Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Premier Foods half-year results for the 26 weeks that ended on the 27th of September this year. I'm joined by our CFO, Duncan Leggett, and between us, we'll take you through what we've been doing in the first half of the year. I'll give a bit of an overview, then Duncan can take us through the numbers, and then I'll come back and give you an update on some of the progress we've been making against our five-pillar strategy. To start off then with some headlines, we're really pleased that actually growth stepped up from our U.K. brands in the second quarter, up to 3% then in Q2, and that brought 0.5% to + 2%. Branded revenue then for the first half of the year, GBP 453 million and up, just shy of 2%.
Now, obviously, what's going on there is two interesting things: some really strong performance from our sweet treat brands, so 9.4% growth in the first half, and actually double digit for Mr Kipling, which is, of course, our biggest brand. Then grocery, our grocery portfolio, which was, of course, suppressed somewhat by that long hot summer that we had. What was really good to see is, as the weather started to normalize halfway through quarter two, we can see that that grocery business bounced back quite nicely, which is what's driving part of that 3% growth. U.K. market shares, and you'll be aware that we've gained quite significant market share over the last three years or so, so 130 basis points up.
We are really pleased we managed to hold on to all that in the first half of the year, despite that downward pressure on the grocery business caused by the weather. Profit delivery then, trading profit was up 0.4% and adjusted PBT up 2.2%. That is after taking a full year's cost of the new packaging levy EPR. Now, obviously, that is something which applies to a full year sales, and it is something that will recover over a full year, but accounting principles require us to put all of that cost into period one and therefore into the first half of the year.
For way of comparison, if we were in fact just to take the first half cost of the EPR and see what trading profit would look like, then trading profit was actually up 7% and adjusted PBT up + 10% in the half, which I think is more representative of the performance that the business has delivered. That is actually with that in mind, which is why we are saying today that we are nicely on track to deliver our full year trading profit expectations and actually adjusted PBT now expected to be slightly ahead. Down in the bottom right-hand corner there, net debt to EBITDA remains low at one times, and that is after the cash out for the very recent purchase of the Merchant Gourmet brand. In terms of performance against the five-pillar strategy, we made good progress across the board here really.
You've seen that growth on the U.K. core, 0.5% at 2%, but Q2 bouncing up to + 3%. In terms of infrastructure investment, we've spent GBP 23 million, so that's back into our manufacturing sites in particular, and we're on track to invest about GBP 55 million this year in efficiency programs and also ability to manufacture some of the new products. In terms of category expansion, this is sales that we're making from categories that historically we've not really been present in, and sales there were up 41%. It's still a fairly modest size base, but nevertheless a continued really strong growth rate. Internationally, our overseas businesses in particular, our biggest business in Australia, had a really strong in-market performance, so sales to shoppers in store were actually up 17%.
Unfortunately, you do not see that in the revenue because what we have also got is a compression, a reduction in the buffer stock that the retailers are holding in market in Australia. I will come back to that in a little bit more detail later. Finally, in organic, so in organic growth, we have really strong double-digit growth in the U.K. from both The Spice Tailor and Fuel10K. They are both continuing their journey of scaling up. As I said, in the quarter, we also bought Merchant Gourmet, and we will talk about that again later as well, but we expect that to follow a very similar pattern to Fuel 10K and The Spice Tailor. Before I hand over to Duncan to go through the numbers, I will just give you a quick update on the pillars of our Enriching Life Plan.
I think what we're finding here more and more is that as we pursue the pillars and the principles of the Enriching Life Plan, we're able to make decisions which are good for the planet, good for our products, but also which are good for us commercially as well. A few interesting examples we've put on here. In the first half of the year, our sales of non-HFSS products grew by 10% as we continue to reformulate our product ranges with recipes that are lower in fat, salt, and sugar. That's good, obviously, for public health, but it's also good commercially because we know our consumers are trying to eat a little bit more healthily, and it also helps future-proof the business.
Of course, Merchant Gourmet, the brand we've acquired, also supports healthier diets, and actually the ingredients that go into that improve soil health. On the planet pillar, a really good example is that we've just installed, and it's just up and running, a solar farm which sits in the field next to our big bakery in Carlton where we make most of our Mr Kipling cakes. This will provide up to 70% of the site's electricity requirements. Great in terms of CO2 reduction, but also great in terms of lower electricity bills. Similarly in Lifton, but obviously a very different approach, we've installed a heat recovery system. We obviously use a lot of heat to cook custard and to cook rice pudding.
What this system does is it takes the heat that's left over at the end of the process and recycles it back to the beginning and starts to warm up the next batch ready for cooking. It is a really good use of heat recycling. Again, reduces CO2 and reduces our fuel costs down at Lifton. Finally, on the people pillar, as most people will be aware, we've almost engendered balance on our overall management population. The other thing we've put on there is that we're now working with Computers for Charity, so they're able to take and recycle our older IT kit. With that, I'll hand over to Duncan, and he'll talk us through the financial performance.
Thank you, Alex. Good morning, everyone. I'm going to dive into the financials, and I thought I'd start with some headlines. As Alex has said, we're really pleased that we've managed to grow trading profit in the first half. As Alex has just pointed out, it is a slightly unusual position in that we've had to absorb the full year's charge of the extended producer responsibility levy. We will be offsetting and recovering this over the full year. If we do exclude the component relating to the second half of the year, really good strong profit delivery up 7%. Looking further down the P&L, adjusted profit for tax, that is our trading profit less our interest number.
We're now expecting that to be ahead of where we thought we would be at the beginning of the year, and that is all around a later refinance of our high-yield bonds. Leverage continues to be in a really good position. We know it's come down significantly over the last few years, and it's still only 1x having bought Merchant Gourmet, which is really fantastic news because it means we're able to deploy further capital for value generation. Diving into the numbers, we're in good growth for the first half at branded revenue, so that's up 1.9% to GBP 453 million. Really good performance from our Sweet Treats business, which I'll talk about later, and really encouraging to see the trend in our grocery business improving as we've gone through the second quarter. Non-branded revenue continues to decline.
Half year on half year, we are still right-sizing that business and with it to a level of profitability that's acceptable to us. That is producing a decline in non-branded, which leaves total revenue up 0.7% to just over GBP 500 million. Traditional contribution is growing ahead of turnover, so we are seeing some volume benefits from the Sweet Treats factories coming through there, as well as our supply chain cost efficiency program, and this obviously includes the benefit of the increased CapEx we've been doing. This original contribution includes the full charge relating to EPR. If again we remove the amount relating to the second half, growth was significantly higher than this. I think trading profit I've covered and adjusted PBT, so our expectations and guidance for the full year is now slightly higher than it was coming into the year.
For the half itself, adjusted PBT is up 2.2%, and again, this is all around lower interest cost half year on half year. With our lower leverage, we have gone through the first half of this year with higher overall cash balance, which obviously is earning a return for us. You can see that flowing down to adjusted EPS of GBP 0.054 , and then net debt of GBP 207 million. That is still lower than prior year, GBP 14 million down after having spent a net GBP 46 million on Merchant Gourmet. Going into a bit more detail around our business units, starting with the grocery business, and this includes our international business, branded revenue is down 0.5% to GBP 337 million.
I think from a strategic process, Alex will talk about this a bit later, but really strong performance from our acquired brands with Spice Tailor and Fuel10K in the U.K. growing double digits. Strong new categories performance up over 40%, and our premium range is performing really well. We know that we had a softer Q1 because of the weather impacts in grocery, and obviously because this does include international as well, we have seen some adjustment to market buffer levels of stock that have impacted the performance. As Alex has just mentioned, really encouraging to see the momentum back into the business in grocery with U.K. and Ireland branded revenue up 3% in the second quarter. Non-branded revenue declined 9% to GBP 32 million. You can see some of the contracts we have exited there.
Again, these are deliberate actions to get the business to the right level of size and the right level of profitability for us, which means that total revenue is down 1.3% to GBP 369 million. Divisional contribution margin has ticked up slightly, so a couple of things going on here. We have got the benefits of the, again, the operational program, efficiencies, looking at waste at sites, looking at the benefits of the capital expenditure. They are all flowing through nicely as planned. Also, we have consciously decided to invest a bit less behind our brands in the first half. We did not think we would get the return that we expect based on the impact of the weather, so we have consciously moved that to our third quarter and second half, which is great news, is it not? Because then we have got even more firepower behind our brands at our key Christmas period.
Sweet Treats have done a fantastic second quarter to follow the first quarter, so for the half, branded revenue is up 9.4% to GBP 116 million. Alex will give some examples of this shortly, but some really good consumer-driven MPD that's performing extremely well for us. Even more pleasing is the performance of Mr Kipling within this, so Mr Kipling is up over 10%. Non-branded revenue is down 7.5%. Again, we are exiting some contracts. This actually will start to become flatter as we go through the second half. By its nature, non-branded will remain volatile, but for Sweet Treats, it will definitely flatten out during the second half. That all leaves total revenue up 6.8% to GBP 133 million. Moving down to profit, a really good performance. I think you can see the benefits of the branded performance flowing through to margin as well as the strength of the Mr
Kipling brand. Clearly, with the volume growth we have had in the first half, that then creates efficiencies in the factory, all of which have a nice leveraging effect as we go down the P&L. Divisional contribution is up over 20% to GBP 14 million. Looking at net debt and how that has moved during the half, I think it is really good that we are still deleveraging even after having bought Merchant Gourmet. Strong EBITDA performance, clearly driving cash flow. In terms of working capital, we always have a stock build at this time of year. You would understand going into our peak sales period, stock levels at the end of September are significantly higher than they are at the end of March. That is no different.
It is slightly higher this September than it would have been last year, but very much just a position of where we are at the point in time, our full year guidance for working capital very much unchanged. CapEx, clearly we are stepping it up over time, and we are also making a conscious effort to try and deploy it more evenly through the half. I am really pleased we have been able to spend GBP 23 million in the first half, and that is a step up from where we have been. I think also, you know, with the ability of spending it, getting these projects in place so that we generate the returns as soon as possible, we are also guiding to slightly higher CapEx at GBP 55 million versus the previous guidance of GBP 50 million. Interest of GBP 7 million.
If you go back to the first one of these I did, which was six years ago, that number was GBP 18 million for the first half. You can really see the benefits of the deleveraging and the restructuring of the balance sheet that we've done. Dividends, GBP 24 million paid in the first half. As a reminder, we stepped that up significantly by 62% at the year end, so that's been paid. The GBP 46 million for Merchant Gourmet is the enterprise value less a bit of cash in hand of Merchant Gourmet at the time of acquisition. It would not feel like a presentation for me without a slide on pensions. Actually, there's not that much new news. We have an ongoing tri-annual valuation, the results of which we expect to be early next year.
What I thought would be helpful was just a bit of a recap as to what has been delivered since the merger five years ago, and that is over GBP 40 million of annualized cash benefit that we are seeing today. That started with a GBP 5 million reduction in May 2023 following some good performance from the scheme. The full suspension last year, that was GBP 33 million we were due to spend last year that we have agreed with the trustees to suspend. The dividend match removal, that was about GBP 5 million. Obviously, that would have increased as the dividend grew over time, and we managed to recycle that into dividend payment, hence the big rebase last year. Valuation data, we will share when we can, and obviously we are working towards a buy-in transaction at the end of next year.
Capital allocation, very much unchanged, and I think this first half is a great example of the capital allocation playing out exactly as we want. We have spent a good slug of CapEx in the first half and want to spend more as we get into the year. Again, all around the good returning, high efficiency projects that we can start getting the benefits of those flowing through. M&A, I mean, Alex will talk about it in a bit more detail, but really, really pleased to have made the purchase in the first half. Certainly, things got off to a good start, and we are looking to get on with integration. Dividends, having rebased it off the back of the full year results, are a big step up by 62%. We still intend to grow it faster than earnings as we move forward.
The final slide for me, I thought it'd be worth a recap of some of the things we're looking for when we're thinking about M&A. Again, it starts off with strong brands. If you think about The Spice Tailor and Fuel10K, the founders did an amazing job getting the brands to the scale that they did. Very much true for Merchant Gourmet as well. What we're trying to do now is to lift the capability and scale of these brands to the next level. With Spice Tailor and Fuel10K, we have successfully increased distribution, increased innovation, strengthened the pipeline, used our customer relationships to get some great feature. We very much expect Merchant Gourmet to follow the same model. I think the only other point to mention is almost a two-year gap between the Merchant Gourmet and the Fuel acquisition.
This just reinforces that we are picky, as we've always said. We'll only do the right deal. We'll only do a deal if we think it's right for the company. Merchant Gourmet very much hit not just our commercial criteria, but our financial criteria, particularly return on invested capital. Really pleased to see the diligence that we're applying to this. That's all for me, and I'll hand back to Alex.
Thank you very much, Duncan. What I'd like to do now is just walk us through progress against the five pillars of the growth strategy. As a reminder, what's sitting behind our growth strategy is this understanding that our core skill set is in building brands and growing brands over the medium term in a sustainable and profitable way.
The idea is that if we can do that over a broader base using the same skill set, then in principle we can build a much bigger Premier Foods than the one we've got today. As a reminder of those five pillars, starting on the left-hand side, the first pillar is about continuing to grow our U.K. brands because at the end of the day, right now, that's where our critical mass is and that's where the majority of our sales and profits are generated. The second pillar is investing back into our supply chain where we've got significant opportunities to keep investing in improving efficiencies, improving productivity, and that obviously expands margins, which helps us with the fuel to invest back in branded growth.
The third pillar is expanding our U.K. brands into new categories, so categories which historically we've not really played in in different parts of the store. A really good example of that is actually Ambrosia, which of course we extended into breakfast with Ambrosia porridge pots. The fourth pillar is building our international business, building overseas businesses with critical mass. Of course, that's all entirely incremental to anything that we do in the U.K. The fifth pillar are those inorganic opportunities that Duncan was talking about, building the brands that we've already purchased, but then looking for more brands we can bring into the portfolio, which we believe will then deliver more value through the application of our skill set in building brands. What sits behind all this is our Branded Growth Model.
As a reminder, this is how we go about building our brands and delivering sustainable, profitable growth over time. We're very fortunate on the top left there that we start with really strong leading brands. That's true in the U.K., but it's actually more and more true in Australia as well now. Our brands are leaders in their categories. They're very well known by consumers, and we've got very high household penetration. Most households will have at least one, if not several, of our brands in the cupboard. As I've said many times before, that doesn't give us growth. It gives us a good start point, but it's then what we do next that drives the growth. One thing we know is that FMCG brands, which can consistently innovate over time, have a tendency to deliver long-term revenue growth.
That is why our second pillar is really about building our MPD plans based on really in-depth understanding of our consumers. We do spend a lot of time understanding how our consumers are shopping, how they are cooking, and how they are eating, and how that is changing over time so that we can then develop new products that fit with those habits, that fit with those trends, and play a genuinely helpful role for those consumers. Within this, which also includes our strategy of premiumisation. Down the bottom left, yes, it is great that we have got these really strong, well-known brands, but they will only remain so if we continue to invest in them with marketing and advertising campaigns. That builds the brands, maintains awareness, and keeps them contemporary and relevant for our consumers.
Finally, but very importantly, it is about how we build our relationship with our retail partners. We take the view that it is better to work together in strategic partnerships with our retailers, focused on driving mutual growth for the category, because with our strong brand positions, we will then tend to disproportionately benefit. It is really then the application of those four things together. When we do that well, that is how we get consistent growth, consistent market share gain. If we just talk about how we have been applying that to the first pillar, to our core U.K. brands. As I mentioned before, we had 3% growth from our U.K. brands in quarter two. What you can see here is that big step up from the 1% we had in quarter one to 3% in Q2.
Yes, we know that Sweet Treats has grown very strongly with our sweet treat brands up 9.4%. One of the big differences between Q1 and Q2 was the impact of that hot weather on quarter one and actually on the first half of Q2 as well. What's also sitting behind that is continued strong performance from those premium ranges. If you group together all our premium ranges, they actually grew by about 13% in the first half. As I mentioned earlier, you can see there the step up in market share over the last three years or so. We're really pleased that we were able to hold on to those strong share gains despite that downward pressure on our grocery brands due to the warm weather.
If we walk through the Branded Growth Model and see what's been happening in the first half, as I said before, having a strong innovation plan is really important. We work on a number of key consumer trends, which you can see down the left-hand side there. This year, we do have a particularly strong pipeline of new products. Here's just a sample of some of those that we've launched in the first half of the year. We launched Bisto Peri Peri Gravy, which is clearly targeted at a slightly younger consumer. We've got Batchelors Pasta and Sauce. Batchelors Pasta 'n' Sauce, of course, has been around for a long time, but in a dried format that you had to rehydrate. What we've got here is a wet format. It's ready to eat. You microwave it, and in 90 seconds, it's ready.
Which seems such an obvious thing to do. You might ask why we've not done that before, but actually, technically, it's quite difficult to do well. Our chefs have spent quite a bit of time making sure that the pasta doesn't go soft in the pouch while it's sitting in the sauce. Given that we've now cracked that and we've launched that into the market, it's actually performing very well indeed. In the middle at the top there, you've got Lloyd Grossman Premium Pasta Sauces, which is a new range we've launched, authentic pasta sauces made in Italy from high-quality locally sourced ingredients. We've then got The Spice Tailor expanding into a new cuisine type with Mexican. We've got from our strategic partners at Nissin an expansion of the Demae Ramen noodle range.
Over on the right-hand side there, you've got three examples of how we're expanding Fuel10K beyond its original breakfast heartland into other parts of the store. Therefore, we've got Fuel10K instant noodles, instant soup, and then similar to the microwavable Batchelors Pasta 'n' Sauce, there's a microwavable, what we call Protein Bowls, and that's actually a Mexican bean chili. We've got several examples there from Mr Kipling. The two I'm going to pull out are on the far left with breakfast bakes. This fits with our strategy of getting more presence in the morning from our overall range. This takes Mr Kipling into that space. The example there is a Blueberry Breakfast Bake, which actually are also non-HFSS, so not high in fat, salt, and sugar.
Right in the middle there, there's a tub which represents a range of a new product range we've introduced into Tesco, which is tubs of bite-sized pieces of Mr Kipling cake, which obviously are designed for sharing. Very early days on that one as well, but so far, the sales have been really impressive. A really strong pipeline has come to market during the first half of the year. I also said it's important that we continue to support and grow our brand equity. We use a number of techniques for that. We continue to use TV advertising, and that's because we've got several million products being purchased a day by consumers. Therefore, we need to talk to several million consumers, and TV's still got the best reach, and I'm including with that digital TV as well.
We also got out of home, which more and more we use, particularly for communicating new products, and we try to target things like bus stops and locations that are close to supermarkets. It reminds you when you're on the way to the store. More and more we're using digital and social media, and this is really focused on targeting younger consumers, that 18- 35 demographic. As you're leaving home and you're setting up your own kitchen and you're going to start doing the cooking yourself. Now, the other interesting thing about digital and social media, of course, is that the getting cost is a lot lower than TV. What this allows us to do is to support some of the smaller brands, which previously we wouldn't have been able to do. I also said that in-store support's really important.
That's why we have those strong strategic partnerships with our key retailers. Our execution in-store in the first half has been really great. That graph on the left-hand side, I think, is one of the most powerful things I want to show today, which is how our distribution has evolved from where we were a year ago at this point to today. This is really a measure of how much more distribution we've got, so how many more products in how many more stores. Overall, we have a 4.7% increase in distribution, which I think is a really positive number. Grocery is very healthy at 3.1%, but the standout number there is Sweet Treats at 14.8%. That's 14.8% more of our Sweet Treats brands products in-store than they were this time a year ago.
That is really helped by that very strong MPD pipeline, so the number of new products that we have launched over the last year or so. In the middle there, we continue to get really impactful in-store execution in terms of displays. That is a really nice gondoline that has a series of our brands and products on it. This year, we also started doing some outdoor sampling. This was taking place in the car parks of large supermarkets where we were cooking up some summer food using things like Cape Herbs & Spice on barbecue and also the Lloyd Grossman pizza range. If I move on to the second strategic pillar now, which is investing back, particularly into our manufacturing sites.
As I said, we are on track to deliver about GBP 55 million of investment in the year, so a big step up from where we used to be if I go back five or six years. Remember, many of these projects that we are working on have still got really good paybacks in that three- to four-year kind of window. A couple of examples we have pulled out to show you a good example of growth capital. This is putting in place the capital needed for new products that we launch. You will remember we talked before about the success we have had with Mr Kipling Birthday Cake Tarts. It has a sister product as well, actually, which is on there, which is Strawberry & Cream Tarts.
We needed some capital investment into one of the sites in order to be able to automate the manufacturing of those, which is something we have done. That image down the bottom there, that big complicated network of pipes, is actually a cooling process for our mini rolls and cake bars under the Cadbury brand. What this does is it actually cools down the warm cake as it has come off the product off. It is more efficient and it actually saves on food waste. These are some good examples of how we are driving growth and also reducing our cost base through capital investment. If I move on to the third pillar then, new categories, the growth we are getting from categories that historically we have not been present in.
Of all the experiments we've done, the two real winners are Ambrosia pPorridge and Cape Herbs & Spice. Ambrosia porridge pots and distribution and launch new flavors. The new news there was we've actually made now a Fuel10K version of this, which is just coming to market, so a protein-enriched version of that three-year [Kaga], a very similar trajectory as we've gained more market share, we've increased our distribution, and we've introduced more flavors into the range. The new one that's really come onto the map now is Fuel. There is some of our Fuel10K granola. Remember, of course, that Fuel10K chocolate granola is the best-selling granola in the U.K. You mix the granola into the protein yoghurt. Very early days, put it in a couple of retailers so far, but we've been really impressed by how well that's selling.
In fact, one of the retailers has already started to increase their store count, their distribution on that. Really good performance and 41% growth from those new categories. We'll now move on to international. The fourth strategic pillar cake held in our biggest market by the Australian retailers. To understand that, it's important we understand the supply chain a little bit here. We manufacture the cake in the U.K., we freeze it, and it gets shipped to the port. Actually, the retailers own it from that point onwards and are responsible for shipping it down to Australia and holding what they consider to be an appropriate level of stock.
Historically, they've sat on a decent amount of stock to cover some of the uncertainty that we've had in shipping times down to Australia, obviously with the difficulties in the Middle East and lots of. Those retailers have now come to the conclusion they don't need to sit on as much stock, and they've started to reduce it. That reduction in stock obviously manifests itself in the fact that they don't need to order as much from us because they're working from the stock they've already got. That is what causes the impact on revenue. Actually, if you look at performance in market, we're really very, very pleased with it. I've included some of the numbers here.
We actually, if I look at the sales we've made to shoppers from stores, so scanned through the EPOS tills and measured by Sakana, we actually increased those by 17% in the first half. A really strong performance, which ultimately will eventually pull through to turnover. Mr Kipling increased its household penetration. If you look down at the bottom there, we've got some phenomenal market share gains. In fact, actually, we've got record market shares in the first half in Australia. A really strong 190 basis points increase in our cake market share and a 450 basis point increase in our Indian sauces, which is pretty staggering. Really pleased with that. Actually, one thing that's helping that Indian performance and the Indian market share is the TV advertising that we've put behind The Spice Tailor in Australia.
What that's doing is introducing the brand and making more people aware of it that will then go on and try it. Of course, the one thing we know about The Spice Tailor is once you try it and realize how delicious it is, you tend to come back time and time again. It's working really well for us in Australia. Quickly moving on to North America on the top right-hand side. In quarter two, we saw double-digit revenue growth as we launched our apple pies into the U.S. One thing we've learned about the U.S. is obviously it's a big apple pie market, but most of those apple pies are family-sized. There's really not a lot of sort of standard, what we would consider individual apple pies in the U.K. We've launched our Mr
Kipling apple pies in the U.S. have really seen some quite encouraging initial performance, which catapulted into double-digit growth. At the same time, we've also launched in our new packaging. Remember, we discovered that U.S. consumers see British cake as being a better quality cake. We've put U.K. cues onto the pack. Therefore, we've got pictures of Big Ben and Union Jacks and things on the pack. In Canada, we've got continued good momentum for Mr Kipling and for The Spice Tailor. Go down to Europe, and we're continuing to expand distribution of Sharwood's and The Spice Tailor. You might remember I said once before that we were putting dedicated sales resource into some of the big cluster markets in Europe.
The idea there is that then we start to own the distribution relationship with the retailer from a selling point of view, even if we're then using a third party to do the logistics and the distribution. That's already starting to have an effect. The first resource that we put in place was in the Netherlands with a head of sales responsible for Benelux. That's already starting to land new distribution. We've just managed to secure Fuel10K distribution in one of the big retailers in the Netherlands. Also, we've got Spice Tailor into Jumbo, which is one of the other big retailers in the Netherlands. That is really turning into distribution gains already. Cadbury Flake Cake, we continue to expand in the Middle East where it's actually very popular down there.
If I move on now to talk about the brands we've purchased, both The Spice Tailor and Fuel10K going double-digit in the U.K., strong market share gains, and really just benefiting from the branded growth model application. New products coming to market and supporting the brands with digital and social media. In Australia, as I said, we've actually got mainstream TV introducing the brand to more people. Really happy with the performance there. Obviously, in the quarter, we bought Merchant Gourmet. A great brand, strong double-digit growth, really great track record, market-leading positions, and really in line with consumer trends. Healthy eating, it's a premium brand, and it's a convenient whole food. It's already proven its ability to expand into new categories, and it's got exceptionally high consumer repeat rates, even higher than The Spice Tailor.
We were really quite impressed with that. It is completely complementary to our existing brand portfolio, of course. What we are going to be doing here is pretty much the same as we did with The Spice Tailor and Fuel10K because we see this brand following exactly the same trajectory with really strong growth. We see opportunity for further distribution expansion because if you look at how well Merchant Gourmet sells and what we call the rate of sale, it deserves more distribution than it has. That is something that the sales team will be working quite hard on. There is a strong innovation pipeline to come, and some of that was what the Merchant Gourmet team were already working on, and some of that is coming from some of the [audio disruption]
What we've seen with Fuel10K and The Spice Tailor, and we expect exactly the same to happen here, is as you significantly scale these brands up, your costs don't increase anything like as quickly as your top line's increasing. Really, there's just a bit more brand support. As a consequence of that, we see quite a significant drop through of that turnover growth through to improved profitability. If we look forward into half two then, we've got some really strong plans across the board. If we look at our U.K. brands and the innovation plans, we've got another series of new products that are coming to market. As I said before, I think this year we've got a really strong lineup of new products.
Some of the examples we've pulled out there, if we look at the top left, I said before we'd had some good success with the ready-to-use microwavable pasta and sauce. This just extends that out further into ravioli. OXO's brought to market two flavors of bone broth. This is following a trend that we picked up in the United States, and people enjoying that for the benefits of protein and collagen. We've got Bisto, which has brought a premium ready-to-use version of gravy. This is in a little tetrapack. You just pour it into the pan. Fuel10K there. We talked already about Fuel10K ready-to-eat porridge pots, so essentially replicating what we've done with Ambrosia. This is Fuel10K now going into rice pudding, so a protein-enriched chocolate rice pudding. Bottom left there, we've got Angel Delight with Bubble Jelly.
You'll probably be aware of the trend to bubble tea. This is a jelly version of that idea. It's jelly with bubble balls in it. That's also only been in market for a few weeks, but we've been really very impressed by how well that one's selling. We'll be bringing to market, working with our strategic partners at Nissin, a protein version of the very successful soba noodle pots. If I move on to the second pillar, which is our investment back into infrastructure, there are a couple of really exciting projects I want to highlight here. The one at the top is the first in what will be a series of what we're calling replatforming projects. Replatforming for us is the replacement of one of our existing production lines with something which is much more up-to-date, much more state-of-the-art.
What we're finding that that's able to bring for us is much tighter control of the production process, leading to much better quality and consistent product quality. At the same time, the speed and the efficiency is meaning that we can produce it at a lower cost. Essentially, we get a better product for the consumer at a lower cost to produce. Down the bottom there, what you can see is that image is a new, more efficient boiler, which we're currently in the process of installing into our workshop site. We'll be doing something very similar at the Lifton creamery as well. Those two sites use steam in order to cook some of the products, and we use the boilers to generate the steam.
What we're doing is replacing some of our big older boilers with these new, much more efficient ones, which are also a lot smaller. This means that we will use significantly less gas. That is better for the environment, of course, but it also saves us money on our fuel costs. Actually, the other thing that these do is they drop us out of one of the government levies, which is related to boiler size and boiler capacity. We will no longer be a part of that, which is a further saving on top of the saving we make in gas utilization. On the new categories pillar, pillar number three, we've talked about the Fuel10K yoghurts, which have been very successful so far. We will be continuing to drive those and be looking to get those into more distribution in early stages.
There's then the Fuel10K ready-to-eat porridge, which essentially replicates what we've done with Ambrosia. Moving to our overseas business in Australia, it's probably worth pointing out this is a version of The Spice Tailor. Spice Tailor is generally a pack made for two people. We do know that particularly the best-selling product in Australia, which is butter chicken, which is on there, is a milder flavor and often enjoyed by families. What we've done is we've created a larger family-sized pack. You just have to use one pack to make dinner for the family. What we also should see in Australia is the tapering off and dissipation of that impact from the reduction in buffer stocks on cake. Moving forward to North America, in the U.S., we'll be getting further distribution of The Spice Tailor.
You might remember once before I said we were in one customer and seeing how that was going. We have been pretty pleased with the performance. We are now extending that out into a second big customer, which will come on stream in the second half of the year. We will continue to expand our Mr Kipling apple pies because we have been very pleased with how that started in the U.S., including into Canada, where we have just gained distribution in Canada Walmart for our apple pies, which I think is about 280 stores. In Europe, we will continue to build distribution of The Spice Tailor and Sharwood's, and also now Fuel10K. As I said before, we have just gained distribution of The Spice Tailor in a big customer in the Netherlands.
Fuel10K in the second half will be in the Netherlands, and we'll be in Italy, and we'll be in Portugal as well as we start to roll that brand out now to more countries. Lots happening across the board. At the same time, we've got written down the bottom there, the M&A team will continue to look for more brands that we can buy and which fit our criteria and where we believe that if we apply our branded growth model, we'll be able to deliver further value. To sum up from me then, look, I think we've had good U.K. branded revenue growth despite the warm weather. We were really pleased how it popped up in quarter two once the warm weather started to dissipate.
We've got particularly strong performance from Sweet Treats, that 9.4% growth from our Sweet Treats brand and over 10% from Mr Kipling. We're making further capital investment into our manufacturing sites with attractive returns. The two acquired brands, The Spice Tailor and Fuel10K, have continued to grow really strongly. Plus, of course, in quarter two, we made the Merchant Gourmet acquisition. In terms of outlook, we expect revenue to step up in half two, and that we expect to be a combination of volume and price mix. You've seen we've got a really strong innovation pipeline. I think it's the strongest we've had for several years, to be honest. We'll start to see the benefits of the Merchant Gourmet acquisition as we go through the integration process.
With all that in mind, we're on track, in fact, nicely on track to deliver our trading profit expectations for this year. As I said, adjusted PBT now slightly ahead. I'm always conscious that we're always having this conversation as well halfway through what is our most important quarter in Q3. Whilst there's still an awful lot of water to go under the bridge before we get to Christmas Eve, at the point where I'm standing now, I'd say that we're quite happy with that and that we're on track. Thank you very much, and we'd be more than happy now to take your questions.
Star one on your telephone keypad and just make sure your line is not muted to allow signal reach equipment. Star one for questions. Our very first question this morning is coming from Mr.
Charles Hall of Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Morning, Alex. Morning, Duncan. Well done on good progress through the period. Could you just give a little bit more color on that trend through Q2 and into the early part of Q3, and also a bit of feel on price and volume mix?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Charles. Yes, of course, there was a sort of transition between quarter one and quarter two on our grocery business because of the weather. Sweet Treats remained very strong all the way through, of course. Really, if you look at what the weather did in quarter two, actually July was pretty hot. The start of the quarter was very similar to quarter one, and then things improved as we went through August and September. Essentially, exit rate was a lot stronger than where we were on average through the quarter, if that makes sense. Looking forward into the second half, obviously, we would expect growth to step up in the second half, and that being a mix of volume and value. Does that answer the question, Charles?
Yeah. And sort of what, broadly, even mix between volume and value?
I mean, historically, that's where we've been. I think we'll have to see how it plays out. There is obviously some inflation in there in the second half, but historically, we've tended to be about 50/50.
Perfect. Then on distribution points, one of the great successes has been you landing new products and then sticking on shelf post the initial launch. Have you got any color on how successful you've been on recent product launches in terms of maintaining them on shelf?
I've not got any up-to-date stats on that. I mean, the last time we looked at it, our success rate was about 75%. We measure that as being still present on shelf two years later. A really good measure of sticking power. I haven't got a more up-to-date measure of that. What I can say, though, Charles, is that we're really pleased with this year's MPD pipeline. This is a stronger pipeline than we've had for several years. There are lots of things in there that have already launched that we're really pleased with or are just coming to market now, and the early signs are really good as well. That's got to be a good sign looking forward.
Perfect. Thanks, Alex.
Thanks.
Thank you very much, sir.
Next question will be coming from James Edwardes Jones of RBC. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Alex. Hi, Duncan.
Morning.
Couple, please. First, they're both financial, so probably to you, Duncan. What will a pension plan be in terms of both, I guess, financial disclosure and the reality of Premier's liabilities towards pensioners? Second, the increased CapEx guidance. Where's that increase going? What should we be thinking about for future years?
Perfect. Thanks a lot, James. Let me take both of those, probably in reverse order, if that's okay. Yeah, CapEx, look, I think we've been working hard at trying to obviously deploy as much capital as is sensible and we can sensibly do. We know we've got a big pipeline of projects. We know they return really well for us in terms of payback. As I say, this year, we stepped up guidance to about GBP 50 million from about GBP 40 million last year. I think what we've seen during the first half is really good progress. It's actually putting that capital to work. Clearly, it's in our interest to get that down, projects in and running, getting the returns as quickly as we can.
We've probably made a bit more progress than we expected during the first half, which means we think we'll spend a bit more for the full year. Ticking up guidance, to your point, up to GBP 55 million. From our perspective, this is really positive. This is really what we're all about to do. We know we've got a good track record of generating returns. The other piece is feeling really good about the pipeline of projects, if you like. The 50-odd million, 55, we can see a good home for that capital over many, many years, which just gives us the fuel for our margin progression that we've seen so far.
Very much the 50/55, I would say, is still around what we'd expect to go to spend over the next few years, which again goes to show we've got plenty of good opportunities to deploy capital effectively.
Just on pensions, I mean, look, I think what a buy-in does, I suppose you know it locks down all the remaining risk in the scheme. The company's still responsible for the pension scheme. It's still on the balance sheet, although there'll be some adjustments as and when a buy-in transaction happens. It's probably a bit too detailed to go into now. The risk is completely locked down. One would typically move towards a buy-in transaction, which then removes it from the company and from the balance sheet. I think that is something we're working to.
We've been saying that we expect to get there by the end of next year, roundabout, as best as we can predict these things. I think I'll probably just reiterate what I've said before is sitting here today, I view us pretty well locked down. We've got a really sophisticated hedging strategy, so we're not really exposed to interest rates or inflation. We are continuing to de-risk the assets, and we made further progress of that during the first half. We are taking less risk. I always view the pension scheme pretty much fixed in terms of level of risk out there. Clearly, we need to formalize that by doing a buy-in, and then it may well be that we buy out after that.
Certainly sitting here today, even though we're working towards a buy-in, feeling really comfortable with where the scheme is, and the trustees continue to do a great job running it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir.
We'll now move to Karine Elias of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi, congratulations on a very strong result, and thanks for taking my questions. I just wanted to go back to one of the comments on the bridge facility that you've got. Understand the flexibility overseas, but just understanding how you're thinking about the refinancing. Is it just you being opportunistic, waiting for rates to be lower, or how should we interpret that? Thank you.
Yeah, morning, Karine. Thanks very much for the question. Look, I think clearly we need to refinance the bonds. The high-yield bond market has worked pretty well for us in the past. I think that's certainly where we are today in terms of expectations for the future. The reality is that we're sitting on a 3.5% bond, and any new bond's likely to be more expensive than that. We are making sure that as best as we can, in a sensible way we can, we can approach the bond market in an ordered and sensible way to try and get the best rate possible.
To help us with that, as you pointed out, we put in place a bridge facility, which effectively, obviously, as you'll know, gives us committed financing and allows us to be a bit more deliberate and take a bit more time to do our best to try and approach the market at the right time. Very much just a pushback on timing, and obviously that's flowing through to our interest guidance and upgraded expectations for profit before tax for the year.
Thank you. Fair enough. And best of luck. Thank you.
Thank you, Karine. Next question, we're hearing from Darren Shirley calling from Shore Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning all.
Morning, Darren.
Is it feasible just on EPR? Things were being a bit of a disorder in the year. Obviously, a headwind you did not want. Is there anything you can do to reduce your exposure to EPR? I mean, in a sense, a lot of it is weighted towards sort of glass packaging, heavier packaging, etc. Is there any way you can do to reduce your exposure to that going forward?
I think the short answer is yes. I think the first thing to clarify is obviously that the way EPR has been administered, it means we, or at least the accounting principles around it, mean we have to take all of the cost in the first period of the year. It manifests itself in half one, but we have got it all covered. It is all being recovered. It's all being recovered over the full year. Obviously, that's happening over a year rather than just over the first half. That is why it creates that distortion. Can we reduce our exposure? Yes, we can. We continue the programme we've had for a number of years, which is about reducing the amount of packaging, making the packaging more recyclable, and we can change the mix of the packaging as well.
There's definite work we can and will do on that. There's more to go after. What we don't really know is how the scheme's going to evolve either. I'm not necessarily banking any upside on that looking forward yet until we see how the scheme evolves.
Okay. Another one in Australia. In terms of when did that sort of buffer debuild, let's say, begin? When would you expect that to end? We start to see the good underlying stuff that you've talked about coming through in terms of sales. When we do see that coming through in terms of sales, I mean, what should we be looking at there for you to be viewing it as a success, Alex? Is it double digits? Is it high double digits? If you can give us some idea on time and then a magnitude, it would be helpful.
Yeah, sure, Darren. So look, I think it started in the back end of Q1, but we saw the bulk of the effect during Q2. Obviously, we do not control it. It is really up to the retailers how much stock they want to have in their warehouse. Has it finished? Probably not quite yet. I think we will see it taper off, I think, pretty quickly as we go through the second half. I think most of it has happened in Q2, let us put it that way. And then what sort of performance do we expect to see? I think Australia has clearly had, notwithstanding the stock reduction, the in-market performance, as I mentioned earlier, has been really fantastic. I mean, 17% growth is really excellent performance, no matter how we look at it.
I think we also have to accept that Australia is getting to be a more mature market for us because in the categories we're in, we're the leader, so cake and Indian sauces. As we get more mature, then the percentage growth rates are bound to taper off a bit. Having said that, the counter to that is we're also extending into other categories in Australia, aren't we? We're extending into East Asian cuisine with The Spice Tailor. We're extending. We've put our first feet into gravy. We've got the Bisto Best product in Australia, although we don't have the trademark, so it's called Pacso Best. We're looking at other categories and other ways we can expand, particularly with things like Fuel10K and potentially Merchant Gourmet. We'll have to see how that all plays through.
I'd see a maturation of what we've got in cake and Indian sauces, but then growth coming from the new things we expand into.
Thanks. That's helpful. And then just a last one on marketing. Speaking to one of your branded food is one on the drink side, not too long ago. They were highlighting in their analyst meeting how AI is just basically structurally changing the capability and cost in terms of creating adverts and pace and all of that sort of stuff. And was indicating that sort of the old WPP model was basically dead. I mean, where do you know in terms of your own capabilities and that marketing and AI? Is that something you're going to be? Is it a case of we'll see more stuff, get more bang for your buck, or is there a budget saving there? Anything you can say in terms of sort of that future of marketing would be helpful?
Yeah, no. I mean, absolutely, yes. And we're seeing, I mean, obviously we've got AI helping us in several parts of the business and machine learning as well. But I think actually marketing is one of the areas where you do see more immediately it's starting to help us. It starts to help you with research. It starts to help you with concept development. It starts to help you with pack design. There's a number of ways in which AI is already coming in and helping us. And we're taking an approach there where we're not putting significant upfront investment into that. We're actually working with some of our external partners and using their capabilities. But yes, you're absolutely right.
Okay. I've had my three goals. Thank you and well done.
Thanks, Darren.
Thank you very much, sir. Next question will be coming from Matthew Webb calling from Investec. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Morning, everyone. I wonder if I could just start off by asking about that 13% growth figure for your premium ranges and to what extent that is kind of natural growth, as in growth of existing products very much being sort of pulled by the consumer, as it were, and to what extent that has been driven by your new product development. The second question, which is partly related to that, is clearly the U.K. consumer's not in the best place. You're seeing strong growth at the premium end. Are you also seeing strong growth at the value end? What's happening down there, whether that's just either low-priced products or products that are helping consumers to cook from scratch? That'll be really helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, morning, Matthew. So yeah, look, I mean, obviously we're delighted with that 13% growth from the premium ranges. The answer is it's some of both. What we're learning more and more is that there are definitely shoppers out there, consumers out there who are prepared to pay a bit more for a product that is noticeably better. As long as the product is genuinely better, there are people prepared to pay that bit more. Some of it is growth in our long-standing premium ranges, like Bisto Best, for example, which is performing better than Bisto on average. Some of it is actually driven by new products we've brought to market. We launched, for example, the Ambrosia Premium Range, the Deluxe Range, a few years ago, and that's continued to grow very strongly.
In this first half, we've put a premium version of Lloyd Grossman sauces in there, which I referenced earlier, that is made in Italy out of premium ingredients. I guess some of it is consumer pull, and some of it is us bringing more premium ranges to market, given that we know that there are consumers who want to buy them. That is great. In terms of the overall consumer environment, it is an interesting one, really, is it not? You have to remember that most of our products are really relatively low-cost things to buy. We are not selling cars here. We are selling things that only cost a few pounds to buy. We all need to cook, and the cheapest way to eat is to cook for yourself at home. A lot of our products go into making those meals.
What tends to happen in times of economic volatility or uncertainty is that our sort of product portfolio tends to be relatively resilient. We do not really feel the highs and the lows of how the consumer's feeling because people need to cook and eat anyway. What we do see is we see variance, particularly in the number of people eating at home versus eating out or getting takeaways. When the consumer's under a bit of pressure, we see actually people dropping into our brands who would have otherwise maybe gone out for dinner on Saturday night. I would say it is a pretty resilient portfolio.
Got it. Thank you. Just one final question. Just hearing again the process of getting your product into Australia, freezing it, shipping it halfway around the world, it still strikes me as not the most efficient way of doing it. I mean, are there any thoughts of switching to local production in Australia, maybe getting a third party to do it for you?
No, there isn't, actually. The reason for that is the kit you need, the production line you need to make the Mr Kipling cakes are expensive, big and complicated bits of equipment, production lines. That doesn't exist in Australia, and it would not be economically sound for us to start to invest capital in Australia to produce those given the absolute potential market size. We will continue to ship from the U.K. because despite one's initial reactions, that actually is the most efficient way to do it.
Got it. Okay. Thanks very much.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have any questions or follow-up questions, please press star one at this time. Next question is coming from Damian McNeela of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, everybody. Thanks for taking the questions. I think the first one is around your market share development. Now, I appreciate you've made pretty good progress over the last three years of 130 basis points. Given the fact that share gains have seemed to have stalled, can we read into that that competition in U.K. branded has got a lot harder in recent months? Just any comments on that, please. Just looking at the sort of costs, so your input costs for 2H and into next year, is there anything that's moving that's worth flagging that may impact on your cost line, please?
Yeah. Morning, Damian. Yeah, I mean, look, obviously we've been delighted to have taken 130 basis points of market share over the last three years. I think that all comes down to the branded growth model and how we drive our brands. I think what we've seen in the first half of this year is we've continued to make really good progress taking market share with the Sweet Treats brands. Obviously, 9.4% growth and actually double-digit growth for Mr Kipling is obviously above market growth. What we've seen in grocery is the impact that that hot weather has structurally compresses your market share. It is because our share tends to be highest in categories which are most weather-affected. For example, Bisto, we've got a very, very high share of gravy. Gravy stops growing when it's hot. Consequently, we get a structural market share rebalancing.
I think that's probably the biggest factor in there. Yes, our categories are always competitive. We've got categories that are more competitive than others. Actually, I think the biggest thing going on here is that weather impact on market share factor. In terms of input costs, I mean, look, we buy a huge basket of different things from packaging to ingredients. Obviously, we've got energy and all sorts of things. There's nothing really in there. We're all aware of cocoa, obviously. Although that's come off the peak now, there's nothing in there that's particularly notable. I don't think going forwards. At the moment, our input cost inflation, as I've said before, is about in line with food price inflation in general, so mid-single digit.
We're hopeful that what will happen as we go forward next year is that that will start to taper away. The food industry will be back to where it used to be, which is sort of fairly benign, low single-digit input costs and then food inflation. We'll just have to see how it plays out.
Yeah. So there are no surprises from Rachel next week or a couple of weeks.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, as a final reminder, if you have any questions or follow-up questions, please press star one. We do not appear to have any further questions. So it is being called back over to the management for any additional closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone, for joining this morning. As you can probably see, we're really pleased with that step up in our U.K. branded performance in Q2. As I say, driven by that strong Sweet Treats performance continuing, but also our grocery business popping back up after the hot weather started to ease. As you've seen, we continue to make good progress against the five strategic pillars, which we will continue to drive. The aim at the end of the day is to scale up Premier Foods and make it into a much bigger business than the one we've got today. Thank you very much.