples to bring to life how we are delivering our strong performance in emerging markets. Today I will give you an overview, a brief overview of Kerry's 2022 performance and our medium-term ambitions across our framework of growth, returns and sustainability. Firstly, looking at our performance and scorecards in 2022 and beginning with growth. Overall, group revenue increased to EUR 8.8 billion, with strong volume growth of 6.1% being a key driver.
Group EBITDA increased by 13% to EUR 1.2 billion, reflecting a 13.9% margin for the year as benefits from operating leverage, mix efficiencies and portfolio were more than offset by the mathematical impact on margins of recovering the absolute increase of input costs in the year. Moving to returns, we delivered free cash flow of EUR 640 million in 2022, representing an 82% cash flow conversion. We had overall group return on average capital employed of 10.3% in the year. On sustainability, we made very strong progress across our range of measures during the year. Firstly, we increased our nutritional reach to 1.2 billion consumers in 2022, and this is a measure of the number of consumers globally that we impact with our positive and balanced nutritional solutions.
On carbon, we had a strong performance with a 48% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions versus our 2017 base year. On food waste, we also delivered a very strong performance with a 32% reduction in food waste across our operations. Overall, I am pleased to say a very good year across our range of metrics, especially given the uncertain market backdrop. As we look forward to 2023, we believe we remain strongly positioned to grow ahead of our markets. Moving now to our medium-term targets and firstly on growth. We have a strong track record of volume growth, driven by the consistent mid-single digit growth in our Taste & Nutrition business. Our target is to deliver 4%-6% group volume growth on average across our medium-term plan.
The growth we achieved in 2022 was above this level, as you can see here. We are confident we will deliver our growth target for a number of reasons. Firstly, our performance and positioning in emerging markets with our strong track record and target of double-digit growth, as Marcelo has just outlined. Secondly, Foodservice, where we have consistently outgrown the market and enhanced our positioning and level of business with the faster-growing segments of the channel, like quick service restaurants and coffee chains. Thirdly, in our end markets where we have evolved our business in recent years, increasing our weighting across a number of markets where we feel we can deliver significant value add for our customers. That offer the best structural growth opportunities for Kerry, including in snacks, in beverage, and in meat end markets in particular. Next, on the EBITDA margin.
We have a target of 20%+ in Taste & Nutrition and 18% at group level by 2026. In 2022, while absolute taste in nutrition and group EBITDA increased at strong double digits, our margin percentage decreased as a result of passing through input cost inflation. Going forward, the key drivers we are focusing on to enable us to move from 16.5% to 20% are as follows. Firstly, on portfolio, we are expecting circa 50 basis points net accretion, driven principally by the disposal of the lower margin Sweet Ingredients Portfolio. On operating leverage and mix, we are targeting over 100 basis points. We have a strong track record of delivering operating leverage as we have grown our volumes over the years, and we see significant scope here. Next, on operating efficiencies.
We have previously discussed our Accelerate Operational Excellence program, we will see the benefits of this program across the next few years, we expect this to deliver another 100 basis points. Finally, we're expecting a level of deflation from current levels in the coming years, given where input costs currently are to bring us to 20%. Moving now to cash and returns. On cash, we have a target of 80% plus cash conversion of earnings. We delivered 82% in 2022, we are targeting an improvement on that in 2023. On return on capital employed, our target is to deliver in the range of 10%-12% over the period of the plan, dependent on the timing of capital allocation decisions we will make to generate long-term shareholder value.
Our capital allocation framework has been consistent over the years and disciplined capital allocation will continue to be important in achieving both our cash conversion and return targets over the course of our plan. Moving to sustainability. We have strong ESG credentials, as you can see at the bottom of the slide here. Our 2030 sustainability commitments are part of our Beyond the Horizon strategy. On nutritional reach, we have a target of reaching over 2 billion consumers with sustainable nutrition solutions by 2030 as we grow our business and support our customers to improve the nutritional profiles of their products. We believe this is an area where we can deliver a significant positive impact as part of our Better for People commitment.
On carbon, we have a target of reducing Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 55% versus our 2017 baseline, and we have made strong progress on this in recent years. On food waste, we have a target of halving food waste across our operations. Our range of food waste solutions are important enablers for our customers in reducing food waste in their operations. We plan on ensuring that we are playing our part across our footprints as part of our Better for Planet commitment. To close for me, before I hand you back to Edmond, I hope this gives you a good overview of the continued progress that we are making to meet our financial targets of growth and returns and sustainability commitments over the medium term.
Thanks, Marguerite. Just to close out here with a quick recap of my three key messages. Firstly on growth. We're a growth-led organization, and we have a very strong track record, and we feel positive and confident about our growth prospects going forward. Secondly, our evolution. We're going to continue to evolve our business to ensure we're adding the most value for our customers to help them to continually to meet the evolving demands of their consumers. Thirdly, our winning strategy. How we work across the spectrum of Taste & Nutrition while delivering a better sustainability impact as we aim to be our customers' most valued partner, creating a world of Sustainable Nutrition. Thank you, and we look forward to taking your questions. Yeah, Rupert.
Hi, I'm Rupert Trotter from Barclays. How do you see the Foodservice recovery, playing out when we think about Southeast Asia, from here? How's the comparison to last year? I guess just rethinking about leverage into China as well.
Sure. I'll take that question, Rupert. I would say, look, like we said there in the presentation, we feel we're extremely well positioned as it relates to the Foodservice channel. Foodservice as a channel has outperformed retail nine out of the 10 previous years. Our performance has outperformed the channel performance 10 out of the 10 last years. We've a unique set of capabilities as it relates to that channel. Specifically in Southeast Asia, what we're seeing there is similar to what we're seeing in the rest of the world, in that the larger chains, be they global chains or regional chains, are winning market share. When we talk about our exposure to Foodservice, we're primarily talking about the larger chains.
We're talking about QSR, and we're talking about the larger coffee chains. Effectively the top 100 chains in the industry. We see those gaining market share in Southeast Asia as well. We don't necessarily see, let's say, the chains in Southeast Asia necessarily benefiting from the opening up in China. The local chains within China as well as the global chains within China, we feel, are going to perform well here in the next phase, as reopening in China, I would say continues. We're not necessarily expecting to see a flip back, like we saw here in the U.S. or in Europe.
We believe it'll be more of a gradual opening, and that's certainly what we've seen here since the beginning of the year. In China, we'll see how things play out over the coming months. Globally, about 30% of our business is oriented towards the Foodservice channel. We believe it's gonna outperform the retail channel here for the coming years. We feel we're well positioned whether that's in Southeast Asia, China, or the rest of the world.
Bryan Spillane from Bank of America. I have two questions actually. The first one is just, a lot of your customers are here, presenting, and, you know, they've talked about inflation moderating, so, you know, what they're paying for inputs. One of the things that's been sticky is the non-commodity inflation, right? Can you talk a little bit about, I guess, your costs, whether it's labor costs or any inflation you're experiencing, and just where you stand in the process of being able to kind of recapture that with pricing? Do you expect to have to still push more pricing through to cover inflation? I'll have a follow-up.
Sure. We're seeing the same as everybody else in inflation. I would say that we've been, let's say, quite good in that we have passed through the vast majority of the price increases that we've experienced. We've offset as much as we possibly can. We have quite a transparent pricing model with the vast majority of our customers, whereby we give them transparency on our direct input costs. Pass, let's say, the cost that we're seeing come through that we haven't mitigated, let's say, through to our customers. We don't have a lag of any great significance as we're turning into 2023. We don't necessarily see ourselves, in the most part at least, having to pass new pricing in 2023. The pricing that you're gonna see from Kerry in the first half of 2023 is carry forward from Q3, Q4, 2022.
Okay. Thank you. Bigger picture, you know, one of the core skills or one of the core competencies for Kerry has been its ability to manage portfolio, both as a, you know, seller of assets and acquirer of assets. With interest rates having moved as much as they've had, you know, this is a much different environment than what you've experienced the last, I don't know, 10 or 15 years. I guess, one, does that change at all the kind of willingness of sellers?
Do you think that actually makes... Especially given that maybe a lot of companies are also experiencing inflation. Does it actually loosen up some assets? Also just how you think about returns, right? As you're kind of evaluating M&A and you're evaluating acquisitions or even disposals, I guess. J ust how does it change at all the way you kind of evaluate the value proposition and returns?
Sure. Sure. I'll kick off here, and Marguerite .
Yeah.
You might kick in. I would say in terms of, let's say, the M&A environment as it relates to, let's say, the landscape in which we operate in, there's always a, let's say, in a period where multiples have come down over the course of the last year, 18 months or so, it takes a little bit of time to have those conversations with, you know, let's say potential targets. I would say from a Kerry perspective, one should expect to see, you know, bolt-on M&A here in the next phase, similar to what you've seen in the past.
Certainly there is periods of time whereby we have conversations around maybe, you know, where we initially started a conversation around a set of multiples that would certainly have reduced over the last 12-18 months, and that just takes time to land. From time to time, we may step back from particular opportunities because, let's say the whole relationship needs some time to reset. In terms of catalysts, I think what we're seeing from a catalyst perspective is the cost of investing in new capacity has increased significantly to your point in inflation. For, let's say, peers in our sector, and especially smaller peers within our sector, that cost is starting to become a conversation as it relates to being a catalyst for potentially more opportunities to come our way. I'm not calling it out as a major factor, but it's certainly something there that's in the ether.
Bryan , maybe just to give you a perspective on the returns element of your question. As we think about returns overall, we have a return target of 10%-12%, and there's probably two key components driving that. There's the return on our ongoing business, which we effectively see a return of 10%-12%. As we complete acquisitions, maybe out of the box, the returns on acquisitions is more like a mid-single digit. Over a period of maybe three, four, five plus years, depending on the nature of the acquisition, we bring that returns up to the 10%-12% zone just through the synergistic value of incorporating it into Kerry, and really exploiting the overall Kerry platform. It's, I guess, a holistic, returns, metric that is how we look at it.
Thanks. Lauren Lieberman from Barclays. I was curious, you were talking about, you said, you know, long-term volume growth expectation is 4%-6%. Foodservice just is at 30% of your business and grows faster. I was curious first on what your outlook is for volume growth for the retail business generally over the long term, and then more specific to 2023, how you're thinking about volume progression in retail. You know, and how you're, again, to Bryan 's point of having so many customers here, how you're thinking about, you know, order patterns from customers and how volumes evolve through the year on the retail side of things.
Sure, Lauren. I would say, let's say, taking the, let's say, the more immediate, let's say, situation first, and I would maybe specifically call out the North America market. It's a, it's a major part of our business. We see retail here in the first quarter at least, and maybe a couple of quarters being quite challenged. I would say that, you know, let's say quite low growth, very low growth. I think from a Kerry perspective. So that's the market. That's our expectation from a market perspective. I think from a Kerry perspective, what we've demonstrated through the course of the last couple of years, is that we've been outgrowing the volume growth in the market. We've been taking market share, and we expect that to continue here, into 2023.
We'll be looking at positive, I would say, volume growth here in the short term. I wouldn't be prepared to say much more than that. I think then, like you said, Foodservice then will be on top of that. Our sense for volume growth for 2023 from a Kerry perspective is in that 3% zone, which is obviously lower than our 4%-6%, but I think reflects the underlying market situation, especially in retail. For us, Foodservice will be the backstop on that volume growth for 2023.
I think longer term, our expectation is that from a retail volume growth perspective, when one looks at the, let's say, the macro trends, we talked a lot about it here, let's say even from a nutrition standpoint, consumers still are looking at their Food & Beverages as a way to have better nutrition. I think there is an element of pill fatigue there with dietary supplements and things like that, where we're seeing consumers preferring to take, you know. They prefer to make healthier choices if they're available from a Food & Beverage perspective rather than supplementation. That's our view. We believe that that is a potential opportunity in retail.
I think there's plenty of room ahead of us in terms of improving the nutritional profile of their products, of the products in the market. I think when that starts kicking in out into the future, that could underpin a low single-digit volume growth in retail going forward. I would be confident that Kerry would outperform, let's say, the market growth in retail by probably 200 basis points.
Sorry.
Go ahead.
I don't get to see them very often. I was just curious if you also could talk a little bit about competitive dynamics. There's been, I mean, Edmond, there's been so much M&A in your industry, right? Your competitors and peers have been very busy with a lot of activity, which also can yield pretty inward-looking behavior. I was just curious the degree in which you see the competitive landscape changing going forward, you know, what you've been doing to maybe take advantage of some of the disruption at some of your competitors, and how you see also the market for the market and competitive market for talent.
Yeah. I would say that, look, it's, you can, you can see it in the numbers we're posting, Lauren, over the course of the last several quarters that we're outperforming our peer set from a volume growth perspective. The market is the market. We're outperforming the market. We're obviously taking market share, that's for sure. You know, in terms of exactly who we're taking market share from, I'm not, I'm not gonna get into that. For sure, we're taking market share. And there's I think there's been significant supply chain disruption within our industry. And I think, back to the whole point on inflation, and many of our customers are here this week.
Let's say what has been absolutely key for them as they've been, you know, passing input cost inflation onto their customer base was reliability in the supply chain. As we've been engaging with our customers in terms of the, let's say, the recuperation of input cost increases that we've experienced, part of that discussion has been assurances. I was gonna say guarantees, but assurances on supply chain resilience. We've put a huge amount of effort into that over the last few years to try and, you know, meet as best we can the demands of our customers, and I think we've been rewarded for that. I think that has certainly been one of the reasons of the market share gains that we've experienced.
For other peers in our industry, I think there's been some challenges. Maybe it's what you say in terms of the consolidation, things like that, but there's definitely been some challenges. Sitting here today as we look at the landscape, like you, we've presented in the presentation, look, we've been, I would say, very strategic, very deliberate, very purposeful in how we have evolved our portfolio. We've done it step by step.
They're, you know, very aligned to our strategy and very clear on the synergistic benefits of layering the technologies that we have brought into Kerry with the technologies that are currently in Kerry. I think that's the right way to do it. I think it sets us up well for the future. As we look out here, I'm not hugely concerned about what others are doing in the industry. I feel we're well-positioned, that's why we're committing to our long-term growth targets.
Okay. I think with that, we are ready to go to the, to the breakout. Again, thank you, Kerry, for coming and spending time with us today. Go ahead to the breakout.