Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Zotefoams plc preliminary results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions at any time and press Send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investment Company platform. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll, and if you give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company will be most grateful. I'd now like to hand over to CEO David Stirling. Good afternoon.
Thanks for the introduction, Mark. I'm joined today by Gary McGrath, who's our CFO. Gary's screen is off for now, but he'll come on later in the presentation. I'll just dive straight in. So we have a notice about the legal side of it and then business. I'm sure a lot of our attendees know the business, but just for those who don't, we think about our business in three separate business units. Polyolefin foams, which are made from predominantly low-density polyethylene and high-performance foams, which are made from a variety of different materials exhibiting high-end attributes such as energy return, temperature resistance, fire retardance, chemical resistance, et cetera. Those we term together the foams business, all made using our autoclave technology.
We also have extrusion technology that in the past we had licensed to other people, extruding plastic products, but predominantly today we have focused that business on development of our own applications and specifically ReZorce barrier packaging technology. So we'll cover both of those as we go through. You can see the main markets and the main drivers for each of those parts of the business. The strategy at Zotefoams is to focus resources where we have the potential to be a market leader in the world of foams or cellular materials. We really focus on using unique technology and differentiating ourself, and often creating new markets or new parts of markets, or substituting materials other than foam with our lightweight, predominantly very lightweight high-performance foams.
And largely, the business is an organic growth business, although partnerships, acquisitions, et cetera, have played a minor part, usually where we see associated technology that we want to leverage in our business. Strategic metrics. You know, what makes the business work? What makes it successful? Firstly, we have a variety of products that we make. Those are sold globally into a huge variety of markets, and over time, we look to improve the product mix, you know, selling more of our high-value products or high-margin products as a percentage of the mix. And the best way to measure this is the average selling price. We don't give absolute figures here, but the absolute... The average selling price, sorry, did increase by almost 3% last year compared to 2022.
And those products are made predominantly on, you know, large, well-invested equipment. And so you've got a high capital base, and important for profitability of the business is the high asset utilization. So again, we don't give absolute figures here, but our asset utilization increased by about 2.6% during the year. And how does that square with if you look further on in the presentation, sales volumes being slightly lower? Well, our production volumes were actually up. We'll hear later on from Gary about the inventory build that we specifically did last year, and the reasons for that were that we expected, and have confirmed, actually, the first quarter this year, seen a very strong performance. So getting inventory for that, we actually ran the assets harder than the sales.
In addition to that, we looked at efficiency gains within the manufacturing operation to deliver more capacity. Because our capacity comes in big chunks if we buy a new machine, we want to overall improve the efficiency of the machinery we have, and we do that through a number of means, including faster cycle times, better machine loading, or other adjustments to our operations that allow us to get more out of the machinery. We're very pleased to see the efficiency gains in manufacturing added almost 2% effective capacity. So what does that mean for the margin? Well, the margin increase, if we look at the reporting figures, to 12.1%, up 1% from last year.
But in fact, a better metric, we think, is that we look at the foams business because the ReZorce MuCell business is really developmental and pre-revenue. And so excluding the MuCell ReZorce costs and the small amount of revenue, our operating margin was 15.5%, up from 12.7% prior year. Similarly, excluding MuCell return on capital employed, was up at 14.2, so up by 2.2%, which is a good performance, driven predominantly by the profitability in the business. Two other longer term metrics, sustainability. We publish in our annual report and on our website a series of sustainability metrics, and as we go through the presentation, you'll see where the business sits. And largely, you know, lightweight foams are pretty good for the sustainability agenda.
We sell materials that make products better insulated, lighter weight, or protect people and products, and therefore, you know, help the society that way. We hadn't, up until this point, set any net zero targets. All of our targets were for Scope 1 and 2 reductions, without any carbon offsetting. And the reason for that is that we felt, as an organization, that carbon offsetting was not very reliable and therefore, like a false economy, if you like. And so preferred very much to focus on what we could do with our business. We are, with changes in the way energy is being generated, and looking at that net zero metric, have made a commitment to look at that net zero metric going forward.
And then finally, MuCell, ReZorce, you know, it's a big investment the business has made over the last couple of years in a market which has been dominated by similar technology for about 40 years. And we think we've got disruptive technology here, a lot of interest in the market, and we have in fact signed up with a world-leading beverage packaging company the middle of last year, and made very substantial progress in going to market trials here. So I think we again, we'll cover that later, but that's the essence of the business and the key strategic metrics. At this point, I'll pass over to Gary to talk us through some of the highlights of the year and the financials. So over to you, Gary. Thanks.
Thanks, David. I think if, in a summary of the summary really, for 2023, was record profits, improved margins, cash generation used to reinvest, and a strong balance sheet. You see these numbers on here, first thing is that if you've looked at the prelim this morning, there's always a delta. This is a deck that adjusts our profit numbers for our amortization of acquired intangibles. Which is a small number, around GBP 250,000 this year and last year. So it changes the numbers slightly. It's a bit of an annoyance to make the adjustments for such a small number, but it can confuse. But these numbers here, unless otherwise stated, are adjusted for that, for that amount.
They're specific to MuCell, so when we actually talk about excluding MuCell or the Foams business, actually, that's the reported number as well. Start with revenue is up, unchanged, or pretty much in line with the record of last year. Actually, up 1% in the Foams business. And that, on first glance, seems uneventful, but if you split it, we actually had a 7% increase in HPP. And David will talk about that later. And a 4% decrease in a pretty challenging at times, particularly in the later part of the year, general industrial market and the polyolefin foams market.
Coupled with a focus by the business unit on margins, which you can see actually bore fruit. Talk about margins. Gross margins, you can see, up 190 percentage points to 32.3%, or another 1.5% up if you exclude MuCell. Adjusted operating margin, David mentioned, 15.5% without MuCell. And up to 12%, 1% up, at a consolidated group level. The biggest move was the segment margin in polyolefin foams, and that was from 7% last year, 1% the year before, after, you know, through the COVID or just coming out of the COVID period, up to 7 last year, up to 11 this year.
And profit before tax, record. If you look at the Foams business, only GBP 17.2 million, up significantly on last year, 22%, and at group level, 12.8 million, which is, sorry, GBP 13.1 adjusted, which is also a record for the group. And I mentioned strong cash generation. You'll see, and I'll refer later, David. David touched upon the inventory growth build, but an increase in quite significant investment in working capital in the year. And that really, that together with the MuCell investment opportunity, and we actually spent GBP 5.5 million cash in the MuCell business, driving the ReZorce opportunity onwards. That was all invested out of cash.
But nevertheless, even though the debt went up by a few million to GBP 31.6 million, our leverage remained at 1.2, in line with the prior year. If I just move on and touch upon the strategic highlights, we've mentioned and we're focusing quite heavily on that, you know, distinction between two business streams that are at very different stages of development, with an opportunity in ReZorce and the more familiar core foams business, the HPP and AZO businesses. David, they're performing well. David touched upon, you know, some of the strategic objectives and how we're delivering on those.
And when you specifically look at mix enrichment and capacity utilization, very much obviously, the Foams business focus and successful in both of those. Record profits, as I previously mentioned, improved margins, for a number of reasons. I'll touch, maybe touch more on that in the P&L slide coming up. We did announce middle of the year, an exclusivity agreement that we'd extended our exclusivity agreement with Nike, to take us through to 2029. And, as you probably saw on the first slide, with our, with the G.T. Cut 3 picture, our first steps into, or is it jumps? I don't know, into basketball.
And David will talk about that more, as we look to expand upon that, that first product at launch. And finally, planned investment in North America. We've mentioned that we're investing in a, the third stage, the low-pressure vessel, a second vessel in the U.S. That is in recognition primarily of the growth opportunities within the U.S. and balancing some of the capacity. We had two high-pressure vessels there, and so we have more capacity than an expansion capability. And as the market grows, and we're certainly seeing the demand there, we want to invest behind that, as well as give some protection to the existing vessel, which is aging.
As far as MuCell is concerned, we announced also mid-year a joint development agreement with a world-leading packager. That agreement really has, and the cooperation that we've undergone since then, has really helped drive the technical progress further. We are about, you know, we're very close to preparing and filling our first cartons with fruit juice on a commercial scale equipment at the partner. And we have announced once or twice in the past six months some of the awards that the technology has won. So David will talk more about ReZorce coming up. The businesses continues to be well-balanced both geographically and from an industrial perspective.
You know, we, as footwear grows, you see that yellow, that rest of the world grow, because that is primarily the Nike footwear opportunity into China, with sales into China and Vietnam. Otherwise, a fairly stable picture. On the right, the revenue by business unit reflects, as I said earlier, the 7% increase in HPP, with a 4% decrease in AZO. The revenue by industry really is relatively unchanged. Sports and leisure and Nike footwear driving, being the leader out of our industrial segments, but a broad range across a number of industries.
If I then move on to the financial review and onto the P&L abbreviated, the I mentioned the adjustments, so I won't I don't need to refer to that again. And I've mentioned gross group revenue, so I won't, I won't touch on upon that again. The gross profit margin, I mentioned, up to 32.3%. We didn't put any price price rises through in 2023, but we put a number of them. We, we communicated that the price increases that we put through in 2022. So 2023 saw the full year impact of those adjustments. It also came alongside a softening of the LDPE raw material prices. I have a separate slide on that just to show the trends.
But it's fallen back down to what we assess to be more the historical trends off from peaks back in May 2022 that were quite significantly higher. Energy costs have actually still gone up, but they're far less volatile than they were. So I think we've seen about an 8% increase in energy, up to about GBP 8 million. That's about 10% of our non-SG&A cost base. So it's not a significant factor, but it's still gone in the wrong direction, let's say.
And operational efficiencies, absolutely, at the U.K., it's an older site, it's well embedded, but there's still opportunity to improve and find new ways to eliminate waste, improve yields, improve operational effectiveness, plant efficiency through investment. And the guys have been doing a sterling job, excuse the pun on sterling, sterling job on that. At the same time, the U.S. possibly has more opportunity. We know we invested in that, and then along came COVID. It's not set up to really be perfectly self-sufficient. The intention was always that it would leverage the skill sets in the U.K.
Probably lost its way slightly at times, and we've been doing great work there leading to improving yields, improving up times. And we probably still feel there's opportunity to go there as well. And then finally, of course, mix enrichment, as David mentioned, the objectives being a strategic objective. The increase, the faster growth in HPP versus AZO, helps with the margin uplift, too. When you look at distribution admin, 5% increase. If you split it, distribution pretty stable, and around GBP 8 million. That really... That is effectively cost increases offset by some really good efficiency gains, optimization gains in warehousing and in storage in the U.K..
If you then look at the admin costs, the admin costs on their own look like a relatively low movement. But if you strip out our FX hedging gains and losses, which we put through this line in the accounts, admin costs were up GBP 2.7 million or 19%. Now, of that GBP 2.7 million, about a third of it is ReZorce investment. And then, other elements of that include investment in people, obviously, the cost of living increases, pay rises, which were quite—which were more, significantly more than average, as one would understand and expect, through last year.
If you then gives us an adjusted profit before tax, as I mentioned before, GBP 13.1 million, up 5% on the previous year. And, sorry, I forget, also missed out finance cost interest, which I think is understandable. The debt's fairly level with last year. The interest rates are higher, there's nothing more sinister than that. Now, GBP 4.4 million loss, which therefore, if you exclude that, is what I mentioned before, the GBP 17.2 million profit, 22% up, and that leads us to the GBP 13.1 after like I mentioned. Tax has gone up. Clearly, we all know that corporation tax gone up to 25% from 19%.
That's the major driver within that tax change, plus some deferred tax movements, all related to the way our profit was earned during last year in the regions in the various jurisdictions, and the impacts of tax losses where we actually don't recognize them to be prudent. We don't recognize tax losses or the potential to use those in the future until they come. So, possibly a little bit prudent there, but as a result, the tax charge increases. It's that that's driving the 8% decline in profit after tax, and it's that that's driving the 8% decline in adjusted EPS. Then finally, proposed dividend 6% up at GBP 0.0449.
Total dividend for the year, up 5.6% at 7.18 pence. If I move to the cash flow, good performance in profit, as we've covered. And there's the increase in... and therefore, before investments in working capital, capital, CapEx, you know, a similar position to last year, GBP 24 million worth of generated cash. We invested heavily, as I've mentioned, in working capital, and you can see there the receivables movement, really relates in part, mostly to timing of sales.
We had, we had quite a, a, a strong Q4, and it also relates to, increasingly now, to the, to the whims, let's say, of what particular day our, our footwear customer is going to, going to pay us at year-end for, for, for the due invoices. Back in 2023, for the 2022 invoices, they paid us on the twenty-sixth of December, whereas this year they paid us, on the fifth of January. So a space of a week makes a GBP 3 million--has a GBP 3 million impact on our, on our debt and, and, working capital position. That was paid on the fifth, like I said, so, it, it's, it's very much, very much transitory and, timing based around, around a fixed year-end period.
Inventory is the one that's more, that, that's maybe worth more, more worth talking to, and that's GBP 6 million in inventory. Really breaks down to the two parts. First part was, David mentioned, an investment in inventory build, recognizing significant opportunity in H1. Partly recognizing, you know, despite our, you know, certainly when it came to footwear, despite, you know, sort of reminding everyone that there is risk out in the Red Sea, there are supply chain challenges, and people ought to really be thinking about getting in early. Not everyone took that up, and so we thought we better chance it and build.
We had the opportunity, you know, there was certainly softening in the AZO business in Q4, giving us capacity, so we used that. In the past, we wouldn't have been able to do anything with it, because we wouldn't have had storage space. But we now have Poland, and Poland services much of our European business. So we have the ability to produce and to store. And indeed, what we've seen in Q1 is that the customers have actually come back stronger than we expected, and as a result, much of the, let's say, half of that inventory build, which was first a strategic build, strategic inventory build, has been consumed already.
The other part of that is the PVDF, the ZOTEK F polymer, the fluoropolymer, which where the prices increased or doubled during 2023. But that didn't have it—'cause we haven't run a FIFO system and we had sufficient inventory, we didn't consume any of that, and therefore, the impact wasn't visible in 2023. It's more visible in 2024. David will talk about price increases in that market and the effects of that, when he comes on later. I mentioned higher tax, well, higher tax payments related to the higher tax charges. We had no refunds this year. Interest was higher, for obvious reasons.
And then the capital spend is more in line with depreciation, fairly similar to last year, certainly in terms of our plant, our plant property and equipment, it's pretty much in line, as you can see. The increase, the GBP 1 million increase is related to intangibles, GBP 2.7 million, entirely related to the ReZorce investment. And just for good measure, you can see a pretty chunky number there in the borrowings, and that's all related to the way it to our refinancing last year, closing down and redrawing down our new facility, which took place in March 2022. And then, if I move on to second to last slide, the balance sheet. Not too much to touch upon here. Intangibles, like I said, very much ReZorce related.
In fact, the entire intangible asset is almost, I think, 90% related to MuCell. And in that GBP 9.4 million, GBP 6.8 million of that net book value is the ReZorce. Tangible assets, we did invest in line with depreciation, but FX, we have quite a lot of assets. If you think our most of our newer assets are outside the U.K., therefore subject to euro and dollar, any movements has an impact, and so that's why the number's coming down. Working capital, I've talked about. Deferred tax, I've talked about. Post-employment benefits is 2.3% of our net assets.
That was 3% last year, so we do not see our pension or our deferred pension as a risk to the business. And that leaves a net debt, as I touched upon, up slightly, up GBP 3 million to GBP 31.6 million. Yet we still have a leverage ratio of 1.2, which is the same as the previous year. Important to mention, David mentioned that one of our strategic objectives, ROCE, with ReZorce up 0.2 to 10.3, but that includes the discretionary spend of ReZorce. If you exclude that, it's starting to move up to respectable levels, 14.2%, up 2.2% on the previous year.
I won't go through that, but I just left a debt facility reminder on the slide. Final slide, really just covering this, the last few years, the just what key inflation or key influences of costs over the past couple of years have been. I could add, obviously, I should and could add people, certainly, in the last 18 months or so. But this is the slide where you can see the low-density polyethylene, that's the primary raw material for polyolefin foams. And you can see that the red line is effectively the year average, and you can, if you look at the 2023 year, you can see it's pretty similar to the pre-COVID period, and hence our messaging that we feel it's returned back to historical levels.
You can see it did grow quite significantly. You can see the peak of the LDPE price, the light blue, in 2022, and you can see by how much it's come down since then. What you do also see in the brown at the bottom is that the producers made quite a bit of money, as I mentioned before, in the COVID period, particularly as a result of imports not being possible, which is what normally controls and manages the market. But you can see that in the last year for much of the year, particularly the second half of the year, they weren't making any margin.
So you know, that may move, but it obviously can't if there's not a lot of positive news and optimism. Foreign exchange, or sorry, let's start energy and nitrogen. Energy is, like I mentioned, it's about 10% of our total non-SG&A cost base. It went up 8%. It's been extremely volatile. It hasn't been recently, so we're able to fix, we're able to buy ahead and feel confident, and we've been doing so. We've got much more visibility therefore. Three quarters of the total spend is the U.K.. And foreign exchange, also, similar story, certainly in terms of volatility, a crazy year of volatility, yet it started as it finished, and the average was the same as last year.
The impact this year on PBT is actually very, very minimal compared to quite a much larger movement in the previous year. I think with that, I'm gonna pass you back to David.
Thanks, Gary. So we move on to the business review now. Start with the polyolefin foams. We've got a situation where, segment revenue is down 4%. Backdrop really is fairly, difficult industrial markets, particularly Continental Europe and the U.K. I don't think there'll be any surprises amongst the listeners on that. The markets out in, Japan, China, not too bad, actually. And North America, not too bad, but with one or two points of weakness in the second half, that surprises a little bit, and actually have come back very strongly, in the first half this year, and so implies that it was perhaps, you know, inventory management decisions, through the supply chain that caused that weakness. But, overall, generally slow industrial markets.
We have seen the better performing parts of those being, you know, coming off the bottom of previous years, so on the way up, but still not at high levels compared to long-term averages. For us, you know, we've gone through a period with fairly high, as Gary said, raw material and energy inflation, putting up prices. Those have now been either consolidated into list prices or, in the case of some surcharges which were linked to those very high prices, they've been reversed. And so where we see pricing, it's more in the product mix, or it's a full year impact of decisions taken in 2022.
But those higher energy costs, the higher raw material costs, have caused a lot of conversations with our customers about pricing, and in some cases, we have walked away from business, but not very many. And mostly, we've been encouraging customers to move to the right product. And I think customers, over the years, have been, you know, buying products where maybe they could have bought lower density, you know, less expensive materials. They have got switching costs, but, you know, the way things are now, that might make sense, that didn't make sense a few years ago. So, and the lower density tend to be lower price because of lower raw material cost.
Obviously, for us, lower cost, and they go through the plant more quickly, we can make more of them, and so therefore, it can actually improve margins. And so that, that right product, right price trend, you know, is something we've seen more in Continental Europe than than necessarily elsewhere. And we have been active in, as you know, producing materials with 30% recycled content. We've got a number of grades there. A bit different than, perhaps you read in the media, I think it feels like, you know, the customers should be biting your hand off.
Actually, it's long and involved conversations with them about the benefits to them, how they sell the benefits downstream, and you know, we're seeing it more where we've got business-to-consumer type markets, sports and leisure, et cetera, like swim floats or yoga mats or something like that, and far less in the industrial markets, where you know, price and performance is still very much the leading conversation. So overall, you know, revenue down a little bit, profit up considerably, up 53%, and we see the segment profit up at 11.1%. Now, that's come off lows of around 1% a couple of years ago.
Certainly, the input costs on raw material have helped there, but, as Gary said, energy is still above where it was a few years ago, and we have seen, labor inflation come through there as well. So with those cost-based increases, we have, you know, really been focusing on, efficiency gains, cost improvements, et cetera, and waste reduction and logistics have been particularly evident. Well, logistics improvements are particularly evident there. So I think overall, a genuinely good performance in difficult markets. Not horrible markets, but not very beneficial, markets for polyolefin foam. If we move on to the high-performance products, we are looking predominantly at footwear being the biggest part of that. So of the GBP 58 million revenue, footwear is GBP 45 million. And, you know, we saw, again, good growth from that.
We have got basketball in there for the first time, and that certainly contributed to the growth. But, you know, over the kind of footwear development cycle, what we are seeing is, we're seeing, you know, more content, a number of different models that Nike are putting our foams into, and we've genuinely seen good progress there as well. We'll remind you that during the year, we extended the exclusivity agreement with Nike. It previously...
Well, we didn't say when the expiry date was, actually, but we extended it to the end of December 2029, which gives us plenty of scope to continue working with Nike, looking not just at the current models and how we, we do there in the next generation, but beyond that, development of, of new materials, improved foams, et cetera, for the, the longer term partnership. The fluoropolymer sales mainly go to aviation and space, up 6%, so, you know, decent performance, but still, you know, well below the peaks that we've seen back in 2018 or so. Aviation market's still not, you know, operating really at, at the, the levels it has been.
We would expect that to see some improvement in 2024, but really, 2025 would be where we'd expect the real improvement in that business to be. T-FIT, you know, GBP 5.9 million, up a little bit on the previous year. India is pretty good. Food and beverage is good. Biotech, pharma in China, not so, not so good. We definitely went backwards there. The market is not being as active, and so that's part of what we see.
But we've also seen, you know, customers making different buying decisions based on, you know, pricing or alternative materials, and that's something that, you know, we've looked at pretty hard and trying to figure out, is that just, you know, the kind of rub of the green over a fairly short time, or is there something structural there? So, you know, I would say largely we've got our hands around that, and we expect that market to be better this year. So I would, I would put that down to something that, you know, we can do something about. We have seen a higher raw material cost, as Gary said.
That's mainly come in the fluoropolymer, the PVDF and TFE site, but no impact in the profit and loss this year, because of the time it, you know, it's using up existing inventory. So we will see. We have put prices up 2024, and we will see that impact coming through in 2024. So overall, segment profit margin down a little bit. Mostly that's because of investment in SG&A, and trying to build the team, to do more. You know, we do see a lot of opportunity, but getting the right people in there to drive the business forward is cost us a little bit of money in the short term.
In a year where, you know, sales have been decently growing, but perhaps slightly off the long-term trend for growth percentages. So that's, that's, that's that. And then moving on to MuCell, as I said earlier, we substantially pivoted from licensing the technology to others to developing our own tech, and that's the ReZorce barrier packaging, where it's almost exclusively focused right now on the carton product. We're at the point where during the year we had signed with a world-leading beverage packer, who've been very involved in preparations to go to market trials in Continental Europe. And we are at the point now where we are fairly imminently looking to run, you know, some 150,000 cartons through a machine. Create...
Then the next step after that would be sterility testing. Assuming we pass that, which is, you know, it's important we do, and it's something where we know and then our partners know from past experience there is an expected failure rate there, so. But we're not concerned that we will get there. It's more a matter of timing. Do we need to run the trial, you know, machine conditions differently or something to get the sterility right? And so we feel very confident we'll get past that, and at that point, we're talking about putting products into the market. So, watch this space a little bit for announcements on that.
We are looking at a product market introduction from a you know to talk to the trade press et cetera in mid-May. So that's something where we believe that that's about the right time to really generate the interest and go out and show people what we've been doing. And at that point our partners both the retailer and the packer would be you know on stage with us and therefore people can see who we've been doing with you know this time. So also around that time we would expect that you know we'll be engaging with potential strategic investors.
I think this part of the journey that Zotefoams has developed the products, financed, et cetera, we see that we have assembled a really professional team of industry experts, of commercial experts, machinery, print, quality, and sterility, you know. And so we own, in the sense of understanding and documenting and having the answers, that process front to back. How do we get from a plastic pellet to a carton? And at the end of that, how is that carton recycled and come back in? So we've done all that work. And so we are at the point where there is very large commercial interest. The carton market globally is about 300 billion cartons a year.
We're already at the point where, if we were able to wave a magic wand and go to market today, we would have around about 1 billion, maybe more than 1 billion cartons per year, customers very interested in that. And so we are looking at how do we scale that up? And we have developed relationships with tool conversion partners and extrusion, for example, who are really interested in moving to scale up, you know, with us at the right time. But really to lead that, we believe that we need an investing partner, and ideally someone who has experience and pockets, depth of pockets financially to really invest against what is a pretty compelling, you know, market pool story here.... but we need to get past that point of demonstrating the product works.
So that's kind of where we are. And at this point, you know, there's a little bit of revenue going through there from the MuCell business, but largely, what we see is a pre-revenue development of ReZorce carton. I'd like to talk a little bit about sustainability. It's always on someone's agenda somewhere, so let's deal with it head-on. You know, Zotefoams is manufacturing light density materials that use a nitrogen-based process, very efficient use of raw materials, and our products are, you know, very helpful in our customers avoiding their emission Scope 3, whether that's lightweighting or insulation or protection of products, et cetera.
So we're in a good place, and the vast majority of our revenue is, if we define it by the green revenue metric, is 85% of that is green. So that's pretty significant, and we can—we've had that audited, we've had our ReZorce development looked at from a life cycle analysis. We're getting strong ESG credentials across the board. The one thing we have not done, and we've been criticized for, is setting a net zero target. And that's something that internally we debated long and hard. It is difficult to do, given the diversity of the downstream products that we sell to. And also very much manufacturing businesses approached this by investing in carbon credits.
You know, that's the solution for residual emissions, and we took the view that carbon credits were becoming increasingly discredited. So that is something we are committed to continue to look at every, and regularly, but we don't believe that paying someone to not cut down trees is a valid, you know, offsetting method, particularly when it has been proven that other people are claiming the same credits for not cutting down the same trees. So it's, we, we are very much a fact-based organization, and we'll approach it that way. Just quickly on on ReZorce positioning here. I mean, with ReZorce, we have got something in sustainability. You know, we are talking compared to the incumbent cartons, you know, half the energy, half the water, half the carbon footprint.
We are currently using 30% recycled content, all of the... you know, everything we've looked at, all the legislation upcoming and, and current, we are compliant with. And, I have had a question, I'll just pick up right, right here. How do we, how do we know that that gets recycled correctly? Well, we've done a whole load of trials. I can go into the detail, but if you take cartons and put them in your, your recycling bin here, they do get sorted. They do recognize plastic. There are a number of different ways that that is done, but infrared scanning and, optical sorting, float-sink tests, et cetera. There's a whole load of different ways that, that this can be done, but, we've, we've put this through what's called a materials recovery facility, a MRF.
The cartons were properly picked out as plastic. They then go into a plastics recycling facility, PRF, in the U.K. system, and they were correctly sorted there into correct, we call it the correct fraction, but high density polyethylene. So they ended up with the milk cartons. No confusion as to, "Oh, this is a cardboard or paperboard carton with plastic and aluminum in it." They were sorted into different streams. It does depend on the recycling infrastructure in the particular country, of course, but we have tried this in Germany, we've tried it in other areas and have, you know, credible results to back up our claims that this will go to the right place.
In fact, Biffa, who are one of the big recyclers in the U.K., waste and recycling companies, actively are promoting this, as a solution because they want more high-quality recycled plastic. And they would process the materials and sell it back to us, for inclusion in the next carton. So they're very interested in this. So to summarize, key messages, the two business streams, we've got a really good performing foams business, and we've got this huge optionality potential with ReZorce that we are pretty close to getting across the line, we think. The foams business has got record profits, and very good margin growth, and we have got that planned investment in North America to support further organic growth there.
You know, we can already see customers lining up to take those products in North America. So the team there are doing the right, you know, commercial job now, so that when that plant comes on next year, we're starting to fill it with product immediately. The overall profit up 5%, if we exclude MuCell, which at some point, the ReZorce product, it will be separate from Zotefoams. So giving you the underlying foams business profitability is the right thing to do now, and that underlying profitability is up 22% to GBP 17.2 million. Balance sheet's in a good position, dividend up 6%. And the year started well.
First quarter 2023 was a record first quarter, and we are ahead of that. You know, we can see footwear demand up, we see T-FIT insulation and the aviation markets both coming forward. So we expect growth in all of these areas. And we are cautiously optimistic about the polyolefin foams business. The markets are still not brilliant, and it's very early in the year to call the full year, but we are seeing evidence of higher levels of activities and specific programs or applications which can increase our market share. On the input cost side, things are relatively stable, and you know, overall, we expect another year of good progress. So that's the end of the core slides. So-
That's great, David. Yeah, I'll jump back in. So David, Gary, thank you very much indeed for updating the investors. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab, just situated on the right-hand corner of your slides. But, just while the company take a couple of moments to review your questions submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investment company platform. David, Gary, you received a number of questions from investors on today's call, so thank you to everybody for your engagement. If I may, David, just ask you to read out those questions and give a response where it's appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.
Yeah. So, first question is: How can you distinguish between a ReZorce carton and the composite type? Well, there are systems to do that. We've discussed that. There are also more advanced systems coming out on, effectively, around digital watermarking, which will make this even easier and, importantly, fairly easy to kind of, you know, apply in structures that don't have the existing recycling systems to distinguish. So, you know, there's a huge industry built around putting waste in the right place, so, we are not really concerned about that, particularly as there is so much demand potential out there, and we will obviously be more active in the areas where we have best fit initially. So, I think what are the plans for T-FIT and ZOTEK F?
I've covered that. Question from Scott: What gives you the reason to be optimistic about the underlying demand environment for polyolefins? Well, I think I've covered that as well. We feel that, you know, we see some green shoots in the market. Some of the specific factors in North America in the back end of last year were customer specific, that have been turned around already. I think there is, in Europe, you know, we are much more active in driving, you know, into the specific projects where we believe there is growth. I still think the European market and the U.K. market will be somewhat more difficult, won't give us much help. We're being cautious, optimistic overall, but with some degree of caution in the European, U.K., markets.
Andrew R: What regulatory packaging approvals have you secured so far for ReZorce, and what you still need? Well, as long as you can prove the packaging is fit for purpose and sterile, you don't need regulatory approvals in that sense. So the approval, the custodian, if you like, of fitness for purpose is the packaging company that's releasing it. So when that goes out with juice in it, the person selling that, it's their sign off. And, you know, there are a whole lot of things that you would need to do to prove that, so sterility being one of them. But we know what those are. Those are all in hand and with our partner and, you know, and off we go.
Ed T: How much scope is there to further improve the utilization rates at various plants? Well, we deliberately don't give a very clear number on that, Ed. It's actually an extraordinarily complicated thing, given the different machinery over different plants and product mix and packs, et cetera. So I can say that we have got room for growth, and when we look at, you know, the plans for the next few years, you know, we can see that we can do that without further investment in big pieces of capacity, other than what we're doing in North America. But if the future landscape changes and we see, you know, opportunity there, we may well invest in that, but I think we would have to discuss that at the time.
Question from Dean: "What's the scale of the basketball opportunity?" Again, difficult to answer. Nike are very pleased that the reception they've had on the product so far, but it's a very different end user market. The running market is people who run. The basketball market is not people who play basketball necessarily. At the top end, it is, but the majority of sales would go through to the athleisure market. And therefore, you know, how the design, who's wearing it, et cetera, matters. And I think it's great. They're very pleased at it, but I find it a difficult read across from running. And certainly, it's still a bit early to tell. So we are very pleased that we're on basketball.
We're looking for further product launches coming up, but it's still too early to tell. And it's not ever gonna be as big as running. It's just not... The structure of the market, the amount of foam they use, et cetera, the number of shoes they sell, it's just not gonna be as big as running, but it's a very nice layer of demand in the Nike business. Okay. Question from Andrew. "Zotefoams have quite significant revenue in China. What are your expectations of opportunities in China moving forward?" Well, the Chinese revenue comes largely from, you know, that's where Nike makes some of their footwear. So if they decide they want to make it somewhere else, we'll move somewhere else. If they want more in China, they'll get more in China.
So that's, that's not really anything about China or, or us. It's more about Nike's supply chain. The non-Nike business, you know, we manufacture T-FIT materials in China, and we sell, you know, all of the other products into China, but it is a long way to ship foam. So unless you're really at the premium end, it's not significant. So we don't, we don't see China, ex Nike, being a big market for foam, but I think we can get on, back on the growth track on T-FIT in China. So, so yeah, that, that's, that's where we are. Another question from Andrew R.
Can I take that one?
Sorry?
Can I take that one?
Yeah, go ahead. Thanks. Saved my voice, but thank you.
Yeah. So, question around, first of all, headroom. It doesn't... So, you know, it's fundable out of our cash flow. We won't be at a reduction of GBP 10 million. The analysts have us remaining at a leverage of around 1.3-1.5. With the investment we're putting into resource and to the LP this year, we will definitely have more than GBP 10 million headroom. We have 69 at the moment. It, you know... I mean, if you look, I think the analysts have us in a GBP 34 million debt, which would be GBP 16 million headroom, there or thereabouts. So that is not a consideration. And as we go...
And obviously, it depends upon how ReZorce comes out, but if ReZorce is out of the way, then we also have a profile of debt reduction that's quite rapid, given the cash generation that we're able to generate. In terms of the particular areas, I mean, it's name them, right? We have automotive, which is going pretty strong, and we see further opportunities there. We have a graphic solution, a large customer that are on the verge of, or have opportunity to grow quite significantly. We also have our own internal business.
We have a subsidiary of our U.S. business that deals with industrial use fillers, and we see quite significant opportunity in that market, which would certainly help. It's about... and on top of that, it's very important as we look forward that this particular vessel will give us the optionality to actually make HPP products in the States. So the HPP vessels have the versatility. The existing LP is quite restricted in that capability, and so by having this additional vessel, it will allow us to consider footwear or aviation manufacture going forward, which would not be the case at the moment. And I think... Can I just stay with Scott?
I'll answer. There's one more finance one, David.
Okay.
... in respect to, kind of, have a stab at wage cost inflation this year. I will stab at 5%.
Okay, and there was also a question about fundraise from Andrew.
Absolutely not. I think I just answered that. We have, we will fund. We're able to fund this. We have a strong balance sheet. We will have a strong balance sheet at the end of the year. We will, we will be able to fund this, this investment, these investments through our, operating cashflow. And, and we, as I said, we expect, you know, with resolution of New- of, of ReZorce opportunity, we expect debt to start. And if you look at. If you do have access to the, the, some of our brokers notes, you, you can see that, by 2026, we're starting to chip away quite, quite rapidly at the debt.
... Okay, so diving into a few more. You know, how big an opportunity is ReZorce? Asks Simon. Can you give an idea of the potential this material has and alternatives that are in the market for packages that offer similar benefits? So, we work with a global packaging consultancy to look at, you know, emerging alternatives, et cetera. Nothing has come out. You know, they, they've not seen anything like this. The technology is, you know, it's not easy. Once you know what you're doing, we can do it, but people have been trying to do something like this for years and not managed it. So, it doesn't mean that there aren't other alternatives out there, but there's, you know, no close alternative.
What we do see is, we do see the, the paperboard, you know, the Tetra Pak, et cetera, making incremental improvements on, on their sustainability claims. And how big of an opportunity is it? Well, look, it's not gonna be all things to all people. That, that's certain. You know, I don't think we would necessarily say, "Well, let's, let's put this into," I don't know, Nigeria, for example, if they are not actually recycling the, the end product. It, it kind of doesn't work. So but the markets are extraordinarily big. So we're talking about $100 billion, sorry, $300 billion carton market globally, and $1 billion... I mean, $1 billion, you know, you're, you're getting quite close to a business that's as big as Zotefoams at that level.
Not quite, you know, but certainly at GBP 2 billion, you're bigger than Zotefoams today. And 2 billion is not even 1% market share. I'm not a great believer in going, "It's a very big market, let's claim 10% market share. That doesn't sound very aggressive." You have to work it bottom up, line by line, where does it make sense, where does it not make sense? But the addressable market in areas or geographies with a good recycling infrastructure is very large indeed. And if you go, you know, if you talk to the retailers, talk to the brands, you know, if we had this available now, it would fall into Tetra Pak green system, right? LPB, the current solution, is in Tetra Pak orange system. They don't want it, but they haven't got an alternative. Okay?
If you look at Sainsbury’s, Sainsbury’s say, "Look, we want to reduce plastic, so we're gonna, we're not as interested in that," you know. Do I feel that we have to go and win the war, win the battle with Sainsbury’s? No, not really. You know, we go with the people that want us for the, the reasons that we are making the product. Next question from Dean, B: "Do you see ReZorce being set up as a separate business with a partner, and how would this work?" We may end up selling it, we may end up licensing, we may end up partnering, joint venturing. We could do all of the above and just in different geographies. I think we are capable of doing it all, because from the start, we've looked at the entire supply chain.
We have not just looked at how do we do our little bit and then throw it over the wall to the next guy. So when we are talking about, this is how it goes through a filling machine, this is how the cap goes on, this is how the printing works, all of that, we know how to do, okay? So that gives us the ability to license it. It gives us the ability to partner with a financial partner, because, you know, we're not looking for industry expertise. We can bring in the right people to scale the business, et cetera. So I think we're just... at this point, we are open to the different solutions or different opportunities that may arise for scaling this.
One thing we have done, given the lead times on, for example, extrusion equipment, is gone to various extrusion companies around the world and said, "Look, would you be interested in tool manufacturing this so that we could scale quickly?" And the answer is, you know, "Yes," in a lot of cases. So that would give us, with the right partner, the ability to scale more quickly than you might think. Okay, Benji, "I've read that even if 90% of plastic is recycled in a closed-loop system, that would still result in a greater amount of total plastic use overall than by using LPB." Okay, how do we deal with that? Well, the... I think there's two answers to that. One is, well, that's wrong.
Why is it wrong? Well, typical LPB—we'll use more than 10% plastic. The cap's not recycled because it's in there, and then the plastic liners are not. And by weight, those are more than 10%. So, secondly, you know, we are using recycled content, so if you work out closed loop, the leakage at a closed loop, you know, we are, we believe, lower than 10%. But it does depend on recycling rates, that's definitely true. And we've looked at the life cycle analysis in a number of different ways, including different recycling rates. So I think, I think it is a valid challenge.
I think we have to make sure that we operate in areas where recycling is high, but at the same time, it is a much lower carbon footprint. And I know the world is, you know, anti-plastic, but if you actually work out what intensive forestry does to biodiversity, water usage, carbon, you know, they say, "Oh, we're growing carbon and capturing carbon," actually not true. If you work out what happens when you chop down a mature tree and plant a sapling, that is not the same. And so I think there are arguments on either side of the debate. But certainly, you know, the not valid argument is, well, it's plastic.
You know, that doesn't actually hold up if you look at the detail. And so, you know, one of the things that we are doing on launch is coming out with, you know, very clear, and validatable discussions around those topics. It's interesting, if you go to a Tetra Pak carton, you might see something like, "This cap is certified recycled plastic." Go and look what the asterisk says when they certified recycled plastic. What it is, is virgin plastic, and they make a contribution to other people to subsidize them buying recycled plastic, and then they call their product certified recycled plastic. What do you think about that? I don't think that's very clear or helpful to the debate around, you know, how society is dealing with effectively what is a global sustainability problem.
So finally, David, is the timing of your retirement linked to progress with ReZorce? No. I think there's two ways to read that. When I announced I would retire this year, it wasn't linked to any particular business thing. I always think that, you know, if you think about business, you will never retire. You're always two years away from, you know, retiring because of what's going on. The other interpretation of that question is, you know, am I just going to leave the business and then sort of hand over? No, I've committed to the board that I will be available after an incoming CEO comes in, to do whatever is necessary for continuity.
If that means I pick up certain projects for a while, I've not got anything to do on the other side. You know, I've not decided I'm gonna go and take a non-exec job or something like that. So, we will do what's right for the business. And my retirement will not be a, you know, "There's the files, there's the contact list. Off you go." That won't happen.
David, on that note, you've answered every single question that has come in from investors, both yourself and Gary. So thank you once again for your time, and thank you to everybody for your engagement. David, Gary, I will shortly redirect those on the call to give you their feedback, which I know is particularly important to you both. But before doing so, David, I wonder if I may just a couple of closing comments just to wrap up with. Thank you.
Yeah, just look, thanks for listening. Thanks for your support. I hope you find Zotefoams, as usual, fairly straightforward and honest. When things are going well, we will take the occasional pat on the back, and when things don't go well, we will tell you the truth and what we're gonna do about it. So it's just our way. But this is, you know... I don't know how many more of these calls I'll have with you, but absolute pleasure to be Chief Executive of Zotefoams. And I think in particular, we've had a good year, lots of interesting things going on, as always, another year of progress, and you know, thank you very much.
Well, that's great. And, Harry O. has just typed in saying, "David, getting towards the end of your term, can I please offer a vote of thanks for all you have done?" That's from Harry. So thank you, Harry.
Thank you.
Well, David, and Gary, thank you once again. Can I please ask investors not to close this session, as we'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. This may take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Zotefoams plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.