All right. I think we're all present and correct. Good morning, all, and welcome to DCC's interim results presentation for the six months ended the 30th of September 2018. I think I pretty much know most people in the room, or most people in the room know us at this stage. I am Donal Murphy, Chief Executive of DCC, just in case anyone doesn't know me. Just to introduce the team who are here to answer all the hard questions later on. We have Tim Griffin, who's making an appearance for the first time at a results presentation. Tim was with us down at the Capital Markets Day in Marseille, so I think a number of you met Tim down there. Conor Costigan, Managing Director of the healthcare division. Henry Cubbon, Managing Director of the LPG division. Eddie O'Brien, Managing Director of the Retail and Oil division.
Everyone knows Fergal O'Dwyer, Chief Financial Officer of the group. Thankfully, I don't have to read the disclaimer. I don't even have to read the agenda. Just moving on, and for anyone on the phone, to slide three. We are really pleased with the performance in the first half of the year. We had strong operating profit growth, and again, a very active period from a capital deployment perspective, with GBP 270 million committed to acquisitions during the first six months. That is a material amount of acquisition spend in the first six months. Our first priority in DCC is always driving the organic performance of the group. Our group operating profits on continuing activities up 15.9%, 16.5% on a constant currency basis to GBP 141.9 million. Key thing for us, all divisions performing very much in line with our expectations.
As you all know, DCC's year, the first half is seasonally the less significant. About 30% of our operating profits are in the first half of the year. We are very much weighted towards the second half performance. As I say, very pleased with the performance across each of the divisions. Adjusted EPS and continuing activities up 12.1%, 13% on a constant currency basis to GBP 1.071. The board has approved an interim dividend increase of 10% to GBP 0.4498 per share, and we've had, as you know, a very progressive dividend policy, growing our dividend year on year, over our 24 years as a public company. We were particularly pleased with our equity placing. We generated GBP 606 million before costs, completed on the 2nd of October. That enables DCC to continue to implement our targeted acquisition strategy.
For many that were at our Capital Markets Day, our whole focus on our Capital Markets Day were really to talk about why we believe that we had the platforms, the opportunities, much more importantly, the capability to continue to build DCC into a global leader in our chosen sectors. It was very important for us to have the financial capacity to do that. The placing was very important for us, and we are really pleased to have that completed. Just looking at the financial summary. On the revenue line, revenue up 24.7%. As you all know, really, given the quantum of our business in the energy sector, looking at the revenue number in isolation doesn't mean a lot because depending on what's happening with the cost of the commodity, the revenue can move around significantly. In the energy businesses, we look at the volumes.
In the first half of the year, our LPG volumes grew 14.9% to 742,000 tons of gas equivalent. Our retail and oil business, our volumes grew 2.4% to 6.2 billion liters of fuel. I always kind of pause when I talk 6.2 billion liters or 12.3 billion liters in the year as a whole. We deliver an awful lot of fuel to an awful lot of customers across the business. Excluding the two energy businesses, our revenue was up 15.3%, and about a third of that was organic growth in the first half of the year. Operating cash flow was very strong, GBP 173.2 million. One of the things that you'll notice in our results, our working capital days have moved to 1.3 days positive from 1.7 days negative in the prior year.
That was really reflecting the acquisitions that we completed at the end of last year and the acquisitions this year, which have positive working capital characteristics. On a like-for-like basis, our working capital was broadly in line with the prior year. The strength of the balance sheet post the placing, net debt at the end of the half year would have been GBP 237.4 million. Again, keeping that financial strength, which has been a key element of the growth strategy for DCC. Just looking at our divisions, and it's on slide six for those on the phone. Operating profits across each of our four divisions, we were really pleased with the performance and very much in line with our expectations. The LPG business, on a constant currency basis, back 7.5%.
Two factors impacting on the business, and again, we had talked about this, and it's very much in line with expectations. One, the significant increase in the cost of products during the first six months. Secondly, the organic investment that we're making to build natural gas and electricity business in France. Retail and oil division up 34.5%, very strong growth in the first half of the year. Our healthcare division up 22.5%. Again, very strong growth in the first half of the year. The technology division up 25.6% on a constant currency basis, in the first half of the year. Again, the weighting of our business, the split of profits by division, is less meaningful in the first half of the year, but it's outlined there, 29% in LPG, 40% in retail and oil, 19% in healthcare, and 12% in technology.
Last year, 44% of our profits in the year as a whole were in our LPG division, 30% within our retail and oil division, 14% within healthcare, and 12% within the technology division. Just going to move on and look at each of the divisions in a little bit more detail. Looking at the LPG division, very pleased with the performance in our LPG business, very much in line with our expectations. In the seasonally less significant first half of the year, operating profits back 7.2% on a reported basis. Very much due to the increase in the cost of product. As you will know from prior results, there's a lead and lag effect within the LPG business. When the price of product is rising, it has an impact on our profitability or on our margin.
When it's falling, we get a benefit. As the price is rising, it has that short-term impact on our profitability. In the first half of the year, the price of propane on the 1st of April was USD 460 a ton, and it ended on the 30th of September at USD 638 a ton. Almost a 40% increase in the cost of product during the first half of the year. That has to work its way into the market. The second factor, as I said earlier, was the investment in our consumer natural gas and power business in France. It's not often that DCC makes organic investments in the business, that obviously we're investing profits to grow that business. Volumes up 14.9% during the first six months to 742,000 tons, driven by the acquisition, Shell Hong Kong and Macau, which we completed in January last.
The Retail West and the TEGA businesses, which we took on on the 1st of April. All the acquisitions. Last year was a very material year for development within the LPG division. All the acquisitions performing in line with our expectations. We're really pleased about that. It was a big year for development going both east and west and as I say, all those businesses fully integrated into the group and performing in line with our expectations. The Butagaz business in France performed again in line with our expectations. We continue to deliver good procurement benefits and also very strong focus on cost management within the business. Aligned with that, we've been leveraging the Butagaz brand to extend the range of products and services that we provide to our customers.
That's making good traction in that you'll have seen the Butagaz Click & Collect, those who were in Marseille with us as we went to the Esso retail petrol station. You saw the Click & Collect device. We're rolling those out across the market in France. We have been investing in a wood pellet business, which is going well, and clearly the most material investment has been in the natural gas, the consumer natural gas and electricity business. We've been making good traction in recruiting customers, but in what is a very competitive market. The business in Britain and Ireland, despite the warm weather and actually the warm weather, which is less significant and less material in the first half of the year. This year it was extremely mild over the summer months, which actually impacted in demand for agricultural products.
Despite that, our volume growth was actually very good in our business in Britain and Ireland. That's continuing this growth in the oil to LPG customer base, where we're taking on commercial customers, converting them across from oil. Overall, very good performance within the LPG division. Very big year last year in terms of that growth in the scale of our LPG business. We now have an LPG business with operations in 10 countries, leadership position in seven of those countries on three continents. We sell 1.9 million tons of gas equivalent across that business to almost a million customers. We have about four million customers using our cylinders across the business. We've a business of real scale. The really important bit is we've got the platforms because lots of those markets are fragmented, like the U.S. market.
We've talked about the German market. The opportunities with the capital we have to continue to build and grow our LPG business. Retail and Oil business, very pleased with the performance. Operating profit up 33.5% in the first half of the year, and again, in the seasonally less significant first half of the year. Volumes 2.4% up, benefiting from acquisitions marginally behind on an organic basis, reflecting that impact mainly in the agricultural sector due to the very mild weather. The business in Britain and Ireland performed really well organically, and of the overall division, a third of that profit growth was organic. Really strong underlying organic growth within the Retail and Oil business. Strong organic growth in Britain and Ireland.
Despite weakness in the agri sector, we had really good growth in the commercial sector, which is an area that we have been targeting and continuing to build out the business into adjacent areas. Lubricants, aviation, we're investing more modestly, but we're investing in retail petrol stations in Britain. And we're also expanding out the range of services that we provide to our HGV customers at truck stops. The acquisition of Snap is a modest acquisition, but extends the range of services that we provide to those customers. That, again, has been fully integrated into the services business in Britain. Really pleased with the performance in Scandinavia. Our Danish business, and you'll recall, we acquired some former Shell assets from Couche-Tard the year before.
They have been fully integrated into the business in Denmark, and we're really extracting the synergies, that acquisition is performing well ahead of our expectations. The retail business in Denmark has performed very well, and we're making really good progress in extending out the range of differentiated fuels that we sell to our customers. Danish business has performed really well in the first half of the year. The Norway business, we talked about this at the full-year time, business now is fully integrated into the group. The market remains challenging, but we're really focused on optimizing the business in Norway. Our retail business in Sweden continues to perform strongly. Really pleased with the performance across the business in Scandinavia. Our retail business in France, again, a strong organic performance in the first half of the year.
We rolled out, and those that traveled around with us saw the new Synergy identity on the site. The sites have all been refreshed. We've got the Synergy differentiated fuels on the product, and we're benefiting from that. All the value-added services then that we're putting on the sites, like the Butagaz Click & Collect, the Amazon parcel motels, rolling out car washes, investing in AdBlue on the retail network to generate additional income. Similarly to our LPG business, we now have a business of real scale in the oil market. Operations in 8 countries, leadership position within 6 of those countries. We sold last year 12.3 billion liters of fuel across that business. We've, again, about 1 million direct customers in our oil business, and millions of customers come to our retail sites.
In the space of four years, we've gone from a handful of retail sites to over 1,000 sites that we own and operate ourselves today. Significant development within the retail side of our business. Overall, really pleased with the performance in retail and oil. Moving on to healthcare. Again, really strong performance in the first half of the year. Operating profit up 22.2%. Two parts to our business. DCC Vital, the business of supplying products and services into the healthcare providers. Very strong profit growth in the first half, particularly in the supplies of medical devices, medical products and services to GP surgeries. We also have had two small bolt-on acquisitions, further strengthening our leadership position within the GP supply market here in Britain. We've good growth in our medical device business in Ireland, a satisfactory performance in a more challenging market here in Britain.
Again, good performance in our pharma business. Overall, the DCC Vital business performed really well in the first half of the year. In the health and beauty business, this was an area that we focused a good bit of time on when we were at the Capital Markets Day, again, the trends in growth and the organic growth in this business has been very strong, particularly in the nutritional product area. Again, first half of the year, really strong organic growth. We also benefited from the first-time contribution from Elite. In the nutrition sector, good growth across our key customers, a lot of our customers are international brands, we started manufacturing product for them here in the market in Britain, then expanding the relationship out into their international markets.
Now the presence in the U.S., which is a very large, very fragmented market, where we feel we can further consolidate that market within the U.S. Very strong growth in nutritional products, benefiting from people consuming more and more complex nutritional products, which plays really into our sweet spot in terms of the products that we like to manufacture. Then our beauty business, again, very strong organic growth in the first half of the year across our existing customer base who are growing their business. Then we've had quite success in expanding out our range of customers. Because of the success and the growth of this business, from an organic perspective, we're a bit capacity-constrained. We talked previously about some projects to increase our capacity. We're doubling our capacity within our soft gels business down in Wales. All those projects are moving ahead to plan.
We'll have significant increased capacity into the next financial year. Finally, our technology division, really pleased to report very strong growth in the technology division. It's been a great half-year in terms of capital deployment, talked previously, last year we had 3% of our capital deployment or acquisition capital deployment in the technology division. Putting a bit of pressure on the guys to find the right opportunities. This year, the vast bulk of the capital deployment has been within the technology division. We're really pleased with the development activity. Biggest part of our business is in Britain. Our business in the U.K. and Ireland performed very well organically. We had a couple of smaller acquisitions that have been fully integrated into the U.K. business, including the Kondor acquisition that we announced earlier this year.
We've been driving really strong revenue growth, we've talked about this before, particular focus on certain product areas. Audiovisual products have been growing very strongly for us. Smart home, and all the technology that's coming out now to be able to turn on your kettle ultimately, if you want something to turn on your kettle. Repair and refurbishment of mobile devices, that business has been growing very strongly. Enterprise infrastructure, particularly on the back of the growth in cloud computing, where we're providing the enterprise infrastructure into the data centers, very good growth there. We made significant progress in upgrading our infrastructure. We've talked about a number of very material investment projects across the technology division. We now have new national distribution centers here in Britain.
We've one in France, which we moved into earlier this year. A couple of weeks ago, we moved and fully integrated into a new national distribution center in Gothenburg, in Sweden, which services the Nordic market. Our enterprise SAP project that we have been working on for some time is now live in a part of our business in the U.K. There's been material progress in the major projects we had undertaken across the business. Business in France, there's two parts to that. The piece of the business, the larger part of it, supplying the resellers and electrician market, has performed very well in the first half of the year. Actually, again, benefiting, we're investing in the AV products. That is going well for us.
We're seeing operational improvements now within the consumer business, which has been, I suppose, a more challenging area for a period of time within France. Very active development period, really pleased about that. Particularly pleased in building this business out into the North American market with our presence now in Canada and the U.S. Those markets are very large. They're very fragmented. They very much fit with the skill sets that DCC has in acquiring, integrating, extracting synergies. The Stampede business, which we announced at the time of our AGM, which is a sales and marketing business focused on professional AV products, mainly in North America. They had a presence in the U.K., which has been integrated now with our existing U.K. business. Similarly, a small presence up in the Nordics, which has been integrated with our business in the Nordics.
The Jam business, which brings us very strongly into the pro audio, into musical instruments and consumer electronics. Both those businesses together with GBP 600 million of revenue now in the technology sector within the U.S., a real platform for further growth. Again, building real scale and geographic breadth into our technology division. As I say, all in all, from a trading perspective, we'd be pretty pleased with the performance in the first half of the year. Just the development activity, talked about some of this as we went through, it was a very active period. It's not just about development, it's about integrating. It's one thing to buy something, you've got to integrate it into the group. We've been consuming, if you like, the GBP 900 million of acquisitions that we have done over the last 12 months.
It's been a big first half for us, GBP 270 million in a range of acquisitions. GBP 240 million of that within the technology sector, smaller capital deployment across the other sectors in the first half. The U.S. thing and North America has been very important for us. We now have three divisions with businesses in North America. When we look at each of those businesses and each of those markets, they're all fragmented markets with opportunity for further growth. This thing we talked about before about the platforms. We've created platforms in three of our divisions now in the North American market for further acquisition. Technology, I've talked about the two, the Stampede and the Jam Group acquisitions, and the opportunities that that presents for technology.
It's, I suppose nearly, in some ways, really important in the technology sector because we leverage the same brand relationships. That's one of the important things in technology. We deal with all the global brands. Those global brands, we're much more important to them now, having a presence in North America, as well as having a very strong presence in Europe. We can leverage those relationships to provide more products, more services to the customer base. The integration of businesses that we acquired in the prior year within the LPG sector. There's been a lot of work. Everyone gets excited the day of an acquisition. The work, I always say this in the business, starts that day. It's not the end of it. It's only the start of it. We've been really busy integrating all those businesses.
As I said earlier, all performing in line with expectations. M&A is a core competency of DCC. We've been at it going right back to our origins. In our 24 years as a public company, it's been a very important part. Our first priority is organic growth across our business. Second focus is our M&A activity. It has been, when you look at the graph, it used to be very jagged edge because before we had the big slices at the end of it, you could see it more. Acquisitions come at different times, at different paces, at different periods. We never, ever try and push acquisitions to happen sooner than is right, because otherwise you overpay. Our fundamental focus is always on return on capital employed and generating high returns on capital employed.
That's a message that we're really keen to get out to all our shareholders. We won't acquire unless we're generating appropriate returns for the business. We have ramped up the acquisition activity, and in the last 12 months, or the rolling 12 months up until the end of September, GBP 900 million spent on acquisitions. That's by far a record. The last three years, on average, almost GBP 450 million on acquisition. We've spent GBP 3 billion on acquisitions, but it's 260 acquisitions. It actually doesn't matter whether it's a half a million, a million, GBP 10 million, a half a billion acquisition. The actual process of acquiring and integrating the businesses are broadly similar. We have built a lot of experience in the group in acquiring and integrating business.
That's why we have confidence that we can continue to build out this business geographically, and we think all our shareholders should have that confidence as well. It's not at the expense of compromising on returns. If you look at the return on capital, despite that ramp-up in investment, actually our returns on capital have grown over that period from 2009 to 2018. That's really focused on acquiring well but then integrating and extracting the synergies out of the business. I say it's a core competency that we've built within the organization. I always say this is my favorite slide, but the last slide I always say is my favorite slide as well. Just to talk about diversity, because I think it is important. We have a diverse business.
We have opportunities to deploy capital across each of the four sectors that we operate within. When I joined the group back in 1998, this is a long time ago now at this stage, the DCC Technology division was the largest division in the group. We used to go around, and we had a small energy business, and some investors would say, "Why don't you get out of that boring old energy business and focus on technology?" We said, "No. We're committed to diversity." We see opportunities to deploy capital across each of the sectors that we operate within. Ran the energy business for a long period of time. If you'd have asked me in 2011, would the DCC LPG business be the largest division in the group? I probably wouldn't have called it. We've been 35 years building that business. We were only in Britain and Ireland.
We had looked for lots of opportunities. Six years later, we're in 10 countries, three continents, leadership position in seven of those businesses, and in fragmented markets that will create opportunities for further capital deployment. DCC Technology last year, 3% of our capital deployment, the vast bulk of it in the first half of this year. Diversity works for us. As we've been growing, there's different growth rates if you look over the last 10 years across the different divisions because of the opportunity set that is in front of us. The returns on capital are all very strong across each of our four divisions. Less than 12 months ago, we had no capital deployment in North America. Now 14% of our capital deployed is in North America. The diversity works.
The breadth and the geographic growth of the organization has created more opportunities for more platforms, for more capital deployment. We really feel good about the business. What we don't do is force the pace, and acquisitions come, and everyone always asks us, "Well, what's next? When's it going to come?" That's the only thing we don't answer. We think we have the opportunity set in front of us across each of our divisions, and diversity has worked and hopefully will continue to work for us. In summary, very strong performance from a trading perspective. Each of our divisions performing very much in line with our expectations in the first six months. Active period from a development perspective.
The equity placing very important to us in terms of our plans and ambition to continue to build this business and having the financial strength to go and do that. The most important bit, which was the focus going back to our trip down to Marseille, that we have the platforms, we have the opportunities, and we have the capability to continue to build DCC into a global leader in our chosen sectors. For the year, reiterating our guidance that we gave as we started into the year, that the group expects this year to be another year of growth and development. That is our favorite slide. Thank you. Open it up for questions. Alan?
Thanks. Hi, it's Alan. Alan Smylie in Davy. Can I ask two on LPG to kick off, please? I guess firstly, just given the recent pullback in commodity prices, how should we think about the input price development for the second half of the year? Obviously, it's early days still. Then the Nat Gas and electricity rollout in France, we're just over one year on from the initial rollout. It's a slow-moving market, but is it possible to update us on where you are versus plans and when that business should turn a profit?
Sure. The lead and lag question. Clearly, and the numbers when you look at the commodity movement in the first half of the year, has been very material. That takes a little bit of time to work its way through. We're well on our way in working that into the market. Perhaps a little bit more to go in the second half, but pretty modest. We're pretty much there from a commodity perspective. I've no idea what's going to happen with propane prices in a month's time or two months' time. If I had, I probably wouldn't be standing here. Nat Gas, and that is something that we're very pleased about. In going into this, in the consumer market in France, 90% of that market is still in the hands of the incumbent.
We see the opportunity to leverage the Butagaz brand because it's very much a consumer-oriented brand. We've proven that the brand works. We've proven that we can get good traction in recruiting customers. As we said earlier, the market is very competitive at the moment, so got to be kind of measured about some of that. The key thing that we wanted to do was prove that we can sell natural gas and electricity under the Butagaz brand, and we're pretty pleased with that. We'll see how the business develops going forward now.
Gerry? Sorry.
Sorry, Don. You mentioned actually challenging market conditions on the retail side in Norway. Is that a function of what's happening on the EV side of things, or is it just purely the dynamics in that market itself?
No, definitely not a function of EVs and very much dynamics in the market, Gerry, and maybe Eddie, do you want to-
Yeah, Gerry, obviously we talked about how the dynamics on the market leader had changed its way to go to market early last year.
Things have slightly improved, but that sort of dynamics and pricing is still there. As that continues, we'll have a challenge in market. The organization has bedded in well. The management team are doing good, looking at other opportunities in the business. We're pretty happy with the integration. Once the market dynamics change, then profitability will naturally improve.
I think we've seen this before, if you look back over time and look at retail margins, and Norway is a very consolidated market as well, so it's measured in kind of what we say about. If you look back over time, you go through periods in retail where retail margins kind of can be negatively impacted for a period of time and they bounce back, and there's probably a little bit of that in the Norwegian market due to the activities that Eddie has talked about.
Just to follow up on the question with regard to natural gas in France, have you been as surprised at the level of competition in that market?
No. A couple of things probably have been at play. I think when you look at the market dynamics, Gerry, like 90% of the customers, B2C customers broadly with the incumbent. I think it's obvious that people are going to go and play in that market. Total have been very active. They've made some very material investments. Some of the retailers or some of the hypermarkets have played in the market as well. That kind of competition doesn't surprise me. There has been, not dissimilar in ways to the LPG business, the ramp-up in the commodity costs in the periods of time probably makes it challenging as well in the market. There's a couple of things at play at the moment, the key thing for us was can we leverage Butagaz brand to really substantially grow a customer base?
That's something that we're really pleased about.
Just finally on the opportunity set. Obviously, you've been very active in the North American market. Do you still see the opportunity set as big as it was when we sat here sort of six months ago, 12 months ago?
Across the group or in-?
In terms of pricing as well, across the group.
Across the group. Yeah, Maybe just go back a couple of weeks to the south of France, because we talked, I think, a lot across each of the divisions about the opportunity set. That's only a couple of weeks ago. Clearly nothing has changed. I think for us, the whole focus, in ways, you look back over that chart I had earlier and the level of acquisition activity. In the last 12 months, GBP 900 million of acquisitions, the quantum of anything that we've ever spent before. Nothing has changed in terms of dynamics of the market, in terms of pricing since we went through that, because it's very recent. I think we have proven that we can deploy significant amounts of capital in the sectors that we operate within, and we have platforms to go and do that.
Keep coming back to the return on capital is the key thing. That's why diversity is very important to us. I think if we were just a single-sector business, you might feel under more pressure to do things in a sector because that's all the opportunities that you are looking at. We have real opportunities to deploy capital across each of the four sectors.
Morning. Rajesh Kumar from HSBC. What sort of discussions have you had with your suppliers on the LPG business? How much of the investment was initiated from DCC versus the supplier saying, "We need to compete in the market, This is the strategy we are taking." Do you have some idea on what sort of return you expect to make on the investments you've done in that market in the next 18 to 24 months?
Do you mean from an acquisition perspective?
No, the investments in the LPG market in France, is it driven by the supplier or.
Natural gas?
Yeah.
Natural gas and electricity.
Natural gas.
No, it's our investment decision. Going right back actually to May 2015, when we announced the Butagaz acquisition, one of the opportunities that we put on a list of opportunities that we believed we'd be able to extract value out of that business from was a business consumer natural gas offering. It was natural gas, both natural gas and electricity back then, because of the strength of that Butagaz brand. There's no supplier putting any pressure on us to do anything. What we do is we buy the commodity wholesale, and we sell it retail to the customer. We're leveraging the strength of the Butagaz brand to build that business. That has been our focus.
We started to do this, well, I suppose in a more significant way in 2008 in Ireland, we've built a business now more focused on the B2B sector that has about a quarter of the market in Ireland. We've proven our ability to build a natural gas business in these markets, we just felt the strength of Butagaz brand in France was a key starting point, that our marketing investment would need to be a little bit less because the brand was very well known in the market. We've proven that in the period since we launched, we only launched it last November, it's relatively recent. As I say, it's really about where we take it from here.
Thanks for that. On the technology and healthcare, could we have the organic sales growth, please? That would really help. Finally on technology, what is the type of discussions you're having with your suppliers, especially now that you've just gone into the U.S.?
Sure.
Are you discussing with your European suppliers potential to cross-sell products?
Yeah. Maybe Tim, do you want to take the technology question and Fergal a little back on the organic?
Yeah. With regards to your organic question, I think Donal kind of talked to the overall group's number, and ours is pretty much in line. Actually a third of the top-line growth is coming from organic. With regards to the approach to the vendors, obviously we have a bigger footprint and a greater relevance to our vendors, spending a lot of time talking to them about wider agreements versus what is often a license to hunt in geographies at a macro level. Really looking to try and get European-wide and global contracts to distribute. Now clearly from the vendor's perspective, they'd like us to be everywhere. The way that we do that is using our supply chain services where we don't actually have a physical presence.
We create a virtual presence so that we can say yes to vendors, and we're doing that with a number of global brands to be able to be in multiple geographies even when we're not there. That's working well.
I think the team kind of particularly picked out a couple of areas like AV as one of them, where the likes of LG, the likes of Samsung, they're coming to us and were actually encouraging us to look at other markets. Actually the acquisitions that we acquired, well, one of them, the Stampede one, came from some of those relationships that we had here pointing us in a direction. As a source of opportunities for further capital deployment, those relationships are very important to us.
You're finding yourself appearing in the same vendor in multiple verticals. AV is very big for us. Mobile is very big for us, and that leads us to Samsung in both instances. It's an interesting dynamic.
Organic growth, Fergal?
If you strip out the energy businesses, the rest of the business grew revenues by 15%. That's Healthcare and Technology together. Roughly a third of that was organic, 5%.
Apologies for the voice. Peter Ashton, Stifel. Does looming EU withdrawal throw up any issues?
For who? No. Clearly that's the question probably got more from journalists today than from analysts in ways. We've been pretty clear about this from a commercial perspective. Broadly, pretty much all the products that we sell across the group, we buy and sell in the U.K. for the U.K. We're not importing lots of product into the market. There's probably less of an impact on us. The nature of the products that we sell are pretty necessary for everyday life, whether it's fuel for your car or gas to heat your home or our healthcare products, our technology products. I think regardless, uncertainty clearly is not good for anyone. There's lots of uncertainties. There's lots of speculation.
I think commercially from a business perspective, we don't see a huge amount of risk, bar what's going to happen to the performance of the U.K. economy. We're not going to be clearly insulated from that. The nature of our businesses, again, no business is recession-proof in any way, but they're probably less impacted than maybe some other businesses are as well. Like everyone else, we'd like a bit more visibility of what's going to happen, but we'll deal with whatever happens.
Great.
Hi. Annelies from Vermeulen, from Morgan Stanley. Two questions. Just following up on that last one, the very strong organic growth in the healthcare division. There's been a lot of reports in the press about businesses stockpiling medical equipment and medical devices ahead of Brexit. Is that something you've been seeing from your customers? Or is that organic growth being driven by other factors?
Yeah. No, not particularly. Do you want to, Conor?
I think from a revenue point of view, our organic growth is primarily driven by the health and beauty business, which has been consistently a strong organic growth business. Obviously, in DCC Vital, we're more driven by government healthcare spending, which typically isn't increasing dramatically. Our organic growth is kind of flattish in Vital. We haven't seen any benefit of Brexit stockpiling, no.
The other question I had was, you mentioned obviously now you're in the U.S. in three of your divisions. Is there any appetite to add the fourth to the U.S., or is that not an attractive-
There's always appetite.
Okay.
To talk to Eddie. We do. We're obviously. It's interesting the way business develops. We had gone back to pretty much a business in Britain and Ireland. Go back to 2009 when we made our first investment in building our energy business outside Britain and Ireland. We probably wouldn't have picked the market because we'd have picked the bigger markets, whatever. There was an opportunity to buy Shell's business in Denmark, and did a case study on it at the Capital Markets Day as well.
It was really interesting because, one, we bought a good business back then, but it was a small business, and we said to the team of people on the day, stood up in front of them when we bought the business and said, "Fun starts now." Much more importantly, we want to build a much bigger business. We have built a much bigger business in Denmark over the next number of years. Much more importantly, because we were in the market, we started to build relationships with people, not just in Denmark but in neighboring markets, and we've built a very large business now in Scandinavia. We can kind of trace the roots to going down and our first investment in Denmark all those years ago. I think when you get a presence in a market, it puts you into a different place.
Having a presence now in the U.S., clearly there were things active. It wasn't Retail West that led to, say, Jam acquisition or whatever. Actually having a presence in the market makes a big difference to us. I think the fact that we have a presence now, a strong presence in three of our divisions. The U.S. market is 14% of our capital employed. It was nothing 12 months ago. I don't know what it'll be in 12 months time or 24 months, but I think the opportunity, Seth, will be there for us to deploy capital in all those sectors. Hopefully we can talk about four as opposed to three next year.
Caroline Rohlfs from UBS.
Caroline.
Just in terms of the weather, can you remind us how much profits can swing around depending on the weather? It's a big feature.
It depends, clearly, on the level of weather. If we go back to 2011 to 2012, when we went from the coldest winter on record to the mildest winter on record, as a percentage of our profitability, we had a very material swing because the heating-dependent part of our business was very significant. I suppose if we look at the mix of business now, it's certainly less than 10% of group profits would be if you went from a very cold to an extremely mild. I think an important factor over that period of time has been the geographic diversity of the business. Back then we were in Britain and Ireland, so we were very dependent on what happened in the weather patterns here. Whereas now, and even last year when we talked about weather in the business, we had milder weather in this part of the world.
We had slightly colder weather in France, and you get the balance there. We now have some pretty cold in the U.S. at the moment. You get the geographic diversity helps kind of minimize some of that impact. Weather is a feature of our business. Again, I think someone asked me a risk in the second half of the year earlier, and clearly, if you got a very mild period, that has a risk. But I think investors understand that, see through that. If it's going to be very mild, it'll have an impact. If it's very cold, we'll have a benefit. It's a bit out with our control. We have spent a lot of time getting our cost base much more flexible. Going back to those days, that was a key focus for us afterwards, and we're probably in a better position to deal with it.
Weather will be weather. Tom. Alan.
Hello.
Oh, very polite.
Thanks. Tom Burlton from Berenberg. Can I just ask a question on organic growth and how that ties into the point you made on diversity in the group? I suppose as the capital deployed has, on a mixed basis, shifted more towards the technology business, which is arguably kind of through cycle, a higher organic growth business, how should we think about organic growth for DCC group going forward in this, say, next three years versus the three years just gone?
It's like a hospital pass, Tom, there. I think you've got to look at organic growth in terms of the dynamics of each of the individual businesses, then it's a consolidation of what happens. You're right, technology, we love the technology business because it's a higher organic growth, it's a much higher organic volume growth and obviously you have elements of price deflation within the market. The organic growth in technology is clearly there, we've been delivering that. There's very strong organic growth within our healthcare business. Both actually the Vital business and the health and beauty business, the Vital benefiting from all the trends of people living longer, needing more healthcare. The health and beauty business, the nutritional trends, people being more discerning in the products that they take.
We have been delivering good organic growth in our propane business and the work that Henry and the team have been doing in the oil to LPG conversions. I think that's probably positively surprised people over a number of years that in a market that's kind of flattish, we've been delivering kind of between three and 6% organic growth over a number of years as we have extended out our range of products into those commercial customers. Again, the retail market, we've had very strong organic growth in the first half of the year. The dynamics are different within the energy business. They're not high growth markets, we have to fight hard to deliver our organic profits there. It'll be a consolidation of where we deploy the capital
Yeah, thanks. Just two follow-on questions. The first one for Conor. How much of the capacity investment in health and beauty solutions is due to the opportunities out in Europe? Are you seeing any cross-regional opportunity yet into the U.S. given the acquisition, or is that just too early to say?
We are investing a little bit in our U.S. plant, but the majority of our investment is, as Donal mentioned, in our softgel plant, and that's really driven by demand we're seeing in Europe. We've led the European market in terms of vegetarian softgel capsules, and that's become quite an important trend in the European market, less so actually in the U.S. at the minute. Certainly our confidence in making that investment is substantially driven by what we've seen in Europe. There may be opportunities in kind of high-end, more expensive capsules to supply them into the U.S. as well. Obviously, our ambition will be to have softgel capability in the U.S. market as well and leverage our expertise across the two markets.
One for Eddie. I'd be interested in the French retail network and the rebrand and the refresh. Has that had any meaningful impact on site volumes or footfall?
I think, Alan, obviously, we've been expanding out into the click and collect and the car washes. From that point of view, we've acquired back one of the venture partners, WashTec , with a profit share. We've taken that business back 100%, so it has a positive impact on profits. We still have a bit of work to do with the footfall. With the Club Certas and that, we're looking at can we drive dynamics footfall, especially into services like car washes and click and collect. Overall volumes in the market are off by 2%, mainly economic and border region.
Thanks.
We talked about it earlier, the Club Certas , launching our own loyalty scheme. Again, we've had a focus in the group about innovation. This is one of the innovations that we did where we were able to leverage anonymous credit card customers that were coming to our sites to turn them into customers that become loyal, if you like, or customers that subscribe to our loyalty program. The traction of that has been pretty good. Again, it gives us the opportunity to drive marketing initiatives, marketing campaigns across the retail business in France. No other questions, are we? How about on the Kevin doesn't want to ask a question, I don't think. He's not allowed. On the phone, are there any questions?
Certainly. If you would like to ask a question via the phone line, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please ensure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach the equipment. Again, press star one to ask a question. We'll just pause for a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions via the phone. Once again, that is star one to ask a question. It appears there are no questions via the phone line at this time.
Okay. We've no questions. I think if there's no further questions here, I think that's it for now, and just thank you all for coming. Thank you all for your ongoing support, and we'll be around if anyone has any further questions. Thank you very much.