Thank you. Good morning to all of our shareholders and stakeholders on the line, and thank you for joining us today at Omnia's half year results. I've got with me Stephan, our financial director, and a number of our management on the call as well, who will interact with you a little bit later in the Q&A session. Before we start, maybe just a moment thought for all of our people who have been significantly impacted by the pandemic, and our hearts go out to lives lost, families broken, and folk who have lost jobs due to the pandemic. We pray for those individual families. We pray for those who have lost loved ones in our organization and outside, and we ask for peace in these very difficult times.
If I kick straight into our results, we're gonna talk a little bit about our operating environment. Stephan will take you through our financial result, and I will come back and provide a few thoughts on outlook and closure. Let me open up by saying that it's a very pleasing set of results. It's a proud moment for us at Omnia to share with you what is a half year performance, which is probably one of the best that we've put out to the market. Our business overall has performed according to model. It shows really good execution of our strategy. If I move to the next slide, I think the first thing to say is the pandemic has impacted, firstly, human life across the planet. We have seen the...
Initially, the lockdowns have had health, death, and psychological impacts in all of the communities, in all of the countries we operate in. There's still uncertainty. There's still lockdowns. Our hearts and our focus is on ensuring that our people are safe, that communities are safe, ensuring that we administer vaccines, and we focus on getting the world back to normal, or to some level of normality as quick as possible. The second impact of the pandemic has been the economic impact, and I'm gonna talk quite extensively around the supply chain issues and how that has affected our business and how we has responded to that. I think overall what we're seeing is the global uncertainty and global shocks continue.
They come in various forms, in various waves, and I will share with you how we've responded to that and how our business has changed what we do on a very agile basis to respond to the economic impacts of the pandemic. At Omnia, we have prioritized protecting our people, protecting our workforce, protecting the communities, protecting our suppliers and our customers. We continue to roll out vaccines in a number of our facilities, and we continue to embed strict social distancing, strict cleaning protocols around infections. We know that the north of South Africa, Gauteng, is entering the fourth wave, and we continue to provide what we can to our people, communities, and families.
Certainly, from a vaccination perspective, when we've rolled out vaccines, we've welcomed anybody to come to our facilities, you know, to have a vaccine if they so wish. If I move on to the next slide, I think overall, we know that our purpose at Omnia is a very noble and profound purpose. We've been focusing on protecting life, sustaining livelihoods, and doing that by creating a better world, and I will talk to each one of those things as we go through the presentation. A number of the global shifts that we've seen has really enhanced the focus. Has really sped up the focus on doing things better, on being more sustainable, and we're proud at Omnia to have a number of initiatives that create a better world.
I will speak a little bit later on about our Nutriology concept, which is focused on precision use of water, of macro and micronutrients, and something that's really embedded in our business, embedded amongst our agronomists, embedded amongst our front-facing folk in our agriculture business. We've also seen the world and the global workforce needing to change. All of us have been working from different environments, working from homes, working remotely. As an organization and as a world, we've had to help our workforce, help our folk really build on a sustainable way of doing business differently. We see with all the lockdowns that transactions, deals, new contracts, all of those things need to be signed and secured in a very different global environment. Political tensions continue.
A number of the countries we operate in, we've seen unrest, disruption. Locally, we've seen a lot of unrest and disruption, and our business needs to navigate that and do that on a very agile basis, and you'll see how we've done that. I guess ultimately, you know, we know that we operate in very, very primary sectors of agriculture, mining, and primary chemicals. You know, our world needs food, our world needs food security, and our world needs livelihoods.
The big impacts that agriculture and mining have on GDP across the world bodes well for Omnia's future and for the value we can add into the life of many. The three parts to our purpose, and it's really important as our business grows and as our business moves forward, that we embed this purpose in our business, is to protect life, sustain livelihoods, and creating a better world. You'll see through the presentation how we talk about that and the impact we make and how we measure it.
The next slide, which is the first part of that, is really safety. No business is successful if we don't have a lot of focus on safety, and we can see that our RCRs have been maintained. They've been improved in agriculture and mining, and they've slipped a little bit in chemicals. Great focus from all of our teams. We are focusing on process safety and to enhance our protocols in that space. We're also focusing on rolling out training and driver awareness programs into our contractor and supplier base. Most of the incidents we see is really on roads, and we continue to focus heavily on that. Particularly pleasing is our vaccination program.
We've seen as we started vaccinating our people, our vaccination rates have gone up, and we will continue to administer vaccines across our various plants and businesses that have been registered. We will do so not only for Omnia staff, but for families, for communities, for suppliers, for customers. Anyone who has access to our site will enjoy the benefit of getting a vaccine from our facilities.
The second part of our care is really our ESG goals, and I think it is a proud moment for me to say that whilst we've delivered really good results, which we'll see just now, we've been able to do that in a very responsible way. Firstly, we've improved our greenhouse gas emissions. You know, we've generated a chunk of carbon credits. We also have continued to de-risk our electricity supply in our large Sasolburg complex. Currently, we're able to provide about 40% of cogeneration in total, so we're able to optimize the use of electricity from our utility provider, from internally generated electricity from steam and other applications. Our solar project, which we've invested in, is on track to enhance our cogeneration capacity as well.
Particularly encouraging as well is our explosives business uses used oil in their emulsion, and you will notice that we've won an award for that, and we continue to invest in enhancing the use of this used oil. We continue to look at the amount of used oil we use, and that has also got an impact on the supplier force, on small businesses, and it's got a downstream impact on our mines and our mining customers who then have reduced emissions by using an explosive that uses used oil. It's more stable and better for the environment. We do a number of analyses. Clearly, that helps with our specialty fertilizer. It helps with the Nutriology concept.
Just to tell all of our shareholders that thousands and thousands of leaf soil analysis and samples are being done across the world by our labs and by our technology folk. I touch on two awards that we've won. Really proud moment for our BME business. You know, two awards that they've won, one in Indonesia and another in a local award around responsible care for the used oil, and then also an ESG award around our reporting. We continue to strive to provide more disclosure, more information. Our Sasolburg site also went on an initiative to plant some trees. In the current period, we've planted over 340 trees on our Sasolburg site. I'm starting to think that our folk in Sasolburg want to grow another Amazon jungle.
Great for the environment and great to be doing that. Well done to everybody involved in that. You will also see, fairly, in one of our annexures at the end of our pack, we show our exposure to coal in our BME business. With the uptake of our new contracts and the mobilizing of that, we have consistently reduced our exposure to coal all the way from 19% down to 13% in the current period. If we move to the next slide, let's talk a little bit about the macros. I think we still see social political tensions. We saw a lot of that in South Africa and KZN and disruption.
It's great to say that all of our businesses were safe, all of our people were safe, you know, all of our products were safe through that, and our teams responded swiftly to deal with that. Clearly, there's a lot of economic volatility and change from a currency perspective and from a GDP growth perspective, and it's important that we take cognizance of that and take that into account in our supply chain and how we run our business going forward, and we'll talk a little bit about that later. Similarly, we've seen a massive increase in demand for our products and our outputs.
You know, that is one being driven by supply chain disruption and shortage, but also prices increasing, and changing buying behavior of customers, and we'll talk about that a little bit later. I don't need to talk about the global supply chain, whether it's been the Suez Canal, whether it's been the ports, whether it's been the rail lines, whether it's just been feedstock shortages of ammonia. I think it's, you know, we operate in a very dynamic environment, and it's particularly great to see how the Omnia supply chain, the Omnia manufacturing teams and the Omnia distribution teams in the explosives business and the agriculture business has worked together to optimize the entire chain in our business.
You see that benefit's coming through our results as well. Something that we also need to look at carefully is the infrastructure. You know, whilst we have our own rail wagons, and we're able to import ammonia successfully, and we have imported ammonia successfully in the prior period. We've been forced to import more than what we bought locally. We are dependent on local infrastructure, on ports, on water and electricity supply, and our teams have been agile and have had to put in a number of initiatives to ensure that we are sustainable. Actually, we've been more than that. We've been able to help customers who were dependent on global providers. We've been able to help farmers and mines that needed either product or feedstock in these difficult times. Just a thought about commodity prices.
You know, I try to do a long horizon, a 10-year horizon. What we can see is, you know, an extreme uptick in commodity prices in the last two years. That's driven, you know, one by supply chain disruption and shortage. I think we know that mines and farmers cannot afford not to have the fertilizer or explosives available when they need to operate. We focused hard at Omnia to ensure that we shorten the stock cycles, that we actually get the stock in the hands of the farmers as soon as possible, so they're not dependent on last-minute road infrastructure, rail infrastructure, or delivery, 'cause we've seen so much disruption.
It really reminds us a bit, you know, when we all were at business schools and studying, we were told about just in time and low stock levels. However, the pandemic has taught us and the supply chain disruption of, you know, the Suez Canal, the ports, the infrastructure, has taught us that actually what you need is to get the supply and the stock at the point of use. Get it to the farm, get it to the mine as quick as possible. I think overall what we've seen is that farmers and mines have actually stocked up, and manufacturers have actually stocked up a little bit sooner, a little bit faster. Everybody wants to de-risk the supply chain right now. It's an interesting phenomenon.
You know, we've thought about a global village and global supply chains, but what we do know is the winners now are those who actually have the supply on site when it's needed. You know, it's the companies like ourselves that have flexibility to buy in South Africa, on the continent, but also flexibility to import, and manage and drive that. Obviously, these charts have changed. You know, we're using specific prices, and they've moved on since we've done them. I think overall what you're seeing is that while the supply of ammonia is difficult at the moment, we've been able to secure what we need. We've been able to certainly provide the fertilizer and explosives for all of our customers and more.
You know, we're well-positioned to manage this volatile scenario going forward. We can move forward. Thank you. If we just take a step back and just talk about the last few years, I think we've been on a very disciplined execution of our strategy. You know, firstly, to focus on stabilizing our business and sorting out the balance sheet. We then focused on a number of back to basics fixes, which has delivered a chunk of value. Now we're firmly in this renew and grow phase, and I will talk about that after we go through the results. I think what is great is, you know, when we say we're gonna do something, we go out and do it.
You know, we're seeing great margin recovery that has come through from the fixing. We saw good bottom line growth that has come through from the fixing. What you're seeing in this set of results is a large chunk of top-line growth, which is now coming from the new customers we've secured, the new strategies we've put in place around supply chain, manufacturing, trade sales, and actually optimizing the supply chain across our business and optimizing the manufacturing across our business. We'll talk a little bit further about that. I think what we also said we would do is we will be disciplined around capital allocation. I guess in allocation, we also mean dis-allocation, and in allocation, we also mean how we think about returning money back to shareholders from a dividend perspective.
I think what you've seen after our last reporting cycle is we will stick to our conviction in doing that. What we've demonstrated to you in the last six months is a good transaction for our shareholders and ourselves, for Umongo, and for Azelis in exiting the Umongo business. That transaction will close sometime early in the new year and will bring ZAR 1 billion into our business and further strengthen our balance sheet and further strengthen our ability to allocate capital, whether that is into organic or inorganic projects, or whether that is returning capital back to our shareholders by way of an interim special dividend or share buybacks. I will talk a little bit later about the growth and how we're thinking about that. The next slide.
You know, it's always good to look back and think about whether what we said we would do, you know, how did we go about doing it? You know, I'm encouraged when I look at our supply chain and manufacturing. It was a difficult decision two years ago to start bringing together the supply chain and the manufacturing facilities. It was a difficult decision to move some of our executives to different roles. I think looking back and looking at the results today, we can see how the centralizing of the supply chain across agriculture and mining has paid great and generated great value for us in this cycle. It's actually allowed us to be incredibly agile to deal with some of the macro issues we faced.
We also wanted to change our corporate center, and create a shared services, which has also been a lot of change in the business. It's impacted and reduced our costs. It's increased the focus. I think overall, you know, the exiting of Oro Agri and the disinvestment now of Umongo actually creates a lot of focus for our management team, and it really ensures that Omnia is focused on agriculture and mining. For the first time, we see a chunk of value being generated out of our trade sales, because we've been able to run our plants harder, because we've been able to optimize the product, the use of ammonium nitrate into agriculture and mining.
We've been able to supply on a trade sale basis to various customers, and that profit is actually starting to come through quite nicely in our results at the moment. If we move forward then. Cool. You know, Omnia has performed really well in these challenging times. I think we must not take away from the efforts that our integrated business model, our teams have put into this integrated business model and the value it's generated. You see that our supply chain, our manufacturers, and our distributors in explosives and the agriculture business has optimized the whole. You see it in our stock positions. You see it in the fact that we've been able to deliver fertilizer and explosives while a number of global folk and local folk battle to do that.
I think using Omnia's rail tanker fleet really allowed us the flexibility to import ammonia to do that timely. It did leave us with a lot of gray hairs or balding you know when our utility provider when Transnet had challenges and there were disruptions. I think overall, it's really a great strong place to be in that we've had this flexibility. We also put out a chart a little bit later, and we show you the plant's performances, and you'll see that all of our plants have been optimized. Our plants are running at higher capacities. Something that has been very good for our business is to shorten the stock to cash cycle. You see at half year we've generated cash, which is unusual if we look back.
Our teams have been able to do that 'cause they've really shortened the cycle to get the product to the customer as quick as possible. It's in the interest of the customers because we know there's been so much supply chain and logistics disruptions, so customers are happy with that, and that's resulted in us, actually banking some of the cash a little bit sooner. We can move to the next slide. If I get to our highlights, I think the first thing to say is before we talk about the financial highlights. We've been able to do all of the financial delivery while still doing a whole lot of non-financial delivery. I think there's a few proud items on this slide.
The one is from a people perspective, you know, we have implemented a broad-based share scheme for all of our staff. All of our staff got 300 shares, which we funded and funded that internally. It makes every single person in our company a shareholder of Omnia. We also continue to invest in learnerships. We continue to invest in graduate programs, and we continue to administer vaccines across all of our sites that have been accredited. We've also been able to maintain our safety record. From a communities perspective, we continue to invest in learnerships. We continue to teach kids about various math and science and financial programs, and share some of our skills with graduates, universities, and others, whether that be engineering, agronomy, or others. We've maintained our BEE rating.
I've spoken already about reducing our greenhouse gases. You know, Protea has also been investing in HydroPlus, which is a technology used in hydrogen fuel cells. We continue to focus on renewable energy in Sasolburg. BME continues to enhance the use of used oil in an emulsion. Then finally, in Australia, we've expanded our plant. We've expanded our storage capacity. We've commissioned a kelp facility. We've also commissioned a blender in Mozambique, which you will hear about a little bit later. I guess having done all of that from a non-financial perspective, if you go to the finances now, I think it's really good to see good top-line growth.
It's important, I guess, in any business, you know, if you see the top-line growth, you wanna see the growth all the way through. You know, our revenue up over 30%, our profits up, you know, significantly. We've given you a number with hyperinflation and with and without hyperinflation. Stephan's included a lot of disclosure around hyperinflation as well. You can see, when you strip hyperinflation out from both years, you know, even a better performance from our group. Clearly, we've been managing cash well, so our interest is down. Our profit after tax, you know, more than doubled. Our earnings per share more than doubled.
Our EBITDA up and our cash generated in the first six months positive, moving from a net debt position of last year. Yet again, working capital well managed. Some nice initiatives coming through there. Our net asset value with a slight decrease due to the ZAR 1 billion dividend paid out at half year. I think overall, a really good interim report card. I'm very pleased with the way the businesses have performed overall. Let's just get into a little bit of the detail. I think the first big win for us is the working capital and cash flow and how we have been able to achieve that. We've been able to achieve that with great supply chain, manufacturing and sales and marketing integration.
We've reviewed a number of our processes. We've thought about being agile around when we produce and what we produce. In some instances, we've produced more explosives and a little less fertilizer. We've imported some of the fertilizer. We've reduced our stock levels, and actually, our sales and marketing folk delivered from our plants straight to farms on a number of instances. That reduced the stock to cash cycle, and it actually got the stock to where it was needed to be used. We work hand in glove with our large global mines and with our farmers to reduce the overall supply chain. That is actually the right thing to do because it reduces the risk for those customers. When our farmers need to plant, they need the fertilizer there.
When our mines need to explode, they need the explosives to be on site. They don't need it to be in our facilities and dependent on road, rail, and the disruption we've seen. We've also introduced some supply chain finance, and it's great to see as our business strengthens. It's great to see our finance teams and our supply chain folk leverage our relationships with suppliers, with customers, with banks, and that's also resulted in a lower working capital cycle. Obviously, our cash flow has been supported by strong operational performance. I think we put out this chart, which Stephan's team has done, which is really showing at half year how much cash, you know, we've generated or utilized, and that's the bottom chunk of the bar.
How much do we generate in the second half? What we know is the second half of the year is our large cash generating time. What you're seeing last year and this year in the first half, our business is generating cash, which is particularly encouraging and pleasing. We also have not got the Umongo proceeds in this, and I think you know that the Umongo proceeds will come through in the first half or the first quarter of next year, and that's another ZAR 1 billion of cash flow on top of this. If we move to the next slide. Just from a working capital perspective, and you would have seen these slides previously, you know, a really good story again to tell here.
You know, working capital, you can see our stock positions, which are the dark green bars, are up on last year. Our working capital position improved again by ZAR half a billion. We can talk about the various segments a little bit later. It's great to see the sales up, the stock levels up, and the working capital down. It really shows, you know, as our teams are coming together, how much value we've been able to unlock in our business. If we move to the next slide, I think we almost always promised you that the capital expenditure will be well managed.
I think yet again, you can see us focusing on generating the value out of previously invested capital and ensuring the capital, the maintenance capital and the expansion capital that we utilize is well managed. We're guiding again to, initially, we guided to about ZAR 600 million for the current year, but probably somewhere between ZAR 500-600 million for the current year. Well-managed capital as well. If we move to the next slide, I was just talking through the further value that we will deliver in our manufacturing and supply chain and saying that, you know, previously we were able to point to strategies in this space, but now what we can show is the real value, the earnings and the margin enhancement that we've seen from these optimizations.
We've got a chunk of projects that Jacques and Francois are running going forward that will deliver more value in our manufacturing and agriculture spaces in future periods. I'm not gonna touch on all of them in the interest of time. If I move to the next slide, we attempted here to give you additional disclosure around our plant utilizations, and the key one is really our nitric acid plants. You can see that our nitric acid plants are being run harder, and that is due to firstly the additional BME contract that we took on, but also the additional demand for fertilizer. We've been optimizing explosives and fertilizer. We've been importing a little bit of fertilizer, making a little bit more of explosives.
At the end of the day, what we said is we will optimize the margin and the value enhancement and actually produce those in our plants. All of our plants, you can see, have trended up. The one plant that's a little bit less at half year is a Nitrophos plant. However, the benefits out of that plant is been significantly enhanced by various projects that our manufacturing head has put in place in that space. Whilst you know, I'm actually not concerned about the utilization. What I'm excited about is, as the utilization increases, the value we will get out of this plant will far outweigh the original business case.
It just shows when the team comes together, you know, and we change a few of our processes, how much value we can unlock as a group. If we move to the next slide, we will continue to expand our international businesses. We've said before that we've expanded our plant in Morwell. We've also commissioned a kelp plant. That facility, the humates plant, has about 40% spare capacity, and we're continuing to sell and distribute into India, into Egypt, Africa, the E.U., the U.S. We've just opened an agriculture office there and into Brazil. There's nice traction and a lot more value we can generate out of this plant.
I'm hoping that we will have James Freemantle, who is our Managing Director of this business, on the call a little bit later, and he'll be able to engage with you on some questions or some comments about the plant. A really pleasing outcome of where we are. The second area of growth is really our BME international business, and we continue to invest in a number of countries where there's mining spend, mining exploration. Our joint venture in Canada is going well. We've secured some new business there, and Stephan will talk about that a little bit later. We also continue to invest in Indonesia and that's taking nice traction.
We continue to look for a partnership in Australia, and obviously locally, whether that be Zambia or in South Africa, we've made good progress in terms of retaining and securing new customers. These two areas will clearly be areas that we will continue to invest people, invest capital, and invest resources in. I think what we do know is that both our agriculture business and our explosives business has really good value propositions for customers. It's a good story to tell and a good proposition to take into these new markets and win. It's great to see us winning the new business and taking on the new contracts. Obviously, some of them in this space takes a while to mobilize and takes a little bit of time to get bedded down.
Both areas, both international businesses have been impacted by the lockdowns. Australia, as an example, has been locked down very heavily, for large periods of time, so it's been difficult to build new partnerships. It's been difficult for our folks to travel. As the world opens up, I think we will see some very nice traction out of these two spaces. If we move to the next slide. I'm not gonna go into this in too much detail, but really what this demonstrates is our disciplined approach to capital allocation. We told our shareholders that we've got certain non-core assets that you know are unable to be synergized or leveraged as a group.
Umongo was one of those, and we're pleased to have concluded a transaction with Azelis, a transaction that's good for all parties concerned. Where we are now is just ticking through all the CPs and hopefully, in the first quarter of next year, we will have the proceeds from that business over ZAR 1 billion from that sale. Obviously, in the current reporting cycle, we see that Umongo has done well and actually being managed well to model. If we move to the next slide. I'm gonna pause here. I'm gonna hand over to Stephan, who's gonna take you through some more detail of the results, and I'll come back at the end with a bit of a conclusion. Thanks, Stephan.
Thank you, Seelan. Just before we jump into the details, I think it's a real good set of results, as Seelan mentioned, that we're all really, really proud of, from an Omnia perspective. Jumping into some of the details, from a revenue point of view, revenue up to ZAR 9.9 billion, up 31%, mostly driven by our agriculture business that added an additional ZAR 1.5 billion compared to the comparative period. Also, our mining business, which added another ZAR 800 million, which led to increase in gross profit. Maybe just from a gross profit margin point of view, it was negatively affected by a fixed price contract in Zambia, as well as pricing pressure, which we can see throughout the SADC region in the mining industry.
Moving down, if you look at the expenses, the expenses was well controlled versus comparative periods. Increase in expenses as a result of repair and maintenance coming through our mining businesses as well as our agriculture businesses. Also, the insurance markets hardening up post the Beirut explosion. We can see that coming through our premiums, as well as increased rates and taxes on the local front. If we move further down to other operating expenses, a decrease by 26%, mostly driven by the movement in foreign exchange, which leaves at an operating profit of ZAR 679 million, 70% up from the comparative period, which I'll unpack in a bit more detail later. Good operating margin of 6.9% versus 5.3% in the prior period.
If you look at the finance expense, significant decrease compared to comparative period based on the settlement of the debt. That leaves us to a profit before tax of ZAR 670 million. If you look at the income tax, significantly increased compared to comparative period, and that's basically threefold. Firstly, the reversal of the indemnification asset associated with the agriculture biological. Secondly, the strong performance throughout the six months resulted in entities being in tax credit positions now being in a tax-paying position. Overall strong performance by the business, leading to operating profit from continuing operations of ZAR 467 million versus ZAR 213 million in the comparative period.
If I then move us forward, maybe just an update to our shareholders on the SARS transfer pricing audit. If you cast your mind back to our FY 2021 year-end result, we've added the additional disclosure for the additional assessments received on the transfer pricing audit. Maybe some of the developments. In July, we submitted an application for suspension of payment. Towards the end of last week, we received a request from SARS to pay 30%, and for any future payments to be deferred until the matter has been finally settled.
In August, we also submitted a request for extension and objection, and the objection has been lodged with SARS also during the course of last week. The next steps going forward, we don't expect to hear any sort of feedback from SARS on this side of the calendar year. We expect to get some traction in quarter one next year, and depending on the outcome of the assessment of the objection, Omnia will pursue the ADR or the MAP procedures.
Currently, we remain confident on a favorable outcome going forward, as we believe our transfer pricing policies is fair and at arm's length. Maybe just if we delve into some of the detail on the operating profit, and maybe specifically regarding Zimbabwe and the impact on Zimbabwe. Maybe while we're on Zimbabwe, we follow a risk-based strategy in Zimbabwe, where we limit the exposure. We don't invest any money into Zimbabwe. We make sure we also do it on a back-to-back basis to make sure we can externalize the cash out of Zimbabwe. Also, our commercial transactions is structured in hard currency.
We also limit the local exposures by reducing our retail footprint from 50 shops down to five. Maybe if I just look at the Zimbabwean operations before the numbers get hyper-inflated. The Zimbabwe operation is a profitable operation during the six months. It also supports Sasolburg, so we get additional throughput through Sasolburg. The Zimbabwe operation also generated cash. Maybe just to put it in perspective with the broader result, our Zimbabwe revenue is less than 2% of the overall revenue from a group perspective. As you can see on the slide, the impact on operating profit is a ZAR 200 million swing compared to the comparative period.
If I maybe just isolate the movement, you will see the operating profit has moved from ZAR 239 million at a 3.2% operating margin to ZAR 723 million at a 7.3% operating margin. Really strong performance. If I then just move us forward. If we look at our business entities, if I can start off with Agriculture, significant increase in operating margin as well as in operating profit. That was driven by our South African business. Also, we report into our South African business, our manufacturing facilities, which was well-supported by our agile supply chain. We can also see very good agronomic conditions in Agriculture, as well as the high commodity prices that Seelan already touched on. Moving on to our Mining business.
An increase in operating profit, which was driven by increased volumes in our SADC region, and also the higher ammonia prices upliftment, resulted in increased earnings. Which at a operating margin perspective, that was slightly offset by the competitive environment, more specifically in the SADC region. If I move us forward to the chemicals business. Maybe just one point to highlight. Umongo Petroleum gets reported as a discontinued operations. So the chemicals disclosed is only Protea Chemicals. You can see Protea Chemicals were fairly stable, compared to the comparative period, with tentative growth as the business comes out of hard lockdown from a COVID perspective. You can also see the margin reduced from 3.9% to 3.5%, and that was due to operational challenges.
Maybe two to highlight was the cyberattack that played out in the Durban port, as well as the additional shipping costs that we see play out on a global basis. Maybe just jumping to some more details. If you look at our agriculture, and as I mentioned, where we report our manufacturing numbers as well, you can see in South Africa a significant increase in revenue. Also a significant increase in operating profit and margin. Revenue's up 66% and operating profit is up by more than 100%, as I mentioned, by the sufficient supply chain to make sure that we limit any sort of supply chain disruptions to our customers. Also, some of our farmers bought some of the stock earlier to mitigate the potential risk of supply chain disruptions. The higher commodity prices drove up revenues.
We can also see the increased volumes coming through our mining business resulted in additional throughput through our manufacturing facilities. If I move over to our international business, excluding Zimbabwe, you can also see a significant increase in revenue by 13%. That was driven throughout the whole region in SADC as well as international, which shows increase in volumes. You can see the operating profit was down 10%, mostly affected by the fixed price contract in Zambia that negatively affected the margins, as well as in Australia, due to the hard lockdown, resulted in additional shipping costs, as well as the movement in currency and the rand strengthening against the Aussie dollar.
If I then move us forward to the mining business, you can see revenue up by 56%, mostly driven by growth in volumes, specifically in South Africa, by the transitioning of a large contract, which resulted in additional throughput in our agricultural business, from a manufacturing point of view, as I mentioned earlier. You can also see the operating profit increased, but the margins were slightly offset. As I mentioned, the competitive environment, more specifically in [Savage]. If I move it over to the international business, revenues were up by 13%.
Operating profit was up by 30%, and that's on the back of really good sales volumes throughout the whole SADC region, as well as support from Protea Mining Chemicals and increased sales of high-performance products. If I then move us forward to our chemicals division, specifically Protea Chemicals, you can see revenue was up by 1%. Operating profit was down by 9%, and that was on the back of tentative growth as the country came out of hard lockdown in South Africa. The manufacturing industry still experiencing a lot of difficulties as we could see playing out over the last 10 years. Also, negatively affecting the margins were additional operational expenses, specifically in chemicals, as highlighted earlier, as well as a minimal effect, negative effect by the impact of hyperinflation in our Protea Chemicals business.
If I move over to Umongo Petroleum, you can see revenues was up 37% and operating profit up 9%. Strong performance by the division, and this was on the back of a supply/demand imbalance, resulting in additional prices or increased prices and volumes from an Umongo perspective. Margins slightly decreased compared to the comparative period, and that was due to the movement of unrealized foreign currency gains and losses. If I then move us forward, from an EBITDA point of view, again, just highlighting the effect of hyperinflation from a Zimbabwe perspective. If I isolate the Zimbabwe division, you can see EBITDA has increased to over ZAR 1 billion compared to ZAR 612 million in the comparative period.
If I move us from the income statement to the balance sheet, you can see total assets reduced by 5%, and that was mostly due to the disposal of our agri-biological business, which was closed out after the prior period. You can see that was slightly offset by a slight increase in inventories, as well as a really strong cash performance, resulting in ZAR 1.4 billion. If you look at total liabilities, that decreased by 7%, and that was mostly due to the settlement of the debt compared to the comparative period. Also offset by a slight increase in trade and other payables and initiatives, as we've mentioned earlier regarding the working capital that Seelan highlighted.
If I move us down to equity decreased by 3%, and that was on the back of the ZAR 1 billion dividend distribution that was distributed to Shell, that's post the FY 2021 results. Overall, a strong balance sheet, moving from a net debt position to a net cash position, and also net working capital reduced by another ZAR 700 million compared to the comparative period.
If I just close off on the numbers from a cash flow perspective, a strong cash generation from operations by the business, and that was mostly as a result of the strong earnings. Compared to the comparative period, there was also a release of working capital. If I look at the outflow from investing activities, really good control on the capital expenditure from a group perspective. The outflow from financing activities, the big driver, the dividends that was placed, that was post the FY 2021 financials. Overall, a really strong cash performance by the business. I'll hand it back to Seelan for the closure.
Thanks. Thanks, Stephan. I think we should just acknowledge that we've been able to move our results one day earlier, and that's with the hard work and effort that our finance team have been able to put into this. To everyone on the call, maybe just moving to a closing position now, you know, let's just talk about the outlook and the future. I think the first thing to state is that we still expect supply chain disruption and volatility and uncertainty in commodity pricing due to that. I think a number of questions are being asked around how we're dealing with that and how we remain relevant.
I think what you can see is if you look at our last six months' performance, in very, very difficult times, we've been able to demonstrate absolute agility and resilience to deal with the supply chain disruptions. We continue to see support in our agriculture, mining, and manufacturing business going forward. I think the demand for explosives, the demand for fertilizer, is certainly not gonna go away. Customers are wanting to de-risk their supply chain. They're wanting to create certainty for themselves.
I think overall, whether it's our Australian business distributing into the Indian market, you know, via our partnership there with Deepak Fertilizer, or whether it's our BME business, you know, providing services to large mines in SADC or in South Africa, you know, these corporates and these distributors are wanting to reduce their supply chain risk, increase their stock holdings on site at the point of use of either the fertilizer, the coatings products, or the explosives. I think we need to continue to innovate in terms of ESG. Overall, our business is focusing more and more on greener technologies, on safer applications, and whether it's in our mining or our agriculture business or our chemicals business, we continue to invest in that space.
I think our outlook, we anticipate a strong cash position. You know, all things being equal, we've still got the Umongo sale proceeds to come in, and we will consider the distribution to our shareholders at year-end. What we said is, once we've set aside enough for our organic and inorganic growth, we will continue with ordinary dividend, special dividend, and share buybacks, and we will consider that, the board will consider that at year-end. I think you know, our shareholders know that at year-end, we did that, you know, and we were in a strong position to pay not only a strong ordinary dividend, but also a special dividend. We will look at that again at the end of our financial year.
If I move to the next slide, and I know most shareholders ask us a lot of questions about this margin guidance. Stephan and I were saying, "You know, let's go back to what we told you, and let's just see how we're performing, and also let's give a sense that we will also re-look at this." Firstly, at an overall group level, you know, we're performing nicely in our long-term guidance range. I think it's fair to say that you can see us looking at our business across agriculture and mining together. Stephan and I have been focusing our minds a little bit more on the blended margin of those two businesses, because we can see how intertwined the supply chain and the manufacturing is.
Having said that, we also have got very clear KPIs in terms of margins in mining and agriculture. Agriculture, you know, performing nicely in the long-term range as well as the group. I think mining slightly below the medium-term range. We've got projects in place there, and we'd like to see our mining business into the long-term range during the course of next year. You know, it might need a step change into the medium-term range and then into the long-term range, you know, 2023 or so. We've got a number of initiatives on the go there. Chemicals, a little bit disappointing for us. We would have liked to have been like the other businesses in the medium-term range.
I think we need a little bit of refocusing in that business. You know, with some of the clutter removed, some of the simplification in the group, you know, I think our group executives and the leadership of that business will now have more focus to get that business into the medium-term range. We hope to be there, you know, during the course of calendar year next year. Overall, our margin guidance still holds true. We've got a number of initiatives in place to actually get all of our businesses now, certainly the mining and chemicals into the medium, and then into the long-term range.
As we continue unlocking value in our supply chain, and our manufacturing, we will start revising, the long-term ranges in all these businesses, and we will do so, during the course of calendar year FY 2022. If we move to the next slide. Where are we going? You know, if we go backwards again, we still believe there's a chunk of value we're gonna generate, out of our current, capital that we've deployed. There's more on the table, more value we're gonna generate out of our supply chain manufacturing, and current businesses. We think that will nicely increase, our margins, nicely increase our return on capital.
While we're focused on new projects, and I will talk about those new projects just now, I think we still, as a management team, need to deliver some more value out of our current investments that we've made. We're pointing to those, we're seeing those. We need to invest in some of our bench strength. We need to invest in some of our infrastructure to almost automate some of the great wins we've had, and to take those wins to the next level. I've been pleased to see what some of the new leaders have been doing across our businesses. There'll still be value to come out of our renewal phase.
I think what you can see now is Omnia is firmly delivering growth. You know, there's a slide at the end of the presentation that we won't have time to go to, where we've got volume and revenue growth. You can see that almost all of our businesses are showing volume growth. If we take out the impact of the higher commodity prices and we look at the substance of our business, are we growing volumes? We're growing volumes. That's a great place to be in, because you know that this business has got good value propositions to end customers. If we move to the next slide. Where will the growth come from? From a growth perspective, there are three areas that we're currently focusing on.
The one is the expansion of our plant in Australia. The Humates and the kelp plant. James' focus there now is distribution, to continue our distribution partnerships in India, in Egypt, in Africa, in the U.S. You know, we're registering in the U.S., the EU, and Brazil. I think we've got nice capacity that we can still sell off there. We will continue our expansion in Indonesia. We're quite close to executing on our venture there with MNK. We've executed on our venture in Canada. We've secured some nice new customers. There's mobilization taking place there. Those are three areas where we in-flight. We've set aside the capital that's needed for that. It's in our capital plans already, and hopefully that will generate value going forward.
I think other areas where we'll explore AgriBio, we'll explore further expansion in BME, in other fast-growing or well-established mining markets. Then we will look at selected opportunities in our supply chain, in our agricultural mining businesses that will enhance the end value to our customers. We will do that on the basis of knowing that it's close to our core skill and strength, and we will do that in a carefully considered manner to ensure that if we do allocate capital, if we do acquire anything, it's done prudently, and it's done in a very carefully considered manner.
I guess thereafter, which we keep saying, and it takes us to our next slide, is that once we've set aside capital for those initiatives, whether they're organic or inorganic opportunities, we will then consider the capital distribution. We've put out some targeted EPS ranges. I think what you've seen from our delivery at year-end is that should these different initiatives not line up in terms of timelines, we will consider ordinary dividends, special dividends, and share buybacks to return capital to shareholders. We will not hold capital for lengthy periods, you know, in a way that is inefficient from a capital structure perspective.
We will continue to maintain a strong balance sheet, which you've seen us do in these uncertain economic times. We have put out some disclosure in terms of our debt facilities, and we've put out some thoughts around our gearing ratio. I mean, clearly, you know, we're in a strong position, a cash position at the moment, and we don't intend being in a net cash position into perpetuity. We will relook at that, you know, in future periods. I think the story around capital is that, you know, we will manage capital robustly. You know, that speaks to the first point of our investor proposition. We will stay convicted with capital allocation and dis-allocation.
We will stay convicted to ensure that where we've invested money in plants and infrastructure, we will deliver the returns. We will deliver the returns not only on the capital invested, but also on the future capital we invest. We've still got value to unlock in that space. I think what you're seeing is a very focused business model. You're seeing us as a management team focus on our core, and you're seeing us deliver on that core. We believe what we're good at is operational excellence. You know, we're a firm of engineers, of chemists, of scientists. We focus on precision, whether that's in agriculture, or in mining. We believe there's still a lot of value to be unlocked there from an operational excellence perspective. You see some of that coming through.
You know, one of the things we sit on is a large gypsum pile. You know, it hasn't been giving us the return we wanted. We've been able to sign a long-term offtake agreement on that, and that will deliver a return on that. Any unutilized asset, any unutilized warehouse, piece of land or business that's not, you know, reaching its operational excellence or return, you know, we're focusing on getting that heat out of the base. From a competitive perspective, we're winning new customers, and that's always a great lead indicator to know whether we've got good value propositions. We will continue to invest in those value propositions, the Nutriology concept in agriculture. Our shareholders know we've got the youngest and largest nitric acid plants.
Those plants have been very stable and delivered well in a difficult time, where a number of plants were battling in this region. We are pioneers and innovators in a number of technologies in BME, and we can be particularly proud of Blast Alliance. We can be particularly proud of AXXIS, you know, and our dual-salt emulsion, which is stabler and better in reactive ground and actually better for the environment. I'm not gonna go through, you know, all of the issues on this slide, but also to say, you know, our business operates in these primary sectors, and we know that agriculture, mining, and primary chemicals is a big driver of GDP growth. That puts us in good stead to be sustainable and grow going forward.
Just in closing then, what you're seeing from our team is a very focused and robust strategy execution. What we told you we would do, we've set out and done that in a very robust manner. We've also been very disciplined about capital allocation. Sometimes it's difficult to let a business go that you love and that you're proud of, and, you know, we all get on well, but we've been disciplined about capital allocation, capital management, capital de-allocation. All of that really will result in a focused long-term value creation. You're seeing a nice uptick in our return on capital. We're not where we wanna be. There's still a lot more value to unlock. You know, we will continue focus on long-term value creation and continue to focus on increasing our return on capital.
I think most importantly, we will do that by creating a better world. We will do that safely. We will do that while as we look after environment, we look after our people, and we really run a long-term sustainable business. I'm gonna stop there and maybe just in closing say I'd like to thank all of our staff. I'd like to thank all of our suppliers. I'd like to thank all of our customers. I'd like to thank our board, our shareholders, our communities.
In some instances, our communities have safeguarded and looked after our assets during very difficult times. Thank you to all of our stakeholders, our staff, our customers, our suppliers, our communities. Our board, you know, has provided an incredible amount of support to see what is a very pleasing result of Omnia at this half year. I'm gonna stop there and open up for questions. Should we start off with the line first?
Thank you, Seelan. I believe that there's no questions from the conference call, so we can go over to the questions from the webcast. The first question is from a private investor, Daniel Broad. He's asked, "What is the status on the ZAR 900 million possible tax liability?
Thanks, Louise. Stephan, can you maybe talk through that?
Yeah, sure. As we've highlighted, Louise, the objection has been submitted through to SARS towards the end of last week. Now it's a bit of a process that will play out. We expect to hear back from them in quarter one, and from there we'll handle it via the ADR process or the MAP process. Maybe just to add is that, which I've added during the presentation as well, we received a request from SARS for a payment, a 30% payment, which is due in December, and the balance or any sort of future payments will be deferred until the matter is finally settled.
Stephan, we've got agronomists, engineers, and accountants on the line. Could you just give us the full version of those acronyms?
ADR is the Alternative Dispute Resolution process, and MAP is the Mutual Agreement Procedure.
Thank you.
Thank you, Stephan. Just keeping with the financials, next question is from Rajayt Ambakar of Excelsia Capital. Maintenance capital has averaged around ZAR 100 million over the last five years. You have guided for ZAR 200 million for FY 2022. Is that a normal level we can expect over the coming years post-2022?
Yeah. Yeah, I will handle that. Thanks, Louise. As guided previously from a maintenance capital, we expect our maintenance capital to maintain at the ZAR 200 million level. This is group wide, so that includes our Sasolburg facilities as well as our other manufacturing facilities. From a total CapEx point of view, as previously guided, we expect a total of ZAR 600 million, which then include the ZAR 200 million maintenance and ZAR 400 million inorganic and organic growth capital, which for the current year, the current forecast indicate about ZAR 500 million, and we expect it to maintain at that level going forward.
Thank you, Stephan. Another financial question, also from Raj Ambakar. Where do you think you can get net working capital as a percentage of revenue to? What is a sustainable percentage?
Yeah, I think what you can see that played out over the last two years is a rebasing of the working capital. I think our supply chain and our manufacturing facilities has worked really well together to make sure we rebase our working capital together with our marketing teams. As a percentage of revenue, our target is always to keep it below 20% as a net working capital basis. We expect to see a slight increase in working capital as the higher commodity prices will drive up certain quantities going forward. The current target ratio is below 20%, and we expect it to settle between the 15%-18% level into the future.
Thank you, Stephan. We have another question from Raj Ambakar. With the strong H1 in Agri SA, do you expect a more muted second half, or can we expect similar seasonality?
Should I maybe answer that and give Stephan a break? I think what we have seen is a very strong demand in the first half, not only from South Africa, but also SADC. You know, we've got a view of volumes and you know, some volumes has moved earlier. You know, farmers have been concerned about supply chain and have moved volumes earlier. What we do know is that volumes have grown overall. Our main planting season is what's happening right now. You know, our main volumes are happening in the second half. You know, we are still confident that we will see a strong second half if conditions stay the way they are in the agriculture space.
It is very, very complex and difficult in the supply chain at the moment. A lot of the volumes that we supply in the second half of the year are instantaneous volumes. Our sales and marketing director and teams need to bring the volumes in, blend them, and send them in terms of specialty chemicals. Specialty fertilizer. We actually, we're very, very busy now, and we still believe that the second half of agriculture, you know, has got a lot of value to add to the Omnia Group.
Thank you, Seelan. The next question comes from Mike Townshend of Foord. I didn't notice any numbers on the Australian portion of your agri international business. Did this grow in dollars? And what impact did logistical or port issues have on volumes and profitability?
Great. Stephan, maybe you can just guide to the slide where that is. Maybe if I can just answer the bigger picture is I think our international businesses, whether it's the agri or the explosives businesses, have both been impacted by lockdowns and supply chain issues. Both those businesses could have performed better if our people could have traveled, you know, if our people could have got in and out of Australia and have continued to build distribution relationships and distribute.
You know, I think the current six months is really muted in the BME international and agri international space, specifically Australia and Brazil. I think as the world opens up, the lockdowns cease, you know, we will see some nice growth out of those businesses. Specifically, the performance, I'll hand over to Stephan for that.
Yeah. Thank you, Seelan. Yeah, that's specifically slide 28 in the deck, specifically on the international business. As Seelan highlighted, there was volume growth out of those businesses. Due to the lockdowns, the additional shipping costs, and the Australian dollar and rand movement actually muted the increase in volumes if you compare it to the comparative period.
Thank you both. Then we have a few questions from Kobus Serfontein. However, some of them were already answered. The ones that are left, can you please elaborate on the fixed price contract in Zambia? How much of this contract is complete or will go into the second half?
Yeah. Great. Do you wanna do it?
Yep.
The fixed price contract, most of our shareholders know we supply fertilizer via a government contract in Zambia. It's to 800,000 small farmers. That was a fixed contract that was written last year sometime that went against us, and all of the fertilizer's been supplied and dealt with. It's an annual renewable contract, so the contract's being renewed again. I think what's important to note is overall, Omnia generates certain value from our manufacturing area, and then we sell on that fertilizer into OGI into Zambia.
Overall, as a business, you know, we haven't lost money on that contract, but certainly we haven't made the amount of money that we would've liked to. I'm really pleased to have appointed Mandla Mpofu, who is a dedicated Managing Director, will be managing our SADC businesses. He's been in the chair now for a few months, and he's been to Zambia and he's in talks and busy negotiating the next contract. Obviously the next contract is new. It will come through in the following cycle. Stephan, is there anything I'm missing on that.
No, I think.
On that deal?
Yeah.
What also has happened is that the current year's contract was actually moved forward a little bit. Normally this contract would've been delivered and paid much later. It was now delivered and paid much earlier, you know, which also helped our cash position in the current environment.
Maybe, Louise, just to add, the tail end of the question, the bulk of that contract is being baked into the first half base, as such. I think the question was also if there's something that's gonna come through in the second half. The bulk of the contract base is being built into the first half.
Thank you both. The last question, also from Kobus Serfontein of All Weather Capital. How does your current ammonia inventory look compared to previous years?
Sure. Overall, our current stock levels are lower than we'd like it to be. I think, and I know we, you know, one of the shareholders asked about working capital. You know, I would say because we've got such demand, you know, we wouldn't mind having higher stock levels, and I think we can demonstrate the value and the return from that. From an ammonia perspective, I mean, maybe let me just explain how the ammonia value chain works for a second, if you don't mind. We've still got a minute. We've got two ways of getting ammonia into our Sasolburg facility. The first is through a local provider, which you're probably fully aware of, and that's via a pipeline.
The second is via importing and really bringing that via our rail wagons from Richards Bay through to Sasolburg. We've broadly got about 160 rail wagons, so they can go in 40 block trains and circle the route. What our supply chain executive does then is he balances what we can get via the pipeline, what we buy from offshore providers, when we buy those, and some of those are bought three, four, five, six months in advance. Then to manage the logistics, because clearly the storage and the movement of ammonia is quite complex and, you know, needs to be done in a very safe way. That's what Job does in supply chain.
Ammonia, as an example, is also difficult to store, so we've got six bullets in Sasolburg. We can bring from the pipeline into those bullets, or we can bring from the trains into those bullets, and we need to optimize the chain. You know, if you were to say, "What is our levels look like?" I think we're comfortable with the levels we've got. You know, we've been able to, and we use ammonia, obviously, in our nitric acid plants and some of our other plants, and we sell some of the ammonia directly. You know, we've also been able to.
We've trade sold some of our ammonia because we were the only company to have ammonia when the country was running out and some of our local, you know, and the local supplier had some very serious headwinds. I think overall we're comfortable with our position, we're comfortable with our stock levels, and we're comfortable with our ability to manage it. You know, that's more or less as much as I can say. We don't really disclose the actual number or the actual tonnage of ammonia that we store at any point in time.
Thank you, Seelan. There don't appear to be any more questions. Shall we hold on maybe just for a minute?
Sure. Maybe if we've got a minute, it might be useful for James Freemantle. He's the Managing Director of our Australian business. James, maybe you could just give our shareholders one minute of the value proposition that our business has in terms of humates, coatings and kelp and how we distribute it. It's a great gem that we've got and if our shareholders don't mind, I'll give James a one-minute opportunity just to talk through that.
Thank you, Seelan. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me. The humate business in Australia has a very strong position because of its raw material positioning and the ability of us to be able to extract a highly concentrated world-class product, which is the humate or the K-HUMATE 26. What we've done to add value to that product is actually developed fertilizer coating technology, where we've added some other things to it, like kelp and some polymers to really, you know, sell that humic acid story, which is basically it's based on nutrient use efficiency. It's taking fertilizer and it's making it more efficient. It's a greener option.
It really makes sure that when you're applying fertilizer, whether it's an NPK or a urea-based product, that humic coating is giving that nutrient every chance to be utilized by the plant. It's a fantastic story. The plant located in Australia is right next to the raw material, which we have exclusive rights to, and that raw material is a world-class asset. We have got the ability to extract a very good product, and that's what we're trying to distribute across the world now through major fertilizer companies, distributors, other biological and biostimulant companies that are looking for a very strong product offering. In essence, that's why the Australian business does exist, is we're developing this humic story.
There's very good science and peer-reviewed data now on the benefits of humic acid as a nutrient use efficiency biostimulant. The Aussie business is in a really strong position from a manufacturing point of view to make and extract this humic acid. With our capacity upgrades, we think we can have a lot more capacity to be able to sell globally. Our big mission now is to find distribution points and major fertilizer companies across the globe that wanna sort of go on the journey with us and use that product offering for a better fertilizer product for their customers. Hope that answers the question, Seelan.
Great. Thank you, James. Perfect. Thank you, everybody. Thanks to our shareholders and all of our stakeholders for joining the call. We really appreciate the interest you've shown in our company, and we're all committed and working hard to manage our business prudently. We hope to meet you over the coming days. If you do have any questions, any thoughts, any comments, please feel free to email or contact Stephan or myself. Thank you very much.