On behalf of the Board of Directors, Management, and Staff of the Oceana Group, I would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you, including our viewers on the webcam. It's been another positive year for Oceana, delivering solid results in the context of continuing geopolitical uncertainty, rising input costs, volatile weather patterns worldwide, local infrastructure challenges, and sustained pressure on consumer income. As we reflect on our operating environment, it is deeply troubling to observe the escalating conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine, and parts of Africa. These conflicts, along with extreme weather events, are disrupting global supply chains, impacting the availability and cost of essential raw materials, food, and energy. Politically, the rise of populism and protectionism is leading to economic fragmentation and policy uncertainty. The polarizing U.S. election adds further uncertainties to global trade and regional conflicts.
In South Africa, the smooth and fair seventh democratic election and the transition to a government of national unity have been positively received. The new coalition government brings hope for fresh economic policies and increased private sector investment. It is in this environment that Oceana continues to deliver solid results, which will be unpacked by Neville and Zaf. Oceana's diverse product range, the strength of its brands, and the quality of its people and infrastructure, boosted by a healthy balance sheet, position it well for long-term growth.
On behalf of the board, I would like to extend my thanks to the CEO, Neville Brink, and his executive team, and all the staff at Oceana for delivering such a great set of results, and in setting and delivering on the group's strategic ambitions, and all Oceana's employees for their contribution in delivering another year of strong performance in a challenging market context. Thank you very much. I'll now hand you over to Neville Brink. I'll see you. Thank you.
Morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. Just before I start, it was interesting I was chatting to Anthony just two minutes before about whether we continue with this face-to-face or we do it virtually. And my preference, obviously, is face-to-face. It's just so much easier to present to a proper audience than to a screen, and the screen can be edited and managed, etc . So you can hopefully tell from my body language and my expressions that myself and my management team know what we're doing. And as we present, you get a feel for what the real business looks like. So welcome to those guys that made the time to come out here. Thank you to my team, and thank you to those people that are online and joined us. And I look forward to handling some questions.
So the format that we're going to follow. I'm going to do a quick CEO overview, and I'm going to do it slightly differently this year. What I want to do is, again, talk about our pillars. As you know, three years ago when I took over this business, I created this pillar strategy. Each business falls within a pillar. And I want to talk a bit about the pillars and the context of the performance going forward. And I want to also talk about a disclosure change, which I think will please the market, and it certainly helps us. And I think you'll enjoy that. And then I'll have a look at the detail behind the three divisions, the three pillars.
Zaf will then cover the financial results, and I'll come at the end just giving a kind of high-level outlook and strategy with some of the focus areas that each of the pillars are going to concentrate on in next year, and then happy to answer some questions. So we've got about an hour and a half. I think we should be finished within an hour. And then we've got some time just to mingle and say hello face-to-face to those I haven't said hello to. So let me start with the pillars. And you've seen this numerous times, and I keep emphasizing this because it is key to this business. We are operating in three independent businesses. They have very different strategies, but collectively, that makes up Oceana. So let me start on the Lucky Star side.
I'll start on the disclosure issue that we are changing this year for the first time. I have found it very difficult presenting these numbers because of the mix of fish meal and fish oil in the canned food sector. As you know, we have two canneries on the West Coast. Those canneries both have a fish meal plant that's linked to them. The people that work in that fish meal plant collectively work for both businesses. When we presented in the past, you had an almost apples and pears number, which included fish meal and oil on the one side and the foods business, which is a typical FMCG business, very different from fishing. What we've done this year is actually separated those two businesses. The people are allocated a cost center, and some of them will be part fish meal, part cannery.
There will be a formal transfer price between the cannery and the fish meal operations, where we transfer the offal trimmings, that we call it, the heads and guts, heads and tails that come off a pilchard that goes into the fish meal business, and oil. Remember, we extract oil when we produce a can of pilchards. In particular, the fish that comes from the Pacific, high in oil, we do an extraction, and that can then actually we take some oil out of that can, and that gets transferred to the fish meal and oil business, where it's reprocessed and sold. So a market-related price will be determined every year that will relate to world market pricing for offal and oil. So we'll clearly see the difference between. So when you see Lucky Star Foods now, that will be purely the FMCG business.
And then the second change is we talk about Lucky Star. In the past, we used to talk about Lucky Star, and that was the canned fish sector. Now that pillar has now graduated into a foods business. And part of the strategy this year is to take that business and grow the food sector of our business. So not to say we're not going to take our eye off the canned pilchard side. That is still a key part of our business, and we have to grow it. But there's huge opportunity in Lucky Star to take that iconic brand, voted number one iconic brand in the country this year, and I'll talk a bit more and grow this into adjacent food categories. So a key driver for us is to take this business further.
And why I say that is because, and you've all heard it before, the fishing business is by nature a very volatile business. There are many, many uncontrollables that we battle to control. So what we need to do is increase the contribution from the controllable side of our business, try and manage the uncontrollables and make it less susceptible and more variable so that when opportunities come up, those businesses can take advantage of, obviously, weather, fishing, etc, etc. So very much a focus this coming years around the Lucky Star Foods business. On the Wild Caught side, and I've said this many times before, Wild Caught is a finite resource. When we're catching Wild Caught, we get given a quota. In most instances, we get given a quota or a time limit where we can catch a certain amount of fish.
We cannot catch any more, so we cannot add volume there. What we can add is value and efficiencies, so the focus on the Wild Caught side is how do we take that business and make it as efficient as possible. A vessel that's standing alongside here makes no money. A vessel that's out at sea catching fish, not breaking down, so we invest there in technology, ability to make that vessel more effective, ability for that vessel not to break down, ability for where it comes into land to offload and do the repairs to turn that vessel around as quickly as possible. The ideal purpose is 365 days at sea. That's obviously impossible, but that is the target. Keep those vessels at sea, turn around those vessels as quickly as possible. The key driver in Wild Caught is catch rates.
Catch rates have the highest effect on cost of sales. The faster you catch your fixed costs, that vessel operates on a daily basis on a fixed cost basis. The quicker you can land fish into that business, the more effective that business is. And then on the fish oil, and now you'll see a pillar there, and we'll go forward, we'll have two segments with it. It'll have the SA fish meal and oil business, and you'll see that quite separately, and we can track it. And there's a strategy. It still forms part of the overall pillar of fish meal and oil, same market, same business. And fish meal and oil is a commodity. We're a small player in a big pond. We don't control pricing. We don't control supply and demand. What we can do is be more efficient at landing as much fish as possible.
I'll talk a bit about that because there's huge opportunities to scale that business, to really take that volume up. And that's where we're going to see scalability. We can tweak quality. We can tweak throughput. That adds a little bit of margin. But essentially, the pricing and the supply and demand curve follows a band. And we follow that band. We can't change it. And I'll talk a bit about that pricing. So that's the context of the performance this year. And that all leads to who is Oceana. And we spent some time looking at what can we define, what's the investment case behind Oceana. Oceana, as we see it, is a leading fish and food company, driving innovation and growth through diversified operations. And the diversification is a key component of our business. While promoting sustainable practices, sustainability is a key. We've been around for 105 years.
If we don't protect our biomasses out there and the resources, we won't be around for the next 105 years, so it is key for us, and we have what we call six competitive core anchors. Diversified operations. We're across multiple geographies, multiple species, multiple countries, multiple currencies. We have a strong operating platform, 105 years old. We play in the full value chain from fishing to marketing to processing to procurement, which is a big strength of ours, right through to manage our balance sheet and our financials. Brand strength, and everyone knows the Lucky Star brand, but it's not only the Lucky Star brand. It's the Oceana brand. If you go overseas and you go and talk to our customers, Oceana is recognized out there. It's not just Lucky Star. Oceana is seen as a long-standing, reputable company that delivers on its returns and is trustworthy.
So whether it means procuring from big suppliers out there, we negotiate terms that are relative to the strength of the Oceana brand. We play in the affordable quality segment. And when I say affordable, it's not cheap and nasty. It's affordable. It's relative to the market that we compete in, whether it be chicken or cod in the whitefish sector or heads and feet in the pilchards or horse mackerel sector. So it's a relatively affordable business, and we are very conscious about quality and affordability. Our balance sheet speaks for itself. We manage our balance sheet, I believe, prudently, and Zaf will cover that when he goes through the numbers. But we certainly have headroom for further expansion in our balance sheet. And then lastly, sustainability. Key for us. We're a fishing business. We've got to protect the resources out there.
Not only the resources we fish, but the resources we buy again, so we certainly do an in-depth analysis of all the customers that are supplying us to make sure that they are not only sustainable, but within regulated norms of not using child labor, not practices which we would be frowned upon, so that is essentially the investment case behind Oceana, so let's cover this year, and I was thinking about it. I mean, this year has been a solid performance, not a phenomenal performance. It could have been a phenomenal performance, but it's a really solid performance built on the last two years we've had consistent growth. It could have been better, but like our business, it doesn't all fire at one stage. I'd love every part of our business to fire together, and hopefully one day it will happen.
But again, it talks to the diversity of our business. We're not one species or one geography or one business. We're across the board. So we had a really good performance out of Lucky Star within an environment where consumers were really constrained. And I'll show you some graphs when I get to the Lucky Star business about the general food business over the last two years and how it has struggled. So good performance from Lucky Star with strong growth in margin. Wild Caught business struggled. Very disappointing Wild Caught, driven mainly by our horse mackerel business. The two horse mackerel businesses in Namibia and South Africa both struggled this year. Hake had a reasonable year, and squid and lobster are still small, but certainly delivered their part. But really, the pullback on Wild Caught came from the horse mackerel business.
Fish meal and Africa business, and you'll see the numbers slightly down on last year, but within the context of where we are, a pleasing performance. And I'll talk a little bit about that. And then obviously our U.S. business, phenomenal performance. And again, driven by the oil pricing, which drove this performance. But I always say this wasn't luck that we put ourselves in a position that we spent enormous CapEx over the last couple of years building that factory up. We saw the price of oil going up with the Peruvian catch being short, and we took advantage of it both in 2023 and 2024, and an element of 2025. We know it's going to normalize, and I'll talk a little bit about normalization and where it'll go, where we think it'll go over this year. So phenomenal performance out of Daybrook.
And then lastly, what was key, we increased our CapEx spend this year up to ZAR 650 million. And that is double what our normal CapEx spend is. But what is important is that CapEx spend went into two businesses, the two businesses where we believe there's opportunity. Wild Caught, in terms of upgrading vessels, making them more effective, increasing their output capacity, making them more reliable, less likely to break down. And then in the fish meal and oil Africa business, where the investment in the CapEx over the last 15, 20 years has been lacking in investing in those plants and machinery, and they have aged. And we've made a conscious decision to invest heavily, not only in just replacing parts, but in upgrading parts. So for instance, the boiler plant where we spent ZAR 100 million.
ZAR 100 million was not just to replace an old boiler with a new boiler. That new boiler has improved output and power consumption and reduction in oil by 30%, so there's an element of improvement in that CapEx, and we've spent it on both the vessels, so where we think there's the CapEx is very, very targeted, and it's a long-term CapEx. It'll take two or three years to see the real benefit come through, so let me go through the individual pillars, and Wild Caught. I mean, it's the first year ever we've seen an operating loss in this business. Very disappointing. Operating loss of ZAR 53 million versus ZAR 127 million, and you'll know in the history that this business is capable of a lot more. Again, that business really driven by the horse mackerel business.
Overall, between the two businesses, there was a ZAR 250 million turnaround in those businesses, which has really driven this performance. Let me give you some insights into this. It was driven by the DESERT DIAMOND. As you know, DESERT DIAMOND is the only midwater trawler that operates in South Africa. It is the only dedicated trawler. The other horse mackerel operators catch it as a bycatch on their hake vessels, and we do as well. In December of last year, we had a breakdown, a major breakdown in the stern tube. Stern tube seals needed replaced. We tried to fix it, and it was impossible. Those things don't come off the shelf. We went and ordered one. It takes four months to manufacture. When it was almost here, we had problems with dry dock space.
There's limited dry dock space in the Cape Town Port, even in the country's port, and with the delay, we then decided to pull all maintenance forward and do the proper upgrade instead of doing it later this year, so we literally lost nine months of the year, and then at the end of the year, we put the vessel back at sea. As you know, resources on the East Coast have been affected by the La Niña effect. All of the species there have been poor. All the catch rates have been poor, and when she went back there, certainly we could see the horse mackerel on the sonar, but it was either close in shore outside of our catching zone or very hard on the bottom, and we couldn't put a midwater trawler on the bottom. It's very rocky there.
You put a midwater trawler too close to the bottom, you tear the bottom of the net, so we know the resources there, but effectively, that business made a massive loss, and it's difficult. There's always the debate, tie the vessel up. If you tie the vessel up, you don't know where the fish are there, so you've got to balance that, and that vessel runs at ZAR 1 million a day. You're fishing out there for 30 days, and you catch zero. The numbers add up very quickly. What we have done, myself and the West Coast team, decided to move the horse mackerel to Namibia. She left for Namibia, and she's catching currently in the Namibian waters. We have excess quota there on the Namibian side. She is doing reasonably well. Catch rates are also under a little bit of strain there, but at least she's not losing money.
We will make a call sometime in the early part of the new year to bring that vessel back. The beauty is in Namibia. You don't have to flag the vessel, the Namibian flag. We can send an SA flag vessel to Namibia and catch horse mackerel there, and we can bring her back. The plan is certainly the resource is in a reasonable state. We need that resource to move. As the La Niña moves to El Niño, we see the waters cooling a bit. We should see horse mackerel move back into its traditional fishing grounds, and we'll use that opportunity, knowing that the vessel doesn't have to go into dry dock for at least 12 months. The next time it'll go to dry dock will be in 2026. On the Namibian side, again, as you can see, catch rates and fishing days.
So we were very effective in terms of fishing days. We had more fishing days last year. So the vessels operated effectively, didn't break down, were there. But unfortunately, catch rates dropped down. It's a function of what we're seeing in the SA waters with climate change and the La Niña effect. So we saw drop-off in catch rates. And we had a massive increase in fuel. So certainly didn't make a loss, but the performance was certainly a lot lower than last year on the Namibian side. The market remained strong across the board. The West African market, if we could supply more horse mackerel, the market is hungry for products. The pricing is still very, very strong.
The key for this business is obviously maintenance, make sure that the refit we did on DESERT DIAMOND and that vessel breaking down and not being able to get it to sea, that's on our shoulders. The catch rates and the state of the biomass certainly is something we believe will come right. I certainly believe that this business will do a lot better in the coming year. On our hake side, a good performance relative to last year, which was poor. Again, we hadn't spent on the vessels. Over the last two years, we've spent extensively on vessels, upgrading factory components, refrigeration components, converting freon gas, which is a gas that's being phased out to ammonia, and investing in those vessels. This business did reasonably well. Not as well as I'd hoped, but we've really got those vessels right for going forward.
Even on pricing there, you'll see the pricing there, ZAR 50 per kilo versus ZAR 53. A little bit misleading that. The reason being is European pricing is actually very strong. That is a combination of mix. We sell about half of the product to Europe. The bigger size we sell to Europe in euros. The smaller size we sell in South Africa. What happened is we had a change in mix, more smaller size than larger size. Overall, size for size, the market has moved up. So we've seen an increase both in South Africa and in Europe in apples with apples pricing. So very positive performance from hake. But I still believe that this business is going to do a lot better. Hence the investment in this. We've just completed the REALEKA. We've done some.
It only went back to sea after its major upgrade in late September, so those results will come through, and the fleet is, I think, ready for next year. The other positive thing on hake is that the authorities, DAFF, have increased the quota for next year, so there's a 4.1% increase in hake TAC for next year. Hopefully, that translates into improved catch rates, and so we have plenty of product to catch, more so than we've got this year. Now it's all about keeping those vessels at sea and driving that performance. Two smaller parts of our business, squid and lobster, but squid is an interesting one, and I want to talk a little bit about squid, so you're aware, we acquired additional vessels, five new vessels and 77 permits on the squid side to supplement our own. We've almost doubled our capacity in squid.
Squid is a short-lived species, lives for about two years, but very cyclical. So when it comes back, it comes back very strongly. Highly sought after in Europe. After Moroccan squid, it is the highest value squid in the world. And it all goes to Europe. 100% of the squid goes to Europe. And the market really appreciates the squid. We believe that we can upgrade. So you can see the figures there on catch rates increase. And that 377 number that you see there, what that means is every man every day catches 377 kilos per day per- sea- day. So there's two components to this. How much does he catch per day and how many days we can keep it at sea? And both components would be more effective if we've kept the vessels at sea for longer.
You can see the blue graph, which is our apples to apples, our old vessels versus our old vessels last year, and the top one is the new vessels that have come on. What happened is our season, the squid season runs, and it's broken in different components, but normally, the peak season is from November to January when we catch most of our squid. You catch 80% of your squid in that period. Last year, we had a shocking year in the beginning of the year, and then the authorities agreed, instead of closing in March, to open in April. In April, we made up all of the catches that we'd lost in December in one month, and at the same time, we brought on our new acquisition. The signs are certainly good that we've got the capacity now to drive that business.
I see that business becoming a bigger component of the Wild Caught business. It is small at the moment, but it is growing. We have invested in a new vessel. It's currently being built now, a squid vessel. All of our 10 vessels at the moment are monohull vessels. Monohulls are less effective than cats, catamarans, because you've got wider catching space, more men along the side. You can cover the pod of squid a lot more effectively. That vessel is being built in South Africa, in St Helena Bay. There's a boat builder, a fiberglass boat builder. We're building it to the latest specs. That should come on stream probably about March, April next year, when that vessel will then replace two of our monohulls and put those permits. Effectively, they are more effective at catching more squid per day per sea day.
The plan would be to upgrade those vessels and change the monohulls to squid catamarans over time. Good performance. On the two smaller species, West Coast and South Coast, South Coast, as I've always said, is a deep-water species, not susceptible to poaching, very well-managed resource, continuously growing. It is a nice business. We're a small player in there. Opportunity for us to grow that sector, grow our presence in that sector. We'll continue. It makes a healthy, continuous small contribution to the Wild Caught business. West Coast, I've said it many times before, I don't see this resource lasting. It's been highly poached. Funnily enough, DAFF, I don't know why, and I'll quite categorically say I think they were wrong. They've increased the TAC this year. There's a small increase in TAC.
They say that the poaching is under control and is stabilized, and they've given us an increase. So nice for us, but we manage this business on a variable basis. It doesn't have a high fixed cost. So if there's an increase, there's some upside. But it is concerning that West Coast, long- term, I don't believe poaching is under control. Then Lucky Star Foods. Again, this is call it, and I want to emphasize it because it is important. It is now Lucky Star Foods. It's broader than just canned pilchards. Great performance, operating profit up almost 24%. More important is operating margin up from 7.6% to 9.3%. And that was the philosophy that we wanted to do. The balance between volume growth, value growth, and margin is important in this business. And Lawrence and I ourselves debate this on an ongoing basis.
How far we could have put a price increase through? And I'll just show you the figures. So as you can see there, on the top graph there, that orange line, we put in a 3.3% PR this year. Very conscious about where the consumer is. Very conscious that we had to recover some of our input costs, but we couldn't recover at all. Trying to manage that selling price on shelf on an ongoing basis. Right now, Lucky Star Foods, which is the bulk brand that's out there, sells on an everyday basis somewhere between ZAR 26 and ZAR 29 if there's no promotion. On promotion, with a lot of input from the trade, it can be anything from just under ZAR 20, ZAR 19.99 to ZAR 22. And that's what drives volume. 70% of these sales are on promotion.
If we breach, and we will breach the ZAR 30 mark at some stage, we would like to try and hold that back as far as possible, and obviously, we're looking at IQF chicken. We're looking at polony. We're looking at heads and feet, chicken heads and feet. And it's all a relative game. How close can we get? We would like to bring some, so the margin increase has been partly because we've been more effective in our marketing and sales side and the efficiencies that Suleiman and his team have got through the factories. If you look at the production there, we produced 4 million cartons this year out of the factory versus 4.8 million, and that was a deliberate strategy. At the beginning of the year, we decided to close the factories for a longer time.
And we invested quite heavily in those factories in yield and production output efficiencies, auto packers, some auto lines that made our seamers and fillers a lot more streamlined. And that's come through in the performance. So part of that margin growth comes through efficiencies in the factory. Obviously, when you produce 4 million cartons, when the capacity of those two factories is close to 5.5 million, you're not recovering your total fixed costs. So we lost that recovery of fixed costs, but we made it up in the efficiencies in the second part of the year. And we drove volume. So a volume growth or a volume decline of 3.3%, I think is within the context of South Africa and where the consumer is, is a very healthy position. Last year was 9.6 million cartons. We were 9.3 million cartons this year.
Given where the consumer is, I'm very comfortable with it, given that we've seen a nice increase in operating profit and operating margin, and then stock holding, so this shows our opening stock, and we are in a very healthy position, and it's twofold. One, the buying patterns that we've normally done over the years have switched slightly. The Moroccan, North African, Moroccan, Mauritanian resources have stumbled a bit this year, and we haven't bought as much from them. We've bought a lot from the North Pacific, the Japanese waters up there. Trouble is the Japanese waters have a very small season. They effectively catch for four months of the year, so in those four months, you've got to make sure that you've got enough product, and we've invested in that resource. So right now, we've almost got half a year of stock.
If you take 10 million cartons being our output, we've got 4.8 million. It comes at a cost of working capital, but we believe that it's well worth it in terms of investing. And I will say to you, I just saw the figures this morning. Lucky Star have had a phenomenal start to this year. In the two months, October and November, they've sold just over 2.1 million cartons. They are 10% ahead of last year's performance in volume terms. Obviously, the margin will come through. So very good position for us to be in. Obviously, we continue to buy frozen product throughout the year. The second point, and I just want to go back one slide. If you look at that bottom slide, top right, on the right-hand side, that 22%, that is 22% of own catch that contributes to the production of the two canneries.
That's a key component. Obviously, own fish is cheaper than buying frozen. We obviously have a catch cost, but it's cheaper than buying frozen product out there. The 22% is a positive sign. A little bit misleading because obviously we produce less here. So it's 22% of 4 million versus 22% of 4.8 million, but it is an upward trend, and if you look at the graph here, this is the pilchard resource. So the pilchard resource is actually in a very healthy position and growing. The more we can catch of our own product and the less we have to import, it gives us a lot more margin enhancement and a production in three-quarters because that product comes in fresh. It's easier to produce, and you get better yields and output for it. So it's a double-edged sword, so I'm certainly very positive about where the pilchard resource is.
This is the graph that I was talking about, food inflation and food trends over the last year. This goes from October 2022 to October 2024. The blue graphs are the inflation, the price increases of the broader food category. As you can see, in 2022, food inflation was going through the roof, 18%, 16%, and slowly, so you saw value growth over those years. But on average, most of the sectors saw volume declines. But what did Lucky Star? Lucky Star last year had a volume increase, and this year, slight volume decline. But within the context of this, I think it's a very, very good performance. Only in the latter part of this year, April 2024, did we see general food inflation come down quite dramatically. We saw CPIX now below 3% a couple of days ago. But food inflation's come right down.
And we're starting to see volume growth across the board. And I think we will see volume. And I think this trend is very indicative of where Lucky Star will be. Again, we've got to be very careful. Lawrence has planned a price increase sometime March, April next year. We haven't agreed exactly what that percentage will be. And that will be key. What will be key is what the other proteins and competitive products are before we put that through. There's no doubt the consumer can conceptualize. But we want to drive a combination of increased volume, increased operating profit, and a sustainable margin of around 10% on the canned fish side. The two businesses we invested in, and these are margin enhancing. So certainly, we would expect improved margins out of the two businesses. The first one is our canned chicken business.
It produces, and it was bought in Graaff-Reinet. We bought it in the middle of last year, middle of the last financial year. We bedded everything down. We bought the business in the middle of last year. We concluded the deal a month ago where we bought the land as well. So we now own the property, the buildings, and the assets of the business. Huge opportunity for expansion. This business was traditionally only in the school feeding schemes. When we took over the business, they supplied the Gauteng and Western Cape regions. There's massive opportunity. As you know, the state feeds close to 10 million kids a day across the country. We're only supplying a fraction of those. Chicken livers, high protein, gravy. The gravy that we use is a natural extension in terms of a meal. So we think there's a massive opportunity.
And we've obviously, the old brand under the Pasha's, we've converted that brand now to Lucky Star, whether it goes into school feeding schemes or, and we've just put it into retail trade now. Our first retail offering went through into the Botswana market. Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe are big meat-eating countries, more so than fish-eating, although they eat a lot of Lucky Star. But we thought we'd launch this brand in our retail trade in the cross-border country. And sorry, just one point. None of the numbers that you saw for Lucky Star, that ZAR 426 million, nothing came from this. So there was a small profit on canned meat and break-even on the liver side. So this is all upward opportunity to deliver some performance out of these two businesses.
On the corned meat side, that is a new plant we put in St Helena Bay, a kilometer away from our canned fish factory. It was an old lobster factory. We spent a full year putting it in. We've just put a second, not a second, but we've put a corned meat, a corned luncheon roll meat roll into the line into the plant. So it's not only doing corned meat, it's doing luncheon roll, which is a chicken-based, a fillet chicken-based product, very, very popular. So again, it's about ramping this business up. This obviously business, we have competitors out there. One of the majors is a major competitor of ours. And like any competitor, they haven't taken it lying down. And they're fighting us hard, which is good. In some sense, it makes us be very conscious about our pricing and where we are.
But what is positive, it'll grow the market. I know when we were in it on a contract basis two years ago, the market was a lot higher. When we exited and then transferred the machine, it took us a year to get it down. The market shrunk. So I believe this is good for the market and grow the market. So again, two non-fish line items that we're putting in and, more important, controllable. Not susceptible to weather, biomass, hurricanes, all of that nonsense that we have. So this business is a lot more controllable. Obviously, it's dynamic and Lawrence has got a big task about him, but it is a great business that we can grow. So just to end off, and I think it's worth, again, and I've said this before, Lucky Star officially the number one iconic brand in the country.
Now, this is not an iconic brand relative to other food products or other pilchards or chicken. This is number one iconic brand in the country. It outperforms Coca-Cola. It outperforms our dear friend Standard Bank. It outperforms the alcohol guys. So it is the number. So it's not just a brand. It's lifestyle. People resonate with this thing. This is not begrudged food. This is something, it's a lifestyle that has become so synonymous out there. People copy us with T-shirts and shoes and handbags, and we don't get any benefit from it, but it just permeates through the culture, and our dear friend, and he was a friend, passed away recently, Tito Mboweni, and I don't know if anyone listened to his funeral and how his son brought Lucky Star into his clothing and how many positive words. So again, it's not just, it was something that resonates.
For us, the brand is so important that we need to grow that brand. We won't lose touch with our canned pilchards customers, but there's an opportunity to grow this. But we've got to be very careful not to do anything that undermines the trust that the consumer has given us. I'm not going to go and slap Lucky Star on some imported Chinese rice and stick it into it because that doesn't resonate with it. We may have some synergies in terms of distribution, but that's not what we want to do. So we've got to be very careful how we grow this brand. But it will be a focus. We've got two new segments we're into. But watch this space. It won't only be in canned and it won't only be in protein. So there are opportunities for us to grow this thing.
I think I want to take this pillar and make it a bigger contributor to the Oceana performance because it is more controllable and it's more predictable. We've got to be smart how we do it. That's Lawrence's problem. I think this is a business we can control. The new segment, this is what you haven't seen before. This is Fishmeal and Oil Africa. This is only the two fish meal operations in South Africa. As I said upfront, ZAR 80 million down 50%. Within the context of where we are, I'm not unhappy with this performance because I know what we've done in terms of investment and CapEx. I know where this business is in terms of the cycle of the biomass, both Red Eye and anchovy. I think this has huge opportunities.
The lessons that we learned in Daybrook over the last five years, we are putting in here. We've started already, and the investments that we put into this business will start paying dividends over the next two to three years. It's not a short-term fix, but it's certainly, I think this business is in a very good position, and Suleiman will testify when the amount of money, I can see the difference in his team and how they've suddenly become energized because they were criticized hard because of machinery broke down, but it was only 80 years old. How do you stop a machinery breaking down when it's 80 years old? Now those boilers were almost 80 years old, so it's that kind of investment which was long overdue and we've put in now, and those will deliver returns, so generally, just we're at a low ebb of the anchovy.
Just the production wasn't exceptional. Price, we obviously had the same advantages Daybrook had on pricing of oil and meal. Pricing went through the roof, and a little bit of oil that we had, we took advantage of it, but it is really driven by the lack of volume. Fishmeal and oil business is scalable. You need to get volume. It's a high fixed cost. You need to get the volume, so volumes were down. When we closed the cannery for the longer production, the trimmings that we could have put into that were down, but it's still a reasonable performance. This is an important graph here. We start with the far right-hand side, the anchovy recruitment. Now, that is the TAC that we get from government. We get a TAC for anchovy. Generally, the industry only catches bottom left.
As you can see, 69% of the TAC is caught every year. We don't catch as much as we can, and hence the investment. The lesson we learned in the U.S., it's not about vessels. I can put double the amount of vessels. I won't catch double the amount because when they come to land, they don't have enough offloading facilities. We've got to increase the ability for our factories to turn those vessels around quickly, and because the nature of the South African fishing conditions, in particular on pelagic vessels, which are small vessels, can't operate in high seas, two or three meters swell, and they can't operate because they have a very low draft. What tends to happen, you have very short windows of very good catching, four days of catching. Then you've got 40, 50 vessels. We have 12.
There are a whole lot of contract vessels out there that catch, and then you have vessels that are linked to factories. Those contract vessels, they're full, they go to a factory and they say, "Can you turn me around in the next 12 hours?" "No, you can't." Off they go to the next factory, so that's where we've spent the investment. Our investment is in upgrading those factories, allowing, as we did in Daybrook, increasing the stocker ponds or the tanks where we put the fish, increasing the throughput, increasing the drying capacity, increasing the storage capacity, or increasing the pumping capacity. That's what we've done over this year, so we believe that this resource, when it comes back, we'll be in a good position, and the top right-hand graph there, that biomass graph, as you can see, it's a four-year species.
It has these high peaks and low valleys. We're in a low valley now. We're expecting over the next two to three years to see that graph go up. The top left-hand one is an interesting graph. That is what is called Red Eye. That is a bycatch to anchovy. But we don't get a quota. What happens is the industry gets a total allowable catch. So the industry can catch X amount of quantity with your anchovy. And it's on an effort. It's an Olympic system. Whoever catches goes flat out. We were very successful in catching this, but still, we're only catching 70%. So 30% of the bycatch, we don't catch. So there's massive opportunity for us to drive these two businesses, but it comes with upgrading the factory.
So in context, when I say tough performance, I'm not unhappy because I know what we've done for this business. I know what the potential of this business is. Okay, then our star performance. U.S. operating profit of almost $1.2 billion. Operating profit in dollars terms of $62 million, 40% up in dollars, 46% up in, I think, margin through the roof. Great business. Again, pricing, nothing to do with us. I wish I could say I had something to do with it. This is all about Peru. What we do do is we are effective in making sure our oil is of the highest quality. And our fishmeal, we manage in terms of getting the maximum protein. Remember, in the world, there are only certain species of fish that have high omega oils. One of them is anchovy, which we catch in our country and in Peru.
Menhaden has a very high omega-3 component. Not all fish oil is high in omega-3s. The hake, for instance, the white fish, very low in omega-3s. It also produces oil, but very low. The salmon farms need high omega-3 oils. That's where the price comes through. Where the Peru collapsed, we saw the supply drop and the price go through the roof. Phenomenal performance. Just interesting where we are. We haven't put the pricing there, but pricing, as you can see, has gone up 49%. We sold 14,000 tons and just 15,000 tons of oil. I think it's, and remember that number. 15,000 tons versus 12,000 tons last year. Slightly less fishmeal. The reason we did that is we had a very high yield this year. The oil yield traditionally from Menhaden is somewhere between 8%-12%.
The overall yield for this year out of that menhaden catch was just over 12.1%, so phenomenal yields, and that's fat fish. Fat fish, more oil. Nothing we can control. Fat fish normally means there's lots of feed in the grounds and they fatten up and they catch, and then we had lower output of lower sales of meal, and that was driven by, unfortunately, poor catch rates, so we didn't have a great catching season. We had a wonderful year, but a poor catching season. Remember, we only caught 528 million fish versus the 600 million and the 700 million the previous years, and it was driven by the fact that we had two hurricanes in the year. Fortunately, none of them hit us directly, but when a hurricane comes through the Gulf of Mexico, whether it goes to Florida or further east, it affects us.
We couldn't put the boats out there. There were unusual winds. I spoke at length to François Kuttel, who's the owner of WESTBANK FISHING , which is our partner there about fishing. His comment was, "It was not about lack of fish. It was lack of shoaling of fish." What happens is with this unusual winds, the fish were there, but when you set around it, you're catching about half as than you do normally. When they're tightly knitted, you can set the whole lot and you can pump out. He is not concerned about the biomass. I'll show you some figures here. What is positive on the right-hand side is our closing stock. As you can see, we've got almost 13 million tons of oil that we carried over.
So almost the full quantity of what we sold last year, we have carried over into this year. We have committed to six million, and that order went out in October. And pricing obviously is down. I am reluctant to tell you what the pricing is because it was one particular customer, and it is price sensitive out there. But it is still a reasonable price in the context of where we were. And then we are still going to commit, obviously, we are busy negotiating for the balance of that oil to go. And we have not produced any oil this year. So there is still a lot of room if we have a reasonable catch going into here to increase the volume to make up some of the differences in price. And that is a key component.
So the focus on, then the one other thing that the fishermen reported, and again, fishermen's tale is, they will tell you a little bit, it's always a little bit bigger. But there was a strong sign of juveniles this year in the inshore zones of either the river or the inshore zone of the coast. Now, a strong sign of juveniles means juveniles grow up to adults. So certainly the signs are better. And then the last graph I want to show you is the biomass. So the state conducted a biomass and resource study, late 2023 into 2024. And the assessment came through as the resources in the most healthier state it's ever been. 5.4 million tons, that was in late 2023, 2024. So there's no concern about resources. It's all about catchability.
So what I'm saying is, and let me just talk Peru, and then I'll give you kind of a summary of what I think about America. So Peru has come back to normal. And you see the graph on the right-hand side. The first season was average relative to the long- term, not fantastic, the yellow bar. They started the second season, which happened about two months ago, and it's been okay. The expectation is it'll reach normal levels. So it's not a phenomenal year. It's back to normal. The positive thing for our side is the oil yield that they're seeing right now, which is normally around 2%, is sitting at 1.6%. Now, that's still early days. And Anthony, I know you read the Promar report, and that's early.
It's interesting when that Promar report comes out every week. It came out this week, and that 1.6 suddenly we had inquiries about oil. It was dead quiet, so the market watches it very, very carefully. I don't know exactly where that price is going to end up. Our view, it'll be somewhere between historical levels, $2,000 a ton, and the $5,800 a ton we got this year. Where? Is it three? Is it three and a half? Is it four? I don't know. We don't certainly believe it'll go down. It does depend on what happens to Peru. The key for us is we've got the stock. We've got healthy opening stocks of fishmeal. We've got healthy stocks of oil. I think the resource will kick back.
We've got to put effort on WESTBANK, our partners, to drive throughput and catch more fish. One other component that I want to mention is the fishmeal. Fishmeal pricing has been disappointing, and fishmeal pricing is driven, as I said, this is a commodity market by the aquaculture industry, in particular in China. Oil is driven by the aquaculture industry and the salmon farms in Scandinavia and Norway. Aquaculture, the main buyers of fishmeal are the aquaculture industry in China. China has not come out of COVID properly, so there's been a lack of consumer demand across everything. Chinese consumers, as you know, are intelligent people. They're very conservative, and when there's a bit of headwind, they close up and tighten their belts and stop spending. That's not only on durables, it's across the board, so the consumption of seafood in China has slowed down.
They're being very conscious about it. The moment that picks up, and I expect it to pick up. I heard a conference the other day, and they were talking about Chinese stimulus, government stimulus in terms of interest rates and a number of things they're trying to drive consumer demand in China. The moment that picks up, the aquaculture industry will start ramping up production. When that does, we'll see the pull-through. Whether that's going to happen next year or the year after, we'll see. But it definitely drives the pricing of fishmeal in particular. We're fortunate that we're slightly isolated because we sell most of our fishmeal to the pet food market in the U.S. 80% of our sales go to the pet food market, and that is fairly stable, but it still follows the price band.
If the fishmeal price goes down, they're not going to overpay us. They certainly like the continuity. They like the fact that we've got meal right on their door and we can deliver it tomorrow. But they're not going to overprice relative to the market. So it does follow the band. So that gives you the context of the divisions. Zaf, I think you can come present the group. And then I'll close off, and then we can do some questions.
Thank you, Neville. This is, for those of you online, this is the AI version of me. Right. Oceana has delivered solid results for the financial year. This follows our strong performance in the prior- year and continues the upward trend that we've seen over the past four years. Our detailed financial statements are available for those of you that are so inclined.
There's an appendix to this presentation as well as a results booklet, which is available on our website. Just a reminder that the results are reported on a continuing basis, excluding CCS Logistics, which were sold during the prior- year. Revenue, as you've heard, has increased to ZAR 10.1 billion. We've crossed the 10 billion mark for the first time. And this is primarily due to strong fish oil sales together with improved hake and squid sales volume, as Neville mentioned. This was offset by lower fish meal sales volumes due to reduced catches in South Africa and the U.S., as well as decreased horse mackerel sales volumes. Operating profit increased by 9.5% to ZAR 1.6 billion. And then headline earnings per share on a continuing basis increased by 13.5% to ZAR 9.176 per share. This was supported by higher U.S. earnings, which is obviously taxed at a lower rate.m
Quite pleased with the election result in the U.S. On a total basis, headline earnings per share was up by 17% in line with our earnings guidance that we provided earlier. Total dividends increased by 13.8% from ZAR 4.35 in 2023 to ZAR 4.95 in 2024, in line with the growth in our headline earnings per share. The Group's net Debt to EBITDA ratio increased to 1.3x compared to 1.2x at the end of September 2023, primarily due to the increase in capital expenditure. That increase doesn't tell the full story. I'll explain a little bit later the makeup of that net Debt to EBITDA. On a five-year operating profit basis, you can see the consistent operating profit growth over the past four years shows the benefit of a diversified business across species, geographies, and currencies. Neville spoke about the diversity in our business.
The growth is primarily due to strong demand and pricing across our product range, supported by investment in the business. Neville spoke about the investments that we've put in. The group's segmental reporting has been revised, as you mentioned, to align with the operational structure and growth strategy of the business. Lucky Star Foods and Fishmeal and Fish Oil Africa are now segregated and disclosed as two segments, increasing the number of segments from three to four. If you look at the graph on the right-hand side, you can see for the comparative 2023, we've also split out the two businesses. What you see in brackets there is the combined business as you would compare it to the years 2020 to 2022. The group's operating margin continued to increase from 15.3% in 2021 to 16.2% in the year under review.
Lucky Star Foods improved from 7.6% to 9.3%, and Daybrook rose from 30% to 39.2%. This was offset by declining margins in both the Wild Caught Seafood and the African fishmeal and fish oil businesses. Operating profit has grown steadily from ZAR 1.1 billion in 2021 to over ZAR 1.6 billion in 2024, reflecting stronger gross profit margins at Daybrook and Lucky Star Foods, coupled with disciplined cost management. The growth in profit was primarily driven by Daybrook delivering record earnings, margin expansion at Lucky Star Foods, and a good recovery in hake operations. The group's performance was negatively impacted by weaker results from the African fishmeal and fish oil business due to lower volumes and poor horse mackerel performance resulting from a major vessel breakdown and lower catch rates.
Gross profit margin increased by 320 basis points to 31.8%, attributable to a favorable mix of higher margin fish oil sales and enhanced margins from Lucky Star Foods due to efficiencies and cost savings generated by the recent cannery upgrades. Margins were negatively impacted by lower catch and production volumes in both the fishmeal and fish oil and horse mackerel operations. Net interest expense increased to ZAR 226 million from ZAR 192 million in the prior-y ear. This was primarily due to an increase in borrowings, which I'll talk to a bit later, as a result of low cash operating profit from the South African operations and higher capital expenditure and working capital investment. The effective tax rate reduced from 23.7% to 20.8% due to the higher contribution of the U.S. fishmeal and fish oil business, which is taxed at a lower rate.
Profit after tax increased by 12.5% to ZAR 1.1 billion, driven by the improved operating performance and favorable tax rate, partially offset by higher interest expenses. I'm not going to ask him to move the slide again. Let's see if it works. There we go. The increase in inventory days was largely due to the higher frozen fish inventory carried by Lucky Star and the increased fish oil inventory carried by Daybrook. These two divisions comprise the bulk of our working capital, representing 91% in value terms. As you know, it allows us to generate strong cash as a result of the working capital that we carry. A large proportion of supply into our business is cyclical. So we manage our inventory and working capital on a proactive basis. Lucky Star inventory levels closed 20.2% higher at 4.8 million cartons equivalent.
This was due to the increased procurement of frozen fish imports that Neville spoke about in the fourth quarter in particular to secure supply and result in four months' finished goods inventory to service demand. Total inventory levels at Daybrook closed 5.2% higher with a higher mix of fish oil inventory, which increased from 8,812 tons to 13,091 tons. This 48.6% volume improvement was primarily due to fish oil yields materially increasing by 400 basis points to 12.1% for the year, as Neville mentioned. High-value fish oil sales and higher hake sales in August and September were primarily responsible for the increase in debtors' days, while creditors' days reduced due to higher levels of frozen fish procured and settled in the fourth quarter. From a capital point of view, as you're all aware, there's been significant capital investment in our business.
This increased to ZAR 645 million, which included strategic investments in South Africa totaling ZAR 215 million to modernize the canneries, fishmeal and fish oil plants, boiler infrastructure, as well as to commission the new canned meat facility on the West Coast. A further ZAR 77 million was spent on the DESERT DIAMOND vessel, covering essential repairs and expedited dry docking costs, and ZAR 27 million on expanding squid fishing capacity through the acquisition of five squid vessels. The remainder of the capital expenditure was primarily invested in replacement assets to maintain existing infrastructure. This included investments of circa ZAR 125 million. You can see that little block on the left-hand side. This comes with efficiency benefits, which we expect to realize over the next few years. Following a year of significant capital expenditure, the group will focus now on realizing the benefits of this investment.
As a result, capital expenditure is expected to revert to normalized levels going forward, with ZAR 340 million expected to be spent in FY 2025. From a debt point of view, as I mentioned earlier, while the net Debt to EBITDA ratio went from 1.2x to 1.3x, the real story is that Oceana's net debt increased by ZAR 446 million to ZAR 2.6 billion at the end of the period. This compares with ZAR 2 billion in the prior- year. The group successfully refinanced its sustainability-linked South African debt during the year, and I must thank the partners in the room that made that possible. We converted ZAR 700 million to long-term debt and increased the group's total facilities to support our capital investment program. This included ZAR 100 million primarily for the squid and canned chicken acquisition opportunities to drive growth.
Short-term facilities in South Africa increased by ZAR 258 million to finance working capital requirements. The group's net debt position benefited from capital repayments, which included a further $2.5 million prepayment in the U.S., following the U.S. $15 million prepayment in the prior- year. This was further enhanced by a favorable currency translation effect on U.S. dollar-denominated debt and high cash balances due to strong U.S. cash generation. U.S. net debt reduced from $1.2 billion to $838 million at a cover of one times, while South African net debt increased from ZAR 884 million to ZAR 1.7 billion at a cover of 2.7x . At a group level, net Debt to EBITDA increased to 1.3 times, up slightly from last year's 1.2x . The group complied with all lender covenant requirements relating to both its South Africa and U.S. debt.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the abilities we have as a group is that we can generate significant amounts of cash. The US cash operating profit increased by ZAR 419 million to ZAR 1.3 billion for the year, while the South African contribution decreased by ZAR 242 million to ZAR 707 million. Higher working capital requirements of ZAR 517 million outweighed the improvement in cash operating profit to ZAR 2 billion. As a result, cash generated from operations decreased to ZAR 1.5 billion compared to ZAR 1.7 billion generated last year. Free cash conversion dropped significantly due to the impact of the increase in capital expenditure and higher working capital during the year. This is expected to reverse as capital expenditure returns to more normal levels and the buildup of inventory unwinds in the coming year.
Giving a view of the performance of return on net assets and our dividends per share on a five-year basis, we use return on net assets, or RONA, as a key performance indicator for Oceana. It is defined as operating profit plus interest received as a function of assets less non-interest-bearing debt. The group's RONA on a continuing basis, on a continuing operations basis that excludes CCS Logistics, improved to 14% and is the highest since the 12.8% achieved in 2020. Operating profit has grown steadily from ZAR 1.2 billion in 2021 to over ZAR 1.6 billion in 2024, reflecting the increase in operating margin from 15.3% to 16.2% over the same period. A final dividend of ZAR 3.00 per share has been declared, bringing the total dividend for the year to ZAR 4.95 per share.
This is an increase of 13.8% on the ZAR 4.35 per share paid last year, which is in line with the growth in headline earnings per share. You will notice that our dividend yield is above 7%. From a capital allocation point of view and where we are as a business, following two years of strategic capital expenditure and acquisitions, Oceana will prioritize growth opportunities while maintaining sustainable shareholder returns and prudent debt management. The group's current focus will be on bedding down the capital spent to modernize its operations and to deliver sustainable efficiencies, cost savings, and product quality. Oceana returned dividends of ZAR 669 million to shareholders, balancing shareholder returns with growth prospects and available cash. Prudent debt management remains another key focus area.
We have taken concrete steps to reduce U.S. dollar debt and will now prioritize reducing our South African debt post the capital expenditure spent in the current financial year. This will be made easier with the expectation of lower interest rate levels in both the U.S. and South Africa. The group is well placed to pursue organic and acquisitive growth opportunities that deliver targeted returns, driving long-term value creation. And a bit like Rassie Erasmus, I mean, what do we have to do to win Coach of the Year? Thank you, and I hand back to Neville, who will cover our outlook.
Thank you, Zaf. So just one slide, and I just want to kind of encapsulate what we've spoken about so far. So Lucky Star Foods, what is the focus this year? It's not only this year, it's over the next two, three years.
So fish consumption is still a very, very important component. How do we drive fish consumption? I certainly believe that consumers are in a better space. From a confidence point of view, not necessarily a better space from affordability, but we've got to drive consumption in our canned fish per sector. We spent the money. We've bedded down the corned meat, and the chicken livers business, and we've integrated it into our business. The focus now is to deliver on that return. We've put some healthy CapEx in there, and it's really got to be focused on how do we put that. Lawrence has put some dedicated teams into Graaff-Reinet to drive that business, and the focus will be not only in driving volume sales, but it's a balance, a healthy balance between margin in the food schemes and the retail side.
So a focus on costs, focus on market penetration, focus on delivering that product. Remember, it's a new product. Consumers don't know it. Certainly, school feeding schemes like it, but we haven't tested it. So the first lot went into Botswana. We will see how that return, how that acceptance goes, and we believe it'll be good. And that obviously is margin enhancing. Then just obviously the whole brand iconic status, how do we capitalize on that brand? How do we take that forward? You may have noticed on the Boxer shelves, this is a co-promotion project that we've done with Boxer, and currently they have two-minute noodles under the Lucky Star brand. It's not our product. We've lent the branding rights to them. They want to test it on there. They were thinking about going with a Boxer house brand. Their choice was, let's go with a known brand.
Remember, Boxer is traditionally, and obviously the listing is coming up, a house brand store. They compete heavily with house brands, and they pick one or two key top-line branded items to put in their stores like Lucky Star, and they've gone with a two-minute noodle. It is interesting to see how that develops, and it certainly will give us an insight into whether this is an opportunity for us to go independently of Boxer. It is that type of product which we are doing, and it is out there. Then, obviously on Saldanha side, we've put a healthy amount of CapEx into those two canneries. It is now delivering on those upgrades and getting the additional throughput. It is not only on yields, but it is additional throughput, volume throughput, and quality. We believe we can improve on the quality that goes out there.
Key driver under the Lucky Star side. On the Wild Caught side, it's all about driving performance. We've put a lot of CapEx into three or four of the vessels, both on the horse mackerel side and on the hake side and on the squid side, and it's about driving performance. How do we maximize the return through the additional effort that we put into those vessels? Squid businesses, I'm very excited about that squid business. I think it offers huge opportunity. I see us not stopping here. I believe there's opportunity to grow that squid business. It is not a highly capital fishing business. It's fairly low capital. It has the ability to switch off. So the variable element of the catching cost is a lot lower than, for instance, the DESERT DIAMOND. When the DESERT DIAMOND, even when she was alongside, the crew are key.
We couldn't let the crew go. We've got to keep the vessel going. You've got to keep the vessel running. And so that vessel runs on a monthly basis, tied up ZAR 10 million. So it's not a cheap vessel to run when there's no fish. Squid is very different. Squid, because they're fairly inexpensive vessels, don't need very high capital when there isn't a fishing season, you're not chewing up capital. And when the fishing side really performs, you can ramp it up quickly. So definitely an industry we want to grow into. On the demand and pricing side, and I've said this many times before, the Wild Caught species over the last 50 years, if you look at Wild Caught, and they call it captured species in FAO reports, have been fairly steady, around 50 million tons. So one species goes up, one species goes down.
But generally, it is fairly stable. And obviously, consumer growth and population growth continues to grow, and people are looking for sustainable captured seafood. Aquaculture is a supplement to that, but it's not as in high demand. So people would prefer to buy a Wild Caught Cape hake as opposed to a pangasius or a sea bream or tilapia, which is necessary. And so there'll be a continuous growth in demand, and it'll outstrip supply. Hence, we believe there'll be a continuous growth in pricing. It moves in bands, but there's an upward trend. So we've got to take advantage of that, drive that. And then obviously, DESERT DIAMOND, where do we fish that? It's a highly profitable vessel when the resource responds. We do believe the resource is there, whether she'll come back into our fishing grounds. So in the early part of the new year, we will evaluate.
Our hake vessels are fishing on it now, and I saw the report last night from one of the vessels, the Sandile, and she caught a sizable quantity of horse mackerel. Quite hard on the bottom, quite close in shore, but there's a lot of horse mackerel around there. The question is, when does that start moving back into the deeper waters where the midwater trawler can operate? So lots of opportunity there. On the fish meal and oil side, obviously, Africa I've spoken about, 30% undercaught, got the factories in place. It's now about delivering it. As the anchovy season comes back in, we want to attract more of the contract vessels, the independent operators out there in Saldanha's business, to bring more of them to our factory.
We want to make sure that our factories, when the weather is right, and we've got our factories right now. We've modernized the Laaiplek factory in terms of quality and yield and throughput. We've upgraded the type of machinery to try and take advantage of that 30% which we are undercaught in either anchovy and Red Eye, and hopefully the anchovy season continues to perform. The research ship that belongs to DAFF, the Africana, is currently in dry dock having its survey. It should be going out in the next couple of weeks, and it will do a six-week survey between now and the end of the year, which will determine the TAC for both pilchards and anchovy next year. We don't know what it is. I'm positively confident about pilchards. It'll either be the same.
As you see, it went from 39,000 tons last year to 65,000 tons this current season, and hopefully that goes up higher. The anchovy, it'll be interesting to see where that comes out, and that survey will give us an indication, but again, I say these investments that we've put into these two businesses is not about next year only. This is a long-term business. We're investing to take more control of the uncontrollables. On the U.S. side, again, we've done a lot there. So there won't be a lot of capital investment. The last capital investment we're putting in is in our storage warehouse. We've gone from the front end, being the offloading sites, the offloading at quayside, all the way through the factory, and the back end now is our warehousing. We don't have sufficient warehousing. We currently rent two warehouses in the U.S. up the Mississippi River.
It is to try and reduce that, so we take some of that cost out and put it down. So we're busy doing that at the moment. That'll be finished next year. But that factory is running probably the most efficient factory in the world at the moment, producing 120 tons an hour of fish meal. Very, very good. It's now about trying to take advantage of the resource if it starts recovering, which we do believe it will. And then pricing. I mean, pricing, we don't control it. I think the reason we invested in this business is because we think long-term demand will outstrip supply. We still believe that. Growth in the aquaculture industry, food security, the need to produce food to feed the world is going to continue. Aquaculture is growing across the world.
We know the salmon farms now from Norway and Scandinavia have run out of field space. You've seen the tax, the Norwegian salmon tax, which has been introduced. They are looking at, in particular, Africa and other areas to grow their salmon farms, not only in the sea, but land-based RAS operations where they can put land-based operations. That industry continues to grow. Longer term, this is the industry. There's always been a concern and a criticism, Oceana, why aren't we not in aquaculture? We are in aquaculture. We're just indirectly in aquaculture. I don't believe in aquaculture directly invested in South Africa. There may be an opportunity for us to invest in worldwide, but certainly the species are limited in South Africa, and we just don't have the ability to scale it and compete with the Chinese in the Far East.
They just have the ability from a labor point of view, from a cost of production, from a logistics point of view to be more competitive than us, so we will not invest in aquaculture in SA, but we will look at other opportunities, and we are investing in a fund. It's an investment fund that has specialist knowledge and expertise across the world. They have offices around the world that link into new startups, in particular in innovation in seafood and innovation in aquaculture, and it'll give us a pipeline of information that we can then find the right target, the right 10X on next basa. I mean, that would be the perfect world, so we certainly believe there needs to be new innovations, new startups, and there are many, many new startups that are happening.
Cell-based technology that is taking a cell of a hake and growing it out in a 3D printer. Those kinds of things are possible out there. We want to be part of that growth. And so it's an investment in the future, and it'll take time, but it's something we are doing. So that's where we are. So pleasing results. Could have been better, but I believe it's a very pleasing result. And it gives us opportunity because of some of the underperforming businesses to make up the difference in price going forward that we're going to see in oil as it drops off. So I'm still very positive about the year coming up ahead. And thank you for joining me today and coming up and spending some time with me.