Good morning, everyone, welcome to Omnia's financial results for the year ended 31st March, 2023. Before we start with proceedings, I'd just like to take a short note that in case of emergency, please proceed to the exit on the right of the room and walk through the turnstiles in an orderly fashion onto our parking area, where we've got an assembly point, and our safety officers will provide you with further details. I would now like to introduce our Group Executive for SHEQ and Sustainability, Ditebogo Malatsi , to come through and do a safety moment for us.
Good morning, everyone. I think as part of today's safety moment, I'd like to focus on a safety issue that's often slightly overlooked, and this is stress. What we're seeing is that we've got a number of people that are, regardless of your social status, regardless of your occupational level, stress can hinder people's judgment. People are anxious, people have depression, and this is leading to safety incidents, both in the work and both in the workplace and at home. As part of Omnia's safety journey, we have a see something, say something, do something, message that underlines the way we run our safety programs. With that said, when you see that someone is struggling, when you see that someone is anxious, or they're acting out of character, say something, do something, speak to them, reach out to them.
There are a number of initiatives, internally and externally, that are available to support people that are struggling with depression and anxiety. From an internal perspective, at Omnia, we've got Reality Wellness, but I'm aware that a lot of the other corporates also have something similar, for example, I-CARE. From an external perspective, nationally, we've got the South African Depression and Anxiety Group. It's a toll-free line for people to call. Internationally, because we do operate in more than one country, there is a platform called opencounseling.com, and through this platform, you can get access to hotlines across different countries all over the world. Thank you.
Thank you, D. I'd now like to call our CEO, Seelan Gobalsamy, to present our results.
Thank you, Nerina, and thank you, Ditebogo, for doing that safety moment. For those of you who don't know, safety is one of our core values, and we want to entrench, and we'll continue to entrench safety across all of our businesses and all of the geographies we operate in. Firstly, let me welcome all of you. Welcome to all of our shareholders. Welcome to the Omnia board, the Omnia management team, our various stakeholders, banks, auditors, and to all of our staff that are listening in. Thanks for spending the time with us and listening to us talk about how our business has performed in the last financial year, but also where our business is going to in the next few years.
Let me start off by saying this is a particularly momentous occasion for us. Omnia celebrates its 70th year of making an impactful difference, of innovating, of operating in agriculture, mining, and the chemical space, and impacting the lives of so many across the African continent, but also across the world. We're proud to be standing here as a management team, custodians of this great company, and the journey that this company has been on and the contribution that we make is close to our hearts, and it's something that we believe in.
We believe in the impact that our business makes, and our job is to ensure that our business is placed and well-placed to be sustainable for the next 70 years and to grow, and to weather some of the challenging environments we have seen in the past year. If I start off, and I give you the first liner of our results, I think Omnia has delivered an incredibly strong and resilient performance in a very, very challenging market. All of our executives that will talk today will talk to you about how difficult it has been in the past few months, and how difficult it has been to operate with the extreme volatility, the extreme inclines and declines that we've seen in commodity prices.
Let me move to the next slide and say: within that environment, we have been able to improve our safety record. Am I on the wrong slide? We have been able to improve our safety record and also focus heavily on our ESG initiatives. You will hear our executives speak about the underpin of ESG in our businesses and actually ensuring that our businesses are sustainable for the coming decades. We have also continued to progress well on our international expansion. We will talk later about what we've done in Canada, in Indonesia, and Australia, and we have delivered incredibly strong cash flows in a very difficult environment.
We continue, we've promised disciplined working capital management, we will show you how we've performed on that, in that area, yet again, a great working capital result from our management team. Added to that's resulted in a very strong cash position, we will tell you how we've thought about the cash and how we've deployed the cash in this period. The highlights for us, our revenue is up 25% to just under ZAR 26 billion. Our operating profit up 15% to just under ZAR 2 billion. Our headline earnings up 1%, our ordinary dividend up 36% to ZAR 3.75 per share.
Our net cash generated from operations has also been incredibly good in a very volatile market, with us generating just over ZAR 1.8 billion for the period we're reporting on. I'm now gonna go through our ESG section, and I'm gonna ask Tiaan Kotze. Tiaan is our Group Chief Operating Officer, to talk us through the next few slides. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. I'm very proud to be here this morning, celebrating the strong results for 2023, building on what was exceptional in 2022 already. Safety first. Let me click along before I forget that as well. Safety first. We've seen an improvement in our RCR from 0.021 in 2022 to 0.16. However, within the agriculture division, we remain at the same levels as before. Our agriculture division includes our manufacturing operations, which is where we house most of our process safety risk. We continuously do audits and inspections to identify opportunities to improve the conditions in our infrastructure.
In two of our units, in mining and within the chemical sector, we achieved a 0 RCR for the year. That's quite pleasing to us. We continue to recognize road safety as key. One of the key concerns for our business, we focus on ways of improving that. As Ditebogo mentioned a bit earlier, we recognize that our staff and our business partners are experiencing extreme stresses as a result of the economic and the infrastructure failure conditions and safety that we generally experience. Turning to ESG, the carbon emission levels, following the refurbishment of the AXXIS system in last year's continue to improve.
As far as renewables are concerned, the commissioning of Sasolburg's 5 MW solar plant and the potential 180 ML per annum reverse osmosis plant has resulted in significant increases in the consumption of renewables. The plant commissioned in 2023 not only improves our renewable energy generation, but will also result in reducing the Scope 2 greenhouse gases that is that we emit. We continue to collect large volumes of used oil with the secondary benefit being that for every liter collected, we save potential of 1 million L of clean water. We have prioritized investment in generating energy. As you had seen this year, we continue to invest into 2024.
Not only does this help us with the production and the business continuity on our sites, but it helps us achieve all our ESG objectives. We're currently installing or have installed at Losberg, at Morwell site in Australia, Dryden, and Sasolburg phase II is in production. Further capital will be deployed in the year for further energy and water efficiency projects. We recognize water is a scarce resource, and the availability of clean water for our communities is a basic human right. We recognize our reliance and our responsibility in helping to manage that. With that, we are investing in water management programs. We mentioned the reverse osmosis we invested in this year, and in 2024, we'll be looking to invest in gray water harvesting and furthest storage capacity.
Omni has a proud history of driving consumption and continuously innovating in the areas of agriculture and mining. In that, we innovate in our core solutions of Nutriology, which results in precision farming. We also focus on precision mining. Recent initiatives that we've launched is we've showcased automated systems, bringing technology to South Africa with a layer of artificial intelligence, which will take precision farming to new levels. We partner globally within the context of mining, chemicals, and agriculture, to bring technologies to the markets in which we operate. In terms of our social development, CSI initiatives, we focus on the communities in which we operate, and this aligns with our business segments, focusing on two prime sectors: education and food security.
In the food security, we contribute to the production through our fertilizers and by supporting household and small-scale farmers in agriculture entrepreneurship programs. In the education sector, we invest in science, technology, math education to develop critical skills to be relevant in the fast-evolving global economy. Our CSI aim is to deliver a sustainable impact and partner with credible organizations in this environment. In terms of our 2030 goals, the goals were set in 2020, based on a 2019 baseline. We've achieved most of the goals that we set for 2030 within 2023. Our focus will be to remain to improve elements. We found the absolute water usage or the absolute measures to be challenging in the environment where we increase our production levels.
We will continue to focus on the, as I mentioned, on the energy and water efficiency measures. Having materially achieved all these objectives, we'll be reviewing, together with the new guidelines the international bodies provide on this matter, our targets for the 2030, within the 2024 financial year. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about our ESG.
Thanks, Tiaan. I think two things that really makes me proud is the fact that over the last few years, we've attempted to give all of our staff, irrespective of their levels in our company, a few shares to make all of our staff shareholders. What we've done this year is we've set aside money for education, and we've been able to set aside, in a very structured program, a process to help all of our staff with school fees and university fees for their kids. Just us doing something to give back. Let me proceed to our results now and give you a short business update. The year we're speaking about has clearly been one of the most significant years in terms of challenges and headwinds that our business faced.
Not only has there been significant macro volatility and challenges for us, but there was also significant internal issues that we needed to deal with in the various countries that we operated in. I'm gonna touch on a few as we go through the presentation. I think the biggest for us was really the inclining, initially, prices of oil, gas and commodities. Then, in the second half of the year, which I'll talk to in the next slide, the precipitous decline of commodity prices and how that had impacted our stock and working capital positions. We also saw globally that the Russia-Ukraine conflict created immense volatility and immense supply disruption across various of the territories that we operated in.
Obviously, we sit with the impacts of inflation and, locally, the volatility and movement in the currency. The tail end of the year was really a cocktail of all of those coming together. We also saw, and you know that we've got a large operating business in South Africa, and that business was impacted by constrained electricity, disruption in water, disruption in rail, and disruption in logistics. I guess what we're showing you is that all of that resulted in most of our suppliers, most of our competitors, and a number of businesses in the markets we operate, declaring force majeure. I think we can proudly stand here today as a management team and tell you that we have been able to supply all of our customers with fertilizer and with explosives.
We have taken our incredibly strong balance sheet and used that balance sheet to ensure security of supply. We used the investment we put into our supply chain, our trains, our storage capacity, up and downstream, and we were not. We did not need to declare force majeure. We were able to have the stock in the right spaces and ensure that all of our customers were able to do what they needed to do in the period. I guess the biggest story for us was really this material change in the commodity prices. What you saw in the first half of the year, while its commodity prices were volatile, they were still high.
The first half of the year is clearly the part of the year where we build up our stock positions, we build up our fertilizer stocks, not only in South Africa, but across the continent for the rainy season. What you saw in the second half of the year is this massive decline in commodity prices. What you also saw is the rains. The rains came a little bit harder and a little bit faster than what we would have expected, and some of our farmers were unable to do what they wanted to do in terms of planting. Some of our open cast mines were flooded. Notwithstanding all of these challenges, you see a very strong and resilient result delivered by our business.
Maybe it's just worth noting that a precipitous decline of this nature, you know, we saw last, I think, in 2008, 2009. At that stage, our company performed very, very differently to the way it did in this reporting period. I'm very, very proud of what the management team have been able to do through a very disrupted macro and internal micro environment. Having said all of that, you know, we've been on a disciplined path of stating where we're going to. We've put out a true north for our company, and we've been executing on our strategy in a way that has been very focused, very organized, and very disciplined. The first thing we needed to do was stabilize our business.
When our boat was in very choppy waters in 2018 and 2019, and things were very uncertain for our company, we put together a plan, and we said, you know, let's stabilize our business. Let's focus on a whole lot of fixes that we need to do. You know, let's put our business back pointing north towards where it should be going. I think we can say adequately, we've ticked those boxes. Right now, where we are again, is we're renewing, various of our capabilities, we're investing in new technologies, we're focusing on our customers and winning in our customer markets.
I think what we're showing in this reporting period is how we've been able to deliver to our customers and actually ensure that they have had security of supply in a very, very disrupted market. We continue to invest in our organizational capacity. A business that's in 25 countries, operating in these various jurisdictions, we need to ensure that we have folk that can focus on those markets, focus on what needs to be delivered to those customers, and there's more we need to do in that space. I guess what you're seeing now is a lot of execution around our growth.
We said there's certain areas we want to invest and grow in, and we will talk a little bit about that later to show you what we've been doing in our explosives business in Canada and Indonesia, and also what we've been doing in our core operations in SADC, to protect, to conserve, and to grow them with all of the issues we face around us. We also said that we will be very prudent about capital allocation and disciplined, and when we think about M&A, we will do that in a very structured, organized way, and you see us go about doing that. I guess what we have delivered is a steady increase in our return on equity. We've got more to do there, but I think great delivery over the last few years, a steady increase in operating profit.
Clearly, the operating profit, you know, that you're seeing now is being done in a very, very disrupted, challenging environment. It demonstrates the agility of our teams, it demonstrates the agility of our business units. Lastly, an improvement in our earnings. In terms of how we go about focusing on this execution plan, we've put in a performance-underpinned operating model. All of the... our business units, all of our MDs, all of our people, have got a line of sight of what they need to achieve, what they need to go about doing. To give you a few themes of that, you know, we wanna protect and grow our core.
Any business operating in the South African context knows that it needs to do a lot more to sustain itself, to ensure uninterrupted supply, to ensure that you can deal with what is happening with the utility providers of electricity and of rail. We have set aside some manpower, we have set aside some capital to actually focus on that. The second thing is, we want to integrate and synergize our SADC businesses. We have still got a lot of work to do there, to do things once, to do them in one place, to optimize our costs and to increase our efficiency.
We'll talk to you a little bit later about our plants and how they've performed, but there's still an immense amount of value we can unlock from our supply chain, our manufacturer, and the demand management. I guess finally, you know, we set out to grow internationally and some good execution of that in the last reporting period. If I get to our salient results, I've mentioned revenue already. Our revenue up largely 25% to just under ZAR 26 billion. Our gross profit up to just over ZAR 5 billion, and our operating profit up as well to just under ZAR 2 billion. Our operating margins were under pressure this year with the downturn in the commodity prices and our stock positions.
Our operating profit saw a decline at a group level from 8.2%- 7.6%, largely driven by our agriculture segment. Our net cash position, positive again. The company with no debt and ZAR 1.8 billion worth of cash at year-end. Our working capital was also well managed. However, we did put more money into stock, into both explosives and fertilizer through the planting season and through the year. Our return on equity, as I mentioned before, up to 11.9%, and then, you know, all of that has resulted in an ordinary dividend that's also 35%, up to ZAR 3.75 a share. I will talk a little bit further about further capital allocation later in the presentation.
What you have seen is over the years, if we cast our minds back to the last five years, a consistent delivery of EBITDA growth through our business. I think what was particularly interesting for me, looking at the slide on the right-hand side, looking at the graphs, you can see how towards the tail end of the year, the graphs come down. A few issues that drive that in this particular year, it's the commodity prices, it's the rains that came a little bit too much or too violently. It's also the month of March and February are the months when we slow our plants down and go into our normal maintenance shuts.
That also, you know, slows our business a little bit. But I guess overall, what you can see is really great delivery from an EBITDA perspective. That's resulted in strong cash generation by our business, and if we go back a few years, you can see that consistently, we have delivered good cash flows. You know, if I look at FY 2021, 2022 and 2023, the left-hand side of the slide, you can see whilst we are putting money into working capital, you know, we are still generating positive cash flows. That is testament to the focus on cash in our business, the focus on managing working capital, CapEx, and expenses very carefully in over the last few years.
We also have been successful in paying down our debt. There was a time when we had as much as ZAR 6.8 billion worth of debt. Over the last few years, you can see how we've whittled the debt away and also how we have then paid dividends to our shareholders. If I get into our businesses itself, I think the backdrop is, you know, the most challenging environment that we've faced over the last few years. From a group perspective, we saw sharp declining in a sharp decline in commodity prices in the second half of the year, which you're seeing in these results. We also saw adverse weather conditions.
The weather conditions resulted in lower volumes being used in our agriculture business, but also in our mining business, where a number of open cast mines, you know, were flooded. I guess, to add to that, you know, there was significant disruption in our customer base and our supplier base. You know, you saw a slowdown in manufacturing activity, you saw a slowdown in mining activity, you know, and you saw a number of farmers, you know, consider the high commodity prices, you know, and the weather events and change the product mix of what they're planting.
That resulted in our team being very active and agile in terms of working capital, in terms of stock positions, I think an incredible job has been done to work through the stock positions and the working capital in the second half of the year, which required us to do things very, very differently. You saw the prices of ammonia and urea and how they declined on the previous slides. We also saw immense disruption, I'm saying again, you know, repeating the issues around Eskom, Transnet, logistics. I think the one thing which talks very much to the heart of what Dieter Vogel presented here just earlier on, is the sociopolitical impacts on our society.
Whilst we all talk about Eskom and maybe the rail issues, what you also have is a lot of service delivery disruption. Unfortunately, on the roads, you have unrest. We have to do a whole lot more to protect our trucks, to protect our vehicles, to protect our people. That is probably very quickly becoming a big third challenge in the market we operate in. If I move to our businesses, if you bear with me, if I could start with the chemicals business first. I think the chemicals business also had a tough second half. It saw a declining in the manufacturing sector and had a number of once-off costs that affected the profitability.
I think that business can and could have performed a lot better than this. We saw a decline in profits by ZAR 10 million whilst margins were held. I think what's great to see is that the business, you know, sustained some of the delivery we saw over the last few years, but I think a lot more work needs to be done there for us to not have the recurring items we've had in the current financial year. From a mining segment perspective, our business has performed incredibly well. You know, margin increase, profit increase, great support from the mining chemicals part of that business. You know, we've commenced blasting in Canada. We've secured new contracts locally on the African continent and globally.
In the first half of the year, if you recall, we had a lot of disruption around used oil and the supply chain thereof. That normalized a bit in the second half, but that still dragged our earnings down for the entire year. I think good progress made to deal with some of those supply chain issues we had in the first half. As I said, you know, real great growth from the mining chemicals business, so good performance from our mining sector. In our agriculture business, unfortunately, the commodity prices in the second half, you know, declined steeply, which impacted our gross margins and our operating margins.
The volumes were impacted, with adverse weather conditions. I mentioned already that the mix of crops planted changed, which also resulted in impacts onto our volumes. In essence, that probably were the biggest factors that resulted in the margin decline, and that margin decline then filters into the group. On the positive side, our manufacture and our supply chain and our agriculture teams were incredibly agile to deal with these headwinds. We ensured security of supply. We ensured that, in our Zambia business, where we had some challenges last year, those challenges were overcome this year. You'll see when Stephan speaks through the segment, you know, the positivity that came out there.
Our Brazil, our business in Brazil had a very, very strong year and very strong growth. We're still seeing good, strong growth in our Mates in our business in Australia, and both Stephan and I will touch on that a little bit later. From an agriculture perspective, what you're seeing is a slight decrease in margin, and however, a slight increase in profits. If I move on to working capital, and probably one of the most important things that our management team look at and monitor, not on a monthly basis, but a weekly basis, I think we've done incredibly well to manage the working capital position in an extreme volatile year.
You know, volatile and high, and then extreme decline and a massive falloff in the second half. Our working capital positions, while higher than last year, you know, were still managed well. You know, broad brush, you know, we've got, we've put probably another ZAR 1 billion into working capital at year-end that, we would have not liked to have done. You know, the way the season played out with the late rains, and the security of supply to our mines, you know, we had a few extra ZAR 100 million of working capital in West Africa to ensure security of supply there. We had a debtor position, in Zambia, where, you know, that season played out a little bit later than planned.
I think post year-end, what I can tell you is that, those positions are well, well managed. The next part of our delivery is around CapEx, and I think, yet again, very good CapEx management, and expense management from a CapEx perspective. Our executives have done a good job there, sticking within budget. Some of our CapEx for the current period will be spent in the next period, and that's why we've given more disclosure around if the forecast for 2024. I think what we also wanted you to see is how we're thinking about CapEx.
You know, we're setting aside CapEx to protect, and grow and preserve our core, the businesses that generate a lot of cash for us, but we're also setting aside CapEx to expand and grow our international businesses, the explosives, and the agribusiness internationally. I think Tiaan, you know, emphasized how not only are our businesses focused on doing what's right from an ESG perspective, but also investing in various ESG and CSI projects. We've also set aside CapEx to achieve that by enhancing our solar plant, by looking at newer green technologies in both our mining, and our agriculture businesses. If I just step further into capital allocation.
We always told you that we will not maintain a cash positive, a zero-debt position into perpetuity. At some point, we will take on some debt. We haven't done that yet. We told you that we will run a conservative balance sheet, and we will be very disciplined about capital allocation. We told you that we will not just go out and spend the money and buy assets at ridiculous PEs, and you can see us, you know, demonstrating an immense amount of constraint and discipline in that regard. We've set some capital aside to protect and invest in our core. We've set some capital aside for our growth initiatives. We still have an ungeared balance sheet at year-end.
What we've then done is, you know, put in place an ordinary dividend, which the board has approved, of ZAR 3.75 a share, which is 2x EPS. I guess when we looked at our cash available and our cash generated in future periods, we felt that it is prudent to return further cash to shareholders. Today, we've announced that we would seek permission via general meeting in the next few weeks to get shareholder approval to repurchase up to 10% of our share capital. In the circular, what we do state is that the board has approved an initial tranche of up to half a billion ZAR to execute on that.
That notice will go out, and I think that vote will happen in the next few weeks. I'm gonna pause there and hand over to Stephan, and Stephan will take us through the performance of the business units, the income statement, the balance sheet, and cash flow statement. Thanks, Stephan.
Thank you, Seelan. Good morning or good afternoon, everyone, depending on where you are in the world. Now for the exciting part of the presentation, into the numbers. Just before we get to the excitement, let's just quickly deal with the SARS matter. Maybe just a quick update to our shareholders. Last time when we spoke at half year, is that SARS has ruled on our objection at the time and partially allowed our objection with a nominal reduction in the assessment. Obviously, Omnia has lost our objection to the revised assessments in December. We also made our intention clear to follow our ADR process. During February, SARS has actually came back to us to say they accept that process. Since year-end, we're basically in an informal ADR process.
Even though the ADR process has set aside 90 days, due to the complexity of the matter, we expect that to take a bit longer than that, but the management team is still fully committed to close that out as quickly as possible. Jumping into the numbers, you know, as Seelan mentioned, this is an exceptional set of results. In the prior year, the revenue grew by 30%. In the current year, it grew a further 24% in total, up to ZAR 26.5 billion. That was driven by the higher commodity prices, as was mentioned earlier, as well as the weaker exchange rate that we've experienced in the current year.
If you move further down the income statement to the gross profit line, you can see gross profit was up 13%, and as Seelan earlier mentioned, there were several headwinds actually facing the gross profit. When we spoke last time at half year, there was mention about the used oil, specifically in our mining space, that affected the half-year results of our mining business. In the second half, specifically the last quarter, in our second half, the sharp decline had a significant impact, mostly around our key commodity inputs, as is in ammonia, which dropped by more than 60% in that period.
The extreme weather conditions, which affected our agriculture and our mining business, specifically in SADC, South Africa, as well as in Zambia. The sharp drop in commodity prices further resulted in stock adjustments over our year, and specifically in our agriculture segment. If you move further down the income statement, admin and distribution expenses were really well managed, only up by 4% in a very high, inflationary environment. Maybe just to mention, during the year, we also concluded in our Zimbabwe joint venture, Acol Chemicals. That was closed out during the year, and that resulted in an additional ZAR 60 million FCTR loss that was recycled into our income statement.
If you look at it, our finance expenses, our finance expenses are slightly up, compared to the comparative period, and that was just utilizing our facilities throughout the build-up of our peak working capital cycle throughout the year. Maybe just to highlight as well, from an effective tax rate point of view, you will see there's an increase in the effective tax rate compared to the comparative period, and that was driven by the higher earnings, as well as intercompany dividends, where there's withholding taxes, additional withholding taxes, and then lastly, the hyperinflation effect on certain taxes, which further increased that number. If we move forward from an operating profit point of view, maybe just to isolate the Zimbabwe operating profits, to look at the adjusted operating profits.
The adjusted operating profits increased by 15% or ZAR 257 million for the period. As you can see on the graph in front of you, the impact, as we already mentioned, specifically in agriculture, but you can see the strong performance coming through our mining business in the current year. If you maybe just jump into the segments. As such, agriculture and manufacturing segment, first, you can see specifically in South Africa, revenue was up 25%, but the operating profit was down by 8% relative to the comparative period. The revenue was driven by the elevated commodity prices and weaker exchange rate, as previously explained.
Taking into the account that the bulk of our sales, specifically in agriculture SA, happens in the second half, and the decline in commodity prices put additional pressure then on the margins, which you can see playing out in the operating profit. The severe weather conditions, specifically in South Africa, and I'll touch on SADC now, further had an impact on volumes in SA, and that resulted in crop substitution, certain farmers moving from maize into soya, and further, no fertilization of pastures during the year due to the excessive high prices of fertilizers.
From a liquids volume point of view, that was also impacted in SA during the current financial year. That was mainly due to the heavy rain, specifically late in our summer planting season in SA, as well as the poor state of our infrastructure in the country, as Seelan touched on load shedding, et cetera. From a manufacturing point of view, as mentioned on the slide, we maintained security of supply to our customers. From an international point of view, revenue was up 56% and operating profit up 51%. In Africa, similar trends were playing out as in South Africa.
The volume margin mix model, specifically in our Zambia or SADC region, yielded good results on the back of the fixed price contracts, which was a negative impact on the comparative period, as well as the regional hub, specifically out of Zambia, and selling into other areas, specifically around the Central Africa. We actually made good progress from that perspective. Moving on to our biostimulant business, our Australia and Brazil business. Australia and the local market as well faced severe challenges. Flooding on the eastern side of the country, which had an impact on volumes, as well as on margins and revenues from that perspective. That was countered by exports out of Australia, specifically into new regions. Our K-Humate that was exported into Greece, Turkey, as well as Bulgaria.
There was also a significant growth into our AgriBio Brazil business, where volumes were up 47%, which was a fantastic achievement by the team. As Seelan also touched on, we're further now exploring our footprints into the U.S. as well as into Europe. We're in the final stages on closing out our registrations from that point of view. If we just step forward into our mining business, really pleasing set of results by the full mining set. The revenue was up 26%, operating profit was up 35%. Maybe just if you take the mining and perception, you know, mining had a world-class safety performance during the year.
They progressed really well on the ESG side, they protected the South African market, demonstrated security of supply to our key customers across the globe, as well as made good progress in our international ventures. From a South African point of view, the sales volumes were slightly lower compared to the comparative period. That was due to some of the weather impact we've seen, load shedding, as well as socio-political issues. We secured new contracts in South Africa in the platinum as well as in the coal sectors. The margins were really buoyant throughout the year due to the elevated commodity prices that we've seen played out during the year, as well as these nice organic growth opportunities that faces the business going forward.
From an international point of view, revenue were up 30%, operating profit were up a significant 76% from that point of view. In SADC, the commodity prices supported the revenue growth. In SADC, the inclement weather had a negative impact on margins, as well as a safety incident on one of our big customers in Zambia, that resulted in curtailed production at the mine, which infected some of our volumes. I'm pleased to inform our shareholders that we've awarded new contracts, specifically in Zambia, Lesotho, Namibia, as well as in DRC, which bodes really well for the mining business going forward. Also, good margin improvement, strong performance by our mining chemicals team outside of Africa, really supported our international business.
From an Indonesia side, our international expansion, the joint venture partnership was finalized, which result in additional contracts that will be rolled into that joint venture into the future, as well as the mobilization in Canada. That partnership is making good progress. We've already executed on the first blast. That will also further enhance our margins in the international side, going forward. We reformalized our Australian strategy to make sure that we actually showcase our AXXIS world-class, AXXIS Titanium products from that point of view. Maybe just closing out on the segments, specifically in chemicals. As Seelan earlier mentioned, the business continued to be under pressure.
The manufacturing sector faced severe decline throughout the last couple of years, as well as load shedding that further actually added pain into the manufacturing sector, as well as your small and medium-size enterprises from that point of view. Throughout the business, there was a lot of once-offs, as was reported at half year. The additional amortization on the IT software that played a role, as well as stock adjustments in that business, which was offset by the profit of the sale of the Jacob site. The business continued its focus strategy on its SBS, or its strategic business sectors, to make sure we focus to higher margin business from that point of view. If we maybe move on to our balance sheet or statement of financial position, the balance sheet remains strong.
We increased our liquidity from ZAR 5.4 billion up to ZAR 5.8 billion, as well as increase our solvency further from ZAR 10 billion- ZAR 10.3 billion. This was on the back of increased investment into working capital. Seelan touched on it, the additional building that was put into working capital to make sure we maintain security of supply in the mining side in West Africa, as well as the late contract business in our SADC region in Zambia, in agriculture. Overall, a strong cash position as reflected on the balance sheet. If I can close out with our cash flow statement. The cash flow from operations over the last two years resulted strong results, strong cash flow generation throughout the whole organization.
We can also see the working capital was well managed from that point of view. I've highlighted, as Seelan highlighted earlier in the slide, that some of the capital will flow, cash flow-wise, into FY 2024. You can see the impact of the dividends and the increased dividends that was played out over the last two years. Maybe just to close out with the flow of the cash flow, you can see the dividend that was played out, the ZAR 1.3 billion throughout the year, the strong cash generation with the investment in working capital, and the increased payment, as highlighted earlier on taxes, resulted in a strong cash position of ZAR 1.8 billion at the end of the financial year. Thank you. I'll just hand over to Seelan to close out.
Thanks, Stephan. What's left for me is to do two things: to talk about our growth and how we're thinking about our growth into the future, and then a little bit about outlook and where we're positioned, and how we're positioning ourselves. If I talk about growth, firstly, you know, what excites me is that there's still an immense amount of growth in our current business. You know, we've set aside capital to protect and grow our core, and we will continue to deliver value from that. I will go into my next slide just now, which will show you our productivity. We want to strengthen our leadership abilities and our other capabilities in that space.
We also believe there's further value to be unlocked in terms of integrating our supply chain, our manufacturing, and some of our common processes across the group. There's still a lot more we can do with our world-class Nutriology model. You know, it's something that has a profound impact on our farmers in South Africa, and we can take that to other parts of the world, and I think we can roll that out further into parts of the country where we are still not as strong and as prevalent as we should be. This will result in an improvement in our return on capital, and we will continue to execute on that. The second pillar we will deliver against is expanding our agri international business globally, so good progress is being made on distribution.
Our teams in Australia have set up a distribution footprint in the U.S. to access that market, and have also set up a distribution footprint in the EU, which I'll talk a little bit about that later. We also believe there's value in the AgTech space. You would have noticed that we've brought in certain robotic machines that can aid and enhance crop yields with our farmers, and we're rolling those out in various spaces locally. We believe we can do some of that on a global basis as well. Overall, in our agriculture segment, what you see is our growth is in the higher margin products, and our growth is in strong, developed markets of agriculture across the world.
From a mining perspective, that's the third pillar that we would see growth coming from, and that is really focused on Indonesia, Canada, and Australia. We believe that our mining chemicals business is also well-positioned to be taken outside the geographic areas that it plays in at the moment, and we could take that to other parts of the world. You know, what I've said earlier is that we have secured contracts in some of these regions in BME, and we've started blasting, Canada being one of them. I'll talk a little bit about that just now. If I just unpack our plant and our plant utilization, you know, I think broadly what you can see here is that we can enhance our return on capital by enhancing the throughput through our plants.
We can enhance our return on capital by optimizing further our supply chain, our manufacturing, and our demand management. The teams have done an incredible job this year to move supply into the explosives sector when the agriculture area was slowing down. Also, when you saw immense disruption in the explosives sector, you know, we were able to change what we produced to meet some of that supply. We will continue to do that. I mean, in essence, we will continue to look at how we can sell our products and byproducts on a wholesale basis to wholesale customers and distributors, not only locally but across the world. We will continue to do that in a very careful and considered manner in terms of ESG and safety.
We will continue to invest in our skills and our capabilities to manage our plants and plant utilization better going forward. Just to talk a little bit about the global AgriBio and biostimulants market, we've told you that this is a market that is growing very strongly. It's growing much faster than a traditional fertilizer market, and we've got a really great business there, and we see good growth. We've seen good growth out of Mates, but still believe there's a lot more we can do in the coming years. We will put...
We will consider adding to that product base. Our focus now is solely on distribution partnerships, wholesale distribution partnerships that would mirror what we've got with Deepak Fertilisers in India, where we are coating their products with our FertiCoat product. There's a number of discussions underway with various large fertilizer groups to use our product in their stable. I've touched on Indonesia before. You all know that we've executed on our partnership and joint venture with MNK. MNK is the second-largest explosives provider in Indonesia. They have an AN facility. They're a large conglomerate that do a lot more than just explosives. There are 14 customers that will move into that joint venture, which will ensure that all of our investment there becomes profitable.
Our teams now are hard at work to align our processes and to get all of those mines moved into our partnership. I think really great execution from our BME business to get this done. You would have heard me speak about this a few times, and with COVID, you know, a lot of these international partnerships slowed, and in the current year, you can see us executing on two of them. The second one is our partnership in Canada, that's with a large drill and blast company called Consbec. We have got the facility on the right is the facility where our two detonator plants are going in. I was able to visit that facility a month or two ago.
You can see awesome progress. I met our blasting teams. Our blasting teams have blasted on the Côté Gold Mine already. It's a fully autonomous mine, which was incredibly fascinating for me to see. I think what you can just feel is the tangible excitement of our teams to actually execute and get this partnership going. I'm pleased to say that, you know, we're tendering for new business. We've secured, you know, we will secure further new business in that space going forward. I think our initiatives, both in Indonesia and Canada, is gaining great momentum for us. I think the third part of our explosives business is in Australia. There we've been looking to do something bigger.
We haven't found the right partner for us, and at this point, what we've done is we've gone back to basics, and we've invested in our current core business. We've set some capital aside. We've enhanced the management team. They're doing a number of trials and going out there looking for customers. We do know that that market is really favorable at looking at new entrants, and we're not a new entrant 'cause we've been there for a while. Our focus here is to do what we're doing ourselves and hopefully, in the upcoming periods, we will find the right partnership to execute on and have that track, the way we're tracking in Canada and Indonesia.
If I then just move to closing and our outlook, I think it's important firstly, to try and just remind ourselves of where is Omnia placed. Where is Omnia placed in this, in the global mega trends that we're seeing, and where do we find ourselves now and hopefully for the next 70 years to come? I think firstly, you know, factors driving demand and ensuring the future of agriculture and minerals is population growth, and I think what we know is the world's population is growing. The world's population must be fed. The world's population needs minerals. The world's population need jobs, and economies need, broadly, agriculture and mining to drive GDP growth and sustain themselves going forward.
We're well placed from that perspective, one, to meet world demand and to assist meeting the demand for food. We know that that is underpinned by a big, big ESG foundation. Perhaps in some of the emerging markets and frontier markets, we haven't seen a huge uptake as yet of greener technologies and greener products, but we know in the developed markets there's a big drive towards lower carbon, nutrient efficiency, water efficiency, Omnia's Nutriology model, and actually, mines looking for more effective and more efficient blasts.
In all of those spaces, you know, we are well placed, whether it be from our agriculture solutions, Nutriology concept in South Africa, our Mates business in Australia, our ability to do larger blasts and more accurate blasts in BME, our ability to use used oil instead of clean oil and save, not only the oil, but also the water, as Tiaan has mentioned. Omnia is really well placed and aligned to global mega trends, and it's something that we can be really grateful for, you know, that we're not in luxury goods, we're not in airlines, we're not in things that ebb and flow quite significantly. Having said all of that, you know, you're probably gonna ask me, "Seelan, what does that mean for your margin guidance in terms of your outlook?
Because we're a little bit below where we, where we'd like to be in agriculture and the group. I think my response is to say that, you know, we wanna be conservative around our margin guidance for the half years as usual, 'cause you know the half years are quite challenging for us as we go into our planting season. What we always promised is that we will be disciplinedly focused on this margin guidance. We upped our margin guidance, I think it was last year, and we are absolutely still committed to our medium-term margin guidance of between 8% and 10% for the group, between 9% and 12% for agriculture, 10%-12% for the mining business, and 6%-8% for the chemicals business.
I've asked of our team, you know, we are entering and continuing to be in a very, very challenging business environment. We are in a lower commodity price at the moment, and we see immense disruption around logistics, around volatility, and have to do business differently. I've engaged with our teams, and I said, "You know, can we think about what are the areas and what are the things we can do to actually enhance and ensure that we remain resilient and thrive through this challenging environment?" The next slide coming is a little bit of a picture that we're trying to paint around margins.
What we did was we said, "Well, we believe there's more value we can get from our current businesses, agriculture, mining, and chemicals." We started putting down exactly where that optimization and that growth can come from, and then we started putting around some view of how that would enhance our margins. We put some ranges out there, but really, that is all, those are the sorts of initiatives, the sorts of projects that will actually take us, you know, into our margin guidance and beyond in future years. I'm not gonna go through all of them because there's just a, you know, there's a lot of repetition of the things I've spoken about.
Here, what you will see, you know, when you go into our management team, is the specific projects that we will build and execute to respond to the challenging environment we see coming. What we also said is we will continue to manage capital in a very disciplined way. We've returned circa ZAR 3 billion to shareholders since the rights issue in FY 20. We've steadily increased our return on equity from 2.3%- 11.9%. What we're telling you today is we would hold a meeting on the 18th of July to seek permission to buy back up to 10% of our share capital. We've obviously got a planned repurchase that we'd like to execute on as well. Omnia provides a fairly attractive investor proposition.
We operate in primary sectors, which would enhance our resilience through downturns. You know, those primary sectors are fairly aligned to our ESG investments and what we do. I think what you can see is we've got a, it might sound boring to you, but we've got a very focused business model, so we keep setting out to do exactly what we said in the past. You're not seeing us divert from our very disciplined focus and strategy, and we will keep doing that. We will focus on operational excellence, so we've still got value to unlock in our manufacturing plants, in our production environment, in the optimization of our supply chain, our manufacturing and our demand management. We've got great execution of growth in our Mates AgriBio and our BME international business, and we will continue to do that.
We've got some very distinct competitive advantages. You see that in our current period, where we didn't declare force majeure, and we were able to supply fertilizer and explosives to all of our customers and other customers who were unable to source. You know, we've got some of the greatest plants, biggest capacities, and newest plants on the continent, and we've got some really good technologies, like our, you know, Blast Alliance AXXIS, our dual salt emulsion that uses used oil. Now what you're seeing is some really good global partnerships being executed on our...
You know, I can proudly say that our, both our partner in Indonesia and our partner in Canada, you know, I've been able to meet both of our partners physically and really align to what we want to achieve, and putting their shoulder to the wheel to grow our business jointly. From a capital perspective, you're seeing us being very committed to what we say in terms of capital allocation, in terms of cash generation, and how we're executing on the distribution of cash, and we will continue to do that. As a management team, we will remain focused. We will, you know, continue to strengthen ourselves to deal with the headwinds that we face.
I fundamentally believe that, while our company has performed incredibly strongly and resiliently in a very, very tough environment, you know, there's a lot more we can do, and there's a lot more that our team can deliver in the coming years. Thank you for listening to the presentation. It is our 70th birthday. I shouldn't be saying this, but Protea Chemicals is also 50 years old this year, and they want to have a separate birthday announcement a little bit later. It is a proud moment for us to deliver such great results in very, very challenging times, and we thank you for listening to us.
I thank our shareholders, our stakeholders, all of the folk who help us be successful, our board, who continue to guide us and point, and all of our management team that have worked tirelessly over the last year to navigate the challenges. Our 4,000 people across the world, you know, who wake up every day, brace the different weather conditions, and ensure that our customers have fertilizer, that our customers have explosives, that our customers have all the technologies that underpin that, to really make the profound difference we make in food production and mineral extraction across the world. Thank you very much, and we'll open up for questions.
Thanks, Seelan. It's Rowan Goeller from Chronux Research. I've got two questions, please. The first is on your margin-enhancing initiatives, where you speak about 1.5%-2.5% increase to your margin at a group level. Can you just talk through your fixed strategy, what has been achieved to date, possibly, assuming this is what's going to come in the future? Thanks. My second question would be around market share. In your being able to supply customers where your peers might not have been able to, what does that mean for your market share across your different divisions? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Rowan. you know, maybe let me deal with the second question first, around market share. Usually, in terms of force majeure and supply disruptions, customers need supply immediately. They have a contract somewhere else, and they say, "Look, we've got this challenge, can you supply?" In instances like that, what we're able to do is plug the hole for the customer, if it makes sense from a safety perspective and a logistics perspective. Our main focus is not the once-off revenue or income we make at that point. Our main focus is to convert that into a sustainable contract and a new customer into the future. What you will see post, you know, let's call it, you know, calendar year 2022, I got that right, last year, calendar year.
Due to the number of force majeures, what you will see is a number of customers go out on tender and actually potentially reorganize their suppliers based on what happened. I think what you will see is mines diversify their supply base a little bit. You know, where you've got one supplier, maybe have more than one. You will see our explosives business secure new contracts, you know, probably both in areas where we did not have contracts before and we may be not as strong. You know, maybe underground would be an example of that, but also in the surface mining.
In terms of margins, you know, our business needed a chunk of fixes around getting back to basics, running our plants harder, getting our nitrophosphate plant, which didn't work well in 2019 and 2020, sorted out, and our executives have done a really good job in doing that. I think where we are now is to focus on the optimization of our supply, manufacture, and demand. As you see demand changes, like we've had in the current year, where we had certain grades of fertilizer in SADC, and the season changed very rapidly, you know, we brought that fertilizer back to South Africa and sold it here. I think the next level of optimization,
I think, you know, whether you call it 1.5%-2.5% or beyond that, is really gonna result in us optimizing our plants further and to say, "How do we optimize between, one, agriculture and mining? Then how do we optimize further between our agriculture and mining businesses and potential wholesale distributors or partners of those products that our manufacturer can make and can supply?" Having said that, we need to improve supply chain resilience and logistics resilience in South Africa, 'cause that's where a lot of this happens. We also need to think very carefully around storage. We are investing in some additional storage to allow us to convert, which what you raised in your second point, into long-term sustainable contracts.
We will be able to meet ad hoc demand, but also meet the long-term sustainable contracts, which probably will happen out of cycle of the way we would like to have it happen. I'm getting into unnecessary detail here, but it really boils down to the optimization of our plant complex. When we meet tomorrow or the next day and can get into a bit more detail, you know, we can share with you how off-cycle demand will need to be achieved by storage and how we're thinking about that. That will obviously unlock these additional margins we're talking about. I'm absolutely confident, though, there's a lot more we can do, and, you know, our teams know that that can be achieved. Who's next? Great.
Good afternoon, Seelan.
Hi.
Congratulations on your results. Ntuthuko Sithole from SBG Securities. I've got three questions. I just wanted to add on to the guidance. I saw on the slide you said you are a lot more conservative half year 2024. Can we expect that guidance to be achieved in the full year? That's one. My second question is in relation to your Australian expansion. I see you mentioned organic growth, and you want to do something big, can we expect another investment in nitrate supply, or is it still sticking to technologies? Lastly, the share buyback. Looking at your capital allocation framework, I would like to understand the levers that were considered in coming to a share buyback this time around instead of a special dividend.
Great. Thank you very much for that. In terms of margin guidance, I think you can expect us to target the guidance levels we focused on for full year. I think we're just cautioning that obviously the outlook remains very difficult for us. I mean, I think it's as difficult as you've seen in the last six months, but obviously a lower commodity price, which, you know, which will help a little bit. I think we're just reminding you that our margin guidance is a full year margin guidance. I don't think you'll be upset if we hit it at half year, but you do know that we build up stocks for our planting season and all of those things.
In terms of us, Australia, let me first say that, you know, I think we've been very clear that as a management team, we must be prudent, remain humble, and always do what's right from a return on capital perspective. We are not out there looking for something big. That would be the wrong reason to be out there and looking. What we're out there and looking for is a partnership that can help us take our technologies and our products to customers. Ideally, we just would like the customers. If we find a partner that's able to help us do that would be an ideal partner for us. You know, I think maybe think about it very similar to the way we've done Indonesia and Canada.
You know, those were like joint venture-type partners, and they had slow, very careful investments made in there. We haven't, you know, we didn't go and do a once-off big investment in Canada or Indonesia. I think we will be conservative as we think about Australia as well. Having said that, you know, if we find the right thing, our balance sheet is strong, and we will consider that as well. We're not out there looking for something big. We're looking for a partnership that can help leverage. In terms of the share buyback, you know, as usual, we looked at our cash, the ordinary dividend and the special dividend, obviously, the last 2 years we executed on a special dividend.
This year, we did the same piece of work as a management team, as a board, and we finally fundamentally believe the work we've done is that it would be more value accretive for shareholders to execute on a buyback. We've done the modeling and the work around that, and that underpins that, and that's why we're executing on a buyback. Now, clearly, a buyback comes with a little bit more administration and a little bit more effort. I think we got a 74 point something percentage vote for the buyback at our AGM. Gene's nodding, we missed it by a 0.4%, 0.5%.
That forces us now to do a general meeting in the next few weeks. We believe it's more value accretive for our shareholders to execute a buyback in the current environment than do a special dividend. I'm sure we're gonna have shareholders that would prefer a bigger ordinary dividend, a bigger special dividend, or a buyback. Everyone will have a view on this. You know, what we've done our work that underpins that, and that's where we finding ourselves. We will, we've put out a notice already for the general meeting, and we will seek permission from all of our shareholders to be able to execute on a buyback.
We will seek permission in future for a general buyback on an annual basis. Thanks.
Keith McLachlan, Integral Asset Management. I have three quick questions. The first one, it was a bit of a challenging volume environment. You can see in terms of slide 17, there's a tapering off of the EBITDAs on the back end of the second half. How are you trading in terms of volumes and EBITDA and stuff post-period? How is it looking relative to? Has that tapering off continued, accelerated, reversed? Just a sense in terms of how you're trading now. Second thing, in terms of the pullback in the commodity prices, can we expect some unwound working capital, or is that not the way you're anticipating it playing out? Third one, your effective tax rate jumped up, and working through the notes, it's quite clear that there were some withholding taxes in the international side. That feels permanent.
Given your drive to grow offshore, can we expect higher effective tax rate going forward, or is that more of an anomaly, and am I misreading it?
Great. Thanks. Thanks, Keith. I mean, in terms of volumes and trading, you know, bear in mind that our company is, has got cycles in it. Less so in Protea and the mining segment, but more so in the agriculture segment. Early in this year, we do all the preventative maintenance in our plants, we shut our plants, we do some volumes for the Western Cape region. We start making some volumes for Zambia, I guess the uptick in our activity start in June, July, August, September. I guess, you know, if I now start talking to you about volumes, there's nothing.
You know, our business is not operating any different to the way it normally operates from a volumes perspective. That then obviously drives our EBITDA and our earnings and others. There's nothing different in terms of our cycles. If anything, last year, our volumes reverted back to a more traditional type volume. In the prior year, as Stephan said, you know, we did some additional volumes for the Western Cape. In the current financial year, the one we're reporting on, you know, our volumes, you know, went back to a normal cycle. To add to that, you know, if you've got rising commodity prices, you know, our farmers will buy sooner. If you've got high commodity prices and falling commodity prices, our farmers will buy a little bit later.
I think, you know, to think going forward, you know, we've got to look at all of what's happening around us and then say, you know, how does our company trade? In terms of the commodities, I don't think there's much more I can add to that. I think we will. You know, we in that now at the moment, and there's nothing. We're not operating very different to what we've operated in previous years. In terms of the commodity price pullback, you will naturally see our working capital come down due to commodity prices. You see some of that.
You know, I can point to at year-end that there was probably a chunk more that will come down, and it does unwind. You know, and it is unwinding. To give you an exact number or to say where that will land, I think in theory, what you're saying makes absolutely sense. As the commodity prices come down, the working capital will come down. Bear in mind that I did say the planting season was delayed a little bit in Zambia, so we had a chunk of debtors at year-end that, you know, will come out.
We did take additional stock position in BME, in West Africa, which I think Stephan might have touched on, to ensure security of supply there, so that those mines don't run out. That will come down as the, you know, as the, as the months go forward. Your third question was just the effective tax rate, and then to, I suppose, getting to what could you model in for the tax rates going forward based on the entities we operate in. Do you wanna answer that or Tiaan, or?
This one, I.
I can, but I think it's better for a change in voice.
Yeah, I think from the effective tax rate point of view, as we highlighted, we've added additional disclosures there in the note. You will see there's a lot of moving parts in it. We've highlighted the two big ones. The withholding tax, and that comes mostly out of the Zambia regions, where that is. That is a bit abnormal where it is, but some of it will be biting into the future, but not the excessive part as it is there now. You will see there was hyperinflation related as well, which is a bit abnormal.
I think normally we give the guidance, you know, overall, depending on the mix between South Africa as well as international, depending on how our businesses grow, the guidance that we provide is normally between 28%-29%, up to about 32%. That should be our effective tax rate. I think the 36% where it currently is, you will see in the disclosure, there's a couple of the numbers in there, which is a bit excessive from that point of view.
Seelan, we have a couple of questions from the webcast. Two are actually similar in regards to the supply chain finance. I'll deal with those first. First one from Charles Boles of Titanium Capital: "Can you provide some clarity on the extent or quantum of supply chain finance and the impact thereof on cash flow?" The similar question is from Jovan Jackson of Laurium Capital. He says, "Good day, and well done on the results in tough times. Can you please indicate what the repayments of trade payables, supply chain financing relates to on the cash flow statement?
Okay, I'm just gonna do an intro, then can you. If we just think about supply chain finance, supply chain finance requires you to keep turning your stock, 'cause as you buying, you're getting the supply chain finance, and if at some point you slow down the turn of your stock, you slow down your supply chain finance as well. I guess what we saw in the tail end of our reporting period is a little bit of a slowdown in volumes that we're pointing to, which meant there was also a resultant slowdown in stock turn and supply chain finance. As to exactly the numbers, Stephan, do you wanna talk through that?
Is this on again?
We need the mic on for the webcast, huh?
Is it on again? Can I go? I think Jovan , thanks a lot for the question. I think supply chain finance is basically it creates a platform where you can maintain and enhance your creditor terms. That's effectively the mechanism that we drive. You can see throughout our cash flows, our cash cycle is actually shortened, we increased our cash flows. I suppose from a disclosure point of view, what you can see, it creates a bit of noise in your cash flow statement. Of the accounting rules, you need to disclose that separately. You will see in our long form as well, we see it as part of working capital, and that's the way we utilize supply chain finance.
On the cash flow statement, we've also added additional disclosures on, as we include it into cash flow from operations, just to have better insight what supply chain finance means. Just also on the supply chain finance, we've introduced that about a year ago. It's a bit of abnormal in the cash flows because what happens is, a year after, you can only see that going through your cash flows. What you can see from next year, it will start normalizing on a year-to-year basis. The way that the cash flows get disclosed on the cash flow statement is just all the flows that goes through supply chain finance need to be disclosed separately. We see that as part of working capital, and that's why we've just included the additional disclosure on supply chain finance.
Thanks, Stephan. We've got a few places where we've given additional disclosure on supply chain finance. One is in the cash flow analysis at the back of the pack. I think it's also fair to say that we have got a supply chain finance project or program that's moving various parts of our business into the supply chain finance platform, and that hasn't been completed yet. You know, we would anticipate more suppliers on the platform going forward and a benefit being unlocked from that.
Thank you. We have two further questions from Charles Boles of Titanium Capital. The first one: "In agriculture, you speak of crop changes by farmers. Please, could you give us some insight as to the background of this, as well as the impact on Omnia?" The second one: "In mining, what is Omnia's competitive advantage that enables it to be competitive globally?
Great. Thanks, Charles. Maybe just the first question, around the crop changes. You know, as fertilizer prices were incredibly high last year, and you saw, you know, there was a time when soft commodity prices matched that, and you saw that come off a little bit. What we saw is certain farmers moving away from maize to soya. What you do know is our, the underpin of our business is the planter mix, so a lot of our fertilizer goes in much earlier into the soil. What this results then is, you know, when the top dressing and the additional fertilizer is being sold at the tail end of the year, December, November, December, January, you know, those volumes go away. We saw a little bit of that last year.
I don't see Louis Strydom here, if someone can nod and say that I've done a reasonable job on that. Okay. Okay, thank you. The second question was around BME's competitive advantage. I can take a stab at that, Ralph, you're right here. I'll start, you can maybe take over. In essence, you know, BME's competitive advantage is really certain of its components, certain of the way it brings together the blast, we've been able to take that globally. We cannot take our nitric acid plants that are based in Sasolburg globally. You know, we've got to buy that in.
It's actually the technology of the dual salt emulsion, the detonators and others, that has won business against some of the major mining houses like Orica and Dyno and others, locally and globally. That technology, we believe, can make an impact in a number of the countries that we don't operate in. Do you want to add to that?
Yes, thank you.
Ralf is our CEO of the mining business, for those of you who haven't met him.
Good afternoon. I think Seelan summarized it well. It's basically three buckets that we're looking at from a differentiation perspective. The first one is our technology and the complementary technology to what other explosives companies and/or customers bring to the offering. We're talking about mechanization. We're talking about digital platforms, digital platforms in integrating with software platforms on the customer sites. Talking to and enhancing data mining, data storage, trend analysis, and ultimately all leading to optimized blasting. We see ourselves on the forefront on that. We also believe that our electronic detonator system, the AXXIS Titanium, is one of two premium products in the world currently, from a safety, accuracy, and ease-of-use perspective. That opens doors for us.
Thirdly, it is the dual salt emulsion that Seelan has alluded to, that not only is a very stable emulsion, but it also allows the used oil functionality, as you know, and it gives you a lot of optionality in the market, being a dual salt feedstock, from a working capital management perspective to a commercial perspective, and as I said, stability and practical perspective. Those three buckets are, in combination, what makes us so attractive.
Thank you, Ralf.
There are no further questions from the webcast.
Are there any other questions in the room? Thank you to all of you joining us here today, and thank you to all on the webcast. Please take care and feel free to contact us with any questions or any thoughts you might have. For those of you here, please feel free to join us for a cup of tea or coffee outside. Thank you very much.