Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's presentation. We are now into the live Q&A portion of the presentation. As I said in the pre-record, on the first of April, we passed a major strategic milestone with the divestment of the Premium business. The new Tate & Lyle performed very well in the year, delivering double digit revenue and profit growth, and we are effectively managing inflationary and supply chain headwinds.
I'm also delighted that this morning we completed the acquisition of Quantum Hi-Tech, a leading dietary fiber business in China, which will significantly strengthen our fortification platform and customer offering. Before we take any questions, I would like to once again extend a warm welcome to Dawn, who joins us for her first results presentation today. Our first question comes from Alex Sloane. Alex, good morning.
Morning, Nick and Dawn. Thanks for taking the questions. There's a couple from my side, if okay. Maybe just the first one just on sucralose. Obviously a very strong year, 15% profit growth, which I think was well ahead of what perhaps you and certainly the sell side were anticipating at the start of the year. The question would be is that kind of new base sustainable? Obviously after you know mid-teens volume growth, where does that leave you from a capacity perspective? The second one was just on cash flow outlook.
I appreciate, you know, last year was quite an exceptional year with the transaction, but maybe you could kind of give us a sense of, you know, how you see cash conversion going forward, you know, maybe versus EBITDA or another reference point in 2023, and into the medium term?
Sure, Alex. Thanks. Let me take the sucralose question first. Look, I mean, clearly we're delighted with the performance of sucralose last year, and we benefited from a number of key trends. The first is sucralose continues to grow strongly, and of course, there was a recovery last year because of the out of home beverage market recovering.
We saw a really strong pull from some of our biggest customers. The second thing is the fact that we're the only sucralose player making products in North America is a big benefit for us, and our quality and our food safety and our environmental credentials are a really strong draw for our customers. All that flowed through in the results we saw last year.
The third thing, of course, as you rightly point out, is we've managed to create some more capacity in McIntosh to drive growth. We've committed to some modest capacity expansion because of the success we've seen in the last few years. We're not expecting the kind of growth we saw last year.
We do expect to see some modest growth on the top line this year and some pretty consistent earnings coming out of the sucralose business as we go forward. On cash, I'll ask Dawn to comment here as well. I mean, clearly last year was an exceptional year because we had this big swinging working capital at the end of the year 'cause of the transaction.
To close the sale of the Premium business, you know, both building working capital for us so that we could keep customers served and building working capital for Premium . We got the, you know, $120 million back in the transaction post the year-end. We're expecting to see more normal approach to working capital going forward. The good news for us, of course, is the balance sheet remains really strong to allow us to invest for future growth. Just hand over to Dawn maybe to add a little bit of color.
Yeah. Thanks, Nick, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for the question, Alex. As Nick just said, the most important piece from a cash perspective is that we've got a really strong balance sheet and liquidity to be able to invest for the future, but also a cushion in terms of any potential challenges. Nick's outlined the one-off pieces for 2022, and as we look forward to 2023, what's important is that we will continue to invest behind growth.
From a capital expenditure point of view, we're increasing from GBP 75 million to between GBP 90 million- GBP 100 million, and that's really important. The other piece from a cash flow perspective is in an inflationary environment, of course, that puts pressure on working capital, and we will look to mitigate and manage through that.
The other thing to say as an incoming CFO is cash is really important to me, and it will be a key focus area for this year.
Thank you, Dawn.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, Alex. Our next question comes from James Targett at Berenberg. James, good morning.
Hello. Good morning, Nick. Good morning, Dawn. Yeah, a couple of questions. I mean, firstly, maybe just start on the inflation. You know, you mentioned GBP 100 million was your inflation impact for FY 2022. Can you give us what you expect for FY 2023? Then I suppose linked to that, just trying to break down your expectations for the top line outlook in F&BS between, you know, pricing, mix and volume growth.
Sure. I mean, let's start with maybe a little bit of color on last year. I mean, clearly we saw strong volume growth and good revenue translation, which was driven by two things. Successfully managing to shift the mix of our business.
If you think about the revenue accretion, we got about five points from new products and mix, and then passing through inflationary pressures where we needed to, and that all led to a significant increase from volume to revenue, so 5% volume, 18% revenue growth. The encouraging piece of that, though, is if you strip out the extraordinary inflationary impact that the GBP 100 million drove, we saw good translation on the base mix. The quality of business we're doing is improving.
We're anticipating seeing something similar this year in terms of driving continued improvement in mix. I mean, to be honest, James, it's very difficult to give you a precise number on inflation at this point. You know, we're gonna work really hard on productivity again this year, really hard on cost control.
You know, we've put some supplementary pricing through, which we'll adjust as we see how things evolve. Our intent for sure is to try and cover inflation this year again with those three things, productivity, cost control, and the right kind of pricing while not slowing down the top line.
If I just follow up, I mean, you know, you talk about demand being strong, and obviously the new products, you know, continue to grow strongly. You know, a mid-single digit volume figure is not unrealistic, in your opinion. Then on the pricing, you know, maybe if you could talk about when your kind of first incremental price increase, you know, hits, and maybe some sort of color on the magnitude of that increase.
Look, I think it's a bit early to tell how volume will evolve. You know, we're still seeing good demand for what we do, as I said. On pricing, you know, we're actively engaging with customers now in supplementary pricing and passing that through in the first half of the year.
I mean, clearly there's a balance there between keeping customers served and making sure that they can manage their costs as well. We're having the right kind of conversations, and we'll stage it through the year as we see how things evolve, 'cause it is a very uncertain environment at the moment. The good news is the engagement early on is strong.
Okay, thanks very much.
I think our next question comes from Martin Deboo at Jefferies. Martin, good morning.
Yeah, Nick and Dawn, good morning, thanks. I've got three. I don't know if that's allowed. The first one may overlap with Alex's question. I was distracted. I just wanna try and get a fix on where pro forma first of April net debt ended up.
Dawn gave some very useful numbers, which on the back of an envelope seemed to me to suggest that before Quantum, you probably had a pro forma position of about -GBP 60 million, relative to what you said you'd be around neutral, I think. Am I? And the reason I think you're negative is you ultimately had to put more working capital into the business, and relative to my numbers, a bit more exceptionals is how I'm seeing it. I'll just be grateful for your corroboration of that.
Moving on to the trading, you made this statement on page four that you have committed agreements in place for key inputs covering the majority of the first half of 2023. It's a slightly odd statement, Nick, given that the business runs on calendar year. Contracting implies there's an uncertainty around the fourth calendar quarter.
But can you remind me, now we're in this new world, with these complex supply agreements in the prospectus, just give me an idiot's guide to, in the new world, how is corn procurement working for F&BS, and how much and what sort of risk is F&BS taking on corn? Then the third one, if you'll allow me, is just what's the outlook for Europe Primary Products, given it's still a retained business. European corn price is clearly up.
I think this is really an isoglucose business. Where are we versus the isoglucose sugar price? What's the situation on capacity utilization in isoglucose Europe? How would we think about the outlook for Europe Primary?
Sure. Okay, why don't I take the second two questions, then I'll ask Dawn to comment on the debt position post the transaction completion. Your first question on corn. What we've said is we're substantially covered through the first half of our financial year, which to your point takes us to the end of the third quarter of the calendar year.
That's really a reference to Europe, Martin, where, as you know, forward cover on corn is more problematic. Typically what you do is you buy the season ahead. We're starting to lay in cover for the next crop season in Europe as we speak, as farmers start to bring to market what they're planning to plant.
In North America, as you rightly point out, it's an annual process, because we contract annually, we're fully covered on corn in North America through the end of the calendar year. I hope that gives you a simpler explanation of that.
As part of that, as we've done when we do contracting, we back-to-back the cost of corn, although Primient will be buying it on our behalf. It's really no change to the North American position. Hopefully that gives you a clearer sense of the difference between Europe and North America, which is really no different to the past, I guess, is a simple way of putting it, with us using Primient as a source of our corn.
I think your third question was about Primary Products in Europe, if I remember. You know, pre-anything to do with Ukraine, Russia, we were anticipating a moderation in the challenge in Primary Products in Europe. You know, improvement in the pricing situation and therefore, you know, no drag on the business this year.
It's a little bit early to tell how things are evolving at the moment, and we'll give more color to it as the year evolves. What we are seeing, as you say, is continued pressure on corn prices. We're also seeing an increase in the price for isoglucose and also for co-products. At the moment, those two things are balancing each other off in the near term.
We'll see how that evolves as we get into the year. Then last year, your question on net debt and post the transaction completion. I'll ask Dawn to pick that one up.
Yeah. Thanks, Nick. Thanks, Martin. Yeah, so from a net debt to EBITDA perspective, post-transaction, post-disposal of Primient, and post the Quantum acquisition, as we've said, our net debt to EBITDA ratio will be less than one. If you think about the split within that piece, we'll be carrying cash on hand, and that's important to ensure that we've got the availability of cash, and that we can move quickly in terms of future acquisitions.
We're also obviously keeping the debt that we've currently got for two reasons. One, because it's a reasonable interest rate, and the other reason is if we looked to pay down that debt, we would incur penalties. If we needed to raise more debt for future acquisitions, given the fact that interest rates are rising, that would likely be at a higher level.
I think from a balance sheet efficiency perspective, that's something, you know, over the next few months that I will look into to ensure that we are being as efficient as we can.
Okay. Thank you, Martin. Our next question comes from John Ennis at Goldman Sachs. John, good morning.
Hi, good morning, everyone, and welcome, Dawn. I've got a couple of questions. My first is coming back to the volume growth outlook for F&BS into 2023. Because I guess volume sequentially slowed in the second half, particularly in the developed market part of your business, albeit impacted by comps and pricing and other aspects.
But as you take another round of price increases in 2023, do you think volumes can grow again for the F&BS business, both at a total level but also for your developed market businesses? So I'm not after a range, but just a guide on whether you think volumes can be positive again this year. Then my second question is on the topic of integrated solutions.
You mentioned this as a driver of growth on Slide 25. If we combine that component with the new product revenue, which are together effectively, I suppose, your higher value add part of the portfolio, like, can you give us a bit more of a steer on what the outlook is there?
How big is that going to be as part of your portfolio? I know you have the new product targets on a five-year view, but maybe if you combine those two components, that would be helpful, either as a snapshot of where they are now or where you're expecting them to get to. Thank you.
Sure, John. Two good questions. Look, I think on volume growth, you know, I think we have to look at last year as a whole. Let's start with that. 5%, very encouraging, probably at the high end of where we'd anticipated being. I mean, you rightly said, you know, different comps, half one, half two.
Half one very much impacted by COVID the year before. Half two's, you know, lapping a recovery. But the overall run rate remains very positive, and we're seeing that in the early part of this year. I think it's entirely possible that we're gonna see volume growth this year, despite all of the challenges of the sort of inflationary environment. We'll see how things evolve through the next few months as things stabilize.
That's sort of the headline at least, without putting any numbers on it, because in today's environment, it's. I don't wanna be too precise. On our integrated solutions, I mean, clearly there's a big overlap between new products and solutions. 'Cause you tend to find with new products that the formulation side of that is more important for customers as they understand the power of what we're doing.
You know, new products is a proportion of revenue, 14% last year, 16% if you take out the Primary Products Europe business, which just gives you sort of a sense of the progress year on year. I'd say, you know, our integrated solutions business is now tipping into the sort of 20% in total of the overall business.
Increasingly what we're seeing in our pipeline for new business is a much higher proportion of that coming from solutions. We're looking to see that evolve as new products grow as part of the portfolio over the next few years. How far can we get?
I mean, time will tell, but we're making progress and the kind of progress that's driving the kind of margin profile we want to see, and that's the focus to continue to drive that progress. If we do that, we'll get the right balance of growth.
That's really helpful. Just to confirm, you're effectively saying maybe 1/3 of your business, if you combine the two, given there's a degree of overlap between new products and integrated solutions. Is that correct?
Look, I would
That's 20 + 16 minus a bit of overlap.
No, I think you have to think about it more closer to the 20 than the third.
Okay. Understood.
I wasn't as clear as I maybe should have been.
Okay. Understood. That's very helpful. Thank you both.
Okay. Thanks, John. Our next question comes from Alicia Forry at Investec. Alicia, good morning.
Hi. Good morning, Nick, and welcome, Dawn. Look forward to meeting you soon. Just a couple questions from me. Just back to the Europe Primary Products business. Can you talk a little bit about the efficiency initiatives that you see for that? Because presumably, that's going to be less of a drag over time on the group. I was just curious if you could speak to a possible timeline on that.
I think we would have thought, you know, FY 2023 would be another tough year, given inflationary pressures. Your answer to a previous question suggests perhaps it's not quite as tough, maybe a little bit more benign, than we might have feared. Should we expect another leg down in profits in FY 2023, on that Europe PP business?
There are two different questions in there. Let me answer the second one first. Yeah, coming into the year, we were anticipating less of a drag from Primary Products in Europe as we started to see sugar prices improve. We're still anticipating that that's a possibility, but we need to see how the balance between corn price and sugar price evolves over the next few months.
As I said, we're seeing improved pricing on both isoglucose and co-products, which is helping with the corn price increase at the moment. But it's certainly less of a drag than we've seen in the past last year. The second point about efficiency initiatives, we're working on capital programs to divert that capacity out of Primary Products in Europe into Food & Beverage Solutions.
As we do that, we'll see a reduction in the amounts of primary product that we sell in Europe, and we'll shift it into high-margin business. That's going to be a two, three, five-year journey. It's gonna gradually evolve over time. It's not gonna happen overnight, but that will help with reducing the drag that you talked about.
Thank you. That's clear. On the investment that you will be making incrementally into sucralose, is that going to be occurring in FY 2023, or is that for a future year?
Those investments are going in as we speak this year. We will see some benefit in terms of capacity uplift this year, and then it will be fully complete for the next financial year.
Okay, great. If I could just squeeze one last one in, and then I'll pass the mic along. Just the recent acquisitions that you have made, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the impact they're having on the business in terms of, you know, whether revenue synergies, cost synergies, anything you can talk about with how they're.
Sure.
Delivering.
Let me talk about the two acquisitions we did a year or so ago. The stevia business and the tapioca business. I mean, clearly those businesses are different supply chains, so the cost synergies are relatively modest. Although for those businesses, of course, we're selling them through our sales force, so there's no additional cost from a sales perspective.
We are seeing significant synergies, especially with stevia, as we think to formulate alongside our other sweeteners. We're seeing, I mean, the stevia business doubled in size last year, which, you know, is incredibly encouraging and ahead of where we had our business case.
It's a combination of selling stevia solutions alone, but also stevia combined with some of our other ingredients, like monk fruit, to provide, you know, multiple solutions for customers. We are definitely seeing revenue synergies as a result of that. Actually, you know, stevia alone delivered, you know, a couple of points of revenue growth last year as part of the 18% I talked about. We talk about the two acquisitions we've done. Very different in nature.
Quantum, which we announced today, significantly broadens our dietary fiber business by bringing FOS and GOS into the portfolio and encouragingly, significantly enhances our position in China. We're expecting from that business to get a real benefit in China, 'cause we're establishing a really strong manufacturing platform.
Alongside our other fibers, we believe FOS and GOS can play outside China as well. We're expecting to see synergies in China and then the ability to grow it outside China. The other deal that we announced in April, so the Nutriati chickpea protein and flour deal, is much more about testing our ability to successfully grow in protein.
As much part of that will be how we combine the plant protein from Nutriati with our other ingredients to provide customer solutions. 'Cause if you look at the ingredient label of a plant protein product, it's got a lot of the other stuff that we make in it.
We believe there's an opportunity there to create some synergies across our other platforms as well, which is really the trick for us as we continue to improve our ability to provide solutions for customers, not just ingredients.
Thanks so much.
Our next question comes from Karel Zoete, Kepler Cheuvreux. Good morning.
Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I have a couple of questions, and the first one is on mix. I think at the half year one stage, we were at a mix benefit of around 7%. For the full year, you now call out a 3% benefit of mix. Just curious, how things have developed in H2 as your new product sales continue to be high.
The second question is more on the reorganization of your R&D by integrating more closely core R&D with solutions and applications. Yeah, why is this important? What changes it? How do you develop new product and go to the market? The third one is coming back to the acquisition in China.
You mentioned it as a solution for fiber, so the cost proposition. To my knowledge, it's widely used in IFCN, also as a kinda like a sugar product to replicate human milk. What are the opportunities in terms of products as a fiber in other solutions in dairy and other food categories? Thank you.
Okay. Why don't I give you the headline on mix. I think the mix benefit in the full year was round about five points, right, Dawn?
Yeah.
We just called out the fact that three of that came from, if you like, the core portfolio, and two of it came from acquisitions, so from stevia. The reason for that is just to give some clarity. It was really actually pretty consistent through the year. It's just we called it out slightly differently at the end of the year. I think that's fair to say, isn't it?
Yes.
No significant shift at half one, half two. I mean, you're always gonna see a little bit of phasing through the year anyway. Your second question about R&D. The importance of the reorganization, in simple terms, is this, which is in Chicago, we've got this innovation engine that comes up with new products.
Then our application sciences, so those who understand applying those ingredients to the food matrix and to provide solutions for customers in critical categories, happens at a regional level. Creating a better interface between those teams to drive faster application with customers is key.
If you like, strengthening the link by putting those two teams together is allowing a better flow of information, and that allows us to create prototypes and solutions faster for customers, which therefore allows our innovation engine to work in a more effective way. That's sort of as simple as that. Then your last question about China and the fibers business.
Look, I mean, we think there's massive potential to formulate with the Quantum products, the Quantum fibers in our existing portfolio. Which categories and that's gonna be most effective in, we'll learn over time. You know, literally, the acquisition concluded today. But you rightly point out, we see a big opportunity in dairy.
We actually think there's a big opportunity in beverage as well, and we'll learn a lot as we move forward over the next few months.
All right. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Patrick Higgins at Goodbody. Morning, Patrick. We can't currently hear you, Patrick. Maybe we'll move on and come back. Next is Heidi Vesterinen from-
Can you hear me now?
Oh, yeah, I can hear you, Patrick. That's good. Okay.
Sorry.
Excellent. No problem.
My Zoom messing with me. Morning, guys, and thanks for taking my questions. Just three, if I may. Firstly, just on the slight slowdown in Q4, how much of that is just down to a tougher prior year comp, or is there an element of timing, I guess, with maybe some volume being pushed into Q1 of this year, given, I guess, the strength of the Q3 performance as well?
Second question is just on central costs. Obviously, higher than expected and a big step up in H2. Could you just talk us through some of the additional investments during the H2 period that lifted that? I guess how much flex is in that number from year to year, depending on the momentum in the rest of the business.
Finally, you know, you've mentioned customer demand has been strong into 2023. How do you see that developing as the year progresses, and I guess customers look to manage cost inflation, and perhaps dial down inflation? Or do you see, you know, structural trends, and trying to remain relevant to consumers means that they need to keep innovating strongly?
Let me take the first question and the last question, and maybe Dawn can pick up the central cost question.
Yeah.
On the quarter four, you're right. There was a little bit of slowdown in quarter four. I'm not reading too much into it at this point because any one quarter can be kind of a little bit up and down, and the timing can sometimes get in the way. We're still, as I said, seeing good customer demand as we come into the first quarter.
If I link that to your sort of last question, what we're seeing at the moment is tremendous pressure on global supply chains. you know, customers are really struggling to acquire the materials they need to keep their businesses running, and that goes right the way through to retail. We're seeing, you know, unlimited demand for what we do.
You know, pretty much we as much as we can ship, we can sell. Whether that continues much beyond the next six months or so, we'll see. I mean, I think it's likely we're gonna see a consumer shift out of home into in home. That happened in the pandemic, but we still saw good demand for what we do 'cause of the balance across channels.
People will still need to eat and drink in an inflationary environment. In the near term, we're seeing good outlook for what we're doing. In the medium term, we know that the way we've positioned the business against the growing trends of healthier food and beverage is precisely the right place to be.
What we don't know yet is, as we get through, you know, the summer period into the back end of this financial year and the next financial year, how that shift is gonna occur. It's gonna require us to be very agile, both in how we innovate with customers, balance between value and other innovation, and agile in the geographic mix we're gonna see. What we do know is that the medium-term demand for what we do is very strong. I don't know, Dawn, whether you wanna pick up the central cost point.
Yeah, sure. I think what's important from a cost point of view is that we've got a cost base that enables us to grow, and that is the single overriding factor. I think the other pieces are within that, ensuring that we've got the right resource allocation, that our resources are allocated to the areas that will generate the most value and also, particularly at the moment, that we're being responsible and that we're looking for cost efficiencies and cost optimization. I think we'll continue to do that as we have done last year as we move through this year.
Great. Thank you, Dawn. We're now gonna go to Heidi Vesterinen at BNP Paribas. Heidi, good morning. I'm afraid I think you're still on mute. Okay. I believe we've got another question from Alex Sloane at Barclays. Alex, you're back.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking the follow-up. Just on the JV piece, obviously a very challenging year for the sweeteners and starches. I wonder if you could give us a sense of maybe how much of the decline there was one-off. I think you referenced some, you know, disruption versus
You know, what we should be kind of thinking about the pro forma base to model JV prospects into next year. Just one, just very quick one. Just on Quantum, obviously a leader in GOS and FOS. I did notice a couple of years ago, they were talking about R&D in human milk oligosaccharides in China. I wondered if that's still an ongoing, you know, piece of research and maybe growth opportunity for that business. Thanks.
Sure. Let me pick up the JV point first. You know, we saw two impacts on the JV business last year. I'm primarily talking about Primary Products in North America. We saw, as we said at the half year, some operational disruption as we put some more environmentally friendly power into one of the plants, and that created some disruption that impacted the first half. You know, I think that number was in the sort of GBP 6 million range.
Then, of course, what we saw in the second half was an acceleration of cost inflation, especially in the third quarter before the pricing round. You know, through the pricing round, the JV or the Primary Products business successfully managed to restore margins as a result of the right pricing discipline.
We're expecting to see a recovery from that. The other thing we saw last year was very strong performance from the Bio-PDO JV. We're expecting over time, as we've said before, to see stable earnings out of that business and a good dividend.
We'll see how things evolve this year. We know that KPS are very focused on growing that business, and we're expecting to see some recovery as a result this year. Alex, on your second question, yeah, you're right. There is still some research going on. It may or may not be an interesting opportunity for the future.
I mean, in the near term, we're gonna be very focused on continuing to successfully grow the FOS and GOS business, and that's done really well in the last few years, so we're excited about having it in the portfolio.
Thank you.
I think now we're gonna go back to Martin Deboo at Jefferies. Martin?
Yeah. Hi. It's a follow-up on central costs. It goes to the question that's just been asked, but I just wanna come at it another way. The central cost line was significantly higher than consensus was looking for, and I'm still not entirely clear what this incremental investment going through the central cost line is. And also it just feels odd that when the retained business is a significantly smaller scale, the central line, cost line is going up rather than down.
I wouldn't expect central cost to pro rata down with the sales, but you'd imagine that there will be some opportunity to make savings. Given it's now quite a material part of the profit mix, what sort of FY 2023 outlook is there on central cost?
So-
Can we just understand this, what this investment-
So-
Is it again that's going through the central cost line?
Yes, I mean, clearly there's some investment in growth opportunities and in M&A resource. You know, and as we think about this year, we're not anticipating an increase in central costs. One of the tasks we have now as we think about Tate & Lyle is how do we look at the cost base through fresh eyes, and if you like, adjust where we put our costs to accelerate growth.
That's a process that we'll go through in the next few months and will then help us think about the future cost base of the business. I wouldn't anticipate a significantly different outlook on central costs in the near term while we go through that work. I don't know, Dawn, whether you want to add anything to that.
Yeah, nothing.
Okay.
Nothing to add.
Okay, thanks.
I think, Heidi Vesterinen at BNP has another question. No? Karel, apparently you have another question, so from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Yes, please. You know, call out that you expect to be a net zero carbon by 2050, which is, I think, a new statement. What's the delta here? Is that you've been selling three large plants or has there been a progress elsewhere? So what's the delta why you can now make that statement? And how much is based on CO2 offsets or where do you see real reduction of emissions?
The difference, Karel, in increasing our ambition on our environmental footprint is we've done a significant amount of research in the last year on our Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. We're very clear we've got robust programs funded to hit the targets we set for 203
0. That's the near term for the business. Beyond 2030, as technology evolves and we see an increased focus on carbon reduction and climate reduction for us in our Scope 3, we're confident that we'll be able to get to net zero by 2050. I mean, clearly things are gonna evolve. Technology will change, regulations will change, but we've got a very solid idea of how we're gonna get there to our 2030 targets.
I'm pretty confident that from the research we've done, technology will allow us to deliver on the net zero commitment by 2050. What's really changed is we've done a lot more research on it this year to lay out the pathway to get there.
That's good. The factories you've kind of sold to the JV, those are now in your Scope 3, right?
Those are in our Scope 3, yes.
Okay.
As part of the agreements we have in place is a commitment to deliver on the carbon reduction targets we'd set for those plants up to 2030 as well.
Super. Thanks.
I'm gonna try one last time to come back to Heidi Vesterinen at BNP. Heidi, you there?
Hi, Nick. Hi, Dawn. This is the operator. I'm gonna ask a question on behalf of Heidi Vesterinen.
Okay
From BNP Paribas. The question is, have you seen any customers switching out of corn, given the high prices? That's question number one. Question number two from Heidi is, given the industry's move towards broader solution-based approaches, could it make sense for Tate & Lyle to be part of a larger organization? Thinking back to your earlier comment on making yourself an attractive partner for specialty ingredient companies.
On the first question, on switching out of corn, we haven't seen anything yet. We'll see how things evolve over the next few months. The second question on whether we could be part of a bigger organization, our focus very much is on the growth of Tate & Lyle. I think we've done a really great job of positioning the company for future growth with the recent divestment we've done.
Alongside that, we've done four acquisitions that we're really hopeful and confident, in fact, are gonna accelerate our growth and allow us to more effectively serve our customers. As Dawn said earlier, with the strength of the balance sheets and our established ability to do the right kind of deals, we're confident other things will come along.
Our focus in the short term is absolutely on continuing the successful growth trajectory of the business this year, integrating the acquisitions we've done, notably the Quantum deal we announced this morning or completed this morning rather, and then navigating the short term while seeing the exciting potential of the business for the long term. I think with that, we're at the end of the Q&A. Look, thank you everybody for watching and for all of your terrific questions.
Just in summary, we've successfully repositioned Tate & Lyle as a growth-focused specialty Food & Beverage Solutions business, and we're actively focused on delivering on that growth agenda. We look forward to meeting you soon, and at our Capital Markets Day event later in this financial year.
In the meantime, thank you for your time and I wish you all a very good day.