Okay. Welcome everybody to our market update. I don't think we're going to take too long this evening. We did issue an announcement on SENS a little while ago, which I hope you've had a chance to read. There will be an opportunity for Q&A afterwards. Please send your questions via Zoom to Ashley, who will send them to me, and I will endeavor to answer them. If they're really difficult questions, I'll hand them over to David to answer. Here we are 18 months later. The pandemic is still going on in different ways in different parts of the world. I think when you read through what we've said and you listen to what we have said before, things are definitely getting better. We are very surprised by the speed of the recovery and the sharp uptick in the recovery where we do see it happening.
I'll talk about that in generality across the world. That's something that's been very heartening to us, that as countries come out of lockdown and as restrictions start easing, we see our markets bouncing back exceptionally quickly. There's a whole lot of pent-up demand, which is feeding through very quickly into our businesses. Sometimes it's exceptionally quickly and very difficult to cope with from a business point of view, but we'll manage. It's a good problem to have. In some countries, we're seeing volumes going up by treble over a two, three, four-week period, when lockdowns ease, when social restrictions ease. The one comment I do just want to make is we are talking about the fact that we're trading at 100% of 2019 revenues. Please bear in mind our year-end is June, and we're 11 and a half months into a 12-month period.
Trading at 100% for the last two weeks certainly isn't going to shift the needle in terms of the annual results, to where they were in 2019. We need to look at the trend and just be cognizant of what we're saying going forward in terms of the trend. When we look at the year, we started off reasonably well in July, August. As the Northern Hemisphere had a relatively good summer and people were pretty happy with the way the COVID crisis was being handled. From about September onwards, it started getting worse across the world, particularly in Northern Europe and the U.K. It started getting better in Asia, parts of Asia, and Australia and New Zealand. It got very bad in the U.K. and Europe in December, January, February, March. Towards the end of March, April, it started improving.
We definitely saw quite a big improvement in April. May, we saw a bigger improvement. On a week-by-week basis, we are seeing things getting better. I just want to temper all of this with a little bit of reality. We're not out of the woods yet. Not us as Bidcorp, but the world's not out of the woods yet with this COVID crisis, and it's going to be a little bit of a bumpy journey, before total normality resumes. Please don't ask me for definitive answers to when things are going to get back to normal. I've got no clue. Things change very quickly. A few weeks ago, Singapore was doing fantastically until they weren't doing fantastically anymore and went into a full lockdown.
Up until two weeks ago, Victoria in Australia was doing fantastically until they had an outbreak and they went down into a total lockdown. I don't want to be negative about these things, but this is what's going to happen. What we are seeing is the lockdowns, the social restrictions seem to go on for less time, and people are more agile as to how they cope with them and how they react to them and consequently, what the impact on the business is. Overall, from our point of view, where we sit at the moment, we're very positive and happy with the position of our business. We think we're in a good position. All the things we said we were doing, when things were quieter, we have done.
We've seen demand come back with a vengeance, we've been able to cope with that, and that's been very good. It will continue to be good, depending on the circumstances around where we are. You get issues like in the U.K. at the moment, they've got increasing case numbers, and there's a question as to whether they're going to go to a full reopening on June 21. We have no control, we have no insight into it. All we can say is we hope it does happen. We can only go along with what the reality is and our business will cope with it. Notwithstanding that we're not in a full opening in the U.K. yet, our numbers are tracking.
I think Andrew told me we're at 95% of pre-COVID levels, and that's with very strict indoor dining restrictions and a whole lot of segments of the economy not working properly. I have no doubt that once there's a little bit of normality, we're going to see a really strong uptick in demand. I think the industry, our industry, the eating out industry, the leisure hospitality, et cetera, is going to be in for a good period of time. I definitely do think we're seeing this shift, this rotational shift now from retail back into out-of-home consumption. That people have done what they needed to do staying at home and purchasing from retail supermarkets or online retail-type providers and are looking to go out again, get some social activity back in their life, get some normality back in their life.
We are seeing a shift back to that. 18 months ago, the clever people were predicting that everything would change and everything was going to be fundamentally different. We're just simple guys. We've always just been simple guys and girls, sorry. From what we can see, the market has come back exactly as it was, if not a little bit stronger. Fundamentally, there's not much change in the structure of our market. There are still various verticals in our markets that are shut. Anything to do with air travel, live sports stadiums, conventions, conferences, cruise ships, to a degree, inner city, large workplaces are severely impacted and haven't come back to normal yet. Just notwithstanding the fact that those aren't back to normal, our revenues are holding up very nicely.
When we look at all our metrics, we are very comfortable with where we are at the moment, and that's across the world. Obviously, each country is in a different state and has a different short-term outlook as to what might happen in the next week, month, three months, six months. Some are more positive than others. If we look at Malaysia, for example, they're in a world of pain. Vietnam's in a world of pain. From what I hear in South Africa, people are just waiting for this third wave, which hopefully doesn't happen. If you look at Europe, they're in a far more confident, positive type of position. Wherever we are in the world, we're pretty comfortable with where our business is at. We feel we've addressed the problem children.
Once again, you only really know that when reality kicks in and sales return back to normal, and you can actually stress test your hypothesis and put it into practice. We're pretty comfortable with where we're at. On all the metrics we look at, we're exceptionally comfortable with where our business is. We've got a very strong, experienced management team who've guided us through this pandemic, and full credit to them and their teams. As I have said in this presentation and in our SENS announcement, our guys didn't have the luxury of working from home. It's been a responsibility of ours to keep the wheels turning, to keep the hospitals full of food, to keep the nursing homes full of food, to keep people fed.
Our teams have worked through adversity, and they've worked through a lot of severe adversity in many, many countries and continue to do so. I think full credit to our management team and our full teams around the world for what they have done under very trying circumstances. They continue to do this, and they've done a phenomenal job. Technology continues to play a very important role. Maybe to our detriment, we understate it, and we should become more like a tech company and give you fancy presentations and use fancy words and talk about disruption and new inventions and all these things. The reality is technology and innovation is firmly entrenched in our business. A lot of what we do is done digitally, electronically, whatever you want to call it, online. That extends far more than just the customer interface.
It goes the whole way through the business. It goes through data analytics, how we understand what the market's doing, what the customer's doing, what the trends are looking like, what's profitable, what's not profitable, what needs to be profitable, what needs to be moved, what levers there are to pull through the whole business. Bearing in mind, we have unpredictable demand. We supply a huge number of products, and each product is a small component of what we sell to customers. There's a lot of variability in what we do, which makes it a really interesting and nice place to play in terms of data analytics and what we're actually doing with it and what we're getting out of it. We're not going to talk too much about it because from our point of view, it's a competitive advantage, and it will continue to be so.
All I do want to say is it's a very important part of what we do, and what we do is pretty sophisticated and I would say right up there with a lot of other technology, other than we don't make a lot of noise about it and we won't make a lot of noise about it. Our balance sheet's in good shape. I'll get David to do a bit of an update afterwards. Our cash generation has been phenomenal. Our working capital management has been excellent. Whatever we look at, we'd say we really are in a reasonable position to face the future with a lot of positive energy and confidence as to what our business is going to look like in a year's time or two years' time or three years' time when total normality returns to the world, which it will return.
It absolutely will in one form or another. While I'm talking about cash generation, I think where we are at the moment is in a great position that we don't have much debt, which means we've got an incredible amount of firepower, and that firepower is going to be deployed in a few ways. Firstly, we do have some pent-up demand for CapEx. We've had 18 months with limited CapEx, and also the proceeds of some sale and leasebacks that have come through. We are going to have to catch up on the CapEx program. For the next one or two or three years, I think we will see an accelerated CapEx program, particularly because we've seen sales bounce back so quick.
We know we need the capacity, and we need the capacity for two years' time, for three years' time, five years' time, which means we have to invest now. We're absolutely doing that, and we're doing that in many geographies. The next issue, where the cash is going to go is obviously on dividends. We haven't paid a dividend for two periods, and David will talk a little bit more about that. We will resume our dividend payment program. The third issue is acquisitions. There are acquisitions out there. There's nothing major that's going to shift the needle, but there are quite a few in-country bolt-ons that we're looking at. We are looking at a couple of new territories as well. They're just a little bit more difficult to do when you can't get on an airplane and fly around and kick tires. There are opportunities.
The opportunities are more in developing markets than developed markets. Developed markets have far more government banking support, and therefore there isn't the same impetus from vendors to sell. In developing markets, we are seeing a number of opportunities to look at. Once again, you need to be a little bit careful with that because in 18 months, a lot has changed in these businesses. We need to just make sure that's all working okay. I just want to check here and make sure that this is all still working okay. Ashley, we still going okay? Yep.
Yeah. Everything's great.
Okay. Thank you. Sorry about that. I just can't see anybody, so it's a bit disconcerting. We will deploy some of the firepower we have on the balance sheet. You can see that the cash generation has been fantastic. I think our working capital is probably as good as it gets. There's very little more we can squeeze out of that. We do need to accelerate the CapEx program, which once again, is in facilities. For us, a facility is probably no different to a retail supermarket, building new supermarkets in prime locations. We're always looking for those prime locations, areas where we can gain market share, where we might be underrepresented, et cetera. We'll continue to do that. I think I've covered most things.
If I just run you through the regions, and I'll do this very quickly just to give you a feel for what's happening. In New Zealand, it's very much business as usual at the moment. Almost no COVID-related restrictions. Life's back to normal. The buffet is back. Everything's normal. At the end, I'm just going to give you some macro issues that we face across multiple businesses, so I won't go through them in each business. Australia, up until two weeks ago, was absolutely perfect. Tracking above levels that we'd seen before when you strip out a little bit of the disposal of the fresh business and a couple of exited contracts. We were tracking absolutely above our baseline. The Victorian lockdown obviously impacts our business a little bit. Victoria accounts for maybe 20%-25% of the Australian economy, and there was a total lockdown.
Clearly that's gonna impact us for a few weeks, but that will be very short-term. Moving on to emerging markets. China's continued to go from strength to strength, and is really strong. Hong Kong did have some COVID issues for quite a few months. Very strict restrictions that kept on getting tighter. For the past few months, that's been relaxed, and we're seeing good growth in Hong Kong. Where I talk about good growth, we're absolutely above trend. Singapore was fantastic until a few weeks ago. They went into a lockdown as well. They're coming out of it, I believe, in the next few days. Malaysia, Vietnam, although relatively small, they're doing it a bit tough at the moment. Middle East seems to be handling the situation very well.
Our business is powering along in all the geographies we're represented there, which is really interesting because there's no tourism, there's no travel transit through Dubai, through Abu Dhabi. The locals are basically at home spending their dollars locally, which is greatly helping us. In South Africa, we're having a reasonable time of it. Certainly, the Crown and Chipkins business are going from strength to strength and are doing phenomenally. That's not an understatement. In the South African environment, they're doing phenomenally. The Bidfood business, obviously struggling a little bit with the lockdowns and the restrictions and your curfews, et cetera, that you have in South Africa. Notwithstanding that, they're doing absolutely fine. Their revenues aren't far off what they were in 2019.
Where you've got a bit of inflation, that actually means maybe we're 10% or 20% off in real terms. There's still some ground to make up in South Africa. Moving to South America, they don't really have the COVID problem too much under control in South America. Our teams have done an awesome job of finding new markets, finding new products, finding new niches. Our Chilean business has most probably doubled the size of what it was going into the pandemic, and that's with half the economy still shut down. Our Brazilian business has made an acquisition. We've got another one or two acquisitions to make. It's performing very strongly. In the U.K., like I said, we had a very strong bounce back. I think it was in April.
Might have been right at the end of March, towards April, when they allowed outdoor dining at pubs at four degrees in the rain. We saw a huge uptick in business. That was accelerated in May, and hopefully will accelerate even further in June, June 21. Yeah, Andrew did say we're operating at 95% of pre-COVID capacity, which in the U.K. scenario is fantastic. I think we're gonna be the beneficiary there of travel restrictions, as we are in many geographies, of people staying at home and spending their money domestically. Sorry, in the emerging markets, the one I did leave off is Turkey, where the surge in volumes that we've seen in a short period of time are just absolutely phenomenal. How our guys can actually cope with a trebling or a quadrupling of business over a two or three-week period, I don't know.
They do cope with it. This is what we're seeing. It's obviously a mad scramble to get the stock in the door so you can get it out the door again. It's a great problem to have, and our teams are absolutely thriving on the challenge. Doing it remarkably well. Back to the U.K. Our fresh business is one of those that we're going to have to wait and see to see how successful we've been in restructuring it. I believe we'll be successful. It's far more aligned and integrated within the food business, particularly in the back end. The front end, you've still got a specialist seafood business, a specialist meat business, a specialist produce type business, gourmet business, and I think we'll be okay there.
They're very, very heavily dependent on HORECA, on restaurants, on leisure, on big events, on the Wimbledons and the Chelsea Flower Shows, et cetera. Hopefully we see a continued improvement there. Moving along to Europe. Europe's only started coming out of this thing two, three weeks ago, and it's great when you get emails from your team in Europe saying, Another week ahead of 2019. Woo-hoo, we're back. That's happening across Europe. Restrictions are just starting to ease in Europe. Most of them aren't back to full eating inside. A lot of them don't have dining inside yet. Notwithstanding that, the volumes are absolutely phenomenal. That goes across Europe. They're all in the same position. They're all doing okay, although they're at different stages of restrictions and vaccination rollouts, et cetera. It's quite a dynamic and varied situation.
Our two opportunity businesses, I'm not going to talk about them as problems because they're absolutely opportunities, Spain and Portugal. On the one hand, I think there'll be no problem, and we've got that base now, and I think that's going to be good. Germany, similar issue. Was a problem, and I see that as upside potential now. We believe we've got the base correct. We've seen the volumes come back very quickly. We've had a lot of time to fix up what we needed to fix up, clean up a few things, and we're ready to rock and roll. That's taken you on a quick whirlwind tour of the world. I said I'd talk about a few macro issues that we face. Here I'm talking macro issues, so please don't try and get specifics because we actually just don't know.
I'm just going to give you our observations of what we're seeing, and make from them whatever you want. You can make whatever assumptions you like. We'll just tell it to you as we see it. First of all, in almost every jurisdiction, we're seeing a labor shortage, particularly in warehouse and drivers. It's more so a developed market issue than it is a developing market issue. Obviously, the fact that people have had to go home, people aren't allowed to move around has had a big impact, and we really are struggling for semi-skilled people who can work in the warehouse and who can drive vehicles. That will inevitably have an inflationary impact on wages. We'll absolutely have a wage pressure issue. Not only are we struggling with staff, but in many of our jurisdictions, our customers are struggling with staff.
For the exact same reason, they can't get people to make beds and serve tables and wash dishes and peel potatoes and do all those other things. You have many customers in many jurisdictions who are operating hotels at 60% or 70% capacity because they just can't operate at 100%, they don't have the staff to operate at 100%. It's the same with restaurants. We're seeing that dynamic coming through in a lot of geographies, not just one or two. We are seeing supply chain disruptions, and that's on a number of fronts. You're seeing it because of shipping disruptions, the cost of shipping, the fact that containers are in the wrong place, that there is just a whole lot of disruption that's happened that hasn't regularized yet and might not regularize for a long time. That's then impacted by commodity issues, food commodity issues.
You've got droughts going on in America, and various different places. You've got China in trade wars with different geographies, moving product from different places. There's a lot of dynamics going on in the logistics of product moving around the world, which is challenging. It's something we manage. It's something we have teams around the world understanding and looking at. Yeah, it's not having an impact, but it might have an impact at some point in time. We're seeing inflationary pressures in lots of issues. Where we're looking at CapEx as we're building new buildings, we're seeing huge inflation in the price of steel, in the price of concrete, in the price of timber products. You're seeing a lack of availability of microchips, which means you can't get refrigeration, which means you can't get lots of other things. This will all have impacts on the world.
I'm not trying to say that these things are specific to us. By no means are they. It's just a general observation. Not only are you going to see cost increases, you just don't have an availability. In many countries, if you want to buy a forklift or a pallet mover, you actually just can't get them. You can't get trucks. There's a six-month to one-year waiting list to get some of the stuff. All of this is going to create bottlenecks, some type of inflationary pressure. Now I'm going to get 15 questions as to what we see food price inflation doing. We absolutely see that there will be food price inflation. We've got no clue how much. We're only starting to see it come through as a general rule, so we really don't know what the impact of that's going to be.
These are macro observations that we're making, and they're things to bear in mind. Some of them obviously have a negative connotation for the world, for our business. Some of them have a positive connotation. We're in a good position. We think the business is in a good position. We think the world's generally in a good position. We're ready to take advantage of it, and we're excited. I'm just going to hand over to David to give you a little bit of a financial overview.
Thanks, Bernard. I really haven't got too much to add. I think as Ben mentioned, working capital has been well managed. I think in absolute terms, if you look at the numbers year on year to the end of April, we're about 15% down receivables, 11% on inventory, and our payables are down 4%. Generally it's been well managed and hopefully, if you look at the number of days, which is relative to activity, it certainly has come down significantly and hopefully we can contain it and manage it at these levels going forward. Free cash flow has been good. Some of that's working capital. Obviously, some operating cash up from operations. CapEx is down, and we've had some sale and leaseback property sales, which we set out. Interest charges are down, so we are seeing the benefit of a positive cash flow.
We have set out the net debt, which shows you how it has evolved over the last period. Generally the businesses have done a fantastic job at managing asset management, and that obviously flows through to cash generation. Liquidity is fine. We don't really have any issues. We are trying to bring more efficiency back into it. It has been inefficient, I guess, over the last 18 months. I think we've taken the view that we wanted to make sure the businesses, at their respective levels, had the comfort to be able to manage the situation as it came back or got worse. It hasn't been as efficient as we would have liked, but we will start to work on this. There have been some restrictions.
Countries have made sure that there is some, I suppose, sensitivity to maybe paying dividends out while this crisis has been unfolding and developing. In terms of dividends, I think there's nothing really further to add. We have noted that the policy hasn't changed, and we'll see what the situation is like in August. As we noted in February, it wasn't a case of we couldn't pay a dividend. It was really, we just felt it's inappropriate, and we'll obviously have to assess that, and the board will assess that at the release of the results in August. Other than that, I'm happy to take any questions, but I don't really have anything further to add.
Thanks, David. I've got some questions here which I'll go through, and I'll flick one or two of them to you, David. In no particular order, this is just the way it came in from Ashley, so apologies to anyone. From Nick Webster, seems like a positive outcome in emerging markets in recent months, despite commentary around the harsher impacts in many countries. Is this mainly China or a bit more color there, please? Look, it's very difficult to give commentary of what's happened because there are a lot of moving parts through the period. Absolutely, China performed exceptionally well during the period, as did Hong Kong, as did Singapore, as did Malaysia, as did Vietnam, until they changed. We've also seen phenomenal performances out of South Africa. I said the Crown and Chipkins business have performed absolutely admirably.
Our South American businesses have performed well and will continue to perform well. Yeah, I can't find the negative there to give you. I think the history is the history. It's almost irrelevant. It's clouded by so much uncertainty and events. It's just when we look forward, and I don't want to be too optimistic, but on a week by week basis, we see the sales progression and where it's going, and it's just fantastic across almost every single market. Another one from Nick. Can you give us the level of decline of national customers given work from home restrictions? Please, could you give some indication of total spend on the acquisitions, how many, and any further details? Okay. On national customers, we really don't know, and I don't think they know. Once again, it changes very, very quickly.
It's a fluid situation that people are back in offices, they're not back in offices. Governments are encouraging people to get back to the offices, and then they're telling them to stay at home again. I actually can't give you that number. We really don't know. Other than to say our national business is a smaller proportion of our total revenue base than it was pre-COVID. It's not substantially different, but it's absolutely a lower base, which tells you two things. Firstly, that the nationals are smaller, but most probably that we've grown more in the sweeter spots of the independent free trade, I don't know what to call it now. Not the big nationals. We can't give you exact numbers.
I think though the positive though, is once these things start easing, we're going to see that business coming back again, which won't be a negative for us. We see that as a positive. The total spend on acquisitions hasn't been a lot of money. I don't know if David's got the number, and I'm not sure how many we've made so far. Four? Four maybe. Three or four. Another two or three in the pipeline in the next couple of months. We're not talking billions of rands. We're talking tens of millions of rands. I'm not sure we're getting to any-
About ZAR 200 million.
ZAR 200 million. There you go. Okay, let me find my place here. From Paul Steger, can you highlight where your operating margin is trending for the 10 months versus comparative period last year? That is in the announcement, and as of the end of April 2021, our EBITDA margin was running at 4.8%, which is exactly the same place it was in April 2020. Bear in mind that April 2021 has 10 months of COVID in it and April 2020 has one and a half months of COVID in it. Our margin has accelerated in May and will get better in June as well, all things being equal. June's not finished. I guess the one thing we've learned with COVID is it's the gift that keeps on giving. Let's not get too complacent and comfortable. You never know what's around the corner.
Our operating margins, notwithstanding COVID and notwithstanding what's going on, are still absolutely world-class and the envy of our peer groups. Our team have done fantastically. Another one from Paul. How confident are you that you can get back to FY 2019 profitability in the next year if current trends remain intact? Paul, I tell you what, if you can guarantee me that conditions will not get worse than they are at the moment, then I would say I'm very confident we're on track to beat FY 2019 in real terms. We're not talking in rand terms because the rand moves around a fair amount. We're very comfortable with where the business is given the scenario around the world. Please, things do change very quickly. I'm just very scared to be too confident and too definitive in what we say.
From James Twyman, are you seeing substantial restocking as markets come out of lockdown? Do you feel confident you have gained market share in all your key markets? Now that restocking is very interesting because obviously there is restocking from our customers. Bear in mind, our customers don't have any storage on-site. All their restocking is one or two or three days worth of trade. It actually doesn't make a huge amount of difference. It's not like they got huge warehouses to restock. We service these customers five, six, seven times a week. We are their storeroom. We don't believe that the opening up and the restocking has a major one-off impact. Obviously it does, but it's only one or two or three days. It's not a major mover in this. What was the second part?
Do you feel confident you have gained market share in all your key markets? Absolutely. We can't prove it. There's no evidence. There's no data. All we have is hearsay, and maybe our competitors would say exactly the same thing. I really don't know. It does feel out there, and when you talk to our teams, they're exceptionally positive. They're pumped. They're excited about what they've brought on, the new customers they've brought on, the new ranges they've brought on. Yeah, our gut feel, our intuition would tell us we've gained market share. I think we'll only know that in the future. At some point in time, we'll be able to somehow get a handle on it. I've got one here from Vikas Sharma. Two questions. Is there any downtrading pressure or move to private label amongst your customers due to menus?
Does this play to your advantage as private labels could be better higher margin? What percentage of pre-COVID revenue was contributed by the absent events like stadiums, conferences, air travel? In terms of downtrading, customers have been far more adaptable and far less demanding in their requirements because service levels generally by wholesalers like us, I'm not gonna say us, have declined. People haven't invested in inventory and service or anything else. The customers have become slightly easier to deal with, and I think that will change, by the way. I think we'll go back to normality there. We absolutely have seen an uptick in house brand, and that is good for the overall margins. I think it will stick. Most of it will stick because a customer will determine from a house brand that they're saving money and getting comparable quality where it counts.
We absolutely are seeing some of that. Please don't ask me for a percentage. Next question, what percentage of pre-COVID revenue was contributed by the absent events? I don't know the percentage. What I do know is they're relatively large customers on the lower margin spectrum. Although the revenue might be substantial, generally they're larger and lower margin. Yeah, they're missed, but they're not desperately missed in terms of the impact that they have on the overall numbers. Be great to get them back, but it's not something that makes the hugest world of difference, and it's been replaced by other types of business and customer base. We'd dearly like them back and the sooner the better. Another one from Nick.
Given the list of hospitality industries still severely impacted in all the countries that continue to have major restrictions, it's quite remarkable you got back to 100% of normal recently, suggests significant market share gains. Can you give any more color on that, please? I think we've done that. Like I say, we can blow our own trumpet and say we've done a fantastic job, and maybe we have. I'm sure our teams have done fantastically, so full credit to them once again. Once again, maybe the markets have grown, and we've just been a ship rising on the rising tide, but I think we've benefited a little bit more than most. I'm trying to downplay that, but I do think we have picked up market share. From Edward Pinner. Could you please quantify the cash inflow from the sale and leaseback transactions?
Are these facilities you want out of on a five-year basis? Well, they're on different schedules. Hong Kong was a five-year. Sydney was a seven-year. Perth was an 18-month. One of the other ones we did was a five-year. We have explained the strategy before that these are end-of-life assets. We look at them and say we need to be out in five years because we need more capacity. We need new generation refrigeration. We need energy efficiency, all of those other good things. Property markets in a lot of places in the world are so strong now, and yields have compressed so much. It's a great opportunity to get out of the sale and leaseback with a reasonable while left on the property. That's what we've done. David, I'm not sure if you know what the cash inflow is on the sale and leasebacks. David?
It is about ZAR 1.9 billion.
ZAR 1.9 billion cash in?
Cash, yeah.
Yep. Please just all remember that's a one-off. I've got a question here which I'm just trying to work out. I don't know who it's from. Sorry for typo. These new national client gains mentioned are margins at street level for the moment. Lots of competitors out, your pricing power better going forward. No, the customers we've picked up have been through the normal process. They're national customers at normal customer expectation levels for those types of customers. Still very competitive out there. We've got competitors in all the markets we operate in. There is still some pressure. No, we don't have any pricing power. No pricing power has come to us, as a result of this from a national point of view.
If you want to play in that space, you play at the margins that are available, and you play in that space to the degree you want to play in that space. These are obviously customers that we have tended and won. Clearly they're going to be on terms that are mutually beneficial to us, which is what we've always said about national customers. We love national customers, as long as the relationship is mutually beneficial. As soon as it becomes a one-sided relationship in either way, it's not a great transaction. Yeah, we do love national customers, as long as the relationship's mutually beneficial, and we do understand that the margins might be a little bit skinnier. Christopher Collins, Are the sale and leasebacks transactions done in addition to those flagged previously?
What is the contribution of the sale and leaseback to cash flow generation? David answered that. They are the same ones that we've spoken about before, primarily Hong Kong, which is a wonderful facility built in the 1940s, I think, and Sydney Girraween, which was built in the 1980s. Now, we do understand that we have ESG obligations. We are a consumer of energy. We operate big warehouses, big refrigeration plants, freezers, chillers, and lots of trucks. We do understand that we have a responsibility to improve our emissions, our footprint, and the like. We take that very seriously, but that comes at a price.
That comes at a price of CapEx, which isn't done purely from an ESG point of view, and obviously it improves your ESG credentials, but obviously costs you less to operate, gives you capacity, and all those other good things. Yeah, that's part of the CapEx spend is also to get us further down this path of where we need to go on our ESG journey, which has multiple components, not only on energy consumption. There's packaging, there's plastics, single-use plastic, there's sustainability of food, there's ethics around food sourcing, there's diversity, there's all other issues that are part of the journey that we're firmly on. Yeah, that's very much part of where we are at the moment with that as well. I'm not sure if there are any more questions.
No further questions have come through at this stage. No. I can't see none on the Q&A, none on the chats. If anyone has a question. There are no hands raised either.
Well, we'll just wrap it up then. Thank you everybody. I think we've said what we need to say. Year-end is only three weeks away, so we sort of know where that's going to be. Where we sit at the moment, next year is looking a lot better than, I guess, where we were sitting this time last year. Once again, a big, big shout-out to our teams around the world. We haven't got together and seen each other for 18 months, and that obviously has an impact. I think it speaks volumes to the strength and capability of our teams around the world. A huge shout-out to them.
A huge shout-out to all of our people around the world for working under very, very difficult circumstances, for always coming to work, for always delivering the product to the hospitals and the aged care homes and the army bases and whatever else they've done day after day, every single day. Lockdown, no lockdown, major crisis, COVID crisis, no major COVID crisis. They've been there every single day, so a huge, big shout-out to them. To all of you, thank you very much. Thanks for your attendance. Thanks for your continued interest in us. We're excited. We're enthused about the future. Hopefully it's not going to be too bumpy, and does continue to improve on the same basis. Thank you everybody, and stay safe, and we'll talk to you all at the end of August. Thank you.