Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining today. We'll now begin the Conference Call for 2021 Q4 Business Results by CJ CheilJedang. We'll first have the presentation by CJ CheilJedang, followed by a Q&A session. If you have questions, please press star and number one on your phone. We'll now begin the presentation by CJ CheilJedang. Ladies and gentlemen, I am Woo Won-sung, Head of Investor Relation Team at Finance Strategy Office at CJ CheilJedang. We'll now begin the Q4 2021 business results report for CJ CheilJedang. Let me remind you that Korean to English simultaneous interpretation will be provided for foreign investors. Let me first introduce the CJ team. We have Mr. Kang Kyoung-suk, Head of Finance Strategy Office, Mr. An Seung-jun, Head of Finance Planning Department, Mr. Kim Jung-woo, Head of Food Korea Business Management.
Mr. Cho Jae-bum, Head of Global Business Management at Food, Mr. Han Kyung-wook, Head of Business Management at Bio, and Mr. Hwang Hyun-ju, Head of Business Management at Feed and Care. Mr. Kang will first walk you through the business results, followed by issue and outlook reports by respective presenters. We will then move on to Q&A.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am Kang Kyoung-suk, Head of Finance Strategy Office at CJ CheilJedang. Today's agenda includes Q4 highlights, earnings analysis results by business unit, key indicator analysis, progress on key strategy execution, followed by 2022 outlook. Let's now flip to page five. In 2021, CJ CheilJedang achieved 11% growth in sales and 13% in OP, resulting in record high results. For Q4 alone, sales grew 18% year-over-year, posting the highest sales growth since Q1 of 2020.
Food's growth was largely driven by the core channels in Korea, further solidifying our market presence. We also expanded globally, reaching record high quarterly global sales of KRW 1.2021 trillion. Bio also saw 26% growth in sales in Q4 alone, enabled by its outstanding competencies such as extensive global production sites and interoperable production. Next page, please. This is the Q4 company-wide results, excluding CJ Logistics. Food experienced sales expansion in core products and growth channels, and Bio also continued its growth with differentiated competency. As a result, sales grew 18% in Q4 compared to the same period last year, resulting in KRW 4.932 trillion. For OP, due to one-off bonus payout, Q4 saw a decline compared to the same period last year at KRW 134.3 billion.
If it's just for the one-off bonus payment, OP is pretty much flat compared to same period last year. In 2021 annual, OP grew 13%. Net profit turned to surplus compared to the past year, with improvement in non-operating income standing at KRW 76.8 billion. If we include CJ Logistics, as you can see on page seven, sales grew 13% year-over-year to KRW 6.9478 trillion, with KRW 236.6 billion OP and KRW 200.9 billion in net profit. Let's now move on to page nine. Let's look at each business unit. First, food. Sales grew 16% year-on-year. In Korea, we focused on growing channels that respond to changes in consumer and retail trends.
We also ensured solid market presence of core products and strengthened brands, resulting in continuous sales growth of 15% year-over-year to KRW 1.2661 trillion. In global, we expanded K-food products and expanded entry into different channels of key countries, resulting in year-over-year growth of 18% to KRW 1.2021 trillion. Operating profit declined by 32% year-over-year to KRW 62.4 billion, impacted by increased bonus payments for outstanding performance in 2021. In Korea, we tried to offset inflation by improving cost and productivity and efficiently reallocating resources. We also increased prices of some of the products. In global, despite unfavorable environment from inflation, we had seen increased sales volume, higher prices for key products, and improved cost structure, resulting in improved profitability.
If you look at the bar graph on page 10, OP margin in Q4 was 2.9%, excluding Schwan's PPA, and 2.5%, including the PPA. Next is more details on food sales in Korea and global on page 11. First, in Korea, product-wise, core products, namely Haechandle Seasoning Paste and HMR, have seen continued growth with enhanced market share of other core products such as Mandu, Soup and Stew, and Kimchi. Channel-wise, we focused on growing channels such as digital, B2B, and convenience stores. Q4 sales in Food Korea stood at KRW 1.2661 trillion. Onto page 12, for global, in the U.S., we strengthened market position with bibigo as platform for globalizing K-food.
As businesses reopened, we actively expanded sales of B2B Pizza, achieving 17% growth in sales compared to the same period last year to KRW 950 billion. In Asia, Pacific, and Europe, we continued high growth, thanks to expansion in K-food category and channels. For China, marketing efforts such as massive online promotions really helped in achieving 24% growth. In Japan, thanks to expansion in Micho's category and channels on top of expanded Mandu sales, we achieved 17% growth in sales. Europe also grew 36%. In total, we grew 19% from the same period last year to KRW 252.1 billion. Q4 sales in Food Global stood at KRW 1.2021 trillion. Next, on to page 13 on Bio Business Unit.
With technical marketing and market leadership, Bio has been proactive in raising prices and strengthened market presence utilizing its extensive network of global production sites. Sales grew 26% year-over-year to KRW 992.1 billion, and OP grew 6% from the same period last year, with quarterly OP standing at KRW 75.1 billion. Product-wise, for ANH, based on R&D competency and diversified global presence, we demonstrated cost competitiveness and optimized global allocation of key products for OP improvements. We also rode on the trend of using less crude protein to strengthen technical marketing, as a result, creating new demand. For HNH, based on our market leadership, we led price increase and sales expansion of nucleotides. We also expanded sales of high-margin specialties such as arginine and TasteNrich.
Specifically for TasteNrich, annual sales in 2021 surpassed KRW 34 billion, adding more than KRW 28 billion from 2020. On page 14, you can see that Q4 OP margin for Bio was about 7.6%, with high value-added specialties accounting for a two-digit percentage in the total sales mix. Next on to Feed & Care. As major countries raised prices of feed, sales grew, but due to demand decline in light of the lockdown in Vietnam, hog prices fell, resulting in operating profit decline. For sales, grain price hike led to price increase in major countries, resulting in rise in sales of feed. Poultry price also recovered in Indonesia, and hog sales increase in Vietnam led to rise in livestock sales as well. In total, sales grew 14% year-over-year to KRW 632.9 billion.
In contrast, for OP, we saw operating loss of KRW 3.2 billion. This is because grain price inflation led to higher raw material cost of feed and livestock in major countries, and due to prolonged lockdown in Southeast Asia, consumer confidence had shrunk and congestion of obese hog inventory had restrained hog price recovery. Product-wise, for feed, there had been increase in raw material cost due to grain price hike, but we had maintained the spread by increasing price in each country and expanded sales of high-margin feed to defend profitability. In livestock, we improved productivity enabled by biosecurity, resulting in expanded sales of hogs and increase in sales. Due to logistics crunch during the lockdown, expanded volume in the market with spread of ASF, hog prices fell, undermining profitability.
In addition, rise in feed price in Indonesia led to increase in cost of livestock, but government-led efforts to stabilize market enabled recovery in poultry prices, giving us more room to breathe. Let's now turn to page 17 to performance of CJ Logistics. CJ Logistics achieved growth. It grew 8% year-over-year to KRW 3.0573 trillion, and OP grew 10% to KRW 99.8 billion. On page 20, you can see SG&A and non-operating income and expenses excluding CJ Logistics. SG&A to sales ratio is 23.6%, with non-operating expenses standing at -KRW 59.9 billion. For SG&A, one-off bonus payment pushed up labor costs by KRW 87.2 billion compared to the same period last year.
Increase in ocean freight costs raised transportation costs to KRW 13 billion, but with efficient allocation of resources, SG&A to sales ratio remains flat as last year. For non-operating items, we have seen KRW 210 billion improvement from the same period last year, now standing at -KRW 59.9 billion. When including CJ Logistics, SG&A and non-operating income expenses are largely affected by performance of CJ CheilJedang, so I'll skip the details. Next is on the progress in key issues and outlook. First is on our U.S. business.
Good afternoon, this is Cho Jae-bum from Global Business Management. Aggressive sales coverage expansion in our Asian portfolio that helped a recovery of Alpha sales, channel and sales expansions for Mandu and Next Mandu items, and key pizza brands' advancement in market position all pushed ahead the growth. K-food's global growth is driven by the GSPs. GSP's U.S. sales is due to add to KRW 480 million in 2021, 29% growth year-on-year. Mandu in the U.S. hosted $320 million in sales, 27% growth year-on-year. This resulted in 2021 Mandu market share in the grocery channel of 37% with Pagoda included, which tops other players.
Chicken and fried rice and other Next Mandu items together in 2021 posted $170 million in sales or a 33% growth year-on-year. All commodity volume, or ACV, was 9% in 1999 and 9% in 2020 and grew to 35% by end of 2021. Now on performance of our key brands. Our key U.S. B2C pizza brand, Red Baron, thanks to its new premium offerings, saw the 2021 annual market share of 16.3%, further closing the gap to its number one, the brand. The PB Group brand, with the L.A. Lakers sponsorship, continues to build scale. As bibigo, a global platform and the U.S. grocery channel, specifically in the Asian snack category, bibigo's 2021 market share closed at 12.1%.
This is 7 percentage point growth year-on-year, and bibigo continues to be perceived as the fastest growing brand in the U.S. Asian snack category. Moving on to APAC and Europe. Mandu in the Chinese online market, Micho and bibigo Mandu in Japan, and again, the Mandu for Europe have been strategic items by region, and with differentiated competitiveness, we have made strides in expanding channel coverage. GSP sales in APAC in 2021 reached KRW 282.3 billion, or a 19% growth year-on-year. Mandu posted 19% growth, and chicken, processed rice, and other Next Mandu items recorded 19% growth year-on-year.
Micho, non-GSP item, but a strategic item from Japan, has recorded a whopping 56% growth year-on-year or KRW 155.7 billion in sales. For China, Mandu sales on online market grew 47%, which led to an 8% market share lift in China's Mandu market. In Japan, Micho grew by a wide margin, solidifying its number-one market share, while bibigo's TV commercials and broader B2C distribution resulted in almost two-fold growth of Mandu sales. In Europe, 2021 sales grew 45% year-on-year, while Mandu sales posted a massive 72% growth year-on-year. To speed up the increase in K-food experience and awareness in Europe, we introduced a grocery-oriented business model in December. Now we'll walk you through progress in new growth engine development by food business unit.
We debuted a new brand, PlanTable, under bibigo to jumpstart our plant-based meat business. Plant-based meat is not just for vegetarians. It is gaining traction from health-conscious consumers and millennials and Gen Z, which will further expand the market. Euromonitor sized the 2021 global plant-based meat market at KRW 7.6 trillion, and this is just 2% of the meat market, which indicates a massive potential for growth. With our TVP manufacturing and application technologies, we'll continue to ensure the best taste and quality to become a pioneer in this space. In December last year, bibigo PlanTable's original Mandu rolled out in Korea and some countries in overseas, and it will take this momentum to diversify our categories, including ready meal and sauce offerings to add speed.
Meanwhile, to enter the plant-based dairy alternative protein cultured meat spaces, we're the investor of different promising food tech startups and funds. While we take novel ideas of our employees to develop business with our in-house venture capital program dubbed Inno100, we'll continue with our open innovation endeavor to further develop our new growth engines. Now, moving on to Bio business unit. Bio has seen a consistent yet high growth for the past five years. From 2017 to 2021, Bio posted a CAGR of 15% for sales, 36% for operating profit. Operating profit margin during the same period grew from 6.3% to 12.7%, which is more than a double.
In 2021, for amino acids for feed, we've leveraged our global presence in Indonesia, China, North and South America while differentiating the format for tryptophan and threonine to add to our differentiated competitiveness. This helped broaden our market presence and execution of pricing actions. Specialty amino acid sales saw a 38% increase, sales of TasteNrich and other clean label premium flavoring ingredients grew almost by 600%, and we see a sharp growth across our green bio items, which will be our new engines for growth. White bio and Red bio, we're currently laying groundwork to solidify our new growth drivers. PHA, in 2021, we broke ground in Pasuruan, Indonesia. We're currently expediting our processes, and we expect the production to begin in the second quarter.
Also, we have established JV with HDC Hyundai EP to use different bioplastics to build compounding equipment. For Red bio, with our acquisition of ChunLab last July, we have consolidated the organization and established the CJ Bioscience. We'll focus on new drug development, aiming at having 10 new materials for new drug development pipeline and two technologies for license out by 2025. Batavia, which CJ acquired last November, has been one of our vehicles to expand our CGT CDMO business. Next is 2022 key strategy by business unit. Korea's food business will focus on building a standard system for pricing and total cost management to ensure profitability of a global player. Our strong market position and new mega scale products will further catapult the growth of our four key brands. Another area of focus will be digital transformation and growing channels.
For online, we'll upgrade our data analysis while we accelerate growth by focusing on different categories by online platform. For CVS, we'll enhance our sales competency for CVS exclusive product proposal and consulting services. For B2B, client-specific solutions ready-to-serve menus in our B2B brand to create will remain the focus for growth. For our export, while we grow hero products by country, we plan to develop and expand plant-based, halal, and export-exclusive products. Now, on global food business. For the U.S., with the synergy of the integration of frozen grocery and an FS channel, we'll continue to strengthen momentum for Asian categories growth. Proactive average selling price increase and cost reduction will be key pillars for our profitability growth.
We plan to push forward with omni-channel strategies to accelerate the digital transformation while introducing on-trend novel offerings such as handcrafted premium pizza. For China, we'll continue to join the major retailers' key sales festivals and strengthen our brand power by increasing presence in rising platforms like TikTok, and focus on product innovations aimed at Gen Z by riding on trends associated with health and user convenience, as well as by expanding categories. For Japan, we'll diversify Micho product types into ready-to-drink jelly and sour other than the existing concentrated version while expanding channel coverage, and PB brand will be another area of focus to extend the lineup to push demand to sales. Next is bio. For Bio's Animal Nutrition & Health, we'll ensure cost leadership and diversified formats for more concrete market dominance and profitability. For nucleic acid, we'll ensure a high margin structure.
For specialty amino acid, we plan to optimize the interoperable production system, reinforce technical marketing to stay on top of the game. TasteNrich, FlavorNrich, and other clean label premium food ingredients will upgrade solution offerings and dial up strategic partnerships to develop new large-scale accounts. White bio, our new growth engine business, will speed up mass production, diversify applications while driving up market demand through robust external partnerships. For Red bio, we'll develop a new microbiome drug pipeline to accelerate this business. Next is on Feed & Care. For Feed, we'll continue to improve the spread between price and cost with further expansion that we've seen less spread from 2021, but we'll continue to expand and/or improve the spread between price and cost.
Also for aqua feed, we'll try to differentiate the values of premium and value products customized to fish species to build scale. For livestock, compared to competitors, we want to leverage our advantage in biosecurity as we've done for last year, and then we'll continue focused on that. Also, we want to expand value chain in terms of processing and distribution and gain nutrigenetics technologies to build an animal healthcare business. Now handing it over to Iyer for our 2022 outlook.
For our food business in Korea, commodity costs will continue to impose pressure on costs and expenses, but this will be offset by purchasing and manufacturing cost reductions, a robust market position of strategic products and in-growing channels and new market development with outstanding technologies and a bigger scale of new products which will altogether help attain growth and margin.
For food in the global market, the U.S. business plans to focus on recovery in B2B, food expansion in grocery channel. In terms of category, while we expect to see the impact of Schwan's pricing strategy materialize along with new premium pizza at lunch. This will help the momentum for growth in place for 2022. In Japan, with Micho's product type diversification, broader channel coverage with strong PB brand and local manufacturing for Mandu sales growth, we expect to see continued growth. For China, we'll expand into new online platforms and also into tier three and tier four cities, and expansion of chicken and self-heating offerings will serve as a momentum for growth of sales.
For Bio, the Animal Nutrition & Health business will continue to be under pressure of commodity price and marine freight inflation, but gradual decline in crude protein use, pricing leadership and sales increase supported by our global presence and specialty amino acid expansion will make up for such inflationary pressures. The Human Nutrition & Health business expects to see an improving market landscape with demand increase, which will drive a continued high growth of clean label premium food ingredients, including TasteNrich and FlavorNrich. Feed & Care will offset declining profits stemming from livestock price drops by inflating feed prices to improve the spread between price and cost. We plan to continue to increase prices while expanding high margin aqua feeds and functional product sales to boost the profit increase.
The livestock business expects to see a smaller margin due to a drop in year-on-year livestock sales price and cost inflation, but value chain expansion and higher productivity will make up for such adverse impact of the low-market landscape. In summary, CJ CheilJedang in 2022 is expected to record a mid-single-digit sales growth rate and operating profit margin of a similar level to last year's. Now turning to ESG updates. To deliver our business in lockstep with CJ CheilJedang's 2050 vision of carbon-neutral and zero-waste, we continue to pursue carbon neutrality at our plants and sustainable innovation for our products and solutions. Across our value chain, we'll work with different partners to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and aim for a substantial improvement in resource efficiency.
By 2030, our goal is to reduce plant-originated greenhouse gas emissions by 25% from the 2020 level and use 100% renewable power sources, improve water use efficiency by up to 20% and reach zero landfill waste. Also, our work in alternative and cultured meat, upcycled foods, sustainable amino acids, and biodegradable plastic will help our product and solution innovation to create new business opportunities and also help our customers to reach their goals in greenhouse gas reduction. On the final note, we'll build a green partnership across the value chain to cut down on greenhouse gases within the supply chain and sales network, as well as food loss and waste. Now, next slide, we're moving on to the update on our dividend policy.
To better predict the shareholder return, CJ CheilJedang introduced a dividend policy for 2021 to 2023 business years, which has been approved by the board. Using consolidated financial statements as a source, 20% or above of the net profit, excluding non-recurring profit and loss, will be returned to shareholders.
The value of annual dividend payout will be finalized, taking into account of the capital investment, financial structure, and management landscape with stable dividend payout given top priority. Also, we begin with our quarterly dividend payout from 2022 business year, which will ensure consistent liquidity for shareholders to enhance shareholder value. Annual dividend for 2021 is KRW 5,000 per common stock. This is 25% higher year-on-year and an increase in the total dividend payout for two consecutive years. CJ CheilJedang's annual dividend for the past seven years has consistently improved, posting a 14% growth annually. That concludes our prepared remarks. We're now ready for Q&A.
Questions in Korean will be simultaneously interpreted, and questions in English will be interpreted consecutively. We'll now begin the Q&A session. If you have a question, please press star and number one. The first question is from Mr. Park Sang-jun from Kiwoom Securities.
Greetings, I am Park Sang-jun from Kiwoom Securities. I have three questions. First is, you have given us the guidance for 2022. In the same manner, I would like to know whether you can present us with Q1 outlook. My second question is that given the commodity, labor, and logistics cost inflation, we feel that, you know, there has been a lot of price increases by food players. We'd like to know about the grain price outlook, which is the main ingredient for food. For, you know, unexpected increase in commodities, we would like to know how much price increase you are anticipating. The third question is, I would appreciate if you could give us a breakdown of the investment plans for 2022.
Regarding the Q1 outlook, regarding that,the situation in Q1, I think we would have to wait and see. I think we'd be clearer after that. We will get back to you on that on other occasion, if possible. As for grain prices, there would be differences among different types of crops. There has been some short-term revision of grain prices, but because of increasing price of oil and La Niña, there has been the climate risk from Latin America, the prices are going up.
Especially for the first quarter, there's going to be a lot of geopolitical as well as climate change-related risks, so we're expecting gradual increase in grain prices with a stronger value of dollar ahead of increasing grain prices. We feel that impact will likely to be moderate. Whether it be raw ingredients or oil or as well as other secondary ingredients, there is a lot of burden. Regarding price increases, I think, you know, our answer would be largely in principle. Internally, we would be trying to save costs, and we are really trying to streamline our expenses. If we feel that, you know, if it's too much, then of course, we will consider price further price increases.
As for our investment plans for 2022, the CapEx for 2022 is about KRW 1.5 trillion. That's our outlook so far for this year. Just to give you a brief breakdown, it's gonna be KRW 1.0 for new investment and about KRW 0.5 for maintenance. By business, for food, for new investment, it's going to be about KRW 600 billion, and most of them would be executed outside Korea. In bio, it's about KRW 360 billion and about KRW 40 billion for F&C for new investments. That would be a brief breakdown of our investment plans.
We'll take the next question. The next question is from Hae-eun Kim of Morgan Stanley.
Greetings. I have three questions as well. My first question is, so there was the one-off bonus payment, as you mentioned in your presentation.
We didn't, we don't have the exact number here, so we would like to know how that has been distributed across different business units. For food and bio, I think, you know, the payment had been made for both business units. We would also like to know how that had been allocated to our global businesses. My second question is for 2022. You mentioned the OP margin is going to be similar to 2021. If that is the case, then how is it excluding, you know, potential one-off bonus payments? Or especially for the first half of the year, you have very high margin base for bio. We would like to know how the breakdown is going to be by business unit. My third question is, it's been about one and a half months since you began your PHA business.
For the past one and a half months, we would like to know what kind of progress has been made for PHA business. I would really appreciate it if you could share the details.
For the first question, regarding the one-off bonus payment, as you can see in our material, if we look at company-wide or by business unit, there has been an increase in bonus payout compared to the past year, and we've also had the special bonus that was paid earlier this year. If we add that all together, it's around KRW 70 billion. Considering that company-wide, it's going to be pretty similar to last year and by business units, we can't give you the specific breakdown. But as you can see on the chart in our material, compared to the same period last year, it's similar or slightly higher.
As for the bonus payment for 2022, it's going to depend how much performance we're going to make, so we can't really make an anticipation right now. Just like you mentioned, for bio, last year the performance had been very good. For each business unit, our goals and hurdles have been higher than last year. Even if we achieve the same level of performance as last year, the total payment would be smaller than what we had paid out for the past year. Just as for what I have just mentioned, I mean, some of the revisions made for operating profit margin includes the increase in one-off bonus payments as well as special bonus. This is, you know, I would like to once again remind you that this is one-off payment for the performance last year.
For this year's payment, it may vary. As for special bonuses, it doesn't happen every year. That would be. You can exclude that from how you can understand the outlooks for this year or next year, early next year. As for how that has been allocated to overseas business, they have all been reflected in the numbers. As for progress on PHA business, because of the pandemic, there has been higher ocean freight charges, and of course, there has been difficulty in supplying semiconductors. As planned, we have completed the plant at the end of December, and right now we are pilot running the plant. According to the plan, we would be able to begin main production in the first half of the year.
As for the 5,000 capacities, we have already secured the order volumes based on MOU with our customers, and we have continuously secured demand that exceeds that capacity. We're expecting very strong sales.
We'll now take the next question. Next question is from Mr. Park Jeong-eun from Meritz.
Thank you. So when we're looking at overseas bio business, looking at profitability and operating profit has been great for last year. I guess that could actually work as a pressure for this year's performance. What is your strategy? Then the feed, I see that things are actually declining for margin, in terms of margin for feeds. Considering that there have been some one-off impacts that actually boosted, you know, margin for feed, then excluded, how do you see 2022? Then also there has been the COVID impact last year, operating profit for food.
How do you see the impact of the COVID will play out for food business and the different? Also, I know there were a lot of expenses allocated for marketing and everything. How do you see operating profit will play out for food business this year?
First, on your question regarding food, we aim to grow in the global market. Just like last year, we expect that the most of the growth will come from the global market. Also for Korea, we might be faced with a limited volume growth, but we are going to make up for setback in commodity price inflation through pricing increase. We want to actually hedge against, you know, unpredictable drop in growth. Your question on bio, you mentioned about how there had been the impact of COVID, and then there could be some one-off impact of COVID that actually was boding well with our performance 2021.
Of course, I assure there have been the impact of a commodity price increase, commodity, and also transportation cost increase. We want to also hedge this with which pricing increase. We'll try to avoid any adverse impacts and the change in the external market landscape. With our global presence for manufacturing and with global strategists, we'll continue to push forward with growth. On Feed & Care, feed was hit hard by commodity price increase last year, and that's why we push forward with price increase. I think this will continue this year as well. We believe that the market situation will improve.
Next question is Han Yoo -jung from Daishin Securities.
Thank you for this opportunity. If you look at Q4 results, F&C has been in the deficit despite favorable market circumstances. We would like to know about the profitability trends, depending on the business as well as by region. As for Schwan's, we feel like there has been very good performance, so we want to know whether there has been any one-off variables that had contributed to such performance of Schwan's.
A response from Feed & Care. As for the livestock price of Vietnam, that had actually impacted the most in Feed & Care's performance in Q4. It was the lowest in October. It was actually the lowest for hog prices in Vietnam, and for November and December, it picked up by quarter compared to the third quarter. The fourth quarter had seen the lowest prices for livestock. I would like to, you know, correct the information that you have mentioned instead of providing response to the question that you have mentioned.
As for the Q4 profits for Schwan's. What has been very good in the fourth quarter was that we have increased prices for major products, and that has actually in October, and that has played well throughout the quarter, and we had been able to save on our promotion costs, so that also worked well. There has been the high season in B2C, so that resulted in expansion in sales. For 2022, whether it is commodity or labor costs, that pressure is going to continue. We will improve our cost as well as expand our volume for K-food, and we would be having further price increases for core products. We will have these efforts to improve our margin as we go through 2022 as well.
We'll take the final question due to time constraints. The final question is from Mr. Park Sang-jun from Kiwoom Securities.
It's me again, so thank you again for this opportunity. I just have one more follow-up question. If you look at page 26, in Food in Korea, you mentioned that we would be ensuring global top-tier profitability through cost innovation and from total cost perspective. How high is this global top-tier profitability that you have in mind?
Compared to 2021, I mean, we would like to know how much has been achieved, and we would like to know what kind of requirements that we would need to get to that level. Could you please be specific?
For total cost management, before that, for food business units, globally, I mean, you know, our idea of a global top-tier company is Nestlé. Nestlé operating margin is somewhere in the mid-10%. You know, in the short term, it would take some time to get to that, but we want to gradually increase our operating profit margin to that level. We have begun during the last year, and we want to continue to do so this year. From total cost management standpoint, we have been making various efforts.
In the past, we've been looking into price increases as well as costs, so we would be focusing our improvement on GP. For this year, we want to look into SCM sales and marketing costs, so we want to look into SG&A costs as well in more detail. That's the kind of improvement idea we have for this year. All right. With that, we will conclude today's conference for Q4 2021. Thank you everyone for your time.