Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I am pleased to present Tate & Lyle's results for the year ended 31st of March, 2024. The agenda for today's presentation is on the screen. I will begin with an overview of the year. Dawn will run through the financial results, and then I will come back to talk about our strategic progress and the outlook. Finally, Dawn and I will be happy to take your questions. Starting with the key headlines, we successfully delivered a strong financial performance in a challenging external environment, with profit growth in line with our guidance and excellent cash generation. The sale of our remaining interest in Primient, which we also announced today, completes the transformation of Tate & Lyle into a fully focused specialty food and beverage solutions business.
Following completion of this transaction, we intend to start a share buyback program to return the net cash proceeds from the sale to shareholders. We continued to make good progress delivering our strategy, with solutions new business wins once again increasing in the year. We are also taking a leadership position on sustainability, a critical area for the future of the food industry. Turning to our financial performance, group revenue was 2% lower, with EBITDA up 7%. Free cash flow was GBP 49 million higher, with 85% cash conversion, and we delivered $41 million of productivity savings, significantly ahead of target. Earlier today, we announced we have signed an agreement to sell our remaining stake in Primient to KPS Capital Partners for $350 million.
This values our 49.7% stake well ahead of the valuation when we sold a controlling interest in this business in April 2022. It is anticipated that the completion of the sale will be before the end of July, and that net cash proceeds after tax will be around $270 million. The 20-year supply agreements between Primient and Tate & Lyle, put in place in April 2022, will continue to operate. The sale completes our staged exit from Primient, well ahead of expiry of the original lock-up period of eight years to April 2030. Total gross cash proceeds from the sale of Primient, together with dividends received since April 2022, exceed $1.5 billion. The board intends to return the net cash proceeds from the sale of Primient to shareholders by way of an on-market share buyback program.
This is expected to commence on completion of the Primient sale. This decision is consistent with the board's capital allocation policy, which Dawn will talk about later. Further details about the share buyback program will be announced in due course. Over the last six years, we've been on a journey to transform Tate & Lyle into a fully focused specialty food and beverage solutions business. With the sale of Primient, this transformation is complete. Over that period, we have fundamentally changed the way we focus on customers and categories, invested in our innovation and solution selling capabilities, and significantly strengthened each of our sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification platforms through both new product launches and acquisitions. The transformation has positioned Tate & Lyle right at the center of the future of food, focused on creating solutions that meet growing consumer demand for healthier, tastier, and more sustainable food and drink.
We have a clear strategy and purpose, and are very well-placed to capture the considerable growth opportunities ahead. Moving to our strategic progress during the year, I am pleased to report we made good progress on our ambition to accelerate growth from innovation and solution selling. New products as a percentage of Food & Beverage Solutions revenue was 16%, and we met our target of growing our investment in innovation and solution selling by at least 5% in the year. Solutions revenue from new business wins increased to 21%, and I will talk more about this later in my presentation. Finally, turning to our purpose targets, where we continue to perform well. We made strong progress reducing greenhouse gas emissions, both within our own operations and across our supply chain.
Our Scope 1 and 2 emissions have been reduced by 11% over the last four years, benefiting in particular from an increase in the use of renewable electricity. Our Scope 3 emissions are now 20% lower, exceeding our 2030 target of a 15% reduction, seven years ahead of schedule. This has been driven largely by the investments we made previously in three plants now owned by Primient to eliminate the use of coal and the success of our sustainable agriculture programs for corn and stevia. Our other purpose metrics are also progressing well. For example, over the last four years, our no and low-calorie sweeteners and fibers have helped to remove 7.9 million tons of sugar from people's diets. That's 31 trillion calories, or more than the recommended daily calorie intake for the entire global population.
As a purpose-led business, we recognize the importance of combining growth with responsibility, and that means playing our part in tackling climate change. This is critical for the future of the food industry, as around a third of the planet's greenhouse gas emissions comes from food production and agriculture. In addition, agriculture currently uses 70% of the world's fresh water. For that reason, I'm delighted that earlier this month, we announced a significant increase in our climate ambition, with new Scope 1 and 2, and Scope 3 emissions targets to 2028. These targets have been validated as science-based by the Science-Based Targets Initiative, and are aligned to a 1.5 degrees centigrade trajectory, in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. In summary, this means we will now be delivering a larger reduction in emissions at a faster pace.
We are already taking actions to make this happen, and I look forward to sharing our progress in future presentations. I will come back to talk about our strategic progress and the outlook later, but for now, I will hand over to Dawn to talk through the financial results. Dawn, over to you.
Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. In line with previous presentations, I will focus on adjusted measures. Items with percentage growth are in constant currency, unless I indicate otherwise. As Nick said, we have successfully navigated a challenging external environment and softer consumer demand with considerable agility to deliver another year of strong profit growth, in line with our guidance and acceleration in our productivity program, with savings well ahead of our target. Excellent cash generation, driven by significantly improved working capital discipline, and continued investment for the long term across all three pillars of science, solutions, and society. In terms of financial highlights, despite the fact that group revenue was 2% lower, we delivered EBITDA growth of 7%, with EBITDA margin 170 basis points higher at 19.9%.
Profit before tax was 18% higher, reflecting strong performance from food and beverage solutions and improved performance in our minority holding in Primient and lower finance charges. Earnings per share were 18% higher. Return on capital employed was 20 basis points lower at 17.4%, while on an organic basis, it was 40 basis points higher. Finally, free cash flow was up GBP 49 million, at GBP 170 million. So overall, the business showed considerable agility and resilience to deliver a robust financial performance. Moving on to our three operating segments. Starting with food and beverage solutions, this business is our growth engine and represents more than 80% of our revenue. Revenue was 2% lower, with 5 percentage points decrease from volume and price mix, partially offset by 3 percentage points increase from the recovery of net inflation across the year.
The volume and price mix decrease of 5 percentage points was driven by two factors: firstly, 6 percentage points volume reduction from the impact of consumer demand softness and customer destocking. Secondly, a 1 percentage point benefit from our continued focus on mix management and solution selling. Looking at the performance of our three regions, in North America, revenue was 3% lower, driven by cost-of-living pressures on consumers, resulting in softer demand across our core categories. In Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, revenue was down 3%. In Asia, revenue was lower, reflecting pricing pressure and weaker demand, particularly in China. In Latin America, revenue declined, driven by lower-priced imports from outside the region, especially in Mexico. In the Middle East and Africa, revenue was ahead of the prior year, with strong demand for dairy solutions in North Africa.
In Europe, revenue was slightly ahead, driven by good demand across the dairy and infant nutrition categories. This was offset by the exit of some low-margin business, in line with our strategy, and increased competition from imports from outside the region. Our approach last year was to focus on margin ahead of volume. This drove EBITDA growth 8% higher, benefiting from positive customer and product mix and increased solution selling. Productivity savings and strong cost discipline also contributed to higher profits, with 180 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion. Food and Beverage Solutions has a proven growth track record, with revenue growth of 12% and EBITDA growth of 10% over the last three years. Let's move to Sucralose. This is a strongly cash-generative business, and its role is to provide attractive returns.
Revenue was broadly in line with the prior year, as volume remained flat and customer mix led to modestly lower pricing. EBITDA at GBP 52 million was 4% lower, reflecting cost inflation across a range of inputs. Industry demand for sucralose remains robust, driven by growing consumer demand for reduced sugar and calories in food and drink. We continue to see good demand from our larger customers. Primary Products Europe is the smallest segment, comprising 7% of our revenue. We continue to successfully optimize its financial performance as we transition capacity to higher-margin food and beverage solutions ingredients. Revenue was 12% lower, mainly reflecting reduced volume. Adjusted EBITDA losses reduced significantly from GBP 9 million to GBP 5 million, benefiting from lower input costs. So pulling this all together, food and beverage solutions increased EBITDA by 8%, or GBP 20 million.
Sucralose saw a slight decline in EBITDA of GBP 3 million, which was more than offset by Primary Products Europe, where EBITDA losses were GBP 4 million lower. Overall, this led to an increase in absolute EBITDA in constant currency of GBP 21 million, or 7%. This growth is impressive given that we had to offset input cost inflation of around GBP 60 million in the year, and we continued to invest in long-term growth. Finally, the impact of foreign exchange was to decrease EBITDA by GBP 15 million to GBP 328 million. Turning to productivity, we delivered $41 million of productivity savings in the year, demonstrating the strong productivity culture we have embedded across the business. Savings came from the following areas: 70% was from operational and supply chain efficiencies, and 30% was from strong cost management and savings in SG&A.
A strong contribution came from our manufacturing excellence program, which includes projects to drive production yield improvements at our plants. We also made good savings optimizing our logistics network. Our investment in digital also continues to be a key enabler of productivity savings and to enhance our end-to-end customer experience. For example, we are using process analytics to identify bottlenecks in our supplier invoice chain, helping to eliminate manual touchpoints and improve our processing rates. We are also using digital to enhance our demand planning processes, not only improving the customer's experience, but also delivering working capital efficiencies. Given our strong progress, we are increasing our productivity savings target for the five years to the 31st of March, 2028, by 50%, from $100 million to $150 million. Let's move on to talk through tax and exceptional items.
The adjusted effective tax rate was 21.6%, 170 basis points above the prior year. This was due to an increase in the headline U.K. corporation tax rate from 19% to 25% and more profit being taxed in higher-rate jurisdictions. We anticipate the adjusted effective tax rate for the 2025 financial year will be in line with the 2024 rate. On exceptional items, net pre-tax exceptional charges were GBP 24 million, most of which related to restructuring costs for organizational improvements and productivity benefits. From a cash flow perspective, this translated into a total exceptional cash outflow of GBP 27 million. Moving on to Primient. Our share of profit was 53% higher at GBP 35 million, as Primient benefited from strong customer contracting in both 2023 and 2024, robust sweetener demand, and improved operational performance.
This was partially offset by higher finance charges. We received $74 million in cash dividends from Primient in the year. Moving now to free cash flow. Adjusted free cash flow was GBP 49 million higher, at GBP 170 million. This drove cash conversion 23 percentage points higher to 85%, well above our long-term target of 75%. Increased discipline in inventory management and improved demand planning led to a GBP 112 million improvement in net working capital. We also continued to invest in long-term growth, with capital expenditure GBP 39 million higher at GBP 110 million. For the 2025 financial year, we expect capital expenditure will be in the GBP 100 million-GBP 120 million range.
Cash generation will continue to be a key priority, and our focus in the future is to consistently exceed cash conversion of 75%. Moving on to net debt and dividends. Net debt was GBP 85 million lower at GBP 153 million. This was the result of three main factors. Firstly, a step change in cash generation. Secondly, the receipt of $74 million of dividends from Primient. And lastly, the payment of dividends to shareholders of GBP 76 million. Our net debt to EBITDA ratio is 0.5x , and we continue to have strong liquidity headroom to invest for growth. During the year, we have repaid $120 million of debt from cash, of which $95 million was floating rate debt.
Earlier this month, we renewed our committed undrawn and sustainability-linked revolving credit facility of $800 million, extending its maturity to 2029. The board is recommending a final dividend of GBP 12.9 per share. This brings the full-year dividend to GBP 19.1 per share, an increase of 3.2%. Our capital allocation framework remains unchanged. Our priority is to continue the disciplined deployment of capital and to maintain Tate & Lyle's financial strength. Under our capital allocation framework, we have a clear prioritization. Firstly, investment in organic growth. Secondly, investment in acquisitions, joint ventures, and partnerships. Thirdly, our progressive dividend policy. And finally, to return capital to shareholders should it become surplus to the needs of the company.
Consistent with the above, as Nick said earlier, we intend to return the net cash proceeds from the sale of our remaining stake in Primient to shareholders from completion. We have a strong balance sheet, and looking forward, we want to retain the flexibility to drive value-accretive growth, guided by our view that our long-term efficient leverage is in the range of 1x- 2.5x net debt to EBITDA. We remain focused on converting our profit into cash to support all uses of capital in line with our capital allocation policy. I want to leave you with three key messages. The first is that we delivered strong profit performance in line with our guidance while navigating a challenging external environment. Secondly, we've improved the quality of our financial performance.
We have done this through the delivery of a specialty EBITDA margin of 21% in food and beverage solutions, the acceleration of productivity savings with our five-year target increasing to $150 million, and a step change in cash generation ahead of our long-term target... and thirdly, we continue to apply our capital allocation framework to drive value accretive growth through investment for the long term, as well as returning surplus cash to shareholders. With that, let me hand you back to Nick.
Thank you, Dawn. I'm now going to give you a brief update on our strategic progress and then cover the outlook. I'm going to focus on three areas: firstly, the completion of the transformation of the business following the sale of Primient. Secondly, how we are accelerating our solutions-based business with customers. And thirdly, the investments we are making in technology, innovation, and new capacity to support our customers and drive long-term growth. Over the last six years, Tate & Lyle has been through a major transformation. With the sale of Primient, this transformation is now complete. Driven by our purpose of transforming lives through the science of food, Tate & Lyle today is a growth-focused specialty food and beverage solutions business, a global leader in sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification, with world-class scientific and solutions capabilities and strong customer relationships.
It is a focused and agile business with an ambitious purpose and a clear strategy for growth, and the growth opportunities are considerable. The global specialty food ingredients market is $75 billion and expected to grow at around 6% on a compound annual basis. $19 billion of this market is addressable by Tate & Lyle's three platforms. Our core categories of beverages, dairy, soup, sauces, and dressings, and bakery and snacks represent 70%, or $13 billion, of this addressable market. The other 30% is in categories such as confectionery and infant nutrition, where we have regional expertise. But the real opportunity is even bigger.
While the global specialty ingredient sweeteners market is around $5 billion, sugar still makes up 80% of the global sweetening market, and there is an estimated further $3 billion of sugar replacement opportunity across our four core categories. Within our addressable markets, there are structural trends which are driving consumer preference and changes in consumption. The rise of diseases like obesity and diabetes and concerns about digestive health and immunity are leading people to be increasingly concerned about their health and wellness. As a result, consumers are looking for products lower in sugar and calories and with added fiber. They are also moving to more plant-based food. Consumer desire for food and drink which is healthy, tasty, convenient, and more sustainable and affordable all play directly into Tate & Lyle's areas of expertise.
Through our three platforms, we create ingredients and solutions which reduce sugar and calories, enhance texture and the mouthfeel experience, increase nutrition through fiber and protein, and where necessary, optimize cost. The strategic focus and intent of Tate & Lyle is clear. Based on our market-leading positions and world-class scientific and solutions capabilities, we are a leading, differentiated specialty food and beverage solutions business, delivering sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification across our four core categories and beyond. The increasing strength and quality of the business is reflected in our financial performance. Despite what has been a period of considerable economic volatility over the last three years, the group has delivered a compound average growth rate for revenue of 11% and EBITDA of 10%, well ahead of our current five-year financial ambition.
Food and beverage solutions delivered revenue growth of 12% and EBITDA growth of 10% in the same period. This growth has been supported by a second area I want to focus on, the acceleration of our solutions-based business with customers. Innovation is a key growth engine for our solutions offering and is very encouraging to see as continuing to deliver a steady flow of new products into the market. During the year, we launched nine new products, five from our sweetener platform, mainly Stevia line extensions, and four from our fortification platform, including a new high-fiber product for use in low-alcohol beverages. Overall, revenue from new products on a like-for-like basis, including those which fell out of the calculation this year, grew by 13%.
To demonstrate the traction our new products are getting with customers, 44% of the revenue from our new business pipeline involved formulating one or more of our new products. Increased customer adoption of new products is one of the reasons why solution-based revenue from new business wins grew this year, up 3 percentage points to 21%. This is 5 percentage points higher than the average between 2020 and 2022, and so the acceleration over the last two years is very encouraging. I was also pleased to see a strong solutions performance in our growth markets of Asia, Middle East and Africa, and Latin America....
Our chassis approach for solutions development, where we build a global template solution up to anywhere between 50%-80% of a customer requirement, and then and complete the rest of the solution to meet local market needs, continues to work well and to increase customer collaboration. As a reminder, collaboration on solutions has a number of benefits. The value of the ingredients used in solutions tends to be higher, about two times higher on average, and they are also a stickier sale as the solution directly involves solving a customer's challenge. It also builds stronger customer relationships, often leading to new business. Let me give you one example of our solutions in action. In the UK, our food scientists recently worked with McVitie's to create a healthier version of the iconic McVitie's Digestive biscuit.
The brief was to reduce both the sugar and fat content in the biscuit, retain its distinctive taste, and to not change the production process. Sugar plays a crucial role in biscuits, creating both texture and taste, as well as improving shelf life so that the biscuit retains their crunch. Through our deep understanding of the complex intersection between sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification, we were able to find a solution based on our fiber portfolio that not only reduced both the sugar and fat content in the biscuit by 30%, but also added 50% more fiber, and its iconic mouthfeel and taste were also maintained. The combination of our increasing focus on innovation and solution selling is having a positive impact on customer perception of Tate & Lyle and our position as a preferred partner of choice.
At the start of 2024, we undertook a major survey looking at the experience of customers working with Tate & Lyle. This survey, which was conducted by an independent third party, assessed the views of 286 customers across the world. The survey showed that over 90% of our customers believe we provide a better or as good a service as other ingredient suppliers they use. Reasons given include our high levels of technical support, the quality of our products, and our strong levels of customer service and reliability. These results are very encouraging and show that the journey we have been on over the last six years to significantly sharpen our focus on the customer is now paying real dividends.
While we can always do more, as we move forward as a fully focused specialty business, the customer-focused culture we have embedded in Tate & Lyle will play a key part in delivering our growth strategy. To ensure we can continue to grow our solutions offering for customers, we are increasing our investment in technology, innovation, and growth capacity. Let me take each one in turn. Firstly, we have installed a new robotic system in our lab in Singapore with enhanced characterization and predictive modeling capabilities. This system is transforming the way we develop mouthfeel solutions for customers and has led to a significant increase in the customer collaboration at the lab. Secondly, we opened a new customer innovation and collaboration center in Jakarta, Indonesia, which is already helping to build our business in a market with significant long-term growth potential.
And thirdly, we continue to add new growth capacity to our network. Earlier this month, we formally opened our new non-GMO PROMITOR soluble fibers line at our facility in Slovakia. This EUR 25 million investment will ensure we have the capacity to meet growing demand for dietary fiber. Bringing all this together, with the transformation into a fully focused specialty business now complete, we are well-positioned to capture the growth opportunities ahead, both organic and inorganic. Our strategy to increase our solution-based business with customers is working well, and our innovation pipeline continues to launch new products into the market that directly meet consumers' desire for healthier food and drink. We are adding new capacity to meet future demand, and we continue to strengthen our capabilities in key areas such as sensory, applications, and open innovation.
We also continue to actively pursue value-accretive acquisitions to expand and strengthen our portfolio and to seek partnerships which bring us new products and technology. Today, Tate & Lyle is a business with a clear strategy focused on growth, and that is what we intend to deliver. Turning to the outlook, in the last quarter of our 2024 financial year, we saw average daily volumes accelerate, and we expect this improvement to continue into the 2025 financial year. This is based on three main factors. Firstly, our approach to last year was to focus on revenue and margin ahead of volume, and the contracts we have put in place for the 2024 calendar year position us well to grow from this new base. Secondly, customer destocking has come to an end. And thirdly, consumer confidence is beginning to improve, albeit remaining somewhat fragile.
In light of this, we expect good volume growth in the 2025 financial year, accelerating as the year progresses. Moving on to revenue, following a period of input cost inflation, we are now seeing input cost deflation. As a result, revenue is lower in the second half of the 2024 financial year, reflecting the pass-through of lower costs, and this is expected to continue in the first half of the 2025 financial year. Therefore, for the year ending 31st of March , 2025, we expect to deliver in constant currency, revenue slightly lower than the prior year, and EBITDA growth of between 4% and 7%. Following the completion of the sale of Primient, we will no longer consolidate its profits. In summary then, we have demonstrated considerable agility to successfully navigate a challenging external environment and soft consumer demand.
Once again, we have delivered what we said we would do with profit in line with our guidance and excellent cash generation. The sale of Primient completes our transformation into a fully focused specialty food and beverage solutions business, and we intend to return the net cash proceeds from this sale to shareholders via an on-market share buyback program. Our solutions strategy continues to work well, and through our sustainable agriculture programs and our commitment to deliver larger, faster emission reductions on a 1.5 degree centigrade trajectory, we are taking a leadership position on sustainability. Tate & Lyle is positioned right at the center of the future of food, focused on creating solutions that meet growing consumer demand for healthier, tastier, and more sustainable food and drink. We are operating in exciting segments of the market, which have strong growth potential.
We are a business fueled by science, obsessed with customer collaboration, and with a strong desire to make a positive impact on the world. The future ahead is exciting! As always, I would like to finish by thanking everyone at Tate & Lyle for their hard work in delivering these results and for living our purpose with great passion and belief. For their support, I am very grateful.