Good morning, everyone. It's great to be with those of you who've joined us in the room and a big welcome to those that are on the webcast as well. As ever, I'm going to go through some of the highlights of the year before handing over to Jez to go through the results in more detail. I'll then come back to talk about the key trends driving the growth in Croda and explain how we're well positioned to respond to and benefit from them as well.
Let's get started then. You know, 2021 was a record year for the business. An excellent performance demonstrating the benefits of executing our strategy with agility, speed, and fast and challenging in a fast-moving environment.
Investments and acquisitions have driven strong progress across all areas of the business, and that's leading to the best sales, profits, and margins that we've ever seen. You know, significantly ahead of last year and well ahead of 2019. High inflation relating to raw materials, energy and logistics was a significant headwind, and we've leveraged our strong operating model and pricing capability to control the steep rise in costs, one of Croda's unique advantages. Innovation is at the heart of what we do, you know that now, and it defines Croda.
So it's very pleasing to see that NPP growth is so strongly ahead this year. Acquisitions have boosted our growth too. Avanti has established our lipid system platform, which achieved $200 million of sales, primarily to our principal vaccine customers.
Our F&F business, Iberchem, delivered an encouraging performance with integration on track to achieve the synergy potential we talked about when we acquired it. We've also accelerated investment in the business to capitalize on the enormous opportunities that we see to drive future growth. Overall, in the round, strong and agile execution of our strategy as well. You know, in the space of 18 months, if you think about it, we've acquired Avanti and Iberchem, and we're in the process of selling the majority of our industrial business as well.
Croda is looking very different. You know, the shape's changing, and we're moving very much more towards a pure-play Consumer Care and Life Sciences company. If you just look, turning to the headline financials then. Yeah, we delivered a very strong increase in both sales and profits.
Adjusted sales grew 36%, reflecting excellent organic growth in the core business and the impact of acquisitions slightly offset by adverse currency. Your big growth in the core plus acquisitions on top. Profits grew substantially too. You know, a testament to our sustained focus on high value, high margin niche areas of the market. Adjusted earnings per share 43% higher. You know, underpinning the board's proposal to raise the full year ordinary dividend by 10%, delivering 30 years of consecutive dividend increases.
Finally, we grew organic capital investment by over 30% to nearly GBP 160 million, which will drive forward our strategy to scale consumer health and crop care businesses, leading to a more consistent sales growth and even stronger profit margins in the years ahead. We're seeing strong structural growth too.
You know, if you cast your mind back, you know, we're well ahead of pre-pandemic levels. 2019 is a tool we use, the results from or the comparator for 2019 is a tool we use for management to look at real comparisons rather than last year. You know, it's great to see. If you see the graph in the top left, great to see all the businesses showing double-digit underlying growth in each of the sectors. The top right shows the reported operating profit up 38%, and below you can see our EPS has progressed to be 35% higher. There's also been a marked increase in NPP, as I mentioned earlier, increase from 28% to 37%.
As we become more knowledgeable, more and more a knowledge-intensive company, we commercialize people's knowledge, not mere capacity in our world. Underlying growth in 2021 was strong across the board. We had, while healthcare was the standout performer, Crop Protection and Life Sciences also had a good second half too, contributing to this 40% increase in sales of Life Sciences. Consumer Care delivered a strong set of results as well, consistent throughout the year.
We're seeing a resurgence in personal care. Performance Technologies strengthened in the second half, driven by improved demand in its more cyclical end markets. All regions also delivered impressive sales growth, with the consumer recovery strongest in North America.
I mentioned inflation a moment ago, and this slide helps to illustrate both the challenge and our ability to successfully navigate it. 2021 saw the highest rise in raw material cost in a decade, up 17% on an underlying basis. Energy costs rose significantly, with freight also rising by 25%. You know, big headwinds of cost. You've seen that in the industry as well.
Underlying sales volumes were very healthy. You know, we're pleased about that. They grew 9%, reflecting very strong trading. We fully recovered the impact of higher input costs, demonstrating the continued strength of Croda's operating model and alongside an improving product mix as well. If you looked at the overall mix, you know, up 17%. The consequence of strong demand and faster growth was record profit margins increasing to 24.8%.
Our non-financial metrics are just as important as our financial results, and last year we became only the third chemical company in the world to have our 1.5-degree target verified by the Science Based Targets initiative. Our objective is to be net zero by 2050 and to ensure that we're investing in our site decarbonization roadmaps. While the divestment of PTIC will make us less carbon intensive, we will rebase our climate targets to maintain the challenges that we've set ourselves.
We're also improving diversity and inclusion, achieving both targets of the Hampton-Alexander and Parker reviews at the start of this year. The proportion of women in leadership across the business now increased to 36% leadership positions.
We've established the Croda Foundation through which we're providing GBP 1 million of funding annually, and this year we've given an additional GBP 2 million pound on top to reflect the progress in healthcare, our healthcare business. The first project will help deliver vaccines to over 50 million people in India, Brazil, and Uganda. Our sale of the majority of PTIC, which was agreed in December, was a significant strategic step for the business for lots of reasons.
On completion, Croda will become a more carbon-light business, but we'll also have more intellectual property as NPP sales in Consumer Care and Life Sciences are nearly half the total in the business. Our increased exposure to fast growth markets will translate to faster top-line growth and increased margins.
We will be more focused and in an even stronger position to drive consistent superior returns in the future. Let me stop there. More from me in a moment, hand over to Jez for more detail on the numbers. Thank you.
Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everybody. As Steve has said, yeah, 2021 has seen a record financial performance for the group. Sales were up 36% in reported currency at almost GBP 1.9 billion and increased by 43% in constant currency. Sterling strength means that reported currency numbers are about seven points below the constant currency numbers.
Adjusted operating profit increased by 47% to GBP 469 million. With a better product mix and volume growth, return on sales increased by 180 basis points to 24.8%. Adjusted profit before tax was GBP 445 million, up almost 50% on the prior year. The tax rate reduced to 21% with a one-off benefit from settlement of a previous uncertain tax position.
We expect to revert to around 25% tax rate from 2022. Adjusted earnings per share rose by 43% to 250 pence, with a proposed full-year dividend increase to 100 pence, up 10 pence per share and 14% in cash terms following the Iberchem funding for the equity. This is the 30th successive year of dividend growth, as Steve has said, and earnings cover is at the lower end of our range of 40%-50% of adjusted earnings. We're in a good place there.
Free cash flow reduced by 13% to GBP 154 million due to higher capital investment and working capital build, and I'll talk about that later. Adjusted profit items charged in the period totaled GBP 34 million.
This reflected an increased charge for intangible amortization following the recent acquisitions. Exceptional items were netted to pretty close to zero. Profit before tax on an IFRS basis was up 53% to GBP 412 million. The left-hand chart shows the sales bridge for 2021 versus 2020. Underlying sales, that's from the existing Croda businesses pre-acquisitions, were up 26% in the year, of which price mix was plus 17% and volume was 9% higher.
We're particularly pleased with the volume growth, as it demonstrates the strength of the existing business. Price mix includes the recovery of inflationary costs, but with a significant benefit as well from product mix, reflecting the growth of the high-value businesses, particularly in Beauty Actives and healthcare.
The first year of acquisitions added 17% to group sales, giving the 43% increase in constant currency sales. Now, the right-hand chart shows the impact of Lipid Systems growth. As at the half year, this has had a meaningful impact on the full-year performance, and it would be easy but incorrect to conclude that the overall record result has been driven solely by this.
Of the total constant currency growth of 43%, 10 percentage points have come from Avanti and the Lipid Systems platform. 20 percentage points have been delivered from Croda's existing business, reflecting the strong growth in Consumer Care and the rest of Life Sciences, as well as Performance Technologies. The acquisitions in Consumer Care added 13 percentage points of growth. The growth is very broad-based. This sales growth has also been reflected in the profit bridge.
The underlying business delivered GBP 116 million of profit growth. We saw growth across all sectors and all businesses. We're now trading well ahead of pre-pandemic levels across the existing Croda business. Acquisitions are shown separately up to the first anniversary of their purchase. Profit from acquisitions added GBP 58 million in 2021, and currency translation reduced overall reported profit by GBP 25 million.
Turning now to look at each sector and how it's contributed to the growth. Consumer Care sales grew by 45% and adjusted operating profit was 29% higher. The lower profit growth here reflects the fact that Iberchem operates at a lower margin than the personal care business, and as a result of this dilution effect, return on sales overall for the sector was around 25%. The standout performer was, again, Life Sciences.
Sales grew in 2021 by 46%, and with a stronger product mix, adjusted operating profit rose by two-thirds, with return on sales at 36%. Performance Technologies saw a strong sales recovery, with sales up 18%, all organically driven. The benefits of greater volume and the operating leverage impact saw adjusted operating profit 32% higher and return on sales of around 15%. Now looking at each of the three principal sectors in turn.
2021 saw the creation of the Consumer Care sector, comprising Croda's leading personal care business in personal care, our growing Home Care business, and the Iberchem fragrances and flavors business. Personal care saw a strong rebound in sales in 2021, with underlying sales now 15% above the pre-pandemic level of 2019. Growth was strongest in the high-end IP-rich engine of Beauty Actives, including Sederma, with sales up by 29% on 2020.
After a challenging couple of years, the Beauty Care business saw a progressive improvement in demand for skincare, sun care, cosmetics, and haircare, with sales 13% higher. The business is focused on sustainability-driven innovation, including products from the US ECO plant. After strong demand for hygiene products in 2020, Home Care sales growth slowed to 8%. Fabric care and eco products are the key drivers of growth here.
The Iberchem business has proven to be everything that we hoped it would be. The innovation, in particular, is very exciting. Integration is on track, and the first cross-selling synergies are being delivered. 2021 saw an encouraging performance, despite a combination of slower growth in COVID-impacted emerging markets and a lag in full inflation recovery. Our profit was in line with the acquisition plan.
Looking at the bottom chart, with Beauty Actives sales strong, product mix improved in Consumer Care. Price mix was 13% higher and volume was 5% up. Acquisitions added 35 percentage points to the sector, and the Consumer Care sector is now well set to deliver our objective of mid-single-digit percentage sales growth before inflation recovery. Life Sciences continues to develop into a business to rival Croda's long-held leadership in Consumer Care.
With its focus on drug, vaccine, and crop science delivery systems, the sector is growing sales through organic expansion and by leveraging acquired technologies. 2021 saw sales up 46% and adjusted operating profit up 67%. Within this, healthcare delivered an outstanding performance, with rapid expansion in all three patient healthcare platforms. Sales of vaccine adjuvants were up over 40% alongside specialty excipients.
Meanwhile, the Lipid Systems platform saw sales of approximately $200 million for COVID-19 vaccines. Crop Protection delivered double-digit % growth year-on-year in what was a great year for agricultural demand globally. Growth in Seed Enhancement was more subdued due to slower markets in Europe and North America. The growth of healthcare and the top end of crop is driving a focus on value, not volume. Innovative products sell at much higher prices, and volumes are measured in kilos, not tons.
As a result, price mix added 35 percentage points to sales growth, while volume rose by 6 percentage points. The broad-based sector growth can be seen in the chart on the right-hand side, with an overall contribution of 17 percentage points from Croda's existing business, supported by 37 percentage points from the Avanti acquisition and the broader Lipid Systems platform.
Life Sciences is expected to see high single-digit growth in the medium term, excluding inflation recovery. In Performance Technologies, 2021 saw a continued improvement in sales, driven by recovery in high-end markets and, sustainability-driven demand. Margins also improved due to a better business mix and operating leverage. Sales increased by 18%, equally split between price mix and volume.
In December, we reached agreement to sell just over three-quarters of the combined Performance Technologies and Industrial Chemicals business, or PTIC, and there was no impact on the 2021 results from the divestment, other than an exceptional charge for the advisory costs incurred during the year.
However, had the divestment occurred at the start of 2021, we estimate that sales in PTIC would have been around GBP 360 million lower, and the impact on adjusted operating profit from the divestment, together with the resultant stranded costs in the business, would be just short of GBP 60 million per annum. We're now working through the separation process and expect completion during the summer of 2022. We've already begun the redeployment of capital from the PTIC divestment.
In 2021, we increased our capital spend to almost GBP 160 million. We're following our buy and build strategy of acquiring into exciting technology adjacencies, like vaccine adjuvants and Lipid Systems, at sensible multiples. Then expanding them organically through capital investment, which reduces the risk and avoids significant goodwill, thereby accelerating returns. In 2021, we invested GBP 70 million in healthcare.
We also expanded our range of sustainable technologies in Consumer Care. We began an investment in botanicals and fragrances as part of our fast-growth China strategy. The other key cash outflow in the year was GBP 100 million working capital build. This reflected an increase in raw material costs and selling prices, higher sales volume, and tactical increases in inventory to mitigate the global distribution challenges that we faced, similar to many other companies.
The impact of higher values of working capital at a constant level of days cover added almost GBP 70 million, as you can see in the right-hand chart, while the increase in contingency stock added a further GBP 45 million, and this will reverse as price increases and distribution challenges normalize. As a result, free cash flow was GBP 154 million, GBP 23 million behind 2020.
We're following our long-established capital allocation policy, which guides the way we deploy capital. Firstly, we're investing in organic growth, as you've seen, while increasing the ordinary dividend as part of our long-term commitment on returns to shareholders. We invested in acquisitions through Alban Muller and Parfex in Consumer Care, and closing leverage was 1.4 times EBITDA, well within our target range of 1-2 times.
We'll continue to follow this policy, investing for the future, increasing the regular dividend, and returning excess capital as and when this is identified. I'll now hand you back to Steve, who will update you on our strategic priorities.
Thanks. Many thanks, Jez. Right, a little bit more from me then on Croda's strategy, and it's all about moving into faster growth markets. You know, you've heard this from me many times. We're focused on those markets that can value our innovation, and through high margins are less cyclical, as well as capital and carbon light. We'll combine our leadership position in sustainability with our leadership position in innovation. You need them both to deliver profitable growth.
At that intersection, you get fast growth. If you just look at our strategy, our strategic priorities, you know, we've done some of our best strategic thinking during the COVID-19 pandemic, you know, with the board and executive committee together, recently finalizing our strategic plan for the next five years.
Our priorities are shown on the outside of the rim of the circle. In addition to expanding and strengthening our core sectors, we'll also scale biotechnology and invest in faster growth in China as well, where the personal care market, for example, is growing at 9% a year. We'll continue to look to acquire disruptive technologies as well along the way, and also continue to what we call do the basics brilliantly, and increase both our responsiveness to customers and engagement from our employees.
Today, if you look at sustainability, you know, consumers care more and more about it and their impact on the wider environment as well too, in the brands that we sell to. Our customers want us to deliver novel, sustainable ingredients that are ethically sourced and produced from lower carbon manufacturing.
This is how we think about sustainability and the opportunity. We're seeing a big shift from the pandemic. We're ramping up innovation too, and it's our lifeblood, as you know, and we've invested 50% more in R&D resource in the last year and are taking bigger bets with more ambitious projects. We'll roll some of these out with you through the calendar this year. You know, we've got about seven major projects that we're working on at the moment. At the heart of our strategy is our purpose.
You know, smart science to improve lives, which will control and continue to guide the strategic choices that we make. Across the markets we see, we like tech trends, and there are two mega technology trends which we think are the most important for us driving our future.
The first is the demand for sustainable ingredients. You know, as I mentioned earlier, consumers want more products from natural and ethically sourced ingredients. That's benefiting consumer as well as the crop business. The second is the move towards biologics in crop care and pharmaceuticals, which offer transformational opportunities for Croda, which I'll come onto shortly. Big opportunities presenting themselves in biopesticides and biopharmaceuticals, which is really exciting for the group.
The way we look at Croda now and the way I want you to look at Croda now is we've got eight growth businesses supported by industrial specialties. Within Consumer Care, most of you are familiar with our personal care business, where we deliver thousands of products to thousands of customers, all of which with rich IP.
We've got eight businesses like that now, run by dedicated management teams and their own forward-thinking, customer-led R&D capabilities. They're all supplying critical ingredients at low inclusion levels and often selling in test tube quantities rather than tanker loads, replicating the model we have in personal care for many years. All eight businesses have excellent growth prospects. You know, we see a great opportunity for each of them to deliver as a minimum 1.5 times GDP.
Y ou know, if there's a takeout for this slide, you know, multiple opportunities for growth across multiple sectors. You know, 10 years ago, some investors would have invested in personal care as a priority. You know, take a look.
You can invest in healthcare, you can invest in crop care, you can invest in fragrance and flavors, and you can invest in personal care as well. You can invest in all of them now. Turning to each of these areas in a bit more detail. You know, Beauty Actives is a really important business for Croda, and we're market leader in peptides, naturals and biotechnology, all of which are seeing higher growth than the average global beauty market. We expect that to continue.
Our genre-defining peptides, such as Matrixyl, are formulated into 80% of all new anti-aging products containing a peptide. We're also developing next generation active ingredients, including peptides using synthetic biology. Eighty percent of our Beauty Actives R&D pipeline is green.
You know, we acquired Alban Müller deliberately, which develops innovative botanical ingredients such as anti-inflammatories made from pomegranate of all things. We've also introduced ingredients, botanical ingredients into China as well, and acquired land for a new facility, which we expect to build in 2023. A third of our active products, as well as biotechnology derived in revenue terms today. Most well known of which is Majestem for skin and neck lifting. Some of you might have tried that before.
We've acquired Nautilus as well in 2018, a technology-rich marine biotechnology business, which has recently launched Venuceane, an active derived from marine microorganisms as well to repair sun damage. Sederma moving increasingly into sustainable ingredients, into faster growth.
We're winning too in sustainable ingredients in both Beauty Care and Home Care as well. You know, we're the market leader in metal oxides on the left-hand side, used as sustainable mineral UV filters for sun creams, and have invested in Entekno, a partnership which has launched a range of high protection mineral products with additional non-whitening benefits. Positioning through partnership to meet sustainable ingredients.
In sustainable surfactants, we're displacing petrochemical competitors in formulations increasingly with our broad range of eco products. In 2021, we secured a three-year contract with a major beauty brand covering six eco surfactants for high-end skin and hair care, the start of things to come. In other areas, we're also seeing in sustainable surfactants, legislation change through sulfation. You know, sulfate-free brands now are on the market everywhere.
We're getting the benefit of that through our ingredients, through clean beauty products, with sales doubling over the last four years. You know, we're starting to see this big shift materially improving the growth profile for our Consumer Care business. In Home Care, it's just the same. What you see there is a big move in the wash cycle to low temperature washing that's allowing us to provide active biopolymer ingredients.
We just signed some lucrative contracts with a big customer to improve their fabric conditioner range around the world that's been launched in 30 countries, you know, improving their brand. Lots of good opportunities coming through, and you're starting to see that in the numbers with Consumer Care.
In fragrance and flavors, as Jez said, we're really happy with where we are. We're on track with the EUR 48 million of annualized revenue synergies by 2025, and we'll leverage our combined sales network with 10 target countries identified and opportunities across customers of all sizes, including major brands, regional dynamos and indies. In Brazil, a new Iberchem business and our delivery laboratory has been set up and established at an existing Croda site there, and it's delivering its first sales too.
This year, we also acquired Parfex. Again, sustainable ingredients, big shift there. They create fragrances principally for premium personal care and fine perfumery markets, and we're leveraging their natural raw material base to their portfolio. All part of the plan to capitalize on growth opportunities for Ecocert accredited products.
We doubled sales of these product lines during the year. Turning next to crop, we've talked to you a lot about the traditional crop care market on the left-hand side of the slide. You know, a big market with compound annual growth of about 3%. You know, an existing partner to the major crop companies, we've also successfully increased our sales to medium-sized and small customers who now account actually for about 50% of sales. It's not just about the four or five big multinationals.
You know, we've got a broad breadth to our programs now. More exciting is the move to biopesticides. You know, while it's currently a smaller market, it's growing rapidly. We're now increasing our innovation for next generation delivery systems for microbials and RNA, things like that.
Sustainability trends are driving Seed Enhancement too, where we have secured our first customers for seed treatment, seed coatings that are microplastic free. We recently opened an innovation center in Brazil too there, state-of-the-art facility, including formulation, microbiology and seed treatment laboratories. Keeping the best to last, let's talk about moving to biopharma in our patient health business.
As you know, our drug delivery capability is founded on three world-class platforms, all of which meet the need for specialist delivery systems for biopharma applications and where we're seeing compelling opportunities for future growth. I'll talk more about the pipeline shortly. Just as a recap slide, you know, where growth in excipients is being driven by expansion in injectable drugs using biological active ingredients which dominate new drug launches.
The opportunity here is vast, extending to the newest biological drug innovations, such as monoclonal antibodies, more than 5,000 of which are currently in clinical trials. Our adjuvants provide the important accelerator to a range of new global vaccines. You know, the market for prophylactic vaccines has more than doubled in the last two years. In addition, more than 1,500 clinical trials are currently underway for therapeutic vaccines.
Lipid Systems offer significant potential beyond COVID-19 as a preferred delivery system for the developing science of nucleic acid therapeutics. You'll hear a lot more about that from Croda.
The mRNA market alone is expected to reach about $35 billion over the next 15 years, and 180 clinical trials are already underway for applications across preventative and therapeutic vaccines and therapeutic drugs. We've got three world-class platforms, all of which are offering great opportunities for Croda. The pipeline then. Turning to it's getting bigger, much bigger. In 2021, we secured 130 new customers, 250 new clinical and pre-clinical programs with our products we're involved in, and interestingly, two-thirds of those programs are non-COVID-19 applications.
You know, we're not a one-hit wonder in Croda in COVID. You know, you have a look at the non-COVID growth profile for Croda in the next few years, put that in your five-year, 10-year spreadsheets.
In terms of providing some color on the variety of programs, we can say that oncology programs make up the majority of our specialty excipient pipeline, as well as immunosuppressants for diseases such as diabetes. In vaccine adjuvants, we're becoming more involved with the fight against WHO-listed diseases too, so we're now contributing in high-profile projects to combat 15 of those 24 priority diseases, including new projects for things like HIV and Ebola.
In Lipid Systems, we're involved with multiple projects and multiple customers, and we have relationships with over two-thirds of companies developing mRNA vaccines and drugs. We're very well placed there to satisfy future growth. I think taking a big step back from this, Jez and myself will say, you know, these are the hallmarks of a terrific new Croda business.
Probably the most exciting thing I've seen in my career to date. Given the rapidly developing pipeline, it should come as no surprise that we're investing our money in it, putting our money where our mouth is, investing ahead of future growth to satisfy future growth as well. Our preferred approach is to adopt this buy and build model, you know, securing new technology platforms like Avanti and the know-how that we get through that with modest acquisition spends and building site expansion around that.
You know, their model was a good one, but it didn't capitalize on the big growth coming through the clinical programs. We think we can do that. Overall, we've invested more than GBP 100 million in the last two years, including GBP 70 million in 2021, with a similar amount committed in the future.
In specialty excipients, we've doubled capacity in the US. We're also expanding in Asia, investing GBP 50 million to increase our capacity there as well. In adjuvants, you'll see we've doubled capacity at our site in Denmark as well. For lipid systems, we've doubled the number of employees at Avanti with GBP 35 million of investment to double capacity at their Alabama site. This has been complemented by GBP 20 million of investment to create a new scale-up capability in the UK. These are already some of the highest returning investments in our portfolio, and we're confident that this trend will continue.
In addition, we've also increased people numbers by 40%, which has sort of hit the Life Sciences margin you've seen in the second half of the year, but it's because of growth, future growth, and there's lots of it. Lots of progress, and all part of our plan is to build an unbeatable global drug delivery capability with three world-class technology platforms. It's not just Lipid Systems, it's not just vaccine adjuvants, it's specialty excipients are three platforms.
Finally, you know, coming to outlook, you know, we expect to see continued underlying growth in the year ahead, driven by this robust consumer demand we're seeing. Expect that to continue. Raw material prices are increasing, and growth investments are offsetting any further customer destocking. You know, we're navigating inflation very well.
As guided previously, we expect Lipid Systems to be at a similar level to 2021, and margins will remain strong due to an increased proportion of sales from higher value add solutions. In summary, it's been an outstanding year for Croda, with strong financial and strategic progress, and we're well ahead of pre-pandemic levels and demonstrating our ability to navigate this high inflationary environment very well.
We're more knowledgeable and a more intensive business as well with that, focused on higher growth, higher R&D, higher return markets, in a stronger position to deliver more consistent sales growth, stronger profit margins in the future, and it's an exciting time for Croda. Of that, there is no doubt. Now Jez and I are very happy to take your questions from the floor and from the webcast. Thank you.
If you'd like to ask a question from the phone lines today, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad.
Charles Eden from UBS. Thanks very much. Yeah, two questions for me, please. You mentioned strong margins in Life Sciences in 2022. Could you help us define strong if possible, please? And then secondly, on you mentioned raw material inflation, no surprise. Can you help us with what that looks like for Croda in 2022? And if there's any variance between, I guess, core Croda now, so consumer and Life Sciences and what it might be, including PTIC, if you could break that out. Thank you.
I'll do one. Jez can do two. Yeah, I mean, on the margins, you know. You know, the Life Sciences margins come off in the second half, you've seen that. It's all to do with the increase in numbers that we're seeing and the increase in capital we're putting in the business.
Yeah, I'll come back to answer your question in a minute. But you know, Avanti particularly, we started with 125 people in Avanti. We've now got nearly 300 people. The model that we're adopting is that's a preclinical machine. It's sending out samples at a voracious rate right across the spectrum to pharma companies. We're in a lot of preclinical programs. As anybody knows in the pharma industry, once you're in preclinicals, you know, your job is nearly there, nearly complete because we should roll into phase I, II, and III programs with the support we've got from the preclinical relationships that we've got.
The most important thing is making sure that we're responding quickly to new molecules, existing molecules, and synthesizing things in a slightly different way. The Lipid Systems market needs slightly different products. You know, a lot of these clinical programs we've got, not just Lipid Systems, probably multiple products, slightly different products for multiple customers. There isn't one standard product that serves this.
There's a lot of craft needed from our Avanti team to make sure that we are adopting the right products in the preclinical program. We put a special emphasis on that. And you know, you've seen that margin come off in the second half. I think the way we look at that's stabilized now because we put a lot of those people in.
I think we're talking about 35% margins for Life Sciences this year on an ongoing basis. You know, the growth outside of Lipid Systems, the growth is still in the higher margin area. You would expect that margin increase to continue. We're not seeing a deterioration in margin, which is uncontrolled. You know, it's all targeted for growth 'cause of our confidence in the growth. There's a little bit of depreciation in there coming off some of the assets.
Also actually, to a smaller degree, Crop's had a great second half as well. There's a bit of dilution in Crop in there as well. There is absolutely no problem with margins in Life Sciences, far from it.
You're just seeing a stabilization once we put a lot of energy into these preclinical programs through people, putting people on the ground. That's really important. It's testament to our confidence in the business going forward. You know, our capital confidence, but also our people confidence in putting resource in as well. You know, this market could get very, very interesting for Croda in the next decade. Jez, on the second point.
Charles, raw material recovery and so forth. In 2021, we had, as Steve said, 17% increase in raw materials. Clearly there's an annualization effect to flow through, probably about half of that to flow through in 2022, which is a straight sales price recovery. We've seen some further increases in the first quarter, with maybe some early signs in the second quarter that there's fewer of those increases because we feel it's got an inflation, raw material inflation should slow down at some point.
Maybe we'll see that second quarter, but it's still quite early to confirm, but maybe we're seeing that. What we've shown in the model is we're very successful in recovering that.
Little bit of a lag in Iberchem, which is common to, I think, all of the flavors and fragrance businesses. You know, they'll get there and so forth in there. The Croda model works very much on achieving that recovery on a quarter to quarter effect. As you can see, there's been no margin impact, adverse margin impact in terms of doing that. Confident of seeing that recovery. Now when we break down sales margin, we sort of think of sales growth sort of independently. We're certain that we're gonna recover any raw material inflation that we see sort of going forward as we did last year.
What we're saying is, "Okay, think about the underlying sales growth that we're seeing." I think in Consumer Care, we're seeing that as mid-single-digit, but there'll be price recovery on top of that. But that's sort of passed through in effect to maintain profit. In Life Sciences, we think there'll be high single-digit. We expect to see Lipid Systems flat in 2022 in sales terms at $200 million. We still expect to see very strong growth in the other two platforms. We expect to see strong growth in Crop.
I think we can see high single-digit sales growth, as Steve says, at margins which are certainly in the mid-30s% for the Life Sciences business.
In Performance Technologies, we'll expect growth to be more in the GDP range. Again, with margins, you know, at or a little better than the level that we've seen in 2021. I think what we should be seeing is some really steady growth, some raw material price inflation recovery on top, as well as the annualization effect, and then some margin improvement as well. I don't know if that sort of deals with the question.
Yeah, that was helpful.
Maybe just on the 17% raw material inflation. Is there a big difference by divisions? I'm just thinking with PTIC being here for half the year. Just thinking in Consumer, in Life Sciences, is 17 still about the right ballpark, or is it more or less?
Yeah, it's quite interesting. If you look at the release, where we've broken out the sort of price mix in the underlying businesses, actually, I think it's pretty sort of consistent. That 17% raw material recovery is probably about 6% on sales, given that raw materials are just over a third of our sales value. But there's some inflation recovery going on in terms of energy and distribution costs and so forth in there as well .
I think when you then look at the, as it happens, 17% increase in sales price mix, that's probably about half of inflation recovery, eight or nine percentage points. And then the rest is the mix effect coming through, particularly in consumer, and especially in Life Sciences.
Interestingly, when you look at the price mix, you know, we're up 13% in consumer. That feels like sort of nine percentage points of sales price and three or four percentage points of mix.
With Actives doing well. If you look at Life Sciences, it's very heavily mix driven because you've got these, you know, very small volumes but at very high values per kilo, you know, compared with the normal model in, of selling in tons. If you look at Performance Technologies, you know, you've got 11%. You'd expect in Performance Technologies that to be almost all price recovery. Because there's some innovation going on there obviously, but it's not of the same scale as the other two sectors.
I think from that point of view you can see that actually the price effect's pretty equally spread across those. But the mix effects are quite different, particularly in the two sectors that we're focusing on going forward.
No, that's really helpful. Thank you.
Thanks.
Okay.
Thank you. Hello, it's Nicola from BNP Paribas Exane. The first question was actually just to pick up on the outlook and the comments you made around destocking or customer destocking. I just wanted to clarify, you know, if that's something you've seen already, and then if so, which areas and what should we be looking out for? The second question was around investments. You've clearly talked about already reallocating some of the PTIC proceeds.
You talked a lot about the Life Sciences investments. You know, how should we think about CapEx or investment going forward, not just for 2022, but in future years? You know, is it still mainly in Life Sciences or is it also on the Consumer Care side? Thank you.
Well, let's start with investments. I mean, you know, the way to look at the investments really, and new Croda really if you call it that, post the sale of majority of the industrial business, you know, we still spend by and large for about 6% of revenues in CapEx. You know, it's capital light. It's not getting any. It's definitely not getting any more capital heavy, if you like.
The incremental spend on top of that is virtually all going into this drug delivery platform around the world to seek this, you know, capitalize on the growth. You know, we're sitting on 250, you know, big projects. You know, there was a time in Croda where one or two we got excited with.
You know, we've got a lot more now. So, you know, clearly not, you know, a lot of them won't get there, but all we need is a few of them to get there and we can satisfy that growth. So, the model is about the normal screening, it's about 6% plus the incremental spend. That incremental spend will continue in 2022, but then probably moderate. I mean, it all depends on what we see in terms of looking through our intelligent platforms around the conversion rates through the clinical programs. But yeah.
At the moment, you know, we've guided to around GBP 160 million for this year, but a lot of that is because of the, you know, the incremental stuff on top is all into the, you know, the slide you saw on the build and scale for drug delivery. It's all about the incremental spend there. Jez, mate, I don't know if you've got any other comments on investment after that?
No, that's fine. Yeah, it's still spread across the two, but as Steve says, the extra spend, which we think is probably a three-year period of additional spend, at the moment that we can see. We think we'll run at an elevated level through a three-year period, and then return to the more normal level, which is probably nearer, you know, maybe GBP 100 million, 6% of sales, that sort of level. But probably three years of this elevated level, as Steve said, very much focused on healthcare.
I think in terms of the demand, you know, we're cautiously optimistic, that, you know, looking at next year. You know, what we didn't see, like many in the industry in quarter four, we didn't see the seasonal downturn that you'd expect. It just continued. It's continued very strongly at the start of this year as well. There's no surprise there. Bit of inflation in there as well, so raw materials are going up further in quarter one.
We expect that to moderate and, you know, the inflation around Croda's business is, you know, it's quite interesting because it means that there's volume growth there. It's demand led by and large. You get the volume growth and then you also get, pricing on top.
You know, but we would expect raw materials, in a world that we can see today, we expect raw materials to sort of moderate off their tops, you know, from quarter two onwards. I think in the, if you look through the 12-month period, a little bit of raw material increase weighted to the front end. In terms of stock, I mean, you know, we don't see any big changes. There's some moderation, and I expect it to come in the consumer industry more than anything, Consumer Care, where, you know, L'Oréal were out with, you know, 7 or 8% market growth rates for them, you know, 2021 and about 5% for personal care in 2022.
You know, we're not too far away from that in terms of what we see. I think it's still very buoyant. There's a resurgence. I think that resurgence will continue at a higher level, but there's probably a little bit of stock trimming that comes on top of that. Still very pleased with progress. You know, in the round, we don't see any big destocking effects coming, but just more trimming around the edges, I think.
I think it may be more pronounced. If you get any effect, it tends to be in the Performance Technologies business, which is one of the reasons that we've gone for the, you know, the divestment moves us away from some of the cyclicality that Steve spoke about on one of the earlier slides. I think, you know, you tend to see a little bit more cyclical variation in automotive and industrial markets. The whole move to Life Sciences and Consumer Care is about making the business more, you know, consistent in terms of, and accessing the higher growth rate, and we don't see that changing.
Hello. Good morning. Sebastian Bray of Berenberg Bank speaking. I have a few questions, please. The first is on the definition of lipid system sales and visibility out to 2025. Steve, you've talked earlier about the opportunity from preclinical phase I, phase II, phase III trials in this area. Can I just confirm the $200 million sales figure that Croda cites does not include, as a rough guess, the $40 million-$50 million of sales for polar lipids separately that flow to the preclinical market? If that's the case, Steve, I think you've mentioned in the past achieving a $200 million size business by 2025 or maintaining it at that level.
Does that effectively imply a net loss of $50 million of sales? Because at the moment, we have, let's say $250, if you include the preclinical applications. Does that go to $200 by 2025? What type of visibility do you have there?
Yeah, I think so. Hi, Sebastian. The Lipid Systems definition includes Avanti sales where they're going into the LNP platforms. Avanti has this 50-year history of being an R&D house, basically, of being able to produce different delivery systems for customers who are primarily in preclinical and clinical trial stage. Some of those are lipid-based, and some of them are other chemistry-based.
What we're including in the Lipid Systems is just those which are going into LNP applications, which right now is pretty much COVID-19 applications. They're either the vaccine contracts with the principal customers, or they're the other COVID-19 areas that have been developing over time. Those are the sales that we're making.
You're right to say that on top of that, there's a bunch of sales, 40, 50 might be a little bit strong, but there's some more sales which are all part of that R&D, you know, development capability that serves about 2,000 pharmaceutical customers. It's the $200 million, which is currently very focused on the COVID application that we see developing into non-COVID.
That's where the projects that Steve talked about in terms of the pipeline are really coming through with two-thirds of those being non-COVID applications. We're great with the COVID applications, but obviously, the non-COVID ones are also about, you know, longer-term treatments, other vaccines, therapeutic drugs, et cetera.
What we want to do is to morph this portfolio over time to a $200 million portfolio with lots of customers and lots of applications. Increasingly that $200 million, which is right now focused around three or four pieces of business, with one big piece of business in there, obviously, will develop into multiple customers and multiple applications in COVID and non-COVID applications. On top of that, you have the Avanti, I call it a catalog business, but that's not really fair.
It's the sort of thing where R&D people in the pharmaceutical industry are ordering very small amounts of different things. That business will carry on. It carries on growing very nicely at probably 5%.
The big opportunity is the development of the Lipid Systems capability into a whole new range of different ingredients for mRNA and gene therapy. Definitionally wise, we're just focusing on those sales that are going into sort of LNP-based systems, basically.
We're gonna just to add to that, through 2022 and 2023, you know, we see three different types of revenue stream for Lipid Systems. We see obviously from the big partnership we got, that will continue into 2023 as well. You know, we're contracted there. You know, the rollout will continue. You know, we might think in the UK, we're near the end of it, but, you know, we're just starting in some parts of the world. That rollout will continue there.
You've obviously got these booster jabs and the sort of regular annuity that might come with that. On top of that, for that revenue stream one is the potential flu vaccine and RNA together, which could be quite significant.
You know, again, a lot of R&D in there as well, but that could be a solution which extends actually RNA a bit longer than you think in COVID, because it could be wrapped up in a flu vaccine as well, together, which would be a neat thing to do. That's revenue one. Revenue two is we have other customers in the COVID space with lipid ingredients. As Jez said, there's you know, small number of those that we'll be attracting revenue with 2022 and 2023. Also, on top of that, it's the non-COVID applications.
You're in clinical programs, and we already have some revenue streams coming later this year, at the start, relatively modest, but, you know, hopefully building as we start to launch our new products, let's just say that, with our own IP in, let's just call it non-COVID application areas. Three revenue streams running through building. As Jez says, you know, we're looking at this market as a minimum of like $200 million market by 2025. We've said that openly with everybody last time.
With lots, you know, this has the hallmarks of hundreds of products, hundreds of customers. It's not one product and it's not one customer. You know, we don't wanna be there.
You know, it's like the old API days of a lot of companies. You know, we had an API in our stock a few years ago. You know, it's great, you get them in, but you know, they're pretty volatile. For us, it's you know, it looks like a very very good expanding opportunity for us. Our job is really to update ourselves and you as we progress through the conversion rates through these projects and these clinical programs through the next few years. Yeah. At the moment, you know, three revenue streams coming through in the next couple of years.
That is helpful. Thank you. If I quickly follow up, I don't want to outstay my welcome, so to speak. As a rough guess, if I look at expected Sanofi RNA flu doses and then your potential revenue split, is it fair to say that $200 million is roughly 50 COVID, 50 non-COVID in terms of the split? Or could you comment on that or?
What today or?
No, by 2025.
We won't comment on that. No.
I mean, we don't know. I mean, you know, but I think, you know, $200 million, it'll be certainly, you know, a good number for us. A lot will depend on the speed at which the clinical programs come through. The combination of flu and RNA is something interesting, which again, you know, it's in research, advanced research. We'll see where that takes us as well.
We can't comment because we don't know, not because we're trying to be evasive.
Just a quick one on the quantitative side. Am I right in saying that the dis-synergy is now guided for PTIC, net of any contractual additional volumes or contract tolling arrangements is about GBP 10 million? Is that right from the number, or if it was shown, or?
Yeah, that's the sort of right order of magnitude. The dis-synergy costs are essentially costs which are currently borne by that PT business, but which don't change, you know. Me and Steve might be good examples of that, 'cause obviously we charge all of our costs to sectors. Of course it will be transitory. You know, the whole idea is to release the capital from the majority of the PTIC business and reinvest it in the consumer and the Life Sciences.
Clearly, as we look forward two to three years, you would expect to have the same sort of revenue, certainly more profitability. The dis-synergy costs will be there post-sale, but only until we redeploy the capital fully.
Thank you.
Steve, there's a related question on the Lipid Systems from Sam on the webcast, who says, "Pfizer recently spoke about their relationship with Acuitas. How does this impact Croda in the medium term with regards to future projects outside the scope of the COVID contract?
Yeah. I mean, we view that positively because what it's basically saying is Pfizer are fully committed through their R&D program to really invest heavily in the new generation platforms with RNA. Acuitas have technology ownership to some products in Lipid Systems. Yeah, what Pfizer have done is they've agreed, effectively, a scale-up license, a manufacturing license or some arrangement. Acuitas are the owner of the technology, and then they don't manufacture.
You know, their job is then partnering up with the Crodas of the world and ultimately the Pfizers of the world to make sure that they can utilize their R&D and use that through either scale-up or scale-up through with partners.
That's a big confidence boost for the world of RNA, because it's basically saying that they're moving very quickly. There's 10 different agreements, so there's a minimum of 10 different types of product. It's back to our point that, you know, the rollout of this through clinical projects, it won't be one. You know, this isn't one product that's gonna get commoditized like you might see in the battery world. We don't see it like that. You know, there's some companies that have invested in that, and you see prices drop very quickly. This is very science driven.
Lots of complexity and lots of tweaks needed for specifications of products. You're all about stabilizing the mRNA, and that's tricky in different applications. You know, we like that because we like the complexity of it.
Hi. Morning, it's Georgina Fraser from Goldman Sachs. It's good to see you in person. Thank you very much for having us here.
You as well.
I've got three questions. The first is, if you could comment on how you think prices for Lipid Systems outside of coronavirus applications might look. The second question is, a clarification from your print this morning. It said that in Life Sciences, the double-digit growth can continue in patient health, and I was wondering if you could clarify if that was across all three of the platforms or just specialty excipients and vaccine adjuvants.
My final question is, we've seen last year Consumer Care, the top line outgrowing the bottom line, which is not necessarily the typical Croda model. Wondering at what point in time the bottom line will start outgrowing the top line in Consumer Care again.
So on the price, I mean, we don't expect, we're not factoring in any attrition, significant attrition in price in the lipid space generally, I would say. But in particular in non-COVID applications. What you find with, we've got a lot of intellectual property in that space as well, and I don't think we're back to the point before that it's not one product that's gonna drive this where everybody's gonna replicate the same product.
I think you've got to, you know, it's on a case-by-case, treatment-by-treatment basis, and there'll be lots of slightly different, you know, similar technology platforms, but slightly different. We're not factoring that in.
I think the big thing for us and for you is, you know, how quickly can these be commercialized through the pipeline, and what does that mean for us? Because the revenue stream and, you know, the profitability in those products is very high, as you'd expect. We really want chemical industry risk, pharmaceutical margins. That's what we want in our products, and we think we can do that in most, 'cause we're selling to, effectively, a specification.
It's slightly different risk environment which we're looking at through our risk frameworks. You know, ostensibly, you know, it's a different margin you can get in pharmaceuticals. Jez, on Life Sciences, do you wanna...
I'll come back on Consumer Care, well, on the shape of the profit.
Take 'em both?
Yeah.
Fine. The double-digit growth, I mean, we always said on the first platform, which was specialty excipients, which is the one we've grown organically over the last 10-20 years, and then moved into these areas on biologics and oncology drugs and so forth. I mean, we certainly see 10%-30%, which has always been our medium-term range on that platform, as ongoing, because there's lots of opportunities there. You know, we doubled capacity.
We brought that on stream at the beginning of last year and, you know, that will last us three to five years. We're thinking about the next project sort of in that. So definitely see very strong growth continuing in specialty excipients.
I mean, the vaccine adjuvant, smaller business that we acquired through Biosector in 2018, but really we could sell as much as we could build the capacity. Every time we build, we expand capacity, and as Steve said, we doubled capacity last year. It sold out within a few months. We think the opportunities in vaccine adjuvants, from a smaller base, are very exciting. Then the Lipid Systems, absolutely.
I mean, as Steve said, I think that what we're trying to do at the moment is bridge between 2021 and 2025, I guess, in terms of Lipid Systems platform, which is why we sort of say lipids $200 million today, and it will be, we believe, $200 million then. But a very different mix.
Of course, from there, as that mRNA market rises towards the $35 billion that Steve spoke about, you know, then our share of that market, you know, means that that should be growing very rapidly as well. But clearly, we're getting from this slightly unusual position of sort of single product, single application, to the classic Croda position of big portfolio of customers' ingredients.
So they'll all be driving growth for long, many years to come, in our view. In terms of Consumer Care, probably 2021 is the low point, and then I think we would expect to see margin move forward in 2022 and beyond. I mean, clearly it's just a function of maths. It's the dilution effect of having a full year of Iberchem, having acquired it in November of 2020.
Its margin is, you know, in the mid- to high-teens %, sort of natural level. Clearly, even at the top of that industry, you're only looking just into the bottom end of 20%. Whereas in Personal Care, last year we achieved 30%, and that's despite a high remuneration charge from the bonus and share plan base costs that drove there. That's the one-off dilution effect, effectively.
Unless we see exceptionally strong growth from Iberchem, or we do some more acquisitions in that space which are dilutive, then you'd expect the margin in Consumer Care to move steadily forward. You know, certainly into the high 20s %, we believe is achievable over a period. When you think about the drivers to that, in Iberchem, we're investing now.
You're gonna have the sales synergies coming through that Steve talked about, the EUR 48 million by 2025. You've got the benefits of, we haven't talked about it, but the ECO plant in the States, where clearly that's moving from a loss situation to a profit situation. That's additive, of course. It's not exclusive to Consumer Care, but Home Care and Personal Care, Beauty Care are the big drivers behind that area. You've got stronger growth in Beauty Actives, which is always mix beneficial to Consumer Care.
I think you've got lots of reasons to believe that there's gonna be good margin accretion. It would just be a little bit noisy depending on the relative rate of growth of fragrance compared with the Personal Care market in particular. Yeah, good strong opportunities there.
Thanks. Charlie Bentley at Jefferies. I just wanted to follow up on the kind of commentary around lipids into kind of 2023. I know obviously we're quite a way away, but I mean, as you talk around the balance of those two, of the kind of three pools there, can you just give any kind of indication on the absolute level, where you think it might be today?
You've talked about Nicola's question around kind of investing in organic or organic growth. If we talk about M&A priorities, I mean, are they still squarely bolt-ons in Life Sciences? Or I mean, there's an indication on Personal Care there. Just any color you can give there. Thanks.
Yeah. Well, I mean, we'll start with the M&A. I mean, M&A for Croda is, you know, it, the organic growth model has got a long way to play out now. You know, we're very pleased with the acquisitions that we've done recently, and we see a lot of growth opportunities there. You can see that we're investing in that, both in capital, but also in knowledge, in research, and in clever people. We expect that to continue. We've also got the option.
We've got great optionality now, once we get the proceeds from the sale, that gives us flexibility to look at different things as well. But the priority is organic growth plus probably bolt-ons. We like the Avanti-type model. I think you do as well. You know, which is knowledge.
It's a knowledge, but you're buying knowledge. You're buying 125 people, and you're buying 100 of them, maybe 110 of them are scientists. You're buying clever people. What we're doing is commercializing that knowledge. That's what we do very well. That's the type of business that we're looking at. There's no surprise if we see opportunities in the drug delivery space, we'll move pretty quickly if we thought that was the right thing to do.
We'll also spend quite a bit of time looking in sustainable ingredients, positioning of Consumer Care as well, because there is a shift there. You can see it, we can feel it, and when we talk to our customers, that's structural.
We saw it before the pandemic to a small degree, but now it's firmly embedded in the mantra of all the big multinationals. You know, they're all moving away from petrochemical-based ingredients, you know, L'Oréal, Unilever, more to follow. They'll lead the industry in that way, and we're starting to see that with the rest of the industry following. You know, that's the sort of direction of travel from a organic point of view, and there should be no surprise there. In terms of 2023, it's a good question, as I say.
It's a difficult one to answer you. We're very heartened with the revenue streams emerging from these three different areas.
The big, you know, with our big partnership, a lot will depend on.
You know, where we are with the rollout, where we are with the booster program, where we are with the vaccine combination hybrid, you know, mRNA type product. That could have a, you know, a very positive effect as well. I think it's, it'll be a healthy revenue stream, and it's not gonna deteriorate to nothing, as some people say. I mean, we've got revenue streams, we're contracted. We'll get what we will get from our share of our big contract there.
The question will be the other two revenue streams, how quickly they progress. I think it's too early to say, 'cause we know we could quote a number, we could give you a number. I think that's difficult to back up at the moment.
I think as we go through the year, we can start to see what that looks like. But again, as we say, we're heartened with and very encouraged with 25, you know, 24, 25 plus, where you can start to see this business emerging as a really, you know, a great Croda business. Like a nascent personal care business from many years ago with a very different shape to it. Yeah, I think that's the difficulty of putting a big number on that.
Thank you. There was a question from Andre on the webcast who asked about guidance on use of disposal proceeds. I think you largely covered that. Anything you want to add on use of proceeds from the PTIC disposal?
Well, I think we just say, you know, the capital allocation policy which Jez led, when he first came to Croda, you know, it's very clear, very consistent. If you look at, in the pack, Jez's last slide just shows you how we're consistent with that. You know, we'll follow that through. You know, we first look at capital investment in the business. We then look at, you know, the shape of M&A as an opportunity going forward, for us in the next 12, 18 months.
If we don't need or if we have spare cash, that we don't need to deploy in either of those two areas, then we'll return it. You know, we'll return it in the usual way, and we've demonstrated that in the past, and we'll demonstrate that in the future.
We're not gonna sit on an inefficient balance sheet for any length of time. I think it's fair to say most of our investors will want us to invest in the business if we see some good opportunities for it, particularly if it's into these exciting fast growth spaces. You know, that's what we'll be looking to do if we can. You know, we're not here to waste money. We're here to do the right thing with it.
We'll go back to Adam for questions over the telephone line, please.
Our first question today comes from Matthew Yates of Bank of America. Matthew, please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Apologies I couldn't be there in person. Couple of questions, please. An amazing job to pass through so much raw material inflation. But can I ask about the volume trends in consumer? I think you had 11% volume growth in the first half. So if you're saying 6% for the full year, I guess is that implying that the second half is basically around flat? Is that right? And is that the sort of expectation that you're seeing in early 2022?
And then the second question is around NPP, and I think that's slide six in your deck. There was a notable step up, but as you're saying, it's most of that was acquired, so there's a 60 basis point increase organically, and actually over the last two years, it's negligible.
I guess the question is, are you getting enough innovation coming out of your internal efforts, or is it simply the target is to offset the natural attrition in the portfolio in order to protect your overall sort of pricing and profitability model? Thank you.
Yeah. Right. Thanks, Matthew. Yeah, NPP first then. Yeah, I mean, the way you should look at that is what we've seen in the last two or three years. The innovation's not slowing down in Croda. What's happening is the base non-NPP business is growing very well too. What you're seeing is normally you'd expect your NPP to outstrip your base business. But because we've seen this rebound and this resurgent personal care recovery in industrial markets, what you're seeing is the base business coming back very strongly too.
While the numbers aren't the percentage of NPP is not changing significantly, you shouldn't read into that the innovation projects that we've got. That's more an effect of the non-NPP rebounding much stronger than the normal.
That will reach its natural level, and NPP will then outstrip that. I think the other thing to point out, though, is, yeah, we wanna buy knowledge. We want more knowledge in the business anyway, because I think, you know, every company has to keep reshaping and keep doing things differently. It's about moving into new markets, but with knowledge. You know, in Avanti and in Iberchem, they've got a lot, and you'll see that as we start to show you those facilities.
You know, you'll start to see they've got some great innovation programs and, you know, quite a high level of R&D skill, much higher R&D in their businesses than in the average Croda business, you know, across the board. You know, that's the direction of travel we wanna move anyway.
We would expect the NPP growth generally anyway to move ahead of a more stable looking non-NPP environment, you know, when things sort of moderate in the next probably couple of years. That's that. It's a good point on the price mix. You know, we're sort of exiting around about 5% volume in the price mix generally for the company, and Consumer Care was at, you know, below that. A lot of that is a function of just capacity. You know, we're flat out on a lot of our units at the moment, and you know, the order book is strong now for well into this year.
Much longer, you know, our outstanding orders, for example, are much bigger than we would normally expect. I think that's more an industry issue than everything else. It's a reflection of demand. You know, demand is strong. You know, our model for this year is clearly there's quite a lot of price riding into this year with some probably modest volumes in Consumer Care. We'd expect some volume growth in personal care as we've been investing, you know, in the past for this year and next year. It'll be relatively small, you know, low digit volume growth for Consumer Care.
Steve. Hi, Matthew. I think as well, think about the comparatives for last year. I mean, the first half obviously was compared against you know, quite a weak first half of 2020 because of the COVID impact, which was sort of down 20% in Consumer Care in the second quarter of 2020. Whereas we'd already seen full recovery by the end of 2020, and therefore the growth last year is on top of that. I think the overall 5% volume growth is very encouraging, you know, on top of that.
The other element was that Home Care was relatively weak last year because it had such a strong 2020 on the back of hygiene demand. We saw good growth in personal care, particularly at the top end.
As Steve says, I think going forward, you know, that mid-single-digit growth excluding raw material inflation recovery, there should be a good mixture of volume and mix, driving that mid-single-digit growth. We're quite comfortable around that.
Okay, Matthew.
Thank you, sir.
The next question comes from Chetan Udeshi from J.P. Morgan. Chetan, your line is open.
Yeah, hi, thank you and morning. Can I ask a question on the price mix in the Life Sciences business, which, at least on my numbers, went to, like, 29-30% in second half from 42% in first half. Can you comment on what's going on within the mix in the Life Sciences? You know, I know there are different businesses, but, you know, I mean, the key question there is there a read on pricing in any of the businesses in second half versus first half?
That's the first question. And then there was that interesting slide in the deck showing the, you know, growth by different sub-segments within Consumer Care. And clearly, the Beauty Actives part seems to have grown much faster.
When I still do the math, you know, ex the acquisitions, ex the home care business, the margin is still sort of 29%-30%, which is still quite a bit below 33%-34% that you guys had in 2019, I think. The question is, you know, even with the mix going back in those old personal care business, why is the margin still lagging so much? Thank you.
Hi, Chetan. In terms of Life Sciences, I think it's the mix that's going on there. There's no price erosion or anything happening in any of the platforms, and particularly in the three patient healthcare platforms in healthcare there. What you've got in the first half year is very, very strong growth. We were up over 60% in sales in specialty excipients and vaccine adjuvants in the first half year. That was really a function of really uncorking the bottle. That's when the new capacity came on stream in both the US specialty excipient plant and in vaccine adjuvants in Denmark.
You had this sort of release of pent-up demand where people were waiting, obviously, for, you know, and in pharmaceuticals, you can have several months of stock, basically in the pipeline, so people can manage on a longer wait. You had this very strong sales growth of sort of 60% in the first half. In the second half, it settled down to more sort of growth in those two platforms in the 20s, and therefore overall growth of over 40%.
As I said, the 20% growth is much more consistent with where we see growth being 10%-30% on those two platforms going forward. Because you had that big effect, that's why you get this price mix change.
Although 35% price mix is still pretty stunning, I think, in terms of delivery. There's absolutely no price erosion going on in there. We've got a contractual price reduction in the second year of the principal contract in Lipid Systems, which reflects the fact that obviously we're now in full scale production and therefore the efficiencies and so forth improve. That's the only built-in price reduction.
As we've said, we expect pricing to remain strong, particularly as Lipid Systems develops into a wider portfolio of products for different customers. In terms of personal care, I think the key difference between 2019 and 2021 is the remuneration charge. As we note in the statement, remuneration charge is about 2-2.5 percentage points of margin.
There were no bonuses paid in 2019, and the share-based payments were relatively low, and they were very strong last year. You know, Croda's variable remuneration, which affects the top 600 people in the organization, is very much about profit growth year on year. Although 2019 and then 2020 were pretty decent performances, they were still down by 5%-10% in terms of profit, so there was no bonus paid. In 2021, you've got a full bonus, and of course, you've got a very strong share price into the end of the year. That's about 2.5 percentage points. As I said, personal care sitting around about 30% return on sales.
If you grossed it back up, you'd be at 32.5, which is pretty much around the 33% peak that you referred to back in 2019. It's just a function, again, of all of these costs have to be borne by the sectors, and therefore you're gonna get a bit of volatility according to what's happening in those variable remuneration programs. Other companies, BASF, et cetera, they pull them out as a separate division. But we don't do that. We allocate it to the sectors in our reported numbers.
I think the other thing, Chetan, as well, is, you know, we look at it from a divisional point of view. We judge them on gross margin. You know, we're glued to gross margin in the business. It's a good crude indicator for us, and we're not seeing any gross margin attrition in any of the businesses. It's actually quite consistent across them all, where you're seeing this robustness.
You know, we're navigating well through the inflation environment, but the central cost adjustment is significant and, yeah, we can talk to you about that separately, I'm sure. Okay?
Thank you.
The next question comes from Charlie Webb of Morgan Stanley. Charlie, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Morning, everyone. Again, apologies for not being there. Just a couple from me. Just first off on the CapEx into healthcare with another chunky investment year ahead. Perhaps just give us some more details in terms of which platforms that's kind of been allocated to. You mentioned that high purity excipients already have capacity to grow into. Just trying to understand where that's going. And maybe if you could let us know the type of payback you'd expect on that investment. Second question just on working capital.
Obviously quite a big working capital build in 2021. You know, what do you anticipate there in 2022? You know, you built up some stock. Just wondering whether that, you know, like to repeat, unwind, et cetera, for 2022 would be helpful.
Then lastly, just on Consumer Care, as you think about the mix, heading into 2022, you know, what trend do you continue to see? Do you expect to continue to see Beauty Actives, effects, et cetera, outgrow kind of formulations, Home Care, and therefore you're just trying to sense, you know, where does that take margins plus Atlas Point for Consumer Care in 2022 relative to where we ended up in 2021?
Okay, Charlie. I'll let Jez do the working capital one, and I'll kick off with the other two. I mean, CapEx healthcare, there is a slide in here, I don't know if you've seen it, but which sort of describes that, sort of the third slide of the biopharma pack. I mean, ostensibly, what we're trying to do is, you know, the Avanti model is a great preclinical model. It's a preclinical machine, and it's getting samples out to all of these pharma companies. They do that very well.
We've been scaling that up with people resource to turbocharge that. You know, we don't really know how many preclinical projects we're in, but we're in a lot, which is great.
Their model wasn't great at capturing the future growth when they came through the clinical programs because they outsourced that volume to other providers. You know, CDMOs, contract manufacturers, call them what you want. Our job is to then build that capability. We decided to build that capability in North America. You know, the idea there is in our Mill Hall facility just around the corner, we're looking to invest space there to scale these things up. It's all about scaling up, expecting some of these clinical programs to be successful and being available to scale those up there.
There's investment targeted there and also in our UK l ipid facility there as well as we, you know, we plan for future growth. I mean, the paybacks are very modest. You know, the paybacks are very fast, very modest. They're, you know, so they're in the region of about, you know, three years payback, maybe even less than that. And it's not huge infrastructure we're putting in. You know, we're building kilo quantities rather than, you know, oil refineries.
As I say, you know, these are relatively small, but they've gotta have flexibility to refine, purify and separate. That's effectively where the craft is. You know, we've done that for 40 years, 50 years pretty well.
It's more in that area if you know, and you see that on the slide. That was a working cap, that was a CapEx. In terms of mix, I mean, I think the Actives, you know, if you look at the Consumer Care mix, you know, we see, as Jez commented, you know, we expect margins to generally move upwards over the next near term and medium term steadily, we would say. You're gonna see the mix, I think between, as you say, the Actives in the formulation area will be broadly similar to what it is now. I think we would expect the Actives business to grow in percent levels higher than the formulation business.
Well, it's a smaller business. But I think, yeah, we're not disappointed with the formulation growth as well. I think that sort of ratio is about right where it is now, for this year. I think the other drivers are things like, as you say, ECO. You know, we're now starting to displace a number of petrochemical companies in formulations now, you know, on the back of L'Oréal, Unilever's moves, you know, big statements on moving to bio-based by 2030 for both of them. You're starting to see that. You know, we're seeing that quite significantly. You know, we expect a profit move forward, therefore, in the Actives unit.
Therefore, that tends to benefit more the Consumer Care business than it does the Life Sciences business. You know, we, you know, the few drivers there and also just the pace of the projects that we've got. If you look at the number of projects that we've got in the pipeline, you know, we're starting to see our big customers really now moving with some of them. There's been a delay during the pandemic, as you'd expect, but a lot of this is sort of pent-up innovation demand from their R&D stables as well. Jez, anything on either of those? Then you on working capital.
No, nothing to add, I think, on those, Steve. On working capital, Charlie, so we have these two components, the GBP 70 million increase, which is sort of pro rata to the increase in value, with a constant number of working days cover. We'd expect that to drift upwards at the moment from what we can see, 'cause obviously we've got price increases, as Steve mentioned, in the first quarter of 2022. The values I think will be up a bit, but not at the moment by that order of magnitude.
Then on the tactical contingency stock that we held GBP 45 million of extra stock, one would hope that we could start to allow that to reduce now and to reverse. It is incredible.
I mean, it's been a really stellar performance in terms of 2021, but it's been delivered against the backdrop of much increased customer demand at a time of really challenging global distribution position. The teams internally have worked superbly well, both at manufacturing level and at sort of customer service and distribution level to overcome those problems.
We're starting to see some normalization now in the distribution chains around the world, not quite so stressed at ports and so forth. 'Cause I suspect that's added about two weeks to our stock that's been on the water, just the difficulty of getting things through ports. That hopefully is starting to normalize now, and that could mean that the tactical inventory should reduce.
I think there will still be a small working capital build in 2022, but nothing like the same scale as we saw in 2021.
Really helpful. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Charlie.
Our final telephone question comes from Isha Sharma from Stifel Europe. Isha, please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation. I have just one question left, please. The Iberchem margin was already impacted in 2021 as far as my calculations show, and this was probably due to the raw material costs, which is in contrast to the F&F players, where they haven't seen any impact yet, but they guide for 7%-9% inflation in 2022. How should we think in general about Iberchem? How comparable it is to their guidance, and what kind of margin impact are you expecting after the already low margin in 2021? Thank you.
Yeah. Okay, I'll start and then Jez can add. I mean, yeah, I mean, we've been happy, very happy with the trading performance. You know, it screens for about 10% underlying sales growth, and it's just a bit below that at the moment. When you think about it, they've had a perfect storm 'cause they've had. They're in most of the emerging markets that have been really in heavy-duty lockdown for most of the year.
Yeah, trading performance is good, you know, despite that. We're pleased with that. Margins, yeah, I mean, you know, their raw material increase through the year was significant. It wasn't 17%, but it wasn't far away from that.
Sort of the region of about 13%-15% they see it. They don't have any clever hedging systems. They just take it, like we do with raw material costs every quarter. They've had that. They've carried that through the year. I think that will moderate through the year. That's obviously a help to margin improvement as well. I think the worst of it's behind them.
Whereas with some of the other players, I think, you know, because of whether it's hedging or other things, you know, they have to carry that into the year ahead. The margin headwinds for some of the bigger players are more significant than the smaller ones. Well, certainly for Iberchem.
You know, for us, we you know, I'll let Jez comment on the numbers, but you know, we've had a drag on margins this year of 2021, so we expect some of that to come back next year.
Yeah, I agree, Steve. Hi, Isha. The other thing to remember in the Iberchem margin short-term is we've put additional cost in, like Avanti, but not in the same scale. We've put an additional resource so that we can really take advantage of these sales synergies. Therefore, I think while you've got a little bit of short-term dilution in line with our acquisition plan, the midterm prospects look good.
I mean, we think that with those sales synergies, every reason to believe we can get the margin on Iberchem to be sort of consistent with the best in class of the tier one players. Even though tier two players have traditionally operated, you know, probably two or three percentage points below that.
Because of the synergies we can release by leveraging the Croda sales force and leveraging our strength in developed markets while then getting more sales, particularly in the Consumer Care business from their emerging market exposure, the Iberchem performance itself margin should certainly get up into, I guess, you know, around the, you know, the low 20% EBITDA margins that you see, you know, at the top end of this industry. I think, yeah, a little bit of short-term investment to make sure that we deliver midterm margins at the best in class.
That's very helpful. Thank you. Just maybe a conclusion. Does it make sense to assume the reversal of the share-based compensation negative impact of 2% next year and take the underlying margin as what we have seen in the second half for the group? Is that a rough calculation that makes sense for next year?
You have a lot of Croda people on this call as well, by the way. We would be delighted to pay a full bonus next year, this year. Very, very much delighted for the bonus and the PS pay. Yeah, we quite like it, you know. We like good bonuses as well. Yeah, it will be what it will be. It's been a significant impact this year relative to a couple of other years, that's for sure.
You know, for Croda, we're very proud of the fact that over 80% of the UK workforce are members of share schemes. Over 60% of the global workforce are members of the share schemes. The use of share-based payments is very strong across the organization. You know, there's two functions really. One is performance, but the other is share price. And of course, the share price was very strong at the end of the year. That, as Steve says, it'll be what it'll be. I wouldn't like to make any assumptions.
Finance directors know better than the chief execs, by the way. No, I think the other thing we would say as well is that we've just agreed a free share plan for the company. When the senior team of 600 get a bonus, then we expect free shares to be delivered down the organization. You know, everybody in Croda you know at the junior levels gets a share of that as well.
That we think that's you know very much good for distribution of the reward. Everybody's been involved in a great year, great resilience from the team in what's been very challenging, and we've delivered you know knockout results. They should benefit from that as well.
Most of the other questions.
Great. Okay, well.
I will go check the careers page on Croda.
Well, thanks for everybody who's attended, both in person and on the call. It's great to see you all, and, yeah, we'll see you when we see you in the summer. All right, take care. Thank you.