Good morning, everybody. You're all very welcome, both of those, physically here and also people that are online. I'm not the main event, so you only have to put up with me for a couple of minutes. I will just highlight the fact that we have forward-looking statements. I'm just gonna do a quick intro and a quick summary of the year, then I'm gonna hand over to Dalton, who will firstly give us some insights in terms of his first couple of months with the business. We'll go into the financial review with Emma, then Dalton will come back to talk a little bit more about the future in terms of Greencore. Maybe if we just move on to the summary chart.
I was trying to find a word really that sort of summarized Greencore and particularly summarized maybe 2022 financial year. I have a dear colleague on the board who hates the word resilience, so I'm not gonna use that one, even though I've already used it. I would say robust is how I'd describe the year. When I look back on my tenure in terms of Greencore, I think it's a good term to describe the company, because we typically do what we say we will do. We take opportunities when they're innovation or commercial opportunities. When things are tough, whether it's the financial crisis back in 2006, 2007, or even indeed what we've had to sustain through COVID and recovery, we are a robust organization.
I think that's my over arching comment in terms of it. I think also, like when you look at the environment through financial year 2022, we tend to forget some of the challenges that we had. You know, the first two quarters that we were involved, we still had COVID. Omicron was very evident, had a big impact on our business. We faced into huge inflationary pressures, supply chain challenges, supply chain deficiencies, big labor shortage. The you know, it's been a fairly meteoric year. There seemed to be weekly events happening, whether that was the unfortunate passing of the Queen or rail strikes. There was always something in terms of disruption. That's the environment that we've had to live through. I think what's really positive in terms of the year, a couple of things.
One is I think the demand volume side has been really positive, and I think it validates our position in terms of food to go and food for later. I don't think there's, you know, there's been a lot of talk about movements in the mobility index, when you see the restoration in terms of our volume and growth, I think that's a validation of the segment that we're in. I think from an operational perspective, like we've had to move through a constrained volume delivery to our customers into unconstrained volume. More importantly, we've really clawed our way back up in terms of our customer service levels. We're back in the high 90s in terms of customer service levels, which is really important to us.
We've also from an operational perspective, like we've fully recovered the inflationary challenge that faced us and was evolving through the year. That's either been through recovery or through mitigation with our customers, I think that's really important. Our own people have been really instrumental in really solving the supply chain challenges that we had, they were daily, I think that's been incredible. We have had a focus on onboarding new business as efficiently as we can. We've completed our strategic CapEx program in that regard. I think when you look at it also allows us to expand our channel reach and also product diversification, which again, if you go back to our capital markets day in 2019, those were two things that we had identified as strategic opportunities.
The other thing I think that's significant through the year was that we launched Better Greencore. Like we have transformed our organizational model. It's gone into a fully functional role. It's still evolving and settling down, but it allowed us to announce a GBP 30 million benefit around people in our organization, which will manifest itself fully in 2024. I think there's a lot more to come under Better Greencore. We've talked about the other two phases. 2023, we'll see the launch of the output optimization phase, and we have a technology enablement phase to come. They're really important component parts as we move forward. I think the other thing from 2022 financial year, like our balance sheet is really strong.
You know, we've had to go through a liquidity bolster through COVID, when you look at the liquidity, or sorry, the leverage outturn in terms of 22, it's really positive. It's really strong. It's allowed us to look at capital return. We've done the GBP 10 million. Emma will talk a little bit more about where we're heading for. I'm really pleased about that. The one area that's still work in progress is our economic model recovery. You know, I think we've made significant progress there through financial year 22. When you look at the margin improvement, when you look at the second half absolute profitability, you look at some progress that we have in return on invested capital, you know, we are in transition in terms of our economic model, it is work in progress.
We've got to remember, we are at a point in the cycle. This is the last time you're gonna have to put up with me here. I just want to sort of issue a couple of thanks before I hand over to Dalton. Big thank you to all of you. I mean, I've really enjoyed the challenge, the rigor and the support. I think that's really important. A big thank you to our customers. Without them, we're nothing, and that continues every single day in terms of Greencore. A big thank you to my colleagues for their relentless focus and dedication in terms of what they do on a daily basis. I've got Kevin and Emma here in the room in particular.
You know, the triumvirate of the three of us, in the last 12 months has worked well. I really thank them for their support and leadership. My conclusion on Greencore, has been really enjoyable experience, but the future is all in front of us, and I really do think it is an exciting future. I've really enjoyed working the first couple of months with Dalton. I'm really pleased with what I see. I have no doubt that that excitement will get converted into reality under his leadership. Dalton, hand over to you.
Thanks, Gary. That's the first time I've heard Gary talk about, you know, potential departure. Certainly internally, we don't see it that way at all. It's business as usual, and he's on us, like any good chairman is. I'm not gonna say any words of thanks yet, 'cause you're still very much firmly in the role. Look, it's very nice to be here in person. Appreciate you all coming in, and, you know, some of you I know well, some of you I don't know at all. I'm looking forward to getting to know you and working with you. I thought what I'd do is I'd give you a little bit of just an introduction on my first impressions.
I'm on page seven of that slide deck. I'll just stick to one slide. I'll hand over to Emma. First to say, look, I've been in the business nine weeks, so very early days, and I've been really fortunate because Kevin and Emma have really allowed me to join the business and to do what I set out to do, which was to listen, to learn, and to see. I was just speaking to Martin, actually, before over coffee at the beginning, and I've really had this opportunity to get into so many of our plants and spend time with so many of our people. I've been very fortunate. I really want to just express my thanks to both you, Kevin, and Emma for allowing me to do that.
In a moment, as I said, I'll hand over to Emma. I want to just give you know, my initial perspective, and I'll start with a couple of thoughts with you. Firstly, I'm really excited to be here and encouraged by what I've seen so far. Let me share a bit of my background for those of you that don't know me. Food is absolutely my blood. My family owned a poultry business in County Wicklow, which is about an hour south of Dublin, and I spent many, many hours on the line in my youth in that poultry business. As a child of the food industry, I've obviously been aware of Greencore. It's an iconic Irish business for those of you that have spent time in Ireland.
Greencore is this huge brand, less known here in the U.K., but a huge brand there. I've also obviously worked with Greencore from the other side when I was at Morrisons. My impressions then of a dynamic and ambitious business that was fanatical about servicing its customers, and Kevin and Patrick would be all over, me as a customer back in the day, you know, that hasn't sort of diminished whatsoever. When the opportunity arose to lead Greencore, it was an easy decision to take. So much of what I've seen so far cemented this positive view, the role we play in U.K. food, our strong leadership team, and the exciting opportunities we have for future value creation. In my time over the last nine weeks, I've been right across our business.
I've visited nearly all our plants. I've met with hundreds of colleagues in person, be it on the line or through the listening groups I've been running. In each plant, I've run a listening group without the management in the room. I've also spent time meeting with our top 150 leaders, be it through functional deep dives, or through the fortnightly leadership course that I've been chairing. Furthermore, I've met with our largest customers to hear firsthand what they see in our business, how they see it, what we can do better for them to serve them better.
Each and every week, I've been sharing a weekly video with the business on what I've been up to, areas of focus for me, and encouraging all team members to reach out to me directly with their ideas or concerns, and that's been very positive. Starting to get a bit of a flavor for the business and the challenges and opportunities. Secondly, although we're facing some pretty significant headwinds, our business is built on some very strong foundations, and I've just been struck how strong Greencore is. In the last years, you know, we've obviously been through a range of different challenges from the pandemic, Brexit, U.K. , Ukraine, you know, driving obviously the highest inflation in living memory. Yet despite all of this, we've been remarkably strong, taking action to improve performance.
We're now producing more volume than ever before with our recovery outpacing the broader market. We've won new business with customer relationships that are now broader and deeper. We might talk about that later. We've also got a very robust balance sheet, reducing leverage now lower than pre-pandemic levels. I recognize that this is not yet translating into strong shareholder returns, something that I'm absolutely clear needs to change. We clearly have to chart a path back to pre-pandemic margins. However, I'm confident with the right interventions, we've a business that is fundamentally well positioned for the future and which can deliver the returns our shareholders expect. Lastly, despite the challenges we're facing, there are significant opportunities for us. Since joining the business, I've seen a number of areas which give me confidence.
We've put to bed the post-COVID volume recovery question, which now gives us the space to face into tough questions on the profitability of our portfolio and our conversion efficiency, which obviously will be a major near-term focus for me. We're helped here by plenty of growth headroom with existing and new customers to go after, thus giving us choices on capacity allocation. We're also doing a good job on inflation recovery and all in FY 2022, as Gary said, and continue to engage constructively, if not at times a little robustly, with our customers. I'll come back to discuss these themes in more detail. What I'll do now is hand you over to Emma, and we'll go through the 2022 results.
Hey, thanks, Dalton, and good morning to everyone and thanks for joining us in the room and on the call today. My overarching focus during 2022 has been pretty simple, to work on progressing our economic model and returning the business to profitable and cash generative growth so we could accelerate effectively out of COVID. I'm really pleased with the results we've delivered, noting that 2022 has been a year of significant challenge, with substantial inflation to recover, labor availability issues and supply chain challenges, particularly in the first half, and that then followed by extreme weather events in the summer, combined with disruption from rail strikes. We've a lot of detail to cover over the next few slides, but I'll first reflect on our key financial metrics on slide nine.
The first metric is pro forma revenue growth, and our strong recovery is clear with revenue up 29.4%. As we noted in the first half, we were back comfortably above pre-COVID levels in food to go and remained well ahead of pre-COVID levels in our other convenience categories. We delivered real progress in year-on-year profitability with adjusted operating profit of GBP 72.2 million, up from GBP 39 million last year. This was also reflected in a significant improvement in adjusted EPS to GBP 0.092, up from GBP 0.055 due to earnings growth. With free cash inflow of GBP 58.7 million in the year, we're very pleased with this as we delivered a more normalized working capital inflow having exited the COVID period.
We continue to make real progress on de-leveraging to 1.5 times, which is approximately 0.5 turn lower than at the end of FY 2021, and has now reached our target leverage of 1-1.5 times, which was rebased from 1.5-2 times post-COVID. We've a lot of detail to cover now over the next few slides, but Sorry, if I just think about that 1.5 times to 2 times pre-COVID, actually the leverage at September 17 was 1.8 times. We're actually lower than our September 19 leverage at this point.
Finally, ROIC at 8.4% has increased 390 basis points from FY21's 4.5%. We're really pleased with the continued progression while recognizing it's still below the historic level. Moving to slide 10, and the detail of the half one income statement. Our reported revenue grew by 31.3% in FY22. That was mostly driven by recovery in our food to go categories. Pro forma growth was a little bit lower at 29.4%, and that's after adjusting for the impact of the 53rd week in 2022, and the disposal of the molasses business in Q1 of 2021 and for some movements in foreign exchange as well.
Our adjusted operating profit rose by GBP 33.2 million - GBP 72.2 million with year-on-year profit conversion improving as volumes recovered. Look, I'll run through that in more detail in later slides. In this context, FY22 operating margin was 4.2% compared to 2.9% in FY21, which, while still below historic levels, showed continued progress notwithstanding the substantial inflationary environment in the year. Moving further down the income statement, adjusted profit before tax increased by GBP 37.2 million - GBP 59.8 million due to the operating profit increase and to a reduction in finance costs as well.
The exceptional cost in the year was principally related to our Better Greencore reorganization program and represented a cash outflow in the period of about GBP 13 million. From an earnings perspective, we reported GBP 0.062 basic EPS and GBP 0.092 adjusted EPS. On the next slide, I look at our revenue performance. We were delighted to deliver pro forma revenue growth of 29.4% given the level of volatility in the trading environment we had to manage our business through in 2022. Pricing effects were in the mid-teens right across the group.
Most of the revenue increase was in food to go categories, where we saw a pro forma revenue increase, of 35.2%, which was driven by the volume increase due to the full year effect of new business onboarded in FY 2021, which continued into 2022, and then the continuation of the ramp-up of the underlying business to pre-COVID levels. The strongest growth rates were in sandwiches and in those customers that have a balanced mix of urban and suburban locations. Inflation had a low teen impact on food to go categories in-year. We're also really happy with our revenue performance in other convenience categories. Revenue grew by 19.2% on a pro forma basis.
You know, volume was broadly flat year-on-year within inflation recovery and new business driving the revenue growth, the numbers. That was particularly in our Irish ingredients trading business. If we just turn to profitability on the next slide. Look, as you know, for KPI purposes, we focus internally on the absolute level of adjusted operating profit, which increased from GBP 39 million to GBP 72.2 million in year. We're really pleased with this outcome as we delivered these year-on-year improvements while managing through the impact of substantial disruption in the period.
Look, it may feel like just a memory now, but in the earlier part of the year, we were impacted by the emergence of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, which impacted the food to go market and did hold back profitability in December and particularly in January. We experienced extensive supply chain and labor availability challenges, particularly in the first half. We did invest a little earlier than normal in the year to secure labor availability ahead of product launches and our peak season trading, which was the correct decision for us, and it did support strong summer service levels. Later in the summertime, we were impacted by the extreme weather conditions as the chilled food supply chain experienced temperatures which it was just not set up to withstand.
There were also multiple rail strikes to absorb, as well as the effect of the unexpected bank holiday in September. You know, all of these items combined had probably about GBP 3 million-GBP 4 million impact on profitability in that last quarter. In addition, we're in the process of commissioning our new ready meals production unit, and we're dealing with some startup disruption to operations. Look, this has been complicated due to the challenges associated with building a factory during COVID-19 and the supply chain issues that we had to work through at the time.
Look, in this context, we're particularly pleased with the half two component, which was an increase from GBP 38.9 million in half two 2021 to GBP 55 million in half two 2022, having absorbed, you know, the effect of all of those factors. That outcome compares with the half two FY 2019 outcome of GBP 61 million, which market commentators will have noted was a challenging target, you know, absent those factors. It's also important to note the margin outcome for the year, which is a 130 basis point increase in adjusted operating profit margin in the year, of which there was a 50 basis point increase in adjusted operating profit margin to 5.7% in the second half.
People will know that we're seasonally second half-weighted in that respect. Just moving on to slide 13, which focuses on inflation. Look, while this is a scale of inflation we haven't experienced before, our market strength and our customer partnership model has underpinned what we feel is really impressive management of this challenge. Look, I'm pleased to note that we've fully recovered inflation in the year. The challenge isn't over as we end 2022, and we'll continue to focus on the same recovery mechanisms in 2023. We provided some direction on the composition of the inflation.
The largest element, as you would expect, is raw materials and packaging, where we do have explicit pricing recovery mechanisms in place with a number of our customers. The other elements are being recovered through a combination of constructive dialogue with our customers and also operational efficiencies. We work with our customers on multiple initiatives to manage inflation, which includes range alterations, packaging redesigns, and product reformulation. What I'd say is it's a very collaborative and constructive approach, moving in lockstep with our customers. Our purchasing expertise is also really important here. It gives us early visibility on pricing trends and gives us the flexibility to adjust rapidly across ingredients and suppliers if required.
Inflation is increasingly being reflected in consumer pricing at this point across all our product categories. We, you know, we continue to monitor that closely to assess whether, you know, we are seeing demand impacted by those price points changing. If we move further down the income statement and briefly to the composition of EPS growth on slide 14, you can see that improved profitability was the primary driver of growth in the period, and reduced interest costs partly offset the impact of a higher effective tax rate. If we just move on to slide 15, which outlines a waterfall of free cash flow movements in FY 2022.
Working capital was an inflow of GBP 2 million, which reflects a more normalized year-end position now that we've exited COVID-19. Maintenance CapEx of GBP 16.9 million was broadly in line with the prior year. Exceptional cash flows of GBP 13.6 million were largely due to Better Greencore, which we noted at half one. Look, the other line items were much as expected, resulting in a free cash inflow of GBP 58.7 million. Bringing all of this together on slide 16, there was a GBP 3.1 million decrease in net debt, excluding lease liabilities since the end of FY 2021.
We spent GBP 33 million on strategic CapEx in FY 2022, up from GBP 24 million in FY 2021 as we revitalized our excellence agenda and supported our initiative to onboard new business from a key customer. We also completed a substantial proportion of our GBP 10 million share buyback program in the period, and that concluded in October. As a result of all of this, we ended up with net debt, excluding leases, of GBP 180 million, compared to GBP 183.1 at the end of our last fiscal year. If we just move on to the next slide to our balance sheet leverage and liquidity position.
As I mentioned earlier, our leverage as measured under our financing agreements reduced to 1.5 times at year-end, and that reached our target range of 1 to 1.5 times. This, as I said earlier, is lower than our leverage of 1.8 times in September 2019, which was pre-COVID. This balance sheet strength is also reflected in our cash and undrawn facilities, which stood at GBP 398 million at year-end, and our weighted average maturity of debt, which was a healthy 2.5 years. Look, in this time of focus on pension fund investments, I think it's also useful to draw your attention to the funding position of our legacy defined benefit pension schemes and the reduction in our net pension deficit.
There was a GBP 25.7 million reduction in the period, and our actuarial accounting net deficit after related deferred tax now stands at GBP 10.4 million. This was driven by an actuarial gain on our U.K. scheme liabilities as discount rates increased, and our Irish scheme remained in net surplus throughout. From a funding perspective, the schemes have also performed well. The U.K. scheme funding position has improved by GBP 20.8 million in the period, and there has been no requirement to supply incremental collateral to support its hedging position, and that hedging position remains intact. The triennial actuarial valuation is due in March 2023. Based on the current funding position, the pension deficit contributions are expected to remain unchanged from where they are today. The Irish scheme remains in funding surplus, and we're now in the process...
In fact, we've just concluded the purchase of annuity contracts to insure the pensioner liabilities. That represents 80% of that liability. Following the completion of that, there remains a very healthy surplus to manage the remaining liabilities in that scheme. Overall, our annual cash funding requirement for pension schemes is modestly below the previously guided levels of GBP 15 million. We're very pleased with where those pension schemes are sitting actually, given the volatility of the last number of weeks. If we just move to slide 18, look in, and we talked about this earlier in the year. In a real step change for us, we've continued to invest in our ready meals and salads portfolios with the onboarding of new business from one of our existing key customers.
We've talked about the overall detail before. It was a strategic capital investment of about GBP 30 million, involving capacity expansion at 3 sites in Kiveton, which is in Sheffield, in Wisbech and Boston. We've now onboarded this business across all the sites with commissioning ongoing. We are experiencing some challenges in volume ramp-up, and our focus is on delivery of output and driving efficiency to our target levels now in half one. The launch involved adding about 70 additional SKUs to our portfolio across ready meals and salads. The expansion of the site at Kiveton has increased our overall network capacity by about 30%. It is a meaningful increment to our existing footprint. This is the type of investment that we've executed successfully with multiple customers over the years.
It's a tried and trusted approach for all parties involved and a hallmark of our customer partnerships. Moving on to slide 19. With our balance sheet in a good place and our financial model improving, we continue to have confidence in our model. Our longer term reference point for all of our thinking continues to be maintaining an appropriate level of leverage for a business of our size and maturity in our type of industry. We've now reached that target range of 1 to 1.5 times. Our intention remains to return GBP 50 million of value to shareholders over a two-year period. We've already completed the first GBP 10 million of that, and we plan to return another GBP 15 million in 2023.
We'll be guided by our own capital management policy and market conditions as to what mechanisms we use as we deploy this return of value to shareholders over time. This phase will be in the form of a share buyback, as we believe it remains a good use of capital, given the current valuation. We've of course reserved the right to be flexible around the future phases of the value return and whether it would take the form of share buybacks, a reinstated dividend or a combination of both. That concludes my section. In summary, I would say that we're happy with our full year financial performance, and it gives us a strong platform for future delivery. I'll come back in for Q&A, but I'll hand back to Dalton now.
Thanks, Emma. Let me now share a bit more about the potential I see touching on our key markets, our consumers, and my first impressions of Greencore before focusing on our near-term priorities and some of the medium-term opportunities I see. If I turn to page 21, our size and scale enables us to play a unique role in feeding the nation. We produce 1.2 billion food items annually, which can be found up and down the country, from large supermarkets to motorway petrol stations, providing consumers with fresh, great tasting and comprehensively priced products. Supporting one of the largest food manufacturing networks in the country is a unique distribution network with a Greencore site located within an hour of 90% of the British population.
All of this plays a key role in the British food industry, with over GBP 500 million spent annually supporting British farmers and packaging businesses. I turn to page 22, I mentioned the theme of resilience earlier, and I've been really struck by just how robust our categories are. While we have faced questions about rebounding post-pandemic and coping with the current cost of living environment, I think it's telling to look back at just how well the market held up in previous recessions. This chart shows that during the past recessions, sandwich growth barely skipped a beat relative to the longer term growth average. This gives me confidence that we can successfully weather the current headwinds. Turning to page 23.
More recently, we see Food to Go recovering well, with the overall market shown in the gray bars forecasted to reach 103% of 2019 values this year. Despite changes in working habits towards more remote and hybrid working, Food to Go growth has rebounded strongly, noticeably in suburban locations. We're also seeing the grocery retail market settling at a materially higher level than pre-pandemic, with lots of headroom to grow further. In all of this, Greencore has had consistent outperformance, recovering stronger and faster than our markets, as shown by the green bars. Our Food to Go business has outgrown the market by 20 percentage points when indexed to 2019. While in U.K. grocery retail, we once again outperformed a strong market by 15 percentage points. Turning to page 24. This performance is clear when looking at demand despite record inflation.
We've seen a 14% year-on-year sandwich retail price rise in the 12 months to Q3. At the same time, market sandwich volumes grew 10%. What's clear is these products provide great value for money at a time when every pound counts. Likewise, ready meal volumes have weathered unprecedented inflation. Since Q3, 2021, prices have increased 16%, but we're only seeing a modest decline in volumes, which is still higher than pre-pandemic. Together, this data on inflation and past recessions gives us confidence that we are well-positioned not just to weather the current macroeconomic challenge, but thrive as consumers seek good fresh food with value for money top of mind. You can see on page 25 some consumer research specifically on the sandwich market. This data is clear. Sandwiches are a mainstay of the British diet.
57% of the U.K. population buy prepackaged sandwiches at least once every fortnight. We offer a unique value proposition in quality, convenience, and competitive pricing. Sandwich meal deal is 20% cheaper than equivalent in QSR, and one in three regard prepackaged sandwiches as one of the best value for money lunch options. As a result, 35% of sandwich consumers don't even consider another option, and prepackaged sandwiches are the number one out-of-home food option consumed more than once a week. Page 26 shows we are well-placed for future growth, supported by a healthy channel mix. On this chart, we can see IGD's prediction of food to go growth broken down by channel. To the right of that, Greencore's exposure to these channels by share of revenue. There are three takeaways here.
One, the market is projected to grow strongly at close to 5% CAGR over the next three years. Two, Greencore is disproportionately exposed to the highest growth channels. Three, there is still white space for us to pursue. We made some gains in the coffee channel through COVID, but there are still plenty of opportunities beyond our grocery heartland. Turning to page 27, I want to now transition from our markets to Greencore itself, where I've been impressed by the capabilities I've seen in the business right through the value chain. Firstly, we have privileged, highly integrated customer relationships across the fastest-growing U.K. food to go players. We've also regained our position as the number one private label chilled convenience supplier in the prestigious Advantage survey as rated by our customers. Two, there's a really strong food DNA running through the business.
Despite taking conscious actions to simplify our organization and product portfolio, we still developed some 800 new and refreshed products last year. Many of them, of course, award-winning. This is all supported by a food development team of nearly 150 people. The third point is our distribution footprint, which enables us rapid delivery with over 10,000 daily drops across all British post code, British post code areas from factory to shelf in as little as 12 hours. Number four, we mix speed with precision and consistently adhere to the highest standards, scoring 100% on the A and double A ratings in BRCGS audits for the fourth year in a row. Number five, our business is supported by a scaled manufacturing network, producing a whopping 3 million products a day across our 15 product categories.
That's an average of 35 products a second coming out of our facilities day in, day out. Number six, we're supported by a 14,000 strong team where we are continually driving engagement. This year, our engagement scores grew 2 percentage points despite all the headwinds I described earlier. Taken together, these capabilities are not easily or cheaply replicable, so they give us confidence in our unique proposition and long-term position in the market. On page 28, you'll see that we are leveraging these capabilities with laser focus in the near term, where our priority will be driving core performance to start to rebuild our profitability and drive cash generation. Firstly, we'll enhance our manufacturing efficiency through improvements to labor performance and automation across our network.
We continue to make investments in operational efficiency, most notably in sandwich automation, but also through initiatives to unlock latent capacity and drive up utilization. FY 2023 is forecast to be another year of record inflation. We're building on solid foundations and have a clear playbook for price recovery that we have from FY 2022, where we've recovered, as you know, this either directly through pricing or offsetting through our excellence programs. We're working with our customers to both mitigate and recover inflation and increasing the share of inflation that benefits from automatic pass-through via contractual commodity trackers. We're working to simplify our portfolio. In the near term, this will mean reducing product complexity throughout our ranges. To give but one example, we use over 20 different plain mayonnaises across our group.
This creates significant complexity across our operation, so we're working on simplifying this to unlock value for us and of course for our customers. Fourthly, we'll continue to deliver on phase I of our Better Greencore program. This is a multifaceted transformation targeting GBP 30 million of benefit by FY 2024 across people, overheads, and capacity. We've been making strong progress already with the successful implementation of a new functional operational model, both to help our efficiency and manage our cost base. Alongside this, we're also making headway on a range of initiatives to reduce overhead costs in everything from standardizing PPE to tightening our equipment spend controls. We will combine these immediate term actions with longer term planning to set the trajectory for our future performance.
If I turn to the longer term on page 29, over the last nine weeks, I've also observed several areas where I believe we can do much better to drive meaningful change to our performance and longer term outlook. These are areas that I'm gonna put a laser focus on over the coming months. As I said in my introduction, this is a business whose profitability has suffered materially. We have a strong and robust top line, but our ability to convert this into pounds, shillings, and pence has been compromised, and this needs to change. Firstly, on operations, there's a real opportunity for us to build on the foundations of Greencore Manufacturing Excellence to deploy a truly world-class operational model. Our new COO, Lee Finney, will be instrumental in this, and although he, like me, is pretty new in the role, he's really hit the ground running.
Together, we're building a perspective on how we can deploy a reinvigorated view of excellence across five pillars, including, number 1, driving our Overall Equipment Effectiveness or OEE. This is the metric that measures the full 24/7, 365 utilization of our assets. Off the back of this, we can optimize utilization and efficiency within our factories and across our product set, grounded in a clear fact base. We'll also enhance our network and supply chain management by building a digital twin of our assets. Alongside this, we'll put in robust processes for early equipment management and asset care. Finally, we'll drive efficiency within our distribution network. These interventions will support the delivery of our sustainability strategy too, with particular near-term focus on managing utilities and food waste.
Beyond the tactical interventions on ranging and ingredients mentioned previously, we'll also be reviewing our customer and category portfolio in the months ahead. Across all customers and products, I wanna take a long, hard look at what is driving profitability and how we can enhance this further to get the right margins. In particular, we'll be looking at who is using our capacity. I recognize that in the past, we may have priced marginally to drive up utilization. In a world where we are producing more volume than pre-pandemic, we can be more selective and assertive about how we deploy our capacity because this capacity doesn't come cheaply. To put this in real terms, just after I started, we made a decision to exit a material ready meal contract rather than renew on unacceptable terms without full inflation recovery.
We did this because we believe that we can deploy this capacity over time, more efficiently and profitably elsewhere. Of course, we can't shrink to greatness. When taking these kinds of tough decisions, we will need clarity on profitable growth opportunities against which we can deploy this capacity, which is a parallel work stream. Thirdly, I want to ensure we take a very disciplined approach to capital investment and allocation. I'm acutely aware that at a ROIC of 8.4%, we're not covering our cost of capital, and this clearly needs to change. While over time we'll need to look at all growth and margin levers, first and foremost, my focus will be on doing everything we can to enhance performance from our existing assets to drive returns.
Alongside this, I'll also want to understand the profitability and returns profile of the different assets that we hold. I'm already seeing variations across the portfolio. Although it's early days, I'm keen to understand what drives this and the potential actions we can take to make meaningful change. If I now turn to the fourth area on page 30, whilst mindful of the point I just made on capital discipline, want to take a good look at how we use technology and what opportunities there are to do better. I appreciate I'm still only a couple of months into role, but I've seen some really clear opportunities in this area while touring our sites. Our IT landscape is complex, to say the least, with eight different ERPs in place. Our systems are also pretty dated.
Until earlier this year, we still had Windows 2003 live in certain parts of our network. That's not to say that we don't also have pockets of technology distinctiveness. We do. For example, we recently developed in-house a dynamic should-cost analysis tool to ensure our purchasing teams can secure the best possible deals on supply. All in all, I think there's a real opportunity to ensure our technology supports our value creation ambitions, which in time I believe can become a real source of competitive advantage for us. Lastly, significantly, I'll be very focused on engaging our people, all 14,000 of our colleagues, to ensure we're all in it together on this journey. I'm very cognizant that our frontline staff have a tough job, which is often shift work on their feet.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, we have high levels of staff turnover, which adds significant cost to the business in recruitment fees, duplicate training, loss of product-productivity. The list goes on. My early sense here is that this provides a real opportunity for us. With direct labor spend of close to GBP 300 million a year, small movements here will make a big difference to our P&L. Beyond the front line, I also think the reset earlier this year of our organization from five disparate business units to one functional team will help us drive a single best Greencore way of working. I'm also encouraged by the high caliber team that we're building. I've been well supported, not just from experienced hands like Kevin and Emma, but also from a new crop of Greencore leaders who I'm thrilled to be starting this journey with.
For example, as mentioned, we have Lee Finney as our new COO. Damien Moynagh has recently joined as general counsel and company secretary. Of course, Leslie Van de Walle, due to come on board in January. I'll also be spending a day and a half with our top 50 leaders in person next week to reset how we're gonna work together and make sure we're all crystal clear on the priorities I've just outlined. Turning to page 31, to summarize, I'm both excited to be here and by what I've seen across the operations from our scaled and precise manufacturing to our unique customer relationships. Our business is robust and well-positioned in so many ways. We're in strong recession and inflation-resilient categories and provide consumers fantastic value for money.
Despite our challenges, we have significant opportunities to go after across our business, from the people to portfolio and operations with a talented, engaged team to do so. We have a strong top line, but our profitability is not where it needs to be. However, I'm confident that with the right interventions, we can grow both our top and bottom line, and this is what is gonna get all my energy and focus as we move forward. If I turn to page 32, specifically to the outlook, and you'll note in the presentation, we've added some additional details on page 38 to help with your modeling in the appendix. FY 23 will be a year of further substantial inflation, and we're working with our customers on recovery and mitigation. We continue to make decisions on customer contracts.
We will remain focused on the execution of our Better Greencore change program. We will now plan for the second phase. Revenue performance is holding up in the early weeks of this new year. However, we remain cautious about the potential impact of the recessionary environment and cost of living factors. Finally, the board is confident that a continued focus on the strengths of the business, underpinned by our resilient balance sheet and the efficiency and productivity gains related to our Better Greencore program, will support the further successful progress of the group in the years ahead. With that, I'll conclude the presentation, and we'd be really open to taking any of your questions. Thank you. Right. Should we kick off? Martin, I see your hand coming up first.
Yeah. I've got a couple, maybe the fair thing is to ask one and you come back to me later. Dalton, just picking up on everything you've just said in the last few minutes. I know it's a first draft, but I'm gonna try and pin you down a bit more.
Yeah.
I'm reading it as a margin returns and cash story going forward because everything's... That's not, no criticism implied. I'm just trying to get a rise out of you know. It's not so much about top line growth. You're saying the category is resilient. It's all about driving efficiency, portfolio optimization. Am I hearing you correctly, I guess, is the-
Yeah, I think in the short-
I can come back for another one later.
Yeah. Look, I think in the short term, you absolutely are because our, you know, we're not covering our cost of capital.
Right.
There's 200 basis points that have been shipped out of late, and I think you've got to earn the right to grow. You know, we have You know, we're in resilient categories, as you know. We've got good volume growth in our food to go categories. Food for later is a little bit tighter at the moment, as we talked about. Until we can start getting back to where we should be, I think there's no point in me coming back to our shareholders and saying we're gonna grow in these different categories or channels, because there's a lot of self-help here, and I think that's the priority.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
We go Andrew?
Is that working? Morning, all. Firstly, well done on navigating a tricky year and welcome, Dalton. Just a couple of questions from me. In the statement, you talk about noting a mix effect between categories. I just wondered if you could explain what you mean by that, a bit of detail around there. On costs through FY 23, can you give us an idea of what sort of cover, if any, you've got in place? And maybe similar to what we see on slide 13, the distribution between where those costs are coming from and the weighting of recovery there. Lastly, on the security incident that you mentioned in the results, can you give us some detail as to what that was?
I note it's not going into exceptionals. Is there a sort of recurring element of that? Thank you.
Yeah. Look, actually, I'll probably throw most of that to Emma. We clearly have a mix effect going on between the food for now and the food for later. You know, that obviously flows through. I don't know if you want to talk specifically to FY 2022 on that. I can come back on FY 2023.
Yeah, I mean, look, we've talked in food to go about some mix effect where we've seen volume come back to the business and then we see some negative mix impact, which is, you know, as we look at some of the subcategories within food to go, but also when we look at all of our customer set and sort of relative levels of complexity and relative margin performance for us. This is what Dalton's talking about in terms of looking at how we've allocated capacity and making sure that we're getting value for all of the capacity that we've allocated. We're gonna look at mix closely, but we're also seeing, you know, from a consumer perspective, different choices being made around what products they buy.
We'll have talked about it earlier in year where we'll have looked at, you know, less food to go salads and more sort of pasta-based salads as consumers make, you know, choices around the types of products that they're going to buy. Those higher premium products that come at a higher price point have seen lower demand in year. I think we're watching that pretty closely now as we go into the winter. I think Dalton can pick this up, but things like sushi, we're seeing less demand for that. You know, more demand come through for our ambient sources, which are seen more as a component for people quasi-scratch cooking at home.
You might wanna pick up one of the, some of the costs and obviously pick up the security. It was, we got hacked. Cost us to you know, we had to deal with all just the disruption of all of that. There's no recurring coming back.
It's something sort of structurally that you've changed in your IT system then?
Yeah, As I said, we've got work on our IT platforms to do, but it was an incident. We've worked our way through it. Not unusual for many companies to have had similar incidences.
Yeah, I think what I'd say is we had a breach. We moved to contain it pretty quickly. We mitigated the impact on customers very, very quickly. We were also insured, which is why you'd see a fairly limited impact on the P&L. We will have done an enormous amount of work since then to make sure that, you know, there's an appropriate level of containment in place.
Did you have a specific other cost that I didn't get though?
I mean, I guess maybe on the with regards to the IT.
No. Was there a third party?
It was just on the recovery profile as in the distribution between, I think personally, the distribution between raw materials, labor, et cetera, but then also the recovery. I think you had about 90% recovered through price, and yeah, 8% through internal efficiencies. Is that balance shifting in FY23?
I don't see it shifting. Kev, you might have some thoughts on this. I certainly don't see it shifting at the moment. It's, you've got high inflation in terms of ingredients and packaging. You've got high inflation in terms of labor wage rates, you know, the majority of that we'll get back working collaboratively with our supply chain base. I mean, you know, you've got pass-through mechanisms, so we've got a very high percentage of pass-through mechanisms. You've obviously got efficiency programs in place like Greencore Excellence that we've talked about. You've obviously got the one-to-one conversations on when there's inflation coming through the tracker that's not on a tracker. Obviously, we can have one-to-one conversations. You've got range rationalization.
You can obviously have strong conversations up and down the supply chain 'cause obviously we're a big customer for many people as well. Finally, you've got hedging in place. Those are the, you know, those are the six tools we used in 2022. We'll be using them in 2023.
Yeah. I'd probably make a couple of observations on top of that, Don. I think the first thing is, if I think about last year and I think about this year, we're already well ahead of where we were this time, last year. Obviously, we're used to it. It's not that inflation's new to us, but bearing in mind where we were last year, we're significantly through. I think to Don's point, there is a series of levers that we got. Clearly, there is more volume going through pass-through models this year than there was last year, which I think is really important for us, and I think we've evolved that really well.
I think the second area is that retailers, despite what you may or may not hear more broadly, are very understanding and sensible about the fact that we are facing into inflation, and clearly, we have to work together on that, and the level of collaboration continues to be very positive. The next area is, and Don's touched on it earlier in terms of one of the areas of technology investment is around how we think about our buying model itself, 'cause inflation's not just a one-way street upwards. We obviously have to think about that back down the supply chain. I'd say that we're continuing to get efficient in that, and that's whether that be the balance of where we get those ingredients from. How we get those ingredients, is really important. The final area is around specification and ranging.
A great example of that with this Christmas, we've launched probably 10% less SKUs into the Christmas range, and year-on-year, that range is performing better than it was this time last year. We're just getting more efficient and more smart at dealing with inflation more broadly is what I'll probably say to that.
Ashton, I think were you going? Oh, well, Michael, you drive then.
If people could just say their names for the transcript, please.
Thanks. Patrick Higgins from Goodbody.
Oh, Patrick.
You mentioned you've walked away from one unprofitable ready meals contract. Is there any other business currently under review? And maybe how should we think about the impact of that lost contract in terms of revenues or profit or maybe additional capacity? Then the second question is just on the commissioning problems in the new ready meals unit. What are the main issues there? How quickly can they be resolved? I guess, is there any penalties that you could be charged with if you don't resolve them quickly?
I'll just take the Kiveton and then maybe hand to you, Kev.
Yeah.
Look, on Kiveton, you know, as Emma said, you know, this is a tried and tested model of working with our customers, making material investments in, into new capacity for them. Kiveton is absolutely state-of-the-art, but building a state-of-the-art plant during a pandemic, with global supply chain challenges has not been without its challenges. Specifically to that, Patrick, you've got a lot of different kit. It's a highly automated line, so you've got a lot of different kit that needs to talk to each other. Now, often this kit, you know, is not from the same manufacturer, so getting them to speak the same language can be challenging.
Because of the global supply chain issues, we had to make some decisions on equipment that we might have, you know, normally got equipment piece A, and we've actually bought equipment piece B from somebody else. We've struggled to stitch it together. We're not comfortable with where we are. It is obviously material, which is why we're talking about it. Lee is all over it, but I think we're gonna be dealing with this through H1. Obviously coming out into H2, we should, you know, we should have all this rectified. I think in the longer term, you know, we'll stand back and say, "Did we make the right decision by putting leading edge technology into this category?" Absolutely.
The challenge always, and this is a debate you have, is, you know, do we go leading edge, which can at times be bleeding edge, or do we go with tried and trusted? You've gotta push on. I would really admire the team for pushing on and trying to be ambitious, and I think we'll work our way through this, and we'll be stronger for it 'cause we'll have a, you know, I mean, this is highly efficient. We should take you around it at some stage. It'd be very interesting. In terms of customer choices?
I think my reflections would be the first thing is We were certainly in the, if I look back over the last three years, we've been in a period of recovery and finding volume. We're now in a period where we're just valuing our capacity in a slightly different way. The decision on this specific piece of business was the right one for us. We're in a world of inflation, and we need to recover inflation. As Martin's question alluded to and Dalton's response was that we're in margin recovery mode in certain categories. This was a particular category where we didn't wanna continue with this particular piece of business.
I refer you all to 12 months ago where there was a particular piece of salads business where we gave notice on at a relatively low level of margin. None of you will be surprised to know that particular piece of business has now come back into Greencore at a much higher level of margin. Therefore, I think the approach that we take with valuing capacity and the price at which we charge for that capacity is absolutely critical to our future, and that's exactly what we're doing. We'll continue to look at the business in that way.
I think we just need to look at the complexity because we've taken on customers which can be very complex. I think 50% of the runs out of one of our salad lines, you know, 50% of the items, the line only goes for 30 minutes, i.e., you've got constant changeovers. I think those are the sorts of areas where we've got to look at and say, it's like the mayonnaise example going from 23 to 9, or I think we're going from 3 duck suppliers and types of duck to 1, 3 croissants to 1. All of that complexity just costs money, and we've got to take it out. Or at least we've got to be sitting down with our customers and saying, "If we can't be compensated for it, we can't, we can't subsidize it.
Hi, guys, Ashton Olds here from Berenberg. I guess just touching on that last point that you were making, Kevin, just on that, on that business which you dropped last year, and it came back into the system. I suppose just trying to understand the market, like from a competitive perspective, are there other options at the moment in the market where that volume might go, which you dropped? Are other people turning down business? Are there other people that can beat you on price? Just trying to get a feel for that. I guess, secondly, just on the price point of your product. At the moment, you sort of said that what's reflected in the market at the moment is more reflective of inflation.
I suppose, do you have a sense of if that needs to go a little bit further based on where inflation is at the moment? I suppose, you know, are retailers absorbing inflation in your categories? I suppose just the third one, a little bit cheeky, you know, no profit guidance, you know, what are you thinking directionally, and what would give you the confidence to issue guidance?
Look, between us, we'll take some of those. You know, in terms of. I don't think it's a cheeky question. It's just. I think we've outlined that this is a very difficult market. There's lots of challenges. There's a lot of self-help in this business. We've been very clear in terms of the five levers, Ashton, where we can go after that self-help. I think we're all aligned as a senior team that there's money, there's money there. And we'll focus hard on that. It's a very complex market at the moment. I think in price point, I'll maybe give you hand to you for capacity and competitors, but I think in term. And you may have a view on price point.
Yeah.
Look, in price point, I think the charts are very clear that these are two categories that have absorbed a lot of... You know, there's great inelasticity, elasticity, you know, in these categories, particularly in the food to go. And there's been pricing that's been pushed through. You've seen the meal deal pricing continue to nudge up across all retailers. The point is, Ashton, that you've got a 20% minimum delta between, you know, a meal deal offer out there and a QSR. What we're seeing is just with the propensity of people who are, you know, taking on second jobs or, you know, are just working longer hours, this is a very resilient category. You can go in, you can feed yourself very quickly and very cheaply.
The retailers, you know, and the manufacturers, everybody's absorbing some of this because everybody's trying to do their best to protect the consumer. When I talk to the retailers, they talk to me about how great Greencore is, the relationships, the data, the insight, the people we put on it, but they're very firm. They are really struggling with the levels of inflation being pushed through because they are struggling to push it on. I think we're all caught in this difficult situation where we've got to kind of do the best we can and wade it through. In terms of capacity.
Yeah. Martin, might just add one point on pricing, if that's okay, Dalton. Just give you some color. In the last 12 weeks, food to go market's grown 8%. You've got to bear in mind that in that same period, price inflation's been 8% as well. These, going back to the point earlier on about resilient categories, they are very resilient. Is there more to go? There potentially is more to go when Dalton talks about that 20% premium to QSR, for example. Look, we're really confident there is more to do, but look, ultimately, that's the retailer's decision in terms of what they do. What's really important for us to do is to protect our business and make sure we're getting value for the products we've got.
With regard to market capacity, what I'd say, and I'll use the particular piece of business that's come back into Greencore or coming back into Greencore in January as an example. Retailers can make short-term decisions on pricing, but fundamentally, Greencore offers more than just pricing. It's really, really important that the market in this particular country reflects that, reflects on the quality of the team, the quality of the technical service, the capacity consistency, the service levels we provide. One of the most challenging things for us over the last 12 months, as Emma will say, has been actually getting our business back to a 99.97% service level. Having that as a sensible position in fresh food sounds incredible, but that's exactly how we operate, and retailers are prepared to pay for that.
One of the reasons I think that Greencore has been able to get the level of inflation recovery they've got is because we've been able to give the service levels to retailers 'cause they can only sell product when it's on the shelf. I think that's where Greencore benefits and values. I think the retailers respect and understand that, especially in difficult times.
I think in terms of capacity, there's not a lot of capacity out there in the market. I think, people would have to make meaningful investments, meaningful capital investments, before we'd see more capacity in the market. That doesn't mean we're not complacent, but there's been a lot of the smaller suppliers, who essentially were dormant during COVID have come back into the market. For particularly in food for later, you'd have to put capital in the ground for that capacity.
look in terms of.
Go on.
-forward guidance, just, given the challenges we have, you know, in guiding, when you think about the economic environment, what we have done for the first time is include a page in the appendix of the deck where we can give guidance on some specific items. page 38 has got some notes to help people with their modeling.
Hi, morning everybody. Damian McNeela from Numis. Can I just follow up on the sort of perhaps your comments, Dalton, on the food to go market? Kevin, get your thoughts on where sort of Greencore's capacity currently stands, and sort of whether you think, how quickly you think you can sort of fill whatever uplift you have. Just to clarify your comments, Dalton, on the industry capacity in food to go, there isn't any ready meals, there isn't any either. Can you just clarify that? Yeah.
Right. In just in terms of the food to go market, look, as Kevin said, you know, we've got 8%, 9% volume increases at the moment, it's very, you know, we've had a strong start to the year in food to go. Sandwiches obviously is the driver there. Sushi, you've got nearly 20% volume declines for obvious reasons. The stat around it, and some of you will have, I'm really trying to get my arms on a better stat, but it looks like there's about 5.2 million people now picking up second jobs in the country. Anecdotally, I'm hearing that could go to 10, and it'd be, you know, if somebody's got better information on that, great.
This second job is becoming, I think this is partially a driver of that volume growth because you've got more people out there, less time, and the value proposition is still strong. If you all know, if you go out and you buy the individual components of a meal deal, it's gonna cost you 6 GBP, and you can get it for GBP 3.50-GBP 3.90 with most retailers. I think I would be encouraged by the category at the moment.
Greencore's capacity to sort of grow in food to go?
Well, again, I'd make a couple of points. I think the first point I'd say that puts us in a very unique position is that we've got a network of six sites. Not every single one of those sites are what we describe as full. That's the first thing. The second thing I'd say is that the impingement point comes at peak, and our peak is in the middle of summer when it's really, really warm. One of the skills here, and one of the points that Dalton's already made is this piece of work that we're doing about efficiency, rationalization, working with the retailers around how big those ranges are, how we do changeovers, gives us scope to be okay for capacity. From a capacity perspective in general, we're okay.
The other thing I'd say that's really, really important is this time last year, a lot of our frontline employees were relatively new. Those individuals have now bedded down. When people bed down, they become more efficient. As a consequence of efficiency, our output gets better. From a capacity perspective, we're broadly okay. There are certain points within the network where we will make limited levels of investment to create more capacity, but for now, from a capacity perspective, we're actually, we're okay.
Okay. Just one last one from me. Just Dalton, you said that you're not at the right margin yet. Can you tell us what that right margin is and also what your WACC is?
Yeah. not gonna tell you either at the moment. But Damian, on a serious note, look, you know, we're not covering our cost of capital. We've got, you know, we've shipped out margin for many good reasons, I think what's beholden on me and the executive team is to be very clear about the value creation that's out there. I think we, at the appropriate time, need to be coming back and sharing that with our shareholders about where we see the margin and where it can get to.
Yeah. Clive Black from Shore Capital. I guess we should say also congratulations on the appointment, Dalton, and congratulations on the departure, Gary. Long-term badge. Two questions, just around the single subject of cost recovery, please. First of all, how do you see the shape of 2023, given that you are in a period of what looks like quite intense cost recovery again? You said you've got 22 recovered, but there's work to do. In relation to that, a lot of inflation has been passed through, and I can't remember who asked the question a moment ago, but the actual resistance, not just from the retailer, but the shopper as to how much more they can take, and what that means therefore for 2023 in terms of margin recovery capability. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Clive. Look, Emma, I'll hand to you in a second. Look, I think we know that the shopper is under huge pressure. I think the ASDA index is showing the loss of disposable income. I go back to what Kevin was saying in terms of Clive on the food to go categories, the volume is still there. I think it's the fact that, you know, people have to eat. No, we are seeing obviously packed lunches increase. I think it's about 14% increase year-on-year in terms of people making packed lunches at home, but it hasn't been impacting our volumes. I think obviously we're going to see the, you know, I think sushi's going to remain under pressure. Salads are going to remain under pressure.
I think in the core sandwiches, we should be okay. In terms of the shape, it is clearly gonna be a H2 story, maybe you'd like to share more on that.
Look, I mean, what we talked about in terms of shape of the year is second half weighting. We're always second half weighted. I think we're doing a good job on inflation recovery so far. It's a big number. You know, it's a big a number as it was in 2022. We've got a very large proportion of it done already. About 40% of it comes through our transparency models. We've got a lot of negotiation to do. You know, the big areas of increase, you know, include energy, which wouldn't typically be in our models. We've talked about that before. Some of that is coming through.
We're gonna see a lag impact on the first half, on inflation recovery with more to come through in the second half. We'll do what we did this year and aim to get it all in year.
Thank you. Two from me. Building on what you just said, Emma, and building on Ashton's question. I completely understand you don't want to offer guidance or a forecast for 2023, but can you just walk us through the obvious moving... I've seen page 38, by the way, but the question is EBIT. What are the obvious moving parts of EBIT you would encourage us to think about when modeling? A technical one, Emma, is the debt maturity is 2.5 years. Just remind me of when your next refi event is and sort of what the quantum of that will be?
Look, I'll deal with debt first, actually. We've got a GBP 75 million facility that comes up in March. That was the COVID liquidity facility we put in place. Given how substantial our headroom is, we're not gonna seek to extend that. We're gonna let that go. That will save us on commitment fees as we go forward as well. The big event actually is our revolving credit facility. That's GBP 340 million facility, and that's in place until January 2026. We've got some smaller ones within that. You know, we will think about how we manage average maturity as we go through, but really the big chunk is that RCF.
When we think about modeling and the building blocks on EBIT, I suppose, look, it's quite challenging to land given the environment we're trading in and the recessionary environment in the U.K. As we've said, you know, we're seeing, you know, some mix on demand at the moment. Encouraged in some spaces like sandwich demand and where it is, and things like ambient sauces, but we're seeing some choppiness elsewhere, and we're pretty cautious about meals overall, given what the market is doing there. I mean, we're predominantly in Italian, which is a subset. We've got to wait and see how that plays out overall because there's a decline in overall market.
When we think about inflation, it's a very big number. We've got a lot of it done, but it's gonna go right out to the end of the year. We're just cautious about that last mile, actually, as you get to the end. I mean, we'll have got 92% in price this year and offset the rest with our recovery mechanisms internally. We'll be delighted if we got to something like that next year, but we've also got to think as we push it through on price, what that's gonna do to demand. I think that just adds a bit to that level of uncertainty.
We've also, you know, got, you know, some challenges around commissioning of our meals facility, which we flagged, and that's gonna impact us through half one and will be a weight to the half one numbers. The other thing we've referenced is, you know, customer contracts and how we're thinking about them. We are exiting, a meals contract in year, and that will have an impact, and we're reviewing other customer contracts and assessing, you know, how we're gonna think about all of that. I think, you know, we will have some short-term pain on things like that, if we make decisions to exit.
I think it's the right thing to do for the business, which again, you know, does lead to some challenges on how you think about the full year outcome, depending on when we exit.
There's a fifty-third week, Emma. Is that in there as well?
Yes, there is a 53rd week this year. That won't reoccur next year. We don't normally give sort of an EBIT impact of that. I think you probably have a reasonable estimate, Martin, of how to think about that.
Okay.
We'll take a call. Yeah.
No other questions on the call?
Thank you. Thank you. To ask a question over the telephone, please signal by pressing star one. That is star one for telephone questions. Our first question comes from Karel Zoete of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, all. Thanks for taking the question. I have two questions. The one is on the pace, on the choices for the medium term, how to recover margins and where to compete. At the same time, you have in the near term the Better Greencore program, which also focuses to improve efficiency. What are kinda like the differences between the two programs or things you have in mind? The other thing built on to that is reducing complexity. You provided some examples on have fewer different products, et cetera. Could it also entail really fundamental choices around segments where you play that are just less profitable or where Greencore has a more limited scale?
Thank you.
Thanks, Karel. look, the Better Greencore is a platform on which we can build the rest of these opportunities. Better Greencore is a GBP 30 million by financial year 2024, which looks right across our business. What we're talking about now is we're gonna have to go again, we're gonna have to look. You know, that, you know, GBP 30 million isn't gonna, isn't gonna repair the erosion in margin, and that's why we're saying if we look at our manufacturing, particularly our OEE, where we think that there's a material opportunity to improve our OEE. It's a hypothesis at the moment.
We'll obviously need to come back with the detailed workings, but we think there's a, you know, if there is a material opportunity there, if there is a material opportunity, and this leads to your second question about the segments we play in, if there are material opportunities to relook at our portfolio, the complexity of our portfolio, who we serve, how we serve them, we will. We're not absolutely in any stage today to be talking about the segments we will or we won't be playing in, but we'll certainly be looking at it all. I think over the years, Greencore has evolved. The segments, you know, it's been in desserts, it came out as desserts, you know, it's got into salads. It is a business that is comfortable in moving with, you know, the market.
It's too early to say at this stage. If you wanted to, either of you wanted to add anything to that? Is that okay?
Yeah. Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question now comes from Doriana Russo of HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you very much for taking my question. I just want to come back to this basically profitability versus new opportunity. I have a sense that the priority for the immediate future is actually more to try to find areas to improve return on invested capital, improve service, and maintain service level, and improve the profit conversion ahead of finding new opportunities. Nonetheless, in the presentation, there was mentioning that there's plenty of room to grow. Am I correct that priority is profit first and growth next? Can you give more of a sense of where do you see opportunity for Greencore to expand? That's my first question.
My second question is on the change in relationship with clients and trying to prioritize contracts which address inflation and give you more opportunity to pass it on. The question is on timing of recovery. Have you changed the timing? Normally, it would take you a quarter to pass on prices. Are you trying to basically shorten the time that it takes you to recover inflation? Have you changed anything in your new contracts to include inflation in your favor more than, you know, vis-à-vis past practices? Thank you.
Thanks, Doriana. In a moment I'll pass you back to both Kevin and Emma on inflation recovery. We haven't changed our timing. We're trying to get more on trackers, the team have done a good job of that. The timing hasn't changed. We want to in year, all in, you know, is we wanna be compensated for all of it. I'll come back to that with the guys. I think in terms of your first question, the priority is to improve the ROIC, and that's how we will earn credibility with our shareholder base.
You know, there's a lot of opportunity to expand, and I showed that slide, Doriana, on page 25, which showed if you just take the food to go categories, the sort of the blue sky or the, you know, the space that's out there for us to expand. I think first and foremost, let's get our house absolutely in order, and let's really look at how we can be the most efficient in what we do. And that's good for us, it's good for the retailers, and it's obviously good for the consumers. And I think we've got to look hard at our efficiency, as I said, our OEE. I mean, you know, we now have challenges.
We have plants where we are now having to take outside storage to house, you know, raw materials because of the complexity that's in there. Complexity is good, if you're, if you're properly compensated for it. It's bad if you're not. I think that's where we feel there's a real focus. Remember, for three years, there's been a huge amount of effort on a whole lot of other things, Doriana, and now it's time to relook at how we do things around here. That's the priority. There will be in time opportunities to expand. I could name five categories, so I won't do, but, you know, where there's real opportunity to grow, but that's not our focus at the moment. In terms of the contracts, either of you wanna add anything to that?
Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, the specific point on, is inflation included in the contracts? The answer is yes. I'd say that 10% more of our inflation this year is covered on trackers than it was this time last year. Yes, that is the mainstay of how we think about that. We're also putting all the mechanics into contracts as well, such as... I mean, you just take the lessons of life. We now volume mechanics in those particular contracts, and such like. As Emma touched on earlier on, we're trying to find ways of getting into those contracts, extended areas of inflation, whether that be labor or utilities as well. We'll continue to evolve those, and you'd expect us to do that, and that's exactly what we will do.
Nice start. Is that okay, Doriana?
Yeah. Can I ask just to follow on the more contracts that have been put on trackers. Can you give us a sense what sort of % of total contracts is not on trackers, the way you want it to be?
I mean, like, I mean, the answer to that is I'd like everything to be on 100% trackers, quite frankly. The reality of either the customer or the engagement, both ways actually means that that's not the case. As I say, I think the figure I could give you is that there is 10% more of our cost of goods that is now on trackers this year than it was against last year. It's probably as close as I can get. I don't know if there's anything you want to add in.
Yeah. I mean, Doriana, you know, typically we wouldn't have had energy. We've got that with, you know, a couple of our customers now. We wouldn't have had labor historically, and the more recent contracts with a component of labor inflation going in as well. You know, they're all quite different. What we do now when we're renewing contracts is we make sure actually that we do have commodity trackers in place, and we look to include things like labor and energy as well.
I think I'd probably just say to the floor one other thing that this particular phase of our industry has generated, which is just a better level of collaboration, even more so than previous. How we buy, when we buy energy, we do it in collaboration with our retailers. We're talking to them about it. We're helping each other do that. I mean, this is a completely different world to where we were three, four years ago. I think the market needs to recognize that as well. The way we're thinking about inflation is not just one single lens. It is a broad brush approach to how we think about it.
Thanks, Doriana. I think we take one more question 'cause I think people need to go.
Yes, sir.
Yes. Our next question comes from Rowland French of Davy. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Thanks everybody. A couple of questions if I could. Maybe one for you, Emma. If you could firstly try and quantify, I guess, for FY23, to the extent you can, the impact from the challenges from Kiveton, and the exit of what you know in context to ready meals, if there's some timelines around that. The second question is for Kevin. You talked about valuing capacity appropriately, which I thought was an interesting phrase. This might be a difficult question, but what percentage of capacity are you referencing there? And I guess how confident are you in achieving that objective? Finally, one for Dalton. I guess we've seen, you know, multiple years of heavy capital investment.
Clearly that's been accretive top line, but less so to returns and cash conversion. I guess the question is: How are you thinking about capital allocation and discipline going forward? I'll leave it at that. Thanks.
Thanks, Rowland.
Okay. Rowland, very specific question. In terms of disruption, on what we're seeing on meals, you know, the impact is gonna be mid-single digit GBP millions of that disruption. When we look at the exit of the meal contract, you know, when we're looking at a full year effect, you're looking at between GBP 40 million and GBP 50 million of revenue.
Sure. I'll just pick up.
Yeah
On valuing capacity. I think, how I'd respond to that, Rowland, is that in particular categories where our service is tight or our capacity is tight, the natural thing for Greencore to do is to look at the top and the tail of those particular customers and those particular contracts, and it's around those areas where we will make decisions. Either we will reprice, or we will exit. That's something that we actually do constantly on an ongoing basis and will continue to do. So that's what I mean by valuing capacity in a different way. When you're obviously in recovery, as we were at the beginning of the pandemic and building volume back, it was about finding volume. Now it's about the quality of those, of that particular volume.
Rowland, just in terms of capacity look, gonna look at all assets, and what their returns are, what their capital needs are going forward. So I think that's gonna be the first step. The second is to really look at what latent capacity is in the system that we may not have identified, and that goes back to the OEE, and really looking at 24/7, 365. I would hope that we would be able to unlock latent capacity. That may not be the case. There's been a lot of smart people in this business for many years looking at it. If we can, I mean, that's the best returning capital, that we'll find.
Okay. I think Nicola Mallard has probably dropped off the call because of the Investec results. I think just as we conclude, I'd recognize she's retiring. This is gonna be the last call that she was joining. Did want to sort of recognize her and say she will be missed, I think, right across the industry as a very, very experienced analyst who's covered us for many, many years. I guess what I would like to follow up with is the recognition of last but very far from least, our chair, Gary Kennedy, who has shown unwavering commitment to Greencore over the years.
I have, you know, very much appreciated his support and encouragement over the years and, you know, through COVID and particularly in the last 12 months, where he stepped in at, you know, at great personal cost as executive chair at a time when he might've been thinking about doing other things. Would really wish him the very best for the future and would like to thank him for everything he's done for Greencore and all of that support over the years. Thank you, Gary.
Thank you, Emma. Thank you.
Just thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.
Anything else before we close out, Gary?
Nothing from me. No. We're good.
Okay, we'll close it out. Thank you again for your time.