The Bidcorp conference call on the trading update that was released on Tuesday last night. If we could just really set a few house rules. The purpose of this trading update is really to discuss the contents of what was released. Can we confine the subject to that, please? We are in a closed period, and we will remain so till we release our results. The reason really, I guess, for today is to make sure that we can provide good rationale and reasons for us having to delay our results and give you more color on the trading performance of the business. There will be an opportunity to answer questions, if you can use the email or the written link on the webinar system. We'll answer those questions as best we can. On that note, I'd like to hand over to Bernard. Bernard, over to you.
Thanks, David, and good morning, good afternoon, everybody. Apologies for the haircut, but I have been in lockdown in Sydney for the last six weeks. We probably will be in lockdown for the next six weeks. Yeah, I think we're not out of this COVID issue yet. So be it. I think that's just something we've got to get used to going forward. I'd like to just talk about the trading statement and update that we put out to the market. I think there are some fantastic achievements in that, some amazing prospects, and also one or two bits of bad news that we just feel the necessity to inform the market about, and we need to keep people in perspective. We've given you a guidance as to where we expect EPS to come out for the year, which is above the prior year.
Let's remember that the year end of June 2020 had three and a half months of COVID impact in it, whereas this year has been a full 12-month COVID impacted year. I think for us to have had an increase in profitability in a full COVID impacted year is a credit to the amazing work that our teams around the world have put in. I don't want to spend too much time talking about the year that was, because it's actually an impossibility. There were so many moving parts in every different geography of openings, of shutdowns, of good summers, of terrible winters, of reopening, of some geographies sailing through the year with very minimal impact. All of that is what it is. It all just results in the numbers at the end of the day.
The numbers are the numbers, which I think are a true testament to the fantastic work that has been put in by the teams. Let's not make any mistake about it. Our customers are amongst the hardest hit by this pandemic around the world. If you look at the hospitality industry, restaurants, hotels, travel, cruise ships, leisure, office catering, almost every single segment we're in has been impacted severely. Even those segments that were apparently not impacted, were impacted as well. Healthcare absolutely was impacted, and continues to be, where you've got only COVID activities going on in many hospitals and none of the regular elective type surgery and regular type of work. In aged care, of course the business is continued, but as we said before, a lot of the discretionary spend in those segments has just gone.
There weren't any Christmas parties; there weren't any Easter parties, whatever else it might be. All of that has been scaled back significantly. Overall, we're absolutely impressed with the results that our teams around the world have put in. All of them have a story, and all of them have a different story. We look forward to going through that with you in detail in due course. I think the other absolutely amazing outcome of these results is our net debt. Our non-IFRS 16 debt, our true debt, has reduced from ZAR 5.6 billion at the end of June 2020 to ZAR 503 million, at the end of June 2021. To put that into perspective, our market cap is sitting somewhere around ZAR 100 billion-ZAR 110 billion. Yeah, to have net debt of almost nothing, I think is a phenomenal achievement.
That's been driven by incredibly strong free cash flow generation and fantastic working capital management. In very difficult circumstances, our teams have done an awesome job of managing inventories and managing a debtors book that could have been very ugly. In fact, has been exceptionally well managed and that's very good. As we alluded to, and we've said previously, it won't be the intention of the board to pay dividends when it's prudent and correct to do so. I think it is fair to say that it's the intention of the board to declare a dividend based on the full year's profits, in line with our previous declared cover of around about 2.5x. Obviously with the low level of borrowing that we have, the almost insignificant amount of debt that we have on the balance sheet, obviously that supports that.
It's also fair to say, while we were talking about cash, is we have continued to invest in CapEx during the year, and we will continue to do so. We always remain very confident and positive about our future prospects. About the recovery, even though it was maybe a little bit out of step with what other people were saying, we did think that there would be a strong recovery. Fortunately, we've been proven correct. Our CapEx thinking doesn't just look six months in advance, it looks two, three, five years down the track. It's very important that we do carry on that investment trend, which we have done and will continue to do. I think more importantly than what happened in the year is what's happened most recently.
We've given you some sales data from March to month to date in August as of last week. You can see the strong progression in sales. What's probably the more relevant yardstick to measure against is against 2019. These are in constant currency, these turnover percentages. If you have a look at it, at March we were around at 72%, and we're currently running over 100% where we were in August 2019, which is totally non-COVID impacted. The 2020 numbers aren't overly meaningful because they were COVID impacted. It is fair to say that July and August last year were our strongest months of the year in 2020, other than May and June in 2021. You are comparing against reasonably strong years in 2020, but you're comparing them against a very solid base in 2019.
To track above where we were in 2019 in August of 2020, we think is a fantastic achievement. Once again, that's a story of different parts. Australia and New Zealand were the standout performers in 2020, and you can see that they've come off quite significantly in August, down to 95% of 2019. That's basically because half of Australia's lockdown has been since late June. Various jurisdictions in and out, but basically, a big chunk of the country has been and will continue to be locked down for the next few months, which will obviously have an impact. New Zealand's gone, unfortunately, out of that time because New Zealand went into lockdown with what started with one case a few days ago, which has been extended. It does seem to be, unfortunately, not looking all that great.
To my New Zealand colleagues who are on the line, I'm not hopeful that you will get out of your lockdown next Tuesday, I sincerely hope that you do, because the New Zealand business was tracking absolutely phenomenally. We've got Europe tracking at 107% of 2019. That just talks for itself. Emerging markets at 105%, and that's notwithstanding a subdued performance out of South Africa, which we'll talk about in a while, and the U.K. running at 97%. In the U.K., the reason that we are running a little bit behind 2019 is although it has opened, we are quite strong in some segments that just haven't recovered yet. You're talking about conferences and travel related issues. Workplace catering hasn't got back yet. Our core business is doing exceptionally well. We're just not at that 100% yet.
Like out there, we're very confident that by September of the year, we will absolutely be cycling above 100% where we were in 2019, which does bode very, very well. Where we sit at the moment is we've got the U.K. operating full steam ahead, let's not worry about COVID. Europe is pretty much the same issue. Most restrictions are lifted. Obviously, there's still lots of travel restrictions and things aren't that easy, but generally it's back to where it was. We're seeing absolute record weeks in many, many geographies. There's obviously a lot of pent-up demand. Emerging markets is always a mixed bag. In that Asia, you've got some components that are in lockdown. Singapore is gently emerging out of lockdown. Malaysia is facing lockdown. Vietnam's in lockdown. China is in a state of, we believe, semi-lockdown, and that moves around a little bit.
Hong Kong at the moment is relatively unrestricted. In South America, there are restrictions. Lots of parts of the economy aren't open, but notwithstanding that, we're seeing very, very solid growth. The Middle East is performing phenomenally well, and Turkey is performing phenomenally well. Unfortunately, the summer has been impacted by the fires. I think it's also fair to say that the weather hasn't been the best weather ever from a Northern Hemisphere point of view, from Europe and U.K. The fact that we're getting these sales growth numbers are really phenomenal under all the circumstances. We can talk a little bit about what happened in South Africa in July. I know you guys are probably all perfectly aware of it. We had a major distribution center, it's probably our second or third largest distribution center in South Africa, looted on the day of the riots.
The security footage of it was actually haunting you, and it was chilling to watch. It was awful. Just seeing hundreds of people climbing up racks, 18 meters up in the air, looting the place, causing damage. Causing massive destruction. Quite honestly, that was the darkest day I believe I've had at the group in 30 years, because you just didn't know where this thing was going to go. Fortunately, it calmed down very quickly. Fortunately, our facility wasn't burnt down, despite the looters' best effort to burn it down. They did try a few times unsuccessfully. Fortunately, our sprinkler system could pay to that. They did manage to steal a warehouse full of inventory. They did manage to cause a huge amount of damage to offices and furniture. They did manage to destroy a whole load of vehicles. It really wasn't a great situation.
As you can see, our asset losses were about ZAR 72 million, which we believe are all covered by Sasria insurance. Obviously, there's a loss of profits claim, which sits outside of that. Time will tell how that goes. We don't believe that the July looting incident will have a significant impact on our financial performance in the current year. It's a very unfortunate event. I suppose the heartwarming part of it is we were back in business within a week. Our guys moved heaven and earth, and the community came out to help them move heaven and earth. With a great effort of humanity, they managed to restock the place to fix what was broken, to improvise with what couldn't be fixed and replaced. They managed to scratch around for some trucks around the place.
They got back up and going within one week for the Crown National and Chipkins, and within two weeks for the food business, which was the most hard hit. We never let any customers down. We switched our distribution to Bloemfontein, Pietermaritzburg, Johannesburg, into the affected areas. We certainly never let our customers down. We added a lot of cost to our business. It was always a case of, let's get through this and let's get our customers through this. Trading is subdued still in KZN and generally in South Africa, although I guess as time goes on, it will become more just a factor of the economic situation as opposed to the direct impact of the civil unrest. If we can move to this fraud, which really is the cause of us delaying the release of our accounts.
Towards the end of June, we uncovered a fraud in the Miumi division of our Angliss Greater China business. Our Angliss Greater China business operates a multi-channel or a siloed approach to the market that you've got Angliss that deals in the broad range of product, and then we've got specialist businesses that operate in their own silos. We've got Formad Partner, Pastry Global, et cetera. They all have a focus. Miumi was a business that specialized in the global procurement and sale into Hong Kong and China of Japanese-style products, of which some was from Japan, but a lot of it was Japanese-style product that's used in Japanese cuisine. Miumi sold into the Hong Kong market and also into the China market. In Hong Kong, it primarily sold through the HORECA type of business, which is hotels and restaurants, et cetera.
In China, they were selling to wholesalers. It was big transactions to few customers. What we uncovered was a very elaborate fraud, which was perpetrated by our 10% shareholder, a former 10% shareholder, some employees in the business colluding in the Miumi business, as well as some third-party, external third-party service providers. I don't want to go into detail with who, because this is obviously all subject to legal proceedings, criminal proceedings, investigations, et cetera. Needless to say, it's a large fraud, unfortunately. It's one of those that when it does happen, it's painful, trust me. There's no excuses that we can make for it. It's something that possibly should have got picked up a year or two earlier. That's great insight. We're all exceptionally brilliant in hindsight. We did pick it up. We have terminated the employment of the people involved.
We have done a very speedy exit out of that China wholesaling business where the fraud was carrying on. We've done a whole lot of containment work in the last six weeks. We've appointed Ernst & Young to do a full forensic investigation. We believe there will be recoveries in the future. We just aren't clear of what those recoveries will be. There is no doubt that certain of the colluding parties, the third-party providers, et cetera, will be making restitution. As well, we believe that it is subject to an insurance claim. Obviously, all of these factors take a long time. It's important to stress that it relates to the Miumi silo of the Angliss Greater China business. We had, unfortunately, some rogue operators acting in collusion. In a very sophisticated manner. This wasn't a simple hand-in-glove type of approach.
It was a very sophisticated, elaborately planned scam that I guess as it progressed over the years, they must have become a little bit cleverer and more resourceful with how they hid this. I thought, I'm not trying to make excuses for it. We are just taking it on the chin and we are doing a lot of soul-searching as to how such a thing could happen and where maybe some systems didn't work as well as they could and what needs to change going forward, to ensure something of this magnitude doesn't happen again. I guess when you're running a global business, you're in 35 countries, you employ 26,000 people. The product that you're selling has a street value. You're selling chicken and prawns and pork and cheese and all of that. Unfortunately, some people do get greedy.
Unfortunately, there are dishonest people in our midst and we just unfortunately have to be better at catching them. We've taken the view of cleaning it up totally. We've taken the most conservative view. We've written off the inventory that we believe is impaired, which I think is in the region of HKD 102 million. There's also some receivables that aren't going to be collectible, which we've impaired at HKD 253 million. The issue that there is with this, it all goes back six years. Seeing that we only uncovered it six weeks ago, a whole lot of work is going into which year this relates to, because it is a build-up over many years. As you can imagine, dishonest people cover their tracks very well.
It is quite a complicated effort to backtrack and recreate what's happened over a six-year period. Our best estimate is about HKD 160 million. HKD 119 million relates to the current year. Our profits have taken a hit this year of HKD 119 million, and about HKD 95 million there belongs to the 2020 year. The profits in 2020 have potentially been overstated by the HKD 95 million. Like I say, there's a heap of work that's going on. Ernst & Young are working furiously, interrogating computer records, recreating records. Obviously, we'll put this together as best we can to put it into the correct years.
There's a lot of work going on, and I think it's fair to say that in everybody's best interest, our auditors, our own best interest, we thought, let's give this a little bit of time just to make sure that we have put this into the correct pockets of previous years. We're pretty sure that that's the correct amount, but there still needs to be a little bit of work to make sure that it is. That's the bad news. I think there's a whole lot more good news. We've got a fantastic business around the place. The actions of a few bad people shouldn't overshadow the fantastic performance of an amazing bunch of people who've performed exceptionally well under very, very difficult circumstances. I mean, for our business to, and you can work it out from the numbers, hopefully David won't shout at me.
To generate an EBITDA margin over 5% in a COVID-impacted year is phenomenal. A lot of our global peers don't get those margins in their best years. They aspire to margins like that, and we achieved that in a COVID-impacted year. The future looks fantastic. We learn from our mistakes. Unfortunately, we make one or two along the way. We've been as open and transparent as we can about the mistakes. The business is in great shape. The balance sheet is in phenomenal shape. Almost no debt. July trading was exceptionally positive with every single business turning a profit, including the three that were on the intensive care list, which are now only, I guess, in general hospital wards in Spain, Germany, and the U.K. fresh business. They absolutely are well on the path to recovery. We see the future as very, very bright.
We're very, very positive about the prospects of the business. Obviously, we're very upset about the negatives. We don't like to give bad news. I think you guys have dealt with us for a long time. We're going to tell you the truth. We're going to tell you the way it is, warts and all. Unfortunately, there is a wart or two here, so we've absolutely disclosed it and we're moving on, running the business positively. We think we're in really good shape. I think, let me just see if David's got anything he wants to add, and then I know Ashley can send me a few questions, which I can, while David's talking, I'll have a look.
Yeah. Bernard, I really honestly don't have too much to add. I think you've covered off all the aspects that we needed to talk about. I mean, just to note, at this point in time, the results will be released on the 29th of September. Yeah, we'll notify you and the market, obviously, in terms of. What goes around that a little closer to the time.
Okay, I have a question here from an anonymous attendee. "Congratulations on net working capital management. You spoke about debtors and stock, but what about credit terms? Have these been extended? If your revenue run rate continues at current rates, would you expect the business to start absorbing cash?" That's a very good question. We actually haven't stretched our credit facilities or extended our credit terms any different to what they were before. It's pretty much the improvement in working capital has predominantly come out of tighter inventory and tighter receivable management. We could take credit for a lot of it, and maybe we should. What we found on the receivable side, in reality, is our customers actually want to pay their debts.
They actually don't want to sit with big obligations over their heads because they don't know. I guess they don't have the confidence to know when the next bump in the road is going to be, when the next lockdown is going to come. They actually don't want to get too much in debt and owe too much. We've actually seen our days shorten quite nicely. On inventory, we've absolutely been able to streamline our ranges in the period. Customers became way more amenable to our suggestions of what the range should be. Our house brand penetration's absolutely grown as a result of it, which is a long-term positive and change in the behavior in the market. Our revenue growth rate, we're at 100% where we were at 2019, and we haven't absorbed a whole lot of cash.
I guess if our revenue grows by another 20%, 30%, 40%, we've got a few issues. Yes, we will absorb some cash. I'm not sure we are going to see that quantum of growth in the market. I think it's going to be percentage points above where we are now. I think the one thing I didn't mention, I just reminded myself, is actually one of the biggest challenges we face going forward in many, many markets is labor shortages. We just can't get enough labor to get the work out the door. I mean, I say we can't, we struggle. We're talking about drivers, warehouse guys, et cetera. It's very, very difficult. In the U.K., it's exceptionally difficult. As a result of that, we absolutely are going to see cost inflation on our cost base.
Fortunately, I think we'll be able to pass that on the revenue base as well, because our customers are facing a very similar problem. They've got the exact same staffing pressures and cost pressures. There's definitely some cost inflation coming down the path. There's also product inflation coming down the path. Fortunately, on average, the basket is only showing a 2% or 3% inflation metric across most geographies. Hopefully it can stay at that because that's very manageable and probably a positive tailwind in our business. That's important to note. It's also important to note that many of our customers are restrained, and their capacities are restrained, not necessarily by COVID restrictions, but by the availability of staff. A lot of hotels are only operating 50% capacity because they can't get people to clean the rooms and service the restaurants.
Our dining establishments, our clubs, pubs, et cetera, aren't operating at full capacity because they can't get enough people to work in there. Those are the challenges we face. This is a very long-winded answer. Let me see what else we've got. Okay, I'll work through them one at a time. "In what jurisdiction will the legal aid action take place with the fraud, Hong Kong?" Primarily Hong Kong. There's a very small component to China, but the primary action is in Hong Kong. "Re the fraud, please could you explain exactly how the fraud was done? How are you certain that this is not an issue in other parts of your business?
What controls do you plan to put in place on a group-wide basis?" I can't tell you exactly how it was done because we are still working it through, and like I said, it was a very sophisticated case of creating customers purchasing inventory. Maybe the inventory wasn't real. Went through third party warehouses, and there were some phantom transactions. I can't give you the full detail, and that will all be released in due course, and obviously that's all subject to full investigation. "How are you certain that this is not an issue in other parts of your business?" Look, I've got to answer that question as honestly as I can. Frauds do happen. I'd love to say that we're bulletproof and can guarantee you that there are no frauds in our business. That's just not the world we live in.
There are a lot of criminal-minded people out there. There are a lot of people with ill intent. We're facing cybersecurity challenges, as is everybody, at every point in time. I think the pandemic has accelerated the amount of evil and bad in the world. How can we ensure that it doesn't exist in other parts of the business? We've got robust controls and overview mechanisms. They did fail to a degree here. We should have caught this a little bit earlier. Obviously, we've beefed up our surveillance through the other businesses, our questioning, our interrogation et cetera. It's one of those failures that the postmortem will be done in great detail, and the learnings will absolutely be taken heed of. I guess our greatest strength is that we do run a decentralized business. When you do have a rogue element, that's confined to that one business.
There's absolutely nothing to suggest that we did anything other than that rogue business. Hopefully that answers that as much as I can. Sorry, I just want to make sure I don't leave any out here. With July and August revenues bouncing back nicely to F19 levels, can you give some guidance on what currently your cost levels are relative to 2019? Yeah, I think I sort of gave a roundabout answer to that. The roundabout answer is our cost levels will be probably pretty similar to what they were in 2019. There are some cost pressures coming through. We also do have the benefit of the efficiencies that we gained through the pandemic. We also did trim some of the fat out the business, so we do have the benefit of that.
To a degree, that is offset by increased labor costs. We also see in many geographies increased energy costs and increased fuel costs. Our core belief at this stage is our cost of doing business is pretty similar to what it was in 2019, and our margins are pretty similar to what they were in 2019. We fixed a few of the problem businesses, which obviously is some of the upside. Is the full write-off added back to the HEPS range? Could you please provide a little bit more color regarding the Australian revenue levels, 95%? It's very strong given that half of Australia is in lockdown. Can these levels continue? Let me answer the Australian question, and David can answer the HEPS question. Fortunately, in Australia, and it's Australasia, by the way.
Those numbers are a combination of Australia and New Zealand, of which Australia accounts for about 66% and New Zealand 33%. At that point in time, New Zealand wasn't in lockdown. They only went into lockdown this week. We will see the New Zealand numbers come down quite significantly for the next few weeks while they're in lockdown. Hopefully, it is only a few weeks. From an Australian point of view, we've been absolutely amazed as to the stability that we've seen in our revenue levels. I guess that talks once again to the fact that we are geographically diverse, right? Many parts of the country aren't in lockdown. Queensland is not in lockdown, Northern Territory, W.A., South Australia, Tasmania, and some of Victoria. That's absolutely giving us some benefit in that we're not seeing our whole business down.
The Australian business is, at this point in time, still quite handsomely profitable. Not at the same level as we'd be running at 100% revenue. We certainly haven't seen volumes fall off a cliff and panic setting in. Yeah, I think the New Zealand impact will come now, and will be a little bit severe, but hopefully it's for a short period of time. Once again, and this is the optimism, when it does come back, it bounces back incredibly strongly. We've seen that in every single geography. You just have to buckle up and ride these problems. I'll let David talk about the, is the full write-off added back to the HEPS range.
Unfortunately not. Those quantums have been taken directly on the nose to the P&L, and you'll be able to figure out, I guess, the impact on the HEPS in the current year. We don't have the luxury of adjusting those quantum. If we were in the U.S., I guess we'd show something different, adjust it and readjust it, but it's taken basically on the nose.
Thanks. Which I think answers another question, yeah?
Yeah.
Which is a number of parts. Let me just read the question. Any update on the acquisition through the year from what was previously announced? Cash balance obviously to out any opportunities. Just to confirm that ZAR 119 million impact of the full is in the HEPS guidance or is it treated as an exceptional? You mentioned Spain and Germany on the road to recovery. What's the current outlook for Bidfresh now the events market is reopened? As David said, that ZAR 119 million after-tax is taken on the chin. The HEPS number is reduced by that ZAR 119 million. Just to cover off on that. The Bidfresh business is looking fine. We're well on the road to recovery. It's profitable. We've streamlined it a whole lot. We've got a lot of synergy between it and the fruit business. They're working much closer together.
Without taking away the individual customer facing that we're famous for and make it a great business. Yeah, we're confident on the Bidfresh business. We're confident on Spain and confident on Germany as we have been. On acquisitions, yeah, we have made some acquisitions during the year. We've made small acquisitions in Brazil, Dubai, Italy, Germany, and a regional distributor in Australia, which only happened, I think it was at the end of May. Might have been June. It has no impact whatsoever in a regional part of W.A. called Bunbury. They're all relatively small. There is a runway of acquisition opportunities that we are looking at, both bolt-on and new geography. We're still living in difficult times. I can't get out of my house, let alone out of the airfield.
We've got a lot of those restrictions that we still have to navigate our way through. I think we are in a great position. We've got a strong balance sheet, and we remain exceptionally positive about the prospects of all our businesses and of what the future holds. More clarity. When you say 10% minority shareholders, more than one shareholder that will make up 10% now. Sorry, it's one shareholder who held the 10%, who was the general manager of the business. We bought his business in 2012, I think it was. He retained a 10% stake in the business, and obviously, he is no longer a shareholder in that business. Yeah, I think I've answered that one.
Thanks.
I think we've got them all, actually. I think that's all, yeah.
I don't worry.
Okay.
Okay. There's a question here.
Okay. While we're just waiting for that, the one thing I do want to say, though, is it is still going to be a bit of a bumpy road to recover. With COVID, in our opinion, this COVID thing's not over. There's going to be twists. It seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. We are going to have challenges that we have to adjust to. We don't believe that 2022 is going to be a clean year that's totally comparable to 2019 and totally COVID free and everything's back to normal. We're on a long journey. The world's on a long journey. We believe it's fantastic. The story is fantastic, and the future will be great. Let's just not fool ourselves that it's just going to be a linear path upwards. Hopefully, it is. Okay.
What proportion of your customers might be trading it, entertainment, hospitality, et cetera? Once again, that's a very difficult question to answer because it's geography specific. Yeah. Every country has a different answer to that, and every week gives a different answer to that question as well. There are just certain segments globally that aren't working yet. Look at sports stadiums. Yes, they're starting to happen again in some jurisdictions. In a lot, they aren't, or they're at much lower capacity. The cruise ship industry is starting up, very tentatively, but it's timely. Airline travel in most parts of the world is non-existent, and flights are operating relatively empty. The office catering market is generally very depressed. There's obviously the big debate as to whether work from home is going to be a permanent feature and whether that segment ever recovers fully or not.
My personal opinion is it will recover. It's just going to take some time. I think we're all sick and tired of staying at home too often. That's a personal opinion. Obviously, that's a reasonable segment. It does just depend on the market, but there are many segments that just aren't operating back to where they should be. I think we've got one more. How much of the Hong Kong, China business does the food relate to? Depends how you want to measure it. In terms of revenue, just help me out here, David. I'm going to say it's ZAR 100 million out of ZAR 4.5 billion. I'm not sure what that is as a percent. 2%? 3%? 2%? 3% by revenue. A very small-
3%, yeah.
3%. A very small proportion by profitability. It really is a small part of the greater China business with, unfortunately, a disproportionate sting in the cost of how much it's going to cost us. It's just out of whack. That's the way it is. Sorry. The rest of our Hong Kong, China business is doing exceptionally well. They're way in excess of where they were in 2019 across Hong Kong and China and Macau. The business is in good shape. We do put a caveat on that we are a little bit concerned about where China is heading in terms of COVID, that it does look like the genie might be out of the bottle, but we don't know. The Chinese approach is absolutely elimination.
They'll do whatever they have to do to keep it out for who knows how long. As long as they can keep COVID at bay, our business will carry on growing and doing very well. I think also let's just put it in perspective what has been achieved then in Hong Kong and China. We bought the business in 2007. That was doing about HKD 900 million of sales a year. We're now doing about 4.5 per year. It was a business that was marginally profitable. It's now a majorly profitable business. It was a business that had zero, in fact, it was losing money in China, had very little presence, and was purely a distributor of a New Zealand brand of dairy product.
We've now got a broad range distribution network in China of 26 businesses, 26 cities, regions that we service with a broad range of products from a broad range of suppliers. It's a very profitable business that we don't think anybody else in our space has anything even close to that. It's a highly fragmented market, and we're absolutely the first to have built a platform of scale in China. At the same time, we've grown our Hong Kong business into this multi-siloed business that I talk about, focusing on a very small market. Hong Kong only has, I think it's 7 million or 8 million people.
For the size of the market, we've grown a business there that has multiple strings to its bow in the silos that operate in specialty product, format product, natural and organic, seafood, the core protein business, the Pastry Global business, et cetera. Miumi was just one more strand of that, one more silo in that business. Which wasn't of great scale relative to the total business. I think I've answered all the questions. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for taking the time. Yep, enjoy your day. As David says, we're not going to take any further questions because we're in a closed period. We'll see you when we release results and we look forward to that and sharing the full great story and the great picture of where the business is. Thanks, everybody. Stay safe. Look after yourselves, and have a good day. Thank you.
Goodbye