Hi, everyone. My name is David Bortolussi. I'm the Managing Director and CEO of The a2 Milk Company. Thanks for joining us for our Investor Day. While we would love to have hosted this event in person, due to COVID-19 restrictions, today's event is completely virtual. However, we look forward to hosting you in person another time soon. Although we are presenting t o you virtually, many of our team are in Sydney and Melbourne. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with us today. Outside Australia, our team is joining us from China, the U.S., and New Zealand. On behalf of The a2 Milk Company, [Non-English content] good day, and hello.
To the investment community joining us today, thank you again for your interest in The a2 Milk Company, and I really hope that you get a lot out of today. What are our objectives for today? First, I'd like to virtually introduce you to a2's new executive leadership team. We've made some changes to the team in the past six months, and the team represents a good mix of history and experience at a2, as well as fresh talent and perspectives. We don't often get to bring the full team to you, so today is a great opportunity for you to hear directly from our leaders. Second, we've listened to the investment community's desire to further understand our business. This is an important focus of mine. Hopefully, you will have noticed a more transparent approach, and I hope our session today is a further example of this commitment.
Today is also about sharing with you our latest insights in our key markets, categories, and channels. The market, particularly in China, is evolving rapidly, and an important objective of today is sharing with you our perspectives on these shifts and trends. Against this context, we will articulate our ambition and revised growth strategy. This follows the significant amount of work that has gone into our strategy refresh over the past five months and sets the path for our future growth ambitions. Finally, we want to take the opportunity to ask any questions you may have about the business, especially while we have the full leadership team together. With that, let's meet our new executive leadership team. Our leadership team comprises both our business units as well as our functional leaders working together as one team to lead a2 globally.
Looking first at our business leaders, we have Kevin Bush, our Executive General Manager for ANZ. Kevin was promoted to this role in July, having been with the company for five years as our Sales Director for ANZ. Kevin has been instrumental to the success of our fresh milk business in Australia and was the clear choice to take on this new leadership role. Next is Li Xiao, our Chief Executive for Greater China. Li Xiao has been with us for the past 2.5 years and has made a huge contribution in that short time, with the China business more than doubling during his tenure. I know that many of you had the opportunity to meet Li Xiao in our previous Investor Day in Shanghai and will no doubt be looking forward to hearing from him again today. Next is Bernard May.
Bernard is the Chief Executive of Mataura Valley Milk and joined our leadership team post completion of the MVM acquisition in July this year. Bernard has been with MVM since its inception and brings with him deep understanding and experience in nutritional manufacturing. We welcomed Yohan Senaratne to the business a few months ago as Executive General Manager, International. Following his time at Bellamy's, Yohan is uniquely placed to take on our English label IMF business. As you are all aware, the English label routes to market are very unlike traditional FMCG channels, and I've been extremely impressed not only with Yohan's quick transition to a2, but also the additional experience he brings, including in IMF portfolio innovation and e-commerce. Another familiar face to many of you is Blake Waltrip, our Chief Executive for the U.S.
Blake continues to do an outstanding job leading our business in North America, which he's done since he joined a2 in 2016. Under Blake's leadership, our team in the U.S. has successfully created an a2 Milk pool and supply chain, developed the a2 brand, and built national distribution. Moving now to our functional leaders. Amanda Hart is the most recent addition to our leadership team. Amanda joined us in September as our new Chief People and Culture Officer. She was most recently the Human Resources leader across several Asia Pacific markets for Dyson Appliances and has done a great job already engaging with our people and teams globally. Next is Shareef Khan, our Chief Operations Officer. Shareef will also be familiar to many of you.
He is our longest-serving ELT member, having been with the business since 2012, and has been responsible for creating our entire supply chain during this time. Shareef's experience at a2 and his relationships with our long-standing partners has been a critical element of continuity through some of our other leadership changes. Eleanor Khor is next. Eleanor joined the business in 2018, and since then has spent significant time with our corporate and ANZ teams and in China, working closely with Li Xiao. Eleanor has led most of our major strategic projects and business development activities since she joined, and so was the natural choice to become our Chief Strategy Officer when I created the role earlier this year. Next is Jaron McVicar. Jaron joined us in 2016 after several years as a Senior Legal Advisor to a2.
Jaron has provided counsel to our Board and management since he joined, and this year we expanded his role to include sustainability to provide more leadership focus on this critical area, which he is passionate about. Race Strauss, our Chief Financial Officer, who I'm sure most of you will know, joined the business in 2020. Race is responsible for finance, IT, and investor relations across the group. He has a strong consumer goods background in international markets, including China and other Asian regions, and has had a significant impact on the business since he joined us. Janelle Tong is currently our Chief Marketing Officer on an interim basis until Edith Bailey joins the company later in the year from Danone.
Janelle joined a2 in 2020, having spent a considerable period of her career in consumer goods companies in China, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore, and is doing a great job leading our global marketing team through this period. With those introductions, let me talk you through our agenda for today. To start things off, I will give you a brief overview of The a2 Milk Company and talk you through some of the recent disruptions we've faced and how we've responded. I'll then discuss our growth strategy review and our revised ambition, goals, strategic priorities, and enablers at the group level. With that initial context, I'll then hand over to Janelle, Jaron, and Amanda to take you through our brand foundations, sustainability strategy, and people and culture priorities.
For me, it's important that we cover these aspects up front because without a strong brand, sustainable business, and great people, we won't be able to achieve our ambition. We'll then shift gears to look specifically at our core IMF business units. Eleanor will start this section, talking you through our perspectives on the evolving China IMF market dynamics. Li Xiao will then talk through how we are positioned against these dynamics and our strategy for our China label IMF business before handing over to Yohan to talk through our English label IMF challenges, opportunities, and strategy. We'll then go back to Eleanor to take us through our adjacent growth opportunities before heading into a break. Following the break, we'll hear from the other business units with Kevin taking us through our ANZ market, business, and strategy, and Blake doing the same for the U.S.
Bernard will then introduce you to MVM and cover our plans for increasing its utilization before Shareef talks you through our supply chain priorities. Finally, Race will take us through our finance and IT focus areas before providing a trading update. We'll then move into Q&A for just under an hour, closing at 1:00 P.M. There's obviously a lot of content to cover today. With that in mind, let's move into the materials. By way of introduction, and for those of you that aren't familiar with our company, a2 was founded on the fundamental belief that by providing milk that was naturally A1- protein free, we would do good for human health globally. To bring this benefit to consumers, we have developed a wide portfolio of products, including fresh UHT and ESL milk, infant milk formula, adult milk powder, as well as other fortified milk powdered products.
Our company origins are in New Zealand, but our primary sales are now to Greater China as well as to Australia, and we also have a developing business in North America. Throughout all of our regions, one of the keys to our success has been that we produce the highest quality product in world-class manufacturing facilities, whether it be in our own facilities or with our strategic manufacturing partners in ANZ and the U.S. Our partners have also been critical to our China market success, in particular our long-term distribution partner, China State Farm, and our long-term supply partner, Synlait. Finally, we wouldn't be where we are today without our talented, committed, and energized team around the globe.
While we've grown a lot over the years, we still are a relatively small team, and everyone is critical to enabling us to achieve our growth ambition, well beyond the NZD 1.2 billion of sales we generated in FY 2021. Stepping back a little further in time, the a2 story is truly extraordinary. A key feature of that story is its different chapters of growth. When I was joining the company, I was interested to learn that a2's original commercial ambitions were to license its intellectual property. When that didn't yield significant success, the company adapted and in 2007 moved from an IP focus to launching the a2 Milk brand in Australia. With some early success in Australian fresh milk, the company set its sights on bringing a2 fresh milk to several countries globally, with initial efforts to expand in the U.K. and Ireland.
In 2012, the company evolved again, expanding its sights into infant milk formula, leading to a significant change in its trajectory after it launched IMF in 2014. The years that followed were truly remarkable with an almost 60% sales CAGR from FY 2014 to FY 2020. This growth also enabled investment and expansion into other markets, including the U.S., which we entered in 2015. However, after years of impressive growth, the business was disrupted in FY 2021. There's no hiding from the fact that FY 2021 was a very challenging year for us, which has led us to reflect on our strategy and consider how to adapt again for growth, which is the focus of our presentation today. Before we get into our refreshed strategy, let me cover what happened in FY 2021 and the actions that we have taken to address the disruption.
The key thing to note is that COVID-19 and the border closures that followed disrupted cross-border sales for us and other companies exporting through this channel. These disruptions caused significant volatility in our demand and supply, which ultimately led to material excess inventory, which exacerbated the issue. All of this resulted in a significant decline in our English label IMF sales. At the same time, and not immediately apparent to us until May this year, the China IMF market started to decline significantly for the first time in decades, driven by an almost 20% reduction in the number of births. However, as we discussed in May and updated you at our results in August, we took significant actions to address the disruption.
We took aggressive stock write-downs and deliberately slowed down sales from the fourth quarter of FY 2021 to address excess inventory and help support a rebalancing of English label IMF pricing. We swapped older inventory at distributors with newer inventory where possible to improve product freshness for our consumers. We also deliberately increased brand investment at this time to drive consumer demand and in recognition of the reduced brand activity being undertaken by English label resellers. Finally, we reorganized for enhanced focus, we bolstered our team, and we refreshed our strategy to adapt for growth in a new context. In July, we announced the reorganization of our Asia Pacific division. The Asia Pacific division comprised the vast majority of our business, and the primary objective of this reorganization was so that each component within it would receive the dedication and focus to assist with achieving its full potential.
As a result of the reorganization, the Asia Pacific division was separated into three new business units. Our China domestic business continues to be led by Li Xiao, but it is now a standalone business unit focusing on China label IMF, as well as our emerging portfolio of other dairy and nutritional products in China. We appointed Yohan to lead our international export business to allow dedicated management of our English label IMF cross-border business to China, as well as our other export opportunities for a2 out of ANZ, with Yohan working closely with Li Xiao. Kevin was promoted to lead our Australia and New Zealand domestic business, focusing on serving our home market consumers with fresh milk, as well as more actively considering how else we can bring the A2 protein proposition to consumers through new products.
The benefits of this reorganization are clear, with increased energy and dedication to support delivery of our key growth initiatives. The second thing I wanted to mention at the outset is our growth strategy review. Over the past five months, we have been hard at work reviewing our China market opportunity, our brand positioning, our route to market challenges and opportunities, our product portfolio, as well as our potential to expand into adjacent categories and new markets. The work has been comprehensive, richly debated at all levels within the organization, and forms the basis of a lot of what we will share with you today. With this context, let's take a look at our revised growth strategy, which will continue to evolve and adapt.
I'm going to spend a bit of time here as we've endeavored to synthesize a lot of our work into this group summary, but it's important to understand how we're defining our ambition and goals and the strategic priorities we've set to get us there. We'll hear more about our critical enablers and values throughout our functional updates. I've already touched on our purpose, which continues to be to enrich lives by harnessing the nutritional wonders of nature. Our ambition, as articulated here, is new. We obviously have different ambitions within each market, but from a group level, we are committed to rebuilding a2 into the growth company we've been throughout our history, returning to our pioneering and innovative roots and elevating our focus on sustainability. Our ambition is reflected in our high-level goals.
For our people, we want to create the safest and most diverse, inclusive, and engaging place for our people to thrive. We are a big small company, and this sets us apart from our competitors. Every single person in our business has an impact, and to get the most out of our team, we need to create an environment where they can thrive personally and professionally, and where they remain committed and energized by our purpose and ambition. In terms of sustainability, we want this to be a real differentiator for us. Whether it be through supporting our farmers, protecting our planet and cows, rethinking our packaging, or contributing to our communities, we have the opportunity to make a real difference in terms of what we stand for and the impact we have on people and the environment around us.
For our consumers, our goal remains the same as when we were founded: to bring the unique benefits of pure and natural a2 Milk to as many consumers as possible. Finally, for our shareholders, our aim is to create long-term, enduring value and to do this through a trusted and transparent relationship. To deliver on our ambition and goals, we need to orient ourselves around our strategic priorities. Firstly, we will be investing in people and planet leadership. Without a strong team, we can't deliver on our priorities, and without being conscious of the impact we're having on our planet, we can't ensure sustainability of our business in the long term. We're setting ourselves a bold ambition here, which we see as one of our most important priorities. Secondly, our most critical business objective is to push to achieve our full potential in China IMF.
While there's obviously a lot of nuances in what we do here, two key themes to note are that we are increasingly moving towards streamlining our distribution model and getting closer to our consumers. Secondly, protecting, nurturing, and further developing our brand to generate ongoing consumer pull for our product and doing so in a way that reflects evolving consumer channel preferences. Third, it's imperative that we significantly ramp up our product innovation, and this is critical across all of our product segments. We need to expand our IMF portfolios for both China label and English label. In all markets, we need to enter into adjacent product categories to drive growth for a2, as well as delivering on our goal of bringing the unique benefits of a2 Milk to as many consumers as possible. Next, we need to transform our supply chain.
This includes expanding our China label market access, utilizing the capability and capacity we now have at MVM, and over time, developing supply capabilities in China, which will also be important to support our growth ambitions. Finally, achieving profitability across all of our business units. We are working hard on realizing our potential in the U.S., as well as expediting insourcing and new business development at MVM to increase utilization. While there's quite a lot to digest here, we'll be covering these elements in more detail throughout the presentation to ensure you are clear on why these are our priority areas and that you are confident in our ability to execute on these initiatives. Let me add a bit more color to how we see these priorities rolling out over the next few years.
Our plan takes us over a roughly five-year time period as we first seek to stabilize our business, then ramp up growth initiatives within the business before working through next wave growth opportunities. Starting with FY 2022, this is very much a year for us to reset. Most critically, we need to continue to restore demand and supply balance so that channel economics improve further. Doing this right will be the key for a return to long-term growth in English label IMF. For China label IMF, we have defined detailed strategic initiatives, but before we fully scale up, FY 2022 is about testing our hypothesis in market and adjusting our approach so that when we do scale up, we get maximum return on our investment.
Within our BAU focus areas, we will increase our investment in always-on digital content and marketing, which Stage 4 penetration, is a somewhat quicker win for us. In parallel, we'll be working through our refresh strategic priorities and execution plan, refining our brand positioning in China, and ramping up our internal focus on innovation and NPD. From FY 2023 to FY 2024, we're aiming for full-scale rollout of the initiatives we commenced this year. We'll be launching our new China label range formulated to the new GB standard, as well as innovating in our English label IMF portfolio. Innovation is a key theme in our Horizon Two growth plans, with new products also planned in the U.S. and ANZ. To support all of this, we will be dialing up our brand investment in China.
Outside our product portfolio, sustainability will be a bigger feature in FY 2023 and 2024, with our MVM electrification plan being implemented together with a step change in our packaging. When we look slightly longer term, from FY 2025 to 2026, Horizon three growth opportunities become more important. By this stage, we hope to have secured additional China label registrations to allow us to develop an expanded IMF portfolio. In addition, we plan to have achieved greater scale in other product categories in China, as well as entered two to three additional markets. Sustainability continues to be important, particularly making meaningful progress on reducing our Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Business sustainability is also a key goal, with a target to achieve profitability in both the U.S. and MVM during FY 2026 or earlier.
Throughout this journey, we will be exploring pathways to accelerate our strategy execution through potential M&A, JV, and alliance opportunities in relation to both the front end and back end of our business. How are we going to measure our success over the medium to long term? While not tied to particular financial years, I wanted to give you a sense, firstly, of the non-financial goals we are focusing on achieving. For our people, firstly, we want to keep our people safe by continuously driving down our TRIFR below 10. We want to see our team engagement scores continue to be above 80%, and we'll also be including a diversity and inclusion metric to be rated by our team in terms of how we are progressing in this important area.
Under sustainability, you'll see later in the presentation that we have significantly brought forward our commitment to achieve net zero for Scope 1 and 2 emissions to 2030, and net zero for Scope 3 by 2040. We are also targeting to have 100% of our farms to have farm environmental plans and certified animal welfare programs in place by 2023. For packaging, the aim is to have our packaging being 100% recyclable, with an average of 50% of content being from recycled material by 2025. Next is brand health, and our key measures here reflect differing market positions. For China, we're targeting to increase unprompted awareness to 25%. For Australian fresh milk, our targeted measure is for loyalty to be above 40%. For the U.S., within premium milk, we are targeting household penetration above 10%.
For market share, the measures are to be a top five China label player with share above 5%. Secondly, to have the leading English label IMF range with a total share above 25%. For Australian fresh milk, we are targeting share above 15%. For the U.S., we are aiming for premium milk share above 5%, and we're also targeting an incremental NZD 100 million of sales from existing and new emerging markets. Finally, for innovation, our measures are as follows. We're targeting to access three or more China label registrations. We are also planning to expand our English label IMF portfolio. Our aim is to grow dairy and other nutritionals by NZD 200 million in sales, and we are aiming for our innovation to account for greater than 25% of sales from new products in Australia and the U.S.
The key point we want to make is that we know there is considerable ambition built in here, but we wanted to demonstrate very clearly what we're focusing on achieving. In setting our growth horizons and goals, one of the first questions you will no doubt have is when we are planning to deliver on our ambitions. While I'd love to be able to give you precise timelines, the reality is that recent and unprecedented changes and volatility in the China IMF market over the past 12 months make that impossible. There are a number of key macro uncertainties for which there is too wide a range of potential outcomes to allow us to give you specific guidance. In particular, the birth rate in China. Given our primary focus on IMF, the size of the market will essentially be tied to the number of newborns.
While there are COVID-19 and sociodemographic factors impacting the birth rate in China as in other markets, there are also deliberate efforts being made by the government to influence the birth rate. Time will tell how these factors play out and flow through to the IMF market. Second, there's cross-border trade. The abrupt border closures linked to COVID-19 led to huge disruptions in our business in FY 2021. What is unclear is not only when borders will fully open, but whether the market will have structurally changed during that time, or whether existing English label IMF routes to the market will bounce back. If so, to what degree and how quickly? Obviously, we spend considerable time monitoring indicators of this. The unprecedented change over the past 12 months has highlighted the difficulties in trying to predict these dynamics. Third, the China label re-registration process is fast upon us.
This is a very dynamic process, and it remains unclear precisely how many brands will achieve re-registration. What innovation they will bring to market, and for those that exit, how that market share will be divided amongst the remainder. In addition, it is unclear how brands will behave when faced with the prospect of losing registration, with the potential for product dumping and corresponding price dysfunction being an issue we are closely monitoring. Next is the pace of change in consumer preferences. By way of example, we've moved from e-commerce to social e-commerce to content e-commerce in quick succession in China, and this just serves to highlight how quickly the market evolves. While we obviously invest significantly to monitor consumer trends, the pace of change is unlike any other market in the world where we operate, and due to the nature of our category, our consumer cohorts change rapidly.
Finally, the China regulatory environment remains a watching brief. We've seen how quickly changes can be made and remain highly attuned to monitoring these evolutions together with our China strategic partners. These uncertainties serve to highlight how difficult it is to precisely define future state targets. That said, we remain confident that with our unique proposition and brand, coupled with our team's ability to execute, we are well-placed to rebuild a2 into an exciting, innovative, and sustainable growth company. With that context in mind, let's look at how we see our sales evolving in the future. The headline message is that we have an ambition to grow sales to over NZD 2 billion in the next five or more years.
When we break down that growth by driver, we see the primary contributor being our China label IMF business with a target to roughly double our share, and in doing so, add approximately NZD 400 million in sales. English label IMF is one of the hardest segments to estimate. We've assumed that we will increase channel share within English label, but that more importantly, there will be some channel recovery, translating to us regaining half of the English label revenue decline that occurred from FY 2020 to 2021 or around NZD 300 million in sales. Within other product categories to China, we've set ourselves a target of delivering an additional NZD 200 million in sales.
For the other business units and adjacent growth opportunities, we're targeting roughly NZD 100 million in sales each as ANZ and the U.S. expand their product portfolios, and we enter another 2-3 new emerging markets. Given the inherently difficult nature of forecasting growth, particularly in current market conditions, we've provided for around NZD 400 million in risk to the plan, taking us in total to a target of approximately NZD 2 billion in sales over the next five or more years. Having said that, there is significant upside and downside risk in relation to this target, but it is an ambition we are all focused on delivering as soon as possible. In terms of our EBITDA margin, it's worth noting at the outset that infant sales, and particularly English label, will be the key driver of our margin outcomes.
Over the next few years, we are anticipating EBITDA margins in the teens due to market headwinds and investment, potentially increasing to the higher teens in the out years as the market recovers in China and we increase share in both China label and English label IMF. Within this range, there are important accretion drivers and dilution pressures over the plan, including our level of sales and operational leverage, sales mix, the speed at which we achieve profitability in the U.S. and MVM, the level of brand investment required to compete in China, innovation, which is likely to be at lower margins, as well as other operational drivers such as the investment required in our supply chain, capability building, and to achieve our sustainability goals, as well as more financial drivers such as FX.
While it is possible that EBITDA margins may improve further into the low- to mid-20s% in the longer term, this would, among other things, require much higher than expected recovery in our English label IMF business with associated margin benefits and C2C marketing leverage, which may reduce the level of brand investment that we may otherwise need to make. The focus today is on how we see the market, our growth opportunities, and execution challenges. In that context, we have shared our view on the potential scenarios and indicative shape of what we are trying to achieve with our strategy. As you appreciate, there is still some range in the numbers I've just discussed.
While you will no doubt have many questions, I'd ask that we focus questions on the content provided and strategic issues rather than seeking further detail on our financial modeling assumptions, which is not something we can address in more detail given the challenging environment for forecasting. To summarize the key messages we want you to take away from today, first is that the overall market environment has gone through truly unprecedented change over the past 12 months. The speed and extent of change has been more than anyone could have anticipated. These changes have required us to adapt our approach. Adapting to the market and capturing opportunities is in our company DNA, and the approach we're sharing with you today is the next iteration in our company's growth story.
While we're changing our approach, critically, our brand and the proposition that underpins our brand remains strong and relevant. Consumers love the a2 Milk story and what we stand for. In our key growth markets, particularly China, we have a relatively small share and a significant runway remaining for future growth. We have growth opportunities firmly in mind. We have a great leadership team in place, and throughout our business, we have a culture built on a pioneering spirit that we're confident will support us to achieve our ambitions. With that, I'm now going to hand over to Janelle to take you through our brand in more detail.
Thanks, David. Hello, everyone. I'm Janelle Tong, and I'm the Interim Chief Marketing Officer. It is my absolute pleasure to present our brand to you. As a consumer, a mother of three, and a marketer, this is a brand that really captures the imagination and we believe has been a key ingredient in a2's formidable success.
A brand is not a logo. It's not a catchphrase. It's not an ad. It's not even just the combination of these things. It's the overall fabric of a company and defines who it is and what it stands for. What has been and what will be woven into our fabric over time will determine our ability to engage and excite consumers into the future. It's an incredible brand to be working on and one that I am truly passionate about. Let's start with how it all began. The a2 Milk Company was founded in New Zealand by two passionate pioneers, scientist Dr. Corrie McLachlan and his business partner, Howard Paterson, who recognized that not all milk is the same. Early scientific research revealed that there was a difference between beta casein proteins in cow's milk, with predominantly two types, A1 and A2.
McLachlan discovered there was a safe and simple way to identify cows that produced milk that was naturally A1-protein free. From there, The a2 Milk Company was born. Since then, we have worked alongside scientists from around the world to build on Corrie and Howard's work and purpose, and continue to pioneer the scientific understanding of the unique benefits of A1-protein free milk. To this day, our purpose remains the same: to enrich people's lives through the wonder of nature, through the naturally occurring a2 Milk difference. Our a2 Milk comes from cows specially selected to naturally produce milk with only the a2 beta casein protein type. It's pure and natural, not adulterated, and with no nasties. Many people have told us they can feel the difference. If you don't believe me, try a2 Milk yourself.
The a2 Milk brand is much more than just a difference between A1 and A2 protein types. Our brand stands for a series of great qualities which have enabled us to build a leading position in the market. We have a single-minded focus as the pioneer, innovator, and leader in understanding the unique benefits of a2 Milk. We continue to deliver a premium and high-quality product and experience to our consumers. We are all about pure and natural dairy with superior, great taste and New Zealand provenance. We have positioned our brand as an aspirational lifestyle brand with progressive values. At first, competitors tried to question the science, then they tried to replicate our success. Ultimately, we are the only brand that is dedicated exclusively to the A2 protein difference.
The fundamental pillar of our success is that our brand has been built by our strength in intellectual property and our commitment to develop the science that underpins our brand. Secondly, our brand has been advocated by others. The passion for our brand is shared by everyone, from our own employees to our beloved consumers and the broader community in which we interact. So many of our team and so many of our consumers have a favorite a2 story about how it's changed lives. Word of mouth and advocacy is the most powerful for our consumers. Thirdly, our brand is celebrated by us with aspirational and uplifting consumer advertising and being more than just A2 protein, bringing more purpose to our company and the people we touch.
For those of you that are new to our story, or just as a recap for those that have followed our story for some time, the difference starts with selecting the right cow. It doesn't stop there. The a2 Milk Company also applies expertise, proprietary know-how, and care to ensure consistently high quality is applied across all our products. If you look at our milk process with typical cow herds, they produce conventional milk containing a mix of A1 and A2 protein types. However, our branded milk is sourced from herds producing milk naturally containing only the A2 protein type and no A1. Now, I'm going to bring this to life with a video to explain the a2 Milk difference.
a2 Milk isn't just changing lives. It's changing the way we think about milk. You might think milk is just milk, right? Wrong, and here's why. Standard cow's milk contains about 3.5% of protein, and one of those proteins is called beta casein. Beta casein proteins come in two types, A1 and A2. The natural and original A2 protein has always been found in milk. The other type, the A1 protein, came about by genetic mutation thousands of years ago. These proteins are digested differently. For some people, the A1 protein isn't good news and causes inflammation, resulting in digestive issues. a2 Milk is sourced from cows that produce milk containing only the natural and pure A2 protein type, so it's naturally free of the A1 protein, which means we believe millions of people can enjoy a2 Milk without the potential side effects.
That's why a2 Milk truly is a natural wonder.
The company and others have invested in research over many years to further the understanding of the digestive differences between a2 Milk and other milks. Notable milestones are between 2003 and 2006. A series of animal studies were undertaken over this time by various independent third parties, which reported digestive benefits of A1 protein-free milk. To better understand these with reference to its a2 Milk, The a2 Milk Company decided to begin commissioning human clinical studies. In 2016, the results of a double-blind, randomized, crossover, and peer-reviewed human trial of 45 Chinese adults sponsored by the company were published. Key findings from this chronic study were that drinking regular cow's milk, but not a2 Milk, was associated with significant increases in the severity of digestive discomfort symptoms.
In 2017, the findings of an even larger double-blind, randomized, crossover, and peer-reviewed human clinical trial of 600 Chinese adults sponsored by the company were published. A key finding from the study included that across all three study sites, the severity of all digestive symptoms were consistently lower after drinking a2 Milk than after drinking regular cow's milk when measured at one hour and three hours after consumption. Since 2017, a further three human clinical studies have been published focusing on digestive issues associated with consumption of different forms of milk with participants based in China, New Zealand, and the U.S.A. To build on the results from existing studies, we will continue to support clinical research into this area with participants from a wider variety of population groups across different ethnicities, age groups, and genders.
There are also other territories and consumer benefits we are keen to explore. We have a special product, a unique brand, and a desire to nourish people's lives every day. The reason we are so passionate about our products and brand is that our consumers tell us what a difference it makes to their lives. Noelle from the U.S.A. tells us, "This milk is great. If you like milk but can't drink regular milk, you really need to try this." Wendy from Australia tells us, "Completely changed my stomach problems since using a2 Milk. Never been better." It's really powerful, uplifting, and inspiring to receive this feedback and know that whatever your association with a2, be it as an employee, an investor, a supporter, you are contributing to enriching people's lives every day. Our brand sits naturally at the heart of macro consumer trends.
There are five key macro trends that interplay with our brand. In recent times, there has been significant increased demand for real whole food goodness. The natural and whole food revolution, which is all around less nasties and clean eating. The rise of holistic physical and mental wellbeing, where consumers are seeking to proactively improve their health and wellbeing, utilizing an array of tailored products that meet their needs. The rise and importance of protein in one's diet in quality and protein types, not necessarily quantity to be a superfood for growth, digestion, and restoration. There has been a trend in duality of digestion and immunity. There is significant increased awareness of gut, brain, immune health, as well as consumers seeking solutions in this space. Finally, consumers are looking towards more purposeful brands beyond the what to the why that goes beyond just purely functional benefits.
From our perspective, it's important that we keep across these trends as we consider the evolution of our brand, and we develop plans and innovative products and experiences for the future. We are on a never-ending journey to deeply understand our consumers and their needs as we invest significantly to ensure we are consumer-centric and have our consumer needs at the fore, as demonstrated with consumer segmentation and usage and attitude studies, robust brand health tracking across our key markets, China, U.S.A., and Australia, understanding and tracking of broader dairy categories in China, including investment in data and analytics to track consumer and market trends, NPD and competitor activity, and finally, taking a test-and-learn approach in China to further optimize our communication effectiveness across our consumer touchpoints.
As you can see in the images on the page, this has been demonstrated across all our advertising in Australia, China, and the U.S. with some of our previous advertising from Feel The Difference, Naturally Different, Naturally Free, and Love Milk Again. To the more recent More Good Please in Australia, Jony J campaign in China, and the recently released Taste Worth Crying Over campaign in the U.S. Let me show you one of our earlier Australian TVCs that truly brings our brand to life.
Everybody's free to feel good. Everybody's free to feel good. Everybody's free. Oh. Everybody's free to feel good.
Finally, we will continue to push our brand beyond our unique product difference to be a more purposeful, differentiated brand which goes beyond what we are today, driving stronger sustainability initiatives across our farms, manufacturing processes, consumers and community, which is a great segue to hand over to Jaron, who will take you through our approach to sustainability in more detail.
Thanks for that, Janelle. I'm Jaron McVicar, our Chief Legal and Sustainability Officer and Company Secretary. There's no question that our brand is at the heart of our business, and that it reflects the role we've played as passionate pioneers of the A2 protein proposition. The initiatives that Janelle talked about that go beyond a2 to drive a more purposeful brand are also a great segue to the part of today's presentation that I'm going to talk to, sustainability. This is a new area of responsibility for me, but I'm passionate about it, and I'm really pleased to be presenting this to you today. Sustainability continues to be a fundamental and increasingly important area of focus for all of us, whether we're consumers, investors, regulators, leaders or parents.
As a company, we recognize the need to embrace the sustainability challenges we're facing today and to set bold targets for the future. That's not always going to be easy, but we're determined that sustainability is at the very heart of what we do. For quite some time, a2 has had many touch points for sustainability across our business, and a lot of work has been undertaken in the past few years to better understand our position and develop our approach. But despite all the great work that was being done within the business, we did not initially have any focus on talking about our various sustainability initiatives. Come 2018, we found ourselves on the laggard list for our sustainability reporting.
Since then, there's been a fair bit of catch up to do from an external reporting perspective, and at the same time, new sustainability challenges have gained momentum from the perspective of consumers, investors, and from our own people. From 2019, work was done to up our game with reporting and to deepen our understanding of critical sustainability challenges. While we've got more work to do, we're proud of the improvements we're making. We're moving to a more holistic and coordinated approach to sustainability, while at the same time elevating sustainability as a strategic priority. Our sustainability program has evolved significantly in the past few years. This slide seeks to summarize on a page where our sustainability strategy has evolved to today. Our sustainability strategy starts with our purpose, which is to enrich lives by harnessing the nutritional wonders of nature.
To articulate our approach, we split sustainability into two broad areas, people and planet. From a people perspective, we want to support our people, our consumers, and our communities to be healthy, to be safe, and to thrive. From the planet's perspective, we're determined to make a meaningful impact to protect nature for future generations, and we'll be doing that through the a2 Impact Fund that I will talk about shortly. Next are our focus areas, starting from the left. Under people, we want our team to be passionate people, which Amanda will cover next. We want to have a positive impact on our consumers by bringing them the highest quality nutrition. We also want to enrich the communities in which we operate, both from a consumer perspective and for our loyal farmers.
Under Planet, we want to support thriving farms, both in terms of the environment and the welfare of animals. We want to significantly reduce our impact on the climate and natural resources. We see sustainability as a big challenge, but also a massive opportunity. We are, of course, committed to responsible sourcing and distribution. In all this, we understand the importance of target setting and accountability. We have a number of existing targets and commitments, but are also aware of some gaps, which we're reviewing. As David mentioned in his intro, we're also excited to be able to announce some new, and we believe, very meaningful targets that I will talk to shortly. This summary alludes to the critical programs of work within the business that underpin our targets and commitments. A considerable amount of this work has been undertaken for some time, while some is relatively new.
Finally, we think it's important to call out that all our focus areas, targets, and commitments are underpinned by our values, the highest standards of governance, and by us doing business the right way. While most of this has been shown in our recent annual report, as I mentioned, we're excited to be updating you on some new targets today, in particular, our commitments to being net zero. For Scope 1 and 2 emissions, we're targeting net zero by 2030, and for Scope 3 emissions, which include on-farm GHG emissions, we're targeting net zero by 2040. We recognize that climate impact is a big issue for the dairy industry and for us. In FY 2021, nearly 80% of our GHG emissions were from on-farm, a large proportion of which was from methane emitted by cows.
We've started working on initiatives to support the industry in addressing this. This is critical, but it'll take some time to solve. We are taking action to be a leader in the industry in GHG reduction and farming practices. There is a lot of work we still need to do in developing our pathway to net zero, but we believe that this is a major issue for a2 and our industry, and the planet is too precious for us not to take greater action and accelerate the pathway to zero. In 2020, we announced that we would be establishing the a2 Impact Fund as a vehicle to invest directly in our supply chain to reduce GHG emissions. We are pleased to have already made contributions and investments to achieve this. However, clearly, there is more to do.
In the broad world of sustainability, focus is important, and we are focusing on areas where we can have the greatest impact. I want to take you through four areas where we are proud to have made progress in creating impact over the past year or so. Firstly, through supporting the role our farmers play in the supply chain. We recognize that farms and farmers are critically important to our business. We therefore take a holistic approach to help them thrive. Our approach takes into account the need for high-quality milk supply, the need to engage and support farming communities, while also ensuring the environment is protected and that cows are treated with the utmost of respect and care. Over the past few years, working collaboratively with farmers, we've made significant progress in designing and rolling out farm environmental plans.
Our target is to increase the proportion of farms with environmental plans from just over 80% in FY 2021 to 100% by the end of 2023. For animal welfare, we have progressed the developments of animal welfare programs to meet globally recognized standards set by the World Organization for Animal Health and to uphold the Five Freedoms framework for animal welfare. Our target is to have 100% of farms certified under an upgraded program by the end of 2023. On this slide are details of our recent commitments to significantly reduce our GHG emissions footprint in processing. We were very proud to recently announce that Mataura Valley Milk will be undertaking a project to commission a new high-pressure electro boiler, replacing all current coal-fired heat duties on the site.
The project received approval for co-funding by the New Zealand Government Investment in Decarbonizing Industry Fund, administered in New Zealand by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. This will substantially reduce the MVM site's carbon dioxide emissions to almost zero, as coal is switched for electricity from renewable energy, primarily hydro. The project was driven by MVM and supported by a2 and the China Animal Husbandry Group, with EECA, Aurecon, and Meridian as project partners. We were also pleased to make a contribution to Synlait's boiler conversion from coal to biomass. This project received approval earlier this year from New Zealand's GIDI Fund and will also see the carbon dioxide emissions significantly reduced as coal is switched for biomass. Next is packaging. We believe we can make a significant difference over time in sustainable packaging.
This is important to us, and we understand the increasing importance to consumers and the broader community. Again, there's more work for us to do. As a first step, we've committed to the Australian 2025 National Packaging Targets, and we're also working towards operationalizing sustainable packaging initiatives within the business and setting targets for products sold outside of Australia. The final area we wanted to highlight today is the work we do to support communities in which we operate. Our overall aim in enriching communities is to contribute in a way that supports children's and parents' wellbeing, helps farming communities be their best, and give back to those in need, all while fostering inclusion and diversity. Several programs we've contributed to are highlighted on this slide.
In Australia, we've supported Foodbank for a number of years, and this year we're sponsoring their School Breakfast Program, which will support 47 schools across South Australia and the Northern Territory, primarily First Nations students and in areas that need the most support. In New Zealand, we've been a long-term supporter of Cure Kids, including supporting research on digestive health for children, with a special focus on celiac disease and irritable bowel disease. In the U.S., our team recently ran a campaign with Feed the Children U.S.A, donating 10% of every carton of milk sold to that organization in support of families and children returning to school. In China, we have partnered with rural schools and newspaper Guangming Daily to support schoolchildren with nutrition stations to help drive better educational outcomes in rural communities.
We've also provided disaster relief supporting our communities, including a NZD 1 million donation to assist in efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. I'd like to finish this sustainability section by saying we've made some good progress with evolving a2 to be a more sustainable business in the past few years. Today, we're clear on our ambition and on the areas we can focus on to create meaningful, positive impacts. We also know we still have a lot more to do. I'm now going to hand you over to Amanda to take you through our people and culture section of the presentation.
Thanks, Jaron, and hello to everyone. I'm Amanda Hart, and I joined the a2 team in September as our Chief People and Culture Officer. My priorities have been learning the business, meeting team members and leaders across all functions and locations, and understanding our day-to-day operations. Already it is clear to me that we have a team who are passionate, fueled by purpose and high performance. As David described in the opening presentation, our ambition is to rebuild a2 into an exciting, innovative, and sustainable growth company, and our people are pivotal to this ambition. We have an extraordinarily passionate team committed to enriching lives by harnessing the nutritional wonders of nature. Everyone at a2 has a deep affinity for the business, for what we do, and for how we change the lives of consumers with our products.
We are all brand and product ambassadors, with everyone having a personal anecdote for how our products enrich lives. More than that, the team also understand the impact we have on the communities we operate in, serve, and support. Going back in a2's history, it's been a place where bold passion and a pioneering spirit have advanced the company forward, creating incredible opportunities and growth along the way. Our values of humility, respect, and integrity form a bedrock that ensures we go about our business in the right way. These values underpin our culture, having delivered exceptional outcomes in the past and will in the future. The size of company-wide headcount has grown in accordance with our company growth. Over the past five years, we have doubled in size and grown again recently with the acquisition of Mataura Valley Milk.
While the team has grown significantly, there are still only 400 or so people in our organization globally. Our teams are located across various geographies within our regions of China, New Zealand, Australia and the U.S. Despite the various geographies and time zones, we operate as one team with communication and connection at the core of how we work cohesively and collaboratively. Importantly, the growth in recent times has been to build a local China business to support the execution of our strategic objectives. We've also enhanced capabilities across our other regions and in global support functions. A hallmark of the evolution of the team has been that we've retained many people in critical roles from the early days of our business formation, while introducing new talent and with them, new ideas and ways of working.
There is a genuine feeling among the team that whatever their role, they are really making a difference. We're big enough to be seen and known, but small enough to make a tangible impact. That's a very special place to be. The people and culture strategy continues to build on our key business enablers. We are committed to leveraging the full potential of our people by providing them continual opportunities to develop and grow. Ensuring we live the high standards of health and safety across every corner of our business. Building on already high levels of engagement and enhancing the employee experience. Developing through capability and leadership programs. Celebrating the global team and evolving a culture that fosters diversity and inclusion. I'm now going to hand over to Eleanor to take you through an overview of the China IMF market.
Thank you, Amanda, and hello, everyone. I'm Eleanor Khor, Chief Strategy Officer, and it's great to be here to present to you today. After hearing about our brand, sustainability programs, and people and culture strategy, in this next section, we'll shift gears to talk about our core growth opportunity in China IMF. There's a lot to cover, so the way we've broken it down is that I'll take you through our perspectives on the evolving China IMF market. Li Xiao will take you through how we're positioned against these dynamics for our China label business, and Yohan will then talk you through our English label priorities. By way of summary, the overall market environment we're trading in has changed more significantly and more quickly in the past year than we could have predicted.
Not only did we have significant disruption to cross-border channels, but for the first time, the market started to decline. With volume sales under pressure, we're starting to see that flow on to retail price pressure as after years of growth, competitors and retailers turn to discounting to try to maintain sales. While this is supporting continued mix shift into ultra-premium segments, the overall impact is that we're expecting average retail selling prices to decline. It's worth noting that because of the way external agencies collect sales data, the trend isn't always explicitly clear in the data, but it's something that we observe from our own internal tracking. The third point to make is that consumers are no longer actively prioritizing international brands. As has been well observed, there is a mix shift from international to domestic brands.
However, in our view, this is not necessarily about consumers specifically preferring domestic brands, but rather, being an international brand is no longer a critical success factor. Instead, brands are competing on a more even playing field, and it's the strength of a brand's ability to connect and engage with consumers that will ultimately dictate the winners and losers. Doing so, however, requires brands to adapt and evolve with changing consumer dynamics. The nature of IMF is that consumers are constantly graduating out of the category, and brands must recruit a steady stream of new users with each generation of new mothers having their own attitudes and behaviors. We'll see shortly how those behaviors vary amongst the emerging consumer base. Finally, the evolving regulatory environment adds a further dimension for consideration.
We've seen China introduce measures to reduce the cost of raising a child, stimulate birth rates, and also add new measures to ensure the safety of IMF being sold in China. We anticipate that more regulation will likely come, and we will of course be ready to fully support the government's policy agenda. What does all this mean for us? Well, inevitably, these changes mean that we need to adapt our approach to driving growth. Li Xiao and Yohan will take you through how we're going to do this, but ahead of that, let me first walk you through a bit more detail on some of these changes.
While there are some headwinds approaching, at NZD 47 billion retail sales, China remains the biggest and most premium IMF market in the world. This is driven by the fact that there is a large population with a high willingness to ensure that their children get the best start in life with high-quality premium nutrition. In a trend that's quite unique to China, children stay in IMF for much longer. Whereas in other markets, children move quickly out of IMF, in China, there's high Stage 3 penetration, and children tend to stay on Stage 3 for around 20 months. When we look at how the market is segmented across channels and city tiers, we see that more than 80% of the market is China label and the majority in BCD cities.
Note that the skew to lower tier cities is likely to be even more pronounced than this, as the data we've used here is Kantar, which only seeks to project around 40% of the population. We should also note that while we've taken Kantar's tier and channel splits, the total market size we've included here is our view of the actual total market size based on our internal estimates. Looking now at performance by channel, we observe quite different growth trends. One thing to note at the outset is the role different channels play within each of the China label and English label ecosystems. For both China label and English label, there are generally channels which are more effective at new user recruitment and others which then seek to harvest replenishment from those consumer sets.
For example, within English label, C2C channels are generally stronger brand advocates, providing engaging and effective touchpoints to educate consumers on a brand's benefits. Whereas CBEC tends to be better at driving large volumes of sales, often through price discounting and particularly during major promotional events. For China label, MBS has a stronger role in new user recruitment, given the in-store brand ambassadors and activities such as mama classes, which are high-touch education sources for mothers. Similarly to English label, online channels tend to use price discounting to attract consumers from offline to online environments. Although this dynamic is changing with evolving consumer trends and preferences to research and shop online. These channel roles are relevant as they impact growth trends. For English label, we see that with COVID disruptions, C2C channels were heavily impacted.
However, CBEC was somewhat protected from this as it had an existing user base to continue to harvest from. Within China label, MBS, as a more engaging offline channel, consistently wins over modern trade, and we can also see domestic online growth benefited from COVID-19 lockdowns and from general consumer shifts into online channels. Looking ahead, the China IMF market size will be highly dependent on what happens with the number of newborns. This is something that's obviously very hard to predict given the combination of sociodemographic factors as well as the effectiveness of government measures. From our point of view, we're expecting there could be a further softening in the short term. However, we are expecting a bounce back and then are generally assuming that government measures to promote childbirth will have some positive impact.
That said, there are a wide range of potential outcomes and therefore some uncertainty over the next few years. What is also critical to note is that we're anticipating the market will skew further to BCD cities. This is driven not only by the sheer population mix between K&A and BCD cities, but also the generally higher birth rate in lower tier cities and the relatively lower rates of penetration and consumption per user, which we anticipate will increase as those cities have higher disposable income. In fact, we can already see quite diverging trends between K&A and BCD cities when we look at monthly Stage 1 category sales versus the prior year. While BCD cities have generally been able to maintain positive Stage 1 growth in the first half of this calendar year, we see K&A sales have started to decline and drop significantly in July and August.
In addition to trends across city tiers, it's also worth noting the trends that exist across provinces. Talking about China is more like talking about Europe, given the variations that exist from north to south and east to west. Using the most recently available data from 2019, we see those differences also play out in terms of birth rate. While the national average birth rate was 1.06%, at a province level, this varied from 0.1% to as high as almost 1.5%. There are several socioeconomic factors behind this, including cost of living, with higher cost of living provinces generally having lower birth rates and conversely, more births in more affordable provinces. Another factor is demographics, with some provinces tending to larger family units, while others more likely to experience emigration of younger generations and consequently fewer births.
Finally, there are some provinces which responded more to past government policies and where we might anticipate will again respond to further policy. Monitoring these trends is important as we define where and how to deploy our resources across a wide and varied geography, which Li Xiao will talk more about shortly. The next key trend we wanted to call out is the continued mix shift towards ultra-premium products. We can see here that while the mix is slightly different between K&A and BCD cities, across the market, more than 50% of value sales are now in the ultra-premium segment. This provides support for our China label products which sit in that ultra-premium segment. However, when we look at average selling prices, we observe that on a like for like basis, average prices are coming down across the segments.
There is increasing price competition across brands with the actual discounting levels in the market even greater than what is shown here with Nielsen data because of the way additional value is delivered to consumers. For example, bonus product provided by in-store brand ambassadors might not be picked up in the scan data, but we capture this in our internal tracking. Given downward price pressure, competitors are responding by launching new products, generally at even higher effective retail price points. In the past year, Feihe has launched a new A2 protein SKU with a goat milk SKU on the way. And there have been similar launches in English label channels with Aptamil launching a newer Essensis range. While we have historically been committed to a simple product range, Li Xiao and Yohan will talk through how we are also increasingly focused on bringing more innovation to our IMF portfolio.
Another key competitive dynamic that has been well covered is the shift from international to local brands. While we are starting to see some corporate consolidation, brand concentration has not increased significantly yet, with the share of the top 10 brands slightly lower now than it was a few years ago. However, there has been a change in the identity of the top brands. Feihe has emerged as a clear leader with it and other local brands now making up 44% of the market as measured by Kantar and international brands reducing to 56%. This has also been impacted in the last year by the mix shift from cross-border channels, where only international brands participate, to domestic channels, where local brands are generally stronger. However, we believe that ultimately it's not an international versus domestic competition, but rather whether you can build a brand that resonates with consumers.
Consumers are not looking for any domestic brand, of which there are hundreds. They have been won by Feihe. The key change that has happened is that whereas a few years ago, consumers had an overt preference for international brands, and it was hard for domestic brands to make it into the consideration set, now brands are competing on a more even playing field. The registration regime has enabled China to become the most trusted source for IMF by Chinese consumers. Amongst the 400+ brands on offer, consumers ultimately do make their choice based on the brand that resonates with them the most, which is critical and advantageous for us when we consider our strong brand health metrics, which Li Xiao will take you through shortly. The final point I'll cover is how rapidly the IMF consumer base is changing.
In a feature that is very unique to IMF, consumers only stay in the category for a few years. Therefore, not only do brands need to keep recruiting new users, but they must do so from a base that is itself evolving. Whereas 10 years ago, the category was mostly being shopped by mothers born in the 1980s, now the category is made up mostly of mothers born in the 1990s and later, where significant generational changes have occurred. For a brand to continue to resonate, it must not only evolve in line with macro trends, but it must also be able to adapt the way it communicates with consumers, given the changing methods in which consumers find information and make decisions. We see this playing out already in the emerging generation of IMF shoppers.
We've done extensive work with a local Chinese brand agency to better understand the mindset of the newest IMF category entrants with several themes emerging. Firstly, and unsurprisingly, younger consumers are extremely digitally savvy. What this means for us is that whereas previous generations of shoppers might have relied on a couple of information sources to make their decisions, younger consumers are seeking out a much wider variety of inputs, and they tend to cross-check information from multiple platforms, meaning that they're also looking for information that's easy to digest. For example, looking for KOL recommendations or preferring videos to articles. Other key themes are consumers' own personal ambitions and how this plays out in their parenting styles.
Whereas previous shoppers were focused on economic success, and this gave way to terms such as tiger mom parenting, younger parents have somewhat evolving views of what success is and therefore may start to focus not just on things such as academic success for their children, but also focusing on things like being active and giving their children a broader range of experiences. This, again, will impact how we communicate what a2 stands for and how a2 can support parents in their own journeys. We can already see these evolving dynamics in the way consumers are approaching IMF. We can see that online has become a bigger channel for consumers to make their first IMF purchase, and we can use this as a proxy for which channels are effective at recruiting new users.
We can also see how fragmented the universe of research sources has become, making our choices around marketing mix even more important. Reflecting on these changes, it's clear that to continue to succeed in China, we also need to adapt with these market conditions, and we need to do so in a way that preserves and celebrates the elements of our approach that have brought us success to date, while also reforging other parts of our approach to ensure we get to the next level. To take you through how we'll do that, I'll hand over to Li Xiao to talk us through our China label business.
Thank you, Eleanor. Hello, everyone. I'm Xiao Li, Chief Executive, Greater China. I'm really excited to be presenting to you again today. Much has happened over the past two years since many of you have joined us in Shanghai, and I hope you can visit us again in China one day soon. As Eleanor mentioned, we are in a very different IF market today than we have ever been before. While this presents short-term challenges that we must work through, I truly believe with our differentiated product proposition and the brand strength and our committed, capable, and energized team, we are well-placed to both weather the storm that is with us in the short term and then truly unleash our full potential.
In the next section, I will give you a detailed overview of our China MF business, including where our growth has come from, key drivers of our success, where we see challenges and opportunity in the future, and our strategic priorities. By way of summary, we have built a sizable China MF business in a relatively short period of time and have had continual years of successive growth, making us the exception to the trend of international brands losing share to domestic players. When we look at where this growth comes from and where our future growth opportunity lie, there are several key drivers to note. Firstly, when looking at sales in offline channels, footprint expansion has been our biggest driver of growth. While runway remains to continue to build out our footprint, flattening growth in like-for-like stores is concerning and an increasing priority for us going forward.
From a city tier and account point of view, our growth has heavily skewed to tier one cities and national key accounts. While we are pleased with the growth in these segments, applying lessons learned to accelerate growth in lower tier cities is another key priority for us going forward. We can also extract lessons across provinces. Our MBS share ranges from less than 1% to more than 4%, and this not only highlights proof points of where we can get to, but also reveal provinces where further work is required. We have invested a lot of time and effort to build out our understanding of our consumer, track how our brand resonates with our consumer, and also monitor the effectiveness, efficiency of our marketing spend.
While we have stepped up our marketing spend significantly, we still underinvest compared with our competitor, so ensuring we get maximum impact from our investment is critical. Pleasingly, the data we see highlights that with increased marketing spend, we have continued to go from strength to strength in our brand development in China with leading rates of conversion, loyalty, and brand equity measures. We also see our brand strength play out in our sales mix by stage. In a market where births declined by almost 20% in 2020, we had healthy growth in our early-stage products, demonstrating that we continue to resonate with an evolving consumer base. While innovation has not historically been a key factor for us, we see future opportunity exists for us to grow through an expanded portfolio. I will take you through what that might look like later in the presentation.
In summary, our China label MF business continue to grow in both revenue and market share, enabled by strong underlying consumer attitude to the a2 brand and the continuing premiumization of the MF market. Looking ahead, clear opportunity remain, and in a market where brand is the most important factor in driving purchase decision, our strong brand health result instill us with confidence that we can deliver on our full potential in China. As I also said, a key message is that over the past five years, a2's China label business has gone from a NZD 25 million business to almost a NZD 400 million business. However, even with that growth, we see that our China label share is still quite modest, 2.5% in MBS and 2% in DOL.
This is worth noting because while we have talked about some of the emerging market headwinds, our relatively small size means that we still have a significant room to grow, even in a declining market. When we compare our share performance to competitors, we have been the exception to the trend of international brands losing share to domestic players. As you can see from the left-hand side of this page, which shows MBS share change from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2021, we are the only international brand that has grown share with all other international brands losing share. In addition, while there is a lot of noise around new A2 protein MF brands and the sheer number of brands available has increased from five to 14 over the past year, we have continued to grow share despite the increasing competition.
We are the pioneers of a2, the leaders in the market, and the only brand that truly lives and breathes a2. Because of that, the main impact we have seen so far of new competitor offers is an increased awareness of A2 protein MF, effectively growing the category in which we have the biggest share. When we break down our growth over the past year, we see that visiting offline channel footprint expansion has been our primary growth driver. We stepped up our store count materially from fiscal year 2020 to 2021. When we look at the breakdown of our growth driver, we see these new stores together with the annualization of new store entered in fiscal year 2020, has been the biggest contributors. Growth in like-for-like mature store was relatively flat, and there were some stores that become inactive during fiscal year 2021.
Because of this trend, we are implementing a revised set of initiatives specifically designed to focus on like-for-like sales growth. Given the commercially sensitive nature of this initiative, we won't cover them in detail. They center on the way we deploy our internal marketing spend, the way we work with our key accounts, and where we increase our investment in certain geographic areas. In terms of how much runway remains for us to expand our footprint, we have triangulated internal estimates with the competitor benchmarks. Using Nielsen data on numerical distribution, we can estimate the number of store competitor ultra premium brands are in, while a wider portfolio may support their ability to expand their footprint. Using these benchmarks, we are targeting our ultimate footprint of 30,000-35,000 stores and a weighted distribution of approximately 50%, which is a little higher than we previously thought.
When we segment our offline sales by account type, we see that national key account has been our key growth driver. Within the growth, we have seen very strong share performance in select chains, reaching as high as 11.6% share. However, we remain under-penetrated in some accounts, highlighting opportunities to grow in these and other chains by deploying the playbook that has given us success in other chains. From a city tier perspective, we also see a very strong skew to key K&A cities, and this is also highlighted in our MBS share with a 5.8% share in key K&A cities compared with only 1.8% in BCD cities.
The disparity in performance give us both confidence in where the brand can get to as well as underscores the need to refine our approach to growth in lower tier city, which we have spent the last six months studying closely. Although the details of our key initiative to grow in BCD cities are commercially sensitive, there are several areas we are prioritizing, including further development of our distributor network, continue to build our footprint, applying learnings from our national key account into regional key accounts, as well as selectively stepping up our investment in high-priority areas. Looking geographically across provinces, we see a wide variation in our MBS share. Our strongest province is more than seven times bigger than our weakest province. Conversely, Feihe's best province is roughly 3.5 times bigger than its weakest province, and the nutrition range is roughly three times.
Our wide variation again highlights where our brand can get to and where we have opportunity to drive future growth through enhanced focus and investment. When looking at how we have driven growth, particularly in key accounts, our significant investment in in-market activation has been a key factor. We ran 877 roadshows in FY 2021, helping to build brand awareness as well as providing an opportunity to engage with consumers. We helped more than 40,000 mama class, providing opportunity for deeper brand education with consumers. We have more than 4,500 in-store brand ambassadors to assist consumer at the point of purchase in MBS. We also increased our coverage of merchandising in-store and roll out more than 100 new flagship stores in FY 2021.
We will now share a video to bring some of these investments and activation to life. Moving from offline to online, we have invested to build additional capability to further develop our online business. While we have had some success, particularly in Tmall and the JD, when we look at the mix of our business compared with other brands, we can see the shape of our business is closer to domestic players who have historically performed better in offline channels. Compared with our MNC competitor set, we clearly under index online, and while we must manage the overall China label ecosystem as a whole cross channels, we believe opportunity exists to step up our performance online. Critical to delivering on all those opportunity is how effectively we can communicate our brand.
We have a differentiated proposition, high quality product and a brand that truly resonates with the consumer. The key task for us is ensuring that we can efficiently increase our brand awareness, cultivate those that are there into potential consumers, and then convert consumers in market. To do this, we take an integrated approach to marketing, leveraging broadcast media and in-market events to build awareness, increasing investment in social and digital media to educate and engage consumers, and then investing in channel to convert user to trial. When developing our communication strategy and the marketing mix, we start with a deep understanding of our consumer. We have refreshed our consumer segmentation and have identified three priority segments. The resourceful mom deliberately seeks out product sourced from overseas markets and is a focus particularly for our English label products.
For our China label products, we target two archetypes, including the balanced, progressive mom, who value both a strong formulation and a brand that represents her progressive lifestyle, as well as the savvy, rational mom, who is particularly focused on product features and for whom the benefit of A1-free milk are compelling. To track how effectively we are communicating with our consumer and the potential consumers, we have enhanced our brand health and the competitor tracking capabilities. We conduct a quarterly survey of almost 10,000 consumers with wide geographic coverage across city tiers and the provinces. In addition to tracking performance across the brand funnel, we also monitor brand equity metrics, as well as use this survey for tailored research on relevant topics each quarter. Our enhanced brand health tracking has also allowed us to further improve our approach to measuring marketing effectiveness and efficiency.
Each of our marketing activities has a clear role to play along the consumer journey, and our approach for measuring its effectiveness is aligned to the role. While activities designed to drive purchase conversion typically have more robust sales data points to support analysis of metrics such as ROI, for activities earlier in the funnel, such as broadcast media, roadshows, we now also use the brand health tracking correlations analysis to understand the impact on our brand health metrics. For example, reviewing whether provinces which had more roadshows experienced greater increase in brand awareness. While we continue to push ourselves to better understand the impact of our marketing investment, the robust tools and the analysis we have put in place have given us confidence to continue to step up our marketing spend.
Our total marketing spend has increased significantly over the past five years with the intention to continue to increase further, given we still underinvest compared with our key competitors. From a mix perspective, we do weigh heavily to offline marketing. However, this is partially a legacy issue, as we have historically had the benefit of a significant English label reseller network who are very effective at using digital and social media to educate the consumer online. Following English label channel disruption in fiscal year 2021, we will be stepping up our own brand led investment in digital media. Now let's bring some of these investments to life. Here we can see example of our above the line spend, as well as our in-market and in-store investment, which we saw earlier. A key element of our fiscal year 2021 investment was our collaboration with Jony J.
Jony J is a rapper in China who became a father and chose a2 infant formula for his daughter. Jony J's rationale was that as a parent, he wanted his daughter to experience the wonder of nature, and this align with a2 brand purpose. From this shared value, we collaborated with Jony J to invite parents and their children to also explore the natural environment around them, which you will see in the video we will now play.
[Non-English content]
How is our brand health performing following increased investment? Pleasingly, we are seeing growth across the brand funnel. Our total awareness is at historical high of 49%.
Our rate of ever trial is also at a historical high of 18%, and we have maintained our share of brand use most often. When comparing against the top five brands in China, we clearly have room to improve when it comes to unprompted brand awareness. However, importantly, we have the highest rates of trial conversion in the category, and also the highest rates of brand loyalty by quite some distance. Proof points such as this give us confidence that once consumers become aware of our products, they are highly interested to try us. When they do, they experience the product benefits and they become loyal consumers. We continue to see these brand strengths when looking at net promoter score, where our China label and the English label MF have the highest and the second-highest NPS in the category respectively.
When we look at how we perform against brand equity attributes compared with the category, we again see that we outperform the market on every single dimension. Finally, if the proof is in the pudding, the ultimate test is in our ability to recruit and retain brand users. When considering that dimension, we can see we had a very good momentum in Stage 1 and Stage 2 sales. Despite an almost 20% decline in newborn in 2020, and a very good share growth in early stage. Stage 4 ramp-up is also promising. This product was launched in late 2020, and we have stepped up sales and share quickly.
We increased distribution point of Stage 4 in late FY 2021 and early FY 2022 to be roughly in line with Stage 3, and we expect an annualization benefit from those distribution points throughout FY 2022. To bring it all together, whether you cut it by channel, city tier, or province, we have proof points that give us confidence we can be successful, as well as clear pathway to deliver future growth. That is just considering our current single a2 [Non-English content] brand range. Even more opportunity exists when we consider our potential to expand our product portfolio. There are more ranges does not always equal more growth. As we can see from the experience of some of our competitors, there is clearly upside for us when starting from a single brand range.
Without revealing our precise plans, there are several directions we could expand our portfolio, including building out our ultra-premium offerings, extending to the super premium segment to broaden distribution, as well as considering whether our brand could stretch into other A1-free sources of milk, such as plant, sheep or goat. However, as we well know, obtaining registration is key to enabling our portfolio expansion. For this, our strategic partner will be essential. This includes working with CNADC and its subsidiary and our long-term partner, China State Farm. Our new relationship with the China Animal Husbandry Group, also a subsidiary of CNADC as well as our ongoing relationship with Synlait. Where does that leave us? Our ambition is to be a top five China label brand. To achieve this, we have refined our priority to enable us to adapt with the evolving market while preserving our historical strengths.
Our number one priority is to continue to invest and nurture our brand, given that is ultimate what drives consumer decisions. In offline channels, we need to build on our success in key accounts and in the critical battleground of lower tier cities. We need to outsmart our competitors and deploy our efforts surgically for maximum impact. While online sales will benefit from success offline, there is opportunity to expand online further by improving our digital marketing and e-commerce capability and execution, making that a real differentiator for us. In parallel to doing all of this, we remain committed to finding a solution that will enable us to broaden our MF portfolio. When considering what will be defined as success for us, we will continue to closely monitoring brand health metrics, targeting stepping up to top quartile brand awareness while maintaining strong trial and loyalty metrics.
We are targeting a China label footprint of 30,000-35,000 stores with upside if we build expanded portfolio. Within this footprint, driving like-for-like sales growth is key, so that we move from distribution-led growth to productivity-led growth. Online, we want to outperform in DOL with a higher DOL share than MBS. Critical to achieving all of this will be our key enablers. Our relentless commitment to product quality and safety is paramount. We need to obtain additional registration to enable our portfolio expansion, and in parallel, need to develop our MF innovation capability and the supply chain.
We need to continue to focus on our business fundamentals, our management of sales channels and the inventory, maximizing impact of our marketing investment, and leveraging our data and analytics strengths to drive continuous improvement in execution of our sales and marketing activities. To wrap up, the key messages I want to leave you with for our China MF business are, while the China MF market remains the biggest, most premium MF market in the world, current and near-term headwinds are making growth challenging. While overseas manufacturer is no longer a primary decision driver for consumers, consumer will ultimately choose brands that resonate and have a distinctive product proposition. We can deliver on both of these fronts. BrandHealth tracking reveals that once consumer become aware of our brand, we have the highest rates of trial and the highest loyalty in the category.
Our brand strength, combined with our relatively low China label market share, give us confidence that significant opportunities remain for us in China. We have identified how to deliver this opportunity across different city tiers, channels and through development of our brand and the product portfolio. We will increase our level of investment and are confident in our team and ability to achieve our full potential in China. Let me now hand over to Yohan, who will take you through our English label MF business. Thank you.
Thank you, Li Xiao, and hello, everyone. My name is Yohan Senaratne, and I am the executive general manager for our international business at a2. In this section, I will take you through our view of market dynamics for English label products, the impact of actions we have taken recently to support our business, and our strategic priorities moving forward. Overall, there are four key messages that I will talk through in this session. The first is that sales channels for English label products into China are constantly evolving. What started as daigou suitcase trade to family and friends has become more sophisticated and technology-enabled. From B2C and C2C e-commerce platforms through to O2O channels and technology-enabled dropship services. It is more appropriate to consider these channels as a reseller network.
These channels are distinct for English label products and are complex, making it difficult to have clear visibility of end consumer behavior across the reseller network. The second point to note is that English label channel disruptions, which occurred during FY 2021, had a profound impact on our business, and we had to take clear action to address inventory buildup. It is positive to now see improvements in trade pricing, consumer demand, brand health, and sales by stage, which is a testament to the strength of the a2 English label consumer brand proposition. We are working to further support the recovery of the English label business by using traceability technology to improve our ability to manage inventory across English label channels, increasing our brand support to the reseller network and leveraging our China marketing activities to also drive awareness of our English label range.
Driving growth in routes to market such as O2O, where we believe we are underrepresented, and working to get closer to our end consumers by increasing our control over distribution. Finally, we see opportunities to further build on the strength of the a2 brand proposition by expanding our English label formula portfolio. I will speak to each of these points in turn, starting with the English label IMF market in China. On the left graph, on the X-axis, you can see the English label market can be split into three high-level categories. C2C, where resellers sell to consumers on platforms such as Taobao, CBEC or cross-border e-commerce, where consumers buy from major platforms such as Tmall, and offline to online or O2O, where consumers place orders in offline retail and display stores for delivery to their home via the cross-border model.
There are fewer players in the English label market compared to the China label IMF market. The two largest brands are a2 and Aptamil. a2's share is strongest in C2C and CBEC channels at 22% and 18% respectively, while share in O2O is lower at 14%. Note that to provide one single source view of the English label market, in this slide, we've used Kantar data of the channel breakdown and competitor shares, which for CBEC varies somewhat to what Smart Path reports, which was 21% for a2 by way of comparison. We estimate that the English label market skews more to the larger cities in China, with around 57% of the English label market in China concentrated in K&A cities. However, again, this is based on Kantar's panel, which only seeks to project approximately 40% of the population.
English label product is sold across a number of different channels. These channels can be grouped by the fundamental role they play into five archetypes. First, there are channels that are focused on image building and setting the price anchor. These channels are the showrooms for the brand, offering stable price and guaranteed authenticity. Next are the traffic and volume contributor channels. These have large consumer bases that can drive sales at scale. Third, are those channels that can reach new consumers and build awareness for the brand, often through highly engaging visual or written content, but are not typically purchase channels. Next are those channels that can not only reach new users and educate consumers, mostly through word of mouth, but also deliver high sales conversion within the channel. Last, there are channels that are primarily focused on offering discount products and compete almost exclusively on price.
Within these channel archetypes, there are a number of subcategories, and within these, a range of constantly evolving platforms for English Label Formula. For a2, our primary image building platforms are our flagship stores on major cross-border e-commerce platforms which we control. Pricing on our flagship stores is consistent and relatively stable. Major high-traffic CBEC B2C platforms, such as Tmall, JD, VIP, and Kaola drive sales at scale, mostly through platform-owned inventory. New user reaching and endorsement channels can be further sub-categorized into content e-commerce platforms such as TikTok, Kuaishou, Bilibili, and Little Red Book, where key opinion leaders, or KOLs, create content on a range of topics. Vertical e-commerce platforms, such as BabyTree and Mia, where content is focused on mom and baby or medical education topics. These platforms are important for brand awareness and are developing selling models, but direct sales volumes are relatively low.
New user sell-through channels that drive both awareness and sales can be further segmented into three subcategories. There are niche social e-commerce platforms, such as O'Mall, who use tiered selling models to incentivize word of mouth and on-platform sales conversion. All consumers can choose to buy from C2C outlets operated by people they trust on visible marketplace platforms such as Taobao or in private through platforms such as WeChat. There are offline stores that offer O2O sales functionality such as Kidswant and Sam's Club. Lastly, discount platforms such as Pinduoduo use price heavily to attract consumers. The nature of selling on all of these platforms is constantly evolving. The Daigou channel is a case in point of the speed of channel evolution in English label. What began as a suitcase trade where sellers took product home to sell to family and friends quickly evolved with rising volumes.
Pick and pack operations emerged to make it easy for Daigou to place orders for product to be sent to their consumers. Now, technology has further accelerated channel evolution, spawning a range of sophisticated tech-enabled selling models from direct to consumer e-commerce platforms through to O2O selling models. This point is important to note as while many companies continue to refer broadly to Daigou, in fact, true Daigou represents just one segment of the English Label market, which is now a mixture of e-commerce platforms and omni-channel networks. A great example of these next generation selling models is our primary reseller partner, mya2.com. mya2.com manages distribution through multiple apps that each support distinct English Label selling channels from corporate and personal resellers in China to O2O stores in China and resellers in Australia and New Zealand. Market disruption has had a profound impact on our business in the past year.
As you can see on the graph on the left, our English Label IMF revenue was NZD 520 million in FY 2021 compared to NZD 1.08 billion in FY 2020. We estimate that COVID-19 reduced the reseller network channel by 40%-50%, which in turn profoundly impacted our reseller network sales. Our CBEC channel sales were also down year-on-year, in part due to a cycling of a strong FY 2020 and in part due to our actions to address channel inventory levels during the second half of FY 2021. It is important to note that changes to our FY 2021 market share were more modest. In C2C channels, our share declined by approximately 2 percentage points, whilst in CBEC, our share declined by 0.6 percentage points. In response to this disruption, we took steps in the second half of FY 2021 to address inventory buildup.
In total, 7.6 million units of English label product were written down, of which 1 million units were swapped with distributors for fresher product, with the remainder to be destroyed. As a result of these actions, we are now seeing improvements in product freshness across our distributors. This is in turn supporting improved pricing across all channels, from pick and pack stores to secondary markets such as Cqent and CBEC platforms. The COVID disruption also impacted our IMF sales mix. The graph on the left shows our ex-factory English label IMF sales mix by stage. In 1Q 2021, Stage 1 and Stage 2 represented 28.8% of our sales volume. By third quarter 2021, this had dropped to 22.5%.
It is now promising to see this trend reversing with Stage 1 share of sales recovering slightly to 9.8% and a bigger improvement in Stage 2, which is now at just over 20% of our sales. The COVID-19 disruption also impacted our consumer awareness in China. Up until April 2020, awareness of a2 English label had been growing, reaching a peak of 32% in April 2020. But the COVID-19 disruption resulted in declining awareness levels to a low of 25% in December 2020. Promisingly, our latest brand health tracker in May 2021 shows awareness improving to 29%, coinciding with our major China marketing campaign during the fourth quarter of 2021. English label IMF continues to play a key role in our IMF portfolio.
Consumer research earlier this year reviewed the buyer motivations for a2's China label IMF versus English label IMF. The research showed that a2 China label IMF buyers were looking for only the best. They recognized a2 as the A2 protein leader and were attracted to a product designed with premium lactoferrin for Chinese babies. This is in contrast to a2 English label buyers who are attracted to a2's brand buzz and Hermès status. They valued the New Zealand quality milk source and recognized a2 as the A2 protein leader. Critically, they saw the English label product as a smart choice that offered good overall value. They did not believe in the addition of lactoferrin in China label was worth the additional price.
The research confirms that English label and China label both draw from a2's brand equity as the pioneer in A2 protein, but each caters to a distinct set of consumers. Together, English label and China label propositions broaden our addressable consumer market. Quality and traceability have always been hallmarks of a2 Platinum. We were a leader in implementing unique QR codes on each tin that consumers can scan with their phone to get more information about the product. Moving forward, we plan to take this further by activating functionality that will enable traceability at tin, carton, and pallet level, right from manufacturing all the way through to distributor sale. This, combined with scanning technology at first-tier distributors, will help to increase visibility through the multiple routes to market for English label. a2 Platinum tins with this traceability functionality enabled will progressively be sold into first-tier distributors.
We anticipate these tins will be sold across all channels during the first half of FY 2022. We also plan to increase our support of the reseller network across a number of dimensions. We are upgrading our content and brand assets for use across English label channels. We are also in the process of expanding our team to provide trade marketing support to our reseller network. Given the complementary nature of our China label and English label propositions, we plan to further leverage our scale marketing investments in China by promoting China label and English label together. A great example of this is the integration of English label into our recent out-of-home advertising in China. We also see opportunity in growing our English label share in channels such as offline to online or O2O, where we currently hold lower market share.
A number of offline stores in China are moving to also offer O2O functionality alongside their existing in-store range. We can leverage our existing China label sales relationships with these stores to also offer English label product through the O2O mechanism. This will help to increase consumer awareness of our more value-priced English label offer. Pilot studies found that introducing English label via O2O in an existing China label offline store delivered incremental volume growth overall with minimal cannibalization of China label sales. Given the success of these pilots, we plan to scale up this O2O model, leveraging our existing offline store network. We also plan to simplify and delayer our distribution model. On this slide, we have depicted the many pathways that our English label product currently takes to reach our consumers in China.
Currently, approximately 70% of our English label volume is sold through our reseller network. This volume is split across six tier one distributors and major retailers. These tier one distributors can then sell to sub-tier distributors. These range from B2B traders through to gift shops, who in turn sell through a range of different technology platforms to end consumers in China. The other 30% of our English label volume is sold to major CBEC platforms such as Tmall, JD, Kaola, and VIP via three main distributors. This operating model is complex, with multiple layers and multiple points of overlap. It also serves to limit our visibility of the consumer and our ability to engage directly. Our objective is to get closer to our end consumers by simplifying the layers and increasing our control over distribution. We also see growth opportunities through premiumization and NPD.
This graph plots a2 versus our major competitors' English Label product ranges on Tmall by price on the vertical axis. The bubble size reflects the relative retail sales value of each product range. a2 is the only brand with a single English Label product. Competitors have between 6 and 11 ranges in their portfolio, with most of these products in the super premium, and in some cases, ultra-premium price range. We are currently reviewing ways to leverage our premium brand image and leadership of A2 protein Nutrition to expand our portfolio to appeal to a greater consumer set. For English Label IMF, our strategic plan is as follows. Our ambition is to be the number one English Label product range in China. To achieve this, we have five strategic priorities. Maintain tight control of supply chain by improving visibility across channels and the ability to respond quickly.
Ensure we are the preferred brand for the reseller network through superior trade margins and improved marketing support. Accelerate online growth with an omni-channel mindset by continuing to build our e-commerce capabilities to recruit new users. Invest in developing our O2O channel by leveraging in-market China resources and distribution networks. Broaden our English Label portfolio through innovation and NPD. Our measures of success in executing this strategy will be stable channel pricing, leading market share for our flagship range, total English Label share greater than 25%, strong new user recruitment with 30% of sales from Stages 1 and 2 products, and premiumization of our range with ongoing NPD. Our key enablers to execute this strategy will be our continued unrelenting commitment to only the highest product quality and safety standards, increasing our team capability, and effective management of the English Label ecosystem across ANZ and China.
Strong reseller relationships. Improved visibility through the supply chain. Ensuring we have effectiveness and efficiency in our marketing investments. Leveraging data and analytics to deliver continuous improvement. In summary, the multiple and varied sales channels for English Label were disrupted by COVID-19, which had a profound impact on our business in FY 2021. In response, we took action and are starting to see improvements in trade pricing, consumer demand, brand health, and product sales by stage. Our brand proposition remains highly compelling with improved awareness for English Label IMF. We are taking action to address our route to market management model by simplifying the layers and increasing our control over distribution. I'll now hand over to Eleanor, who will take us through adjacent growth opportunities.
Thanks, Yohan, and hello again. I'm back now to talk about how we're thinking about growth outside our core IMF business. It's worth noting at the outset that for us, it's all about doing fewer, bigger things. Strategy is ultimately about the allocation of resources against priorities. First and foremost, our primary focus is ensuring we always allocate the majority of our time, energy, and resources to achieving full potential in our core. When thinking about new growth opportunities, we prioritize opportunities that are more closely related to our core, that share the same consumer set or where we can leverage the same team or existing channels. On the basis that not only does doing so have a greater chance of success, but it also helps to reinforce our core by speaking to existing consumers with new products or becoming a stronger partner to retailers.
Finally, there are some completely new growth opportunities, attacking new geographies, taking on new business models or launching completely new NPD. While we should be open-minded about the possibility that these could, if successful, transform our business, we want to right-size our investment because success in these areas is not guaranteed. When applying this approach to our business outside of IMF, our next focus is on expanding our portfolio of dairy-based nutrition in China for the whole family. We've expanded our portfolio in China into nutrition for mothers to support women before, during, and after pregnancy. We've added smart nutrition, a children's fortified milk powder, allowing us to grow up with our IMF consumers. We also have an emerging portfolio of family milk products, including milk powder, fresh milk, which is air freighted into China, and UHT.
Across all of these non-IMF products, we're targeting growth of approximately NZD 200 million in sales. While sales are still relatively small across this portfolio, our growth from FY 2017 to FY 2020 gives us proof points to suggest we could build a meaningful business outside IMF in China. While our sales mix has weighted to products that are sold cross-border with support from English label resellers, it doesn't detract from the key message, which is that consumers recognize we have a differentiated proposition and can feel the difference for themselves. Finally, it's also worth noting that although this broader dairy business was impacted by disruptions to cross-border sales in FY 2021, our China label business grew by more than 80% during that time. Critical to achieving scale with a broader dairy business is building new capabilities.
The majority of non-IMF dairy products in China are sold in modern trade, which isn't our focus channel for IMF, and so requires us to take on new capability internally, as well as expand our distributor coverage. Similarly, having had such a narrow product focus for the past few years, we need to refine our playbook for launching new products in China. This is particularly important given we plan very premium price points, which represent a much smaller segment of the market for broader dairy than they do for IMF, meaning that we need to become very efficient at precisely targeting those premium shoppers. Finally, as we look to expand our product portfolio further, we need to extract lessons from what is working as well as what isn't working to ensure we're innovating along the right vectors.
While we're still early in the journey, having only really ramped up efforts in this area in the last year, we have some pleasing initial green shoots. From a distribution point of view, we've increased our milk powder footprint by 3x . From a marketing point of view, in addition to leveraging our IMF activations to also promote a wider range of milk products, we've had good success with recent digital campaigns to drive our new UHT product. We launched UHT in October 2020, and to support that launch, we've been investing in trialing different approaches to recruit new users online. The initial results have well surpassed our expectations. While maintaining positive ROI throughout, we've managed to increase monthly online offtake by more than 500% since investment began in early 2021.
Obviously, absolute numbers are still small at this stage, but we're certainly excited about the growth path and the consumer interest in an expanded a2 product portfolio. The other benefit of an expanded portfolio is the ability to utilize multiple products in our marketing comms. We can see here an example campaign we ran in China in August, where we encouraged fresh milk trial as a way to increase confidence in our IMF products. This has the advantage of allowing parents to feel the a2 Milk difference for themselves, as well as allowing us to talk about two products in the same campaign. This ultimately also comes back to our prioritization approach. Focusing on growth from the core allows us to leverage existing strengths, in this case, marketing investment, to not only support fresh milk sales, but also provide another avenue to educate IMF consumers on the a2 difference.
In terms of opportunities for somewhat further outgrowth, we also have the potential for geographic expansion. However, this is a new challenge altogether and one that we want to pursue without taking our eyes off the main prize. Therefore, our guiding principles are, first, to leverage existing products so that our teams remain focused on innovating for our core markets. Second, we want to choose the right route to market with a general preference for partnering with distributors or licensing over building out new teams in completely new markets, especially while we're still very much focused on the opportunity in China. Finally, investing selectively, waiting until we see some green shoots before we decide that further investment is warranted, and again, to ensure we're preserving our firepower for China. One very good example of our geographic expansion is our partnership with Yuhan Corporation in South Korea.
We launched Stages 1 to 3 in late 2019 and grew to a roughly 3% market share by the end of FY 2021. With this growth, we're now adding to the portfolio of a2 products being sold, including milk powder and UHT. With that case study in mind, we've just completed a detailed market review and prioritization, ultimately selecting several markets for further evaluation. Through expanding into new markets, we believe we'll be able to generate an incremental NZD 100 million in sales over time. Without going into too much detail on each of these, they all have an emerging affluent population, relatively large IMF markets, and high penetration of shelf-stable dairy products, providing us with an opportunity to establish a beachhead in these lower engagement categories before considering IMF.
By way of summary, the biggest takeaway is that while we have many avenues for growth outside our core, our primary focus remains ensuring we deliver on our full potential in our China IMF business. Outside of this, our second priority is building up our broader dairy business in China, leveraging our existing team, partners, and capability to build a second growth engine. Finally, geographic expansion provides an opportunity for Horizon three growth. We're pacing our expansion so as to not distract from our immediate focus on China. With that, we're now heading into a break, and when we return, Kevin will take you through the op [audio distortion].
Hi again, everyone. Welcome back. In this third segment, we'll cover ANZ, the U.S., MVM, supply chain and operations, finance and IT, and then we'll open up the Q&A. Even though it's a virtual event, we want to make it as interactive as possible on the Q&A. After the finance and IT presentation, could you please dial into the teleconference number which has been distributed and quote your individual passcode. If you haven't already, please click the About tab below and you will see a button to register for the Q&A session. I'll now hand over to Kevin to take you through our ANZ business in more detail.
Thank you, David. My name is Kevin Bush, and I'm the Executive General Manager of our ANZ business unit. This is predominantly a fresh milk business, and we are extremely proud of our a2 fresh milk brand, which is the foundation of the a2 Milk Company. The Australian fresh milk market is a mature category, with overall volume declining over recent years. Value growth has come from growth in specialty segments. Despite the overall decline, a2 Milk has consistently grown ahead of the market, leading to year-on-year market share gains over the last 10 years. The growth has been fueled by producing the highest quality product and consistent investment in our brand communications, leading to strong consumer loyalty. Our loyal consumers are super loyal, but recruiting new users into the brand remains a challenge, and this is where we are focusing our efforts.
We are also undertaking a lot of work to understand where we can leverage our brand strength into an expanded product portfolio. We measure the Australian supermarket milk market at just under AUD 2.7 billion at retail, with fresh milk representing just over AUD 1.9 billion and long-life milk being approximately AUD 750 million. Overall, the retail fresh milk category has experienced a steady decline in volume in recent years, driven by a fall in per capita consumption of the amount of dairy milk per annum. Pre-pandemic, this was being largely offset by population growth. However, in the last 18 months, we have seen a return to growth because of increased in-home consumption due to various state lockdowns, most notably the extended lockdown in Victoria. We are also seeing a change in consumer behavior with working from home becoming an established way of life.
We are watching with interest to see how embedded this change will become as life returns to a new COVID normal into 2022. a2 Milk is one of the only mainstream brands in the dairy white milk segment enjoying increases in market share. Over the last two years, our share has increased almost 9% or one percentage point. We are keeping a watching brief on emerging consumer trends, especially the strong growth of lactose-free milk driven by the increasing number of people being diagnosed as lactose intolerant, be that self-diagnosed or medically diagnosed. We also continue to observe the growth in plant-based milk substitutes, but note the share improvements have been quite incremental and appear to have come at the expense of organic milks, which have lost market share. We have enjoyed almost 10% CAGR value growth over the last four fiscal years.
Our market share by value has grown from 9.7% to 12.2%. This makes a2 Milk the clear branded market leader in a category dominated by private label brands. We are the only brand that is readily available in all major national retail chains. The most important SKU in our range is the 2-liter full cream variant, with our sales heavily skewed to the supermarket channel. Our brand enjoys its strongest market share of over 15% in the most popular states of New South Wales and Victoria. We are pleased with the progress that we are making in New Zealand with the a2 Milk brand, which is sold under license to the Anchor brand.
New Zealand is the ancestral home of a2 Milk, and with momentum building, we are looking forward to growing a meaningful brand presence in what is one of the most competitive grocery markets in the world. Note that we don't record these sales as part of our revenue, rather we take a licensing fee. The health of our brand is very strong with extremely high brand awareness and incredible brand loyalty which continues to grow. We have consistently invested in our brand and have the highest share of voice in the dairy milk category. We have invested in key partnerships with quality properties such as MasterChef and The Block, which has delivered on our reach and frequency objectives. Let me show you some highlights from these campaigns in a short video.
I'll come find you someday. Woo-hoo. Jack.
Nature brings us back to what's good.
Our success has required us to increase investment to expand our manufacturing capacity. Smeaton Grange was our original liquid milk processing facility located in New South Wales. This is a wonderfully efficient plant run by an extremely dedicated and capable team with a current capacity of 44 million liters per annum. A CapEx program is already underway that will see capacity increase to 60 million liters by 2024. In September last year, we acquired the Kyabram manufacturing facility from the Kyvalley Dairy Group, who have been our long-term fresh milk supplier in Victoria. The Kyvalley Dairy Group will continue to operate the facility under a long-term operating lease, and there is an accompanying long-term supply agreement in place. We plan to work with Kyvalley Dairy Group to expand and upgrade the facility, including to increase capacity and improve processes.
We have conducted an extensive review to help unlock the next growth phase for our domestic business. We are continuously looking to protect and grow our fresh milk hero range and understand how we can capture new consumers in our core segment. We have already been able to leverage our brand to do near-in adjacencies such as long-life milk, and we have taken a wide lens into which other categories we can stretch our a2 Milk credentials. We have completed a successful trial of a2 Milk in a UHT format with a 200 ml offer in a major retail customer. This is expected to be rolled out nationally in 2022. We have also launched a 1-liter size, which you should expect to see on a major retailer's shelves early in quarter 1 calendar 2022.
Our ambition is to absolutely maintain and grow our market-leading position in fresh milk and expand our brand into new categories. Our strategic priorities are to maintain our brand leadership position in fresh milk by increasing household penetration. We will drive product innovation, both in our core fresh milk category to provide offers for both existing consumers and attract new consumers. We will seek to leverage our brand into adjacent categories to expand our share of dairy consumers' wallets. We will be accelerating our investment in sustainability initiatives, particularly regarding packaging, and we are investing in our manufacturing network to increase capacity and capability to meet this continued growth. We plan to increase our brand loyalty rate above 40%, gain a value market share in fresh milk above 15%, and achieve 25% of our sales from innovation.
In summary, we have a well-established and very well-loved brand in Australia. We are expanding our production capacity to meet increased demand. We plan to extend our well-loved brand outside the core fresh milk offer. The focus brought about by our recent restructure allows us to concentrate on delivering on our full potential in our home market. I'm now going to hand over to my dear colleague, Blake, to take you through the U.S. market in more detail.
Thanks, Kevin, and hi everyone. I'm Blake Waltrip. I'm the Chief Executive of our U.S. business based in Boulder, Colorado. With respect to the U.S. market, there are some key messages I'd like you to take away today. First, the U.S. is an attractive category from a fluid milk perspective, as the premium segments of the category are driving growth and are significantly sized. While sales declined slightly in FY 2021, the combination of COVID and our strategic shift from large broadcast media spending to a focus on driving consumer demand at the point of purchase with an accessible premium price point in return for retailer partnership to provide more shelf presence will deliver long-term for the business. Now, there's still wide space to grow distribution, but we're approaching the ideal number of stores that most efficiently deliver scale.
Innovation will become a key to both leveraging investment made in the brand awareness to date, as well as driving new consumers into the franchise. Finally, the path to profitability is a factor of scale and cost of goods. This is leading us to review our supply chain while we build scale in the U.S. business. The a2 Milk Company competes in the $4.3 billion premium milk segment of total milk in the U.S. market. This segment of U.S. fluid milk is the growth driver, as conventional fluid milk has not demonstrated growth over the past 20 years. The premium segment is made up of organic milk, lactose-free milk, ultra-filtered milks, flavored milks, and a2 Milk. Premium milks have roughly a 100% price premium versus conventional milk products.
The market structure in the U.S. market is made up of private label brands, local and regional brands, and national brands. The processing for most private label branded and locally branded milks, whether they're conventional or premium, is called HTST, and it has a shelf life of roughly 20 days. ESL processing or extended shelf life is the standard for all nationally branded fluid milk products like a2 Milk and delivers a shelf life of approximately 80 days off the line. This enables national brands to be produced in one or two processing locations and cover the expanse of U.S. geography. Regular or conventional milk is declining, and that's been on that trend for 20 years. Other forms of dairy consumption via cheese, yogurt, ice cream, butter, has made up for a lot of this loss.
The organic category, which has been the proxy for better milk in the U.S., has been largely flat to slightly declining. The decline has been somewhat bolstered by the grass-fed super premium segment of organic. Specialty milks, you know, lactose-free milk, ultra-filtered, and a2 Milk, represent the set of products that are driving virtually all the growth in the fluid milk category. As has been the case in many categories, COVID has had an impact on the fluid milk consumption, with consumption surges happening during the most significant periods of the pandemic. However, as the pandemic improves and we see consumers begin to return to more normal life patterns, we have seen some changes in consumer purchasing behavior that we're watching closely to ascertain the ultimate impact on the business. U.S. net revenue decreased in FY 2021, while on a constant currency basis, it demonstrated an increase.
Management undertook a defined strategic shift to leverage trade investment to provide consumers with an accessible premium price during the difficult economic times of COVID, with the ultimate goal of working with our key retail partners to expand our shelf presence, benefiting the business over the longer term. There was increased pressure on top-line sales driven by a major club customer launching their own private label version of A1-free and replacing a2MC in many regions. Competition is always something that we planned on happening as we establish legitimacy for the A1-free milk category in the United States. With the reduction of club as a percentage of volume in the mainstream channels of trade, grocery and mass merchandisers represent the primary source of volume in the U.S.
These are primary channels of trade for the majority of consumers in the U.S. market, and our partnerships with key retailers is strong and building. From a portfolio perspective, we have built the business primarily on the back of 2 SKUs, whole milk and 2% milk. Moves we will discuss today will demonstrate how we are expanding our reach through other items in the portfolio. We have successfully taken our distribution from 400 stores in our initial test market in 2015 to national distribution across all channels of trade in roughly 27,000 stores today. While there is white space and distribution on our core business still to be gained, we're approaching the level of stores that will allow us to efficiently build scale.
This level of distribution in the core business sets the table for leveraging our investment made in the U.S. in multiple margin accretive innovation categories. Pleasingly, as we've moved along the journey of building awareness and a consumer base for a2 Milk, which prior to 2016 was unknown to the U.S. population, our brand health is strong. Aided awareness has built to a significant level since our launch in the U.S. and increased over this past year. Our conversion rates remain strong but flat over this past year, which given that our household penetration increased by 40% is a positive sign for driving consumers into the brand funnel. Among key brands in the premium segment of the U.S. category, a2 Milk brand equity measures sit in a strong competitive position in terms of loyalty, NPS, and brand satisfaction.
This bodes well for the brand as we continue to develop it in the United States. In a relatively short time frame since launch in the U.S. market, a2 Milk has driven very high scores on equity attributes and is driving consumer engagement in the critical elements of trust, taste, and high quality. Household penetration is the key to building great brands when combined with strong loyalty to maintain consumers in the business. We are leveraging multiple marketing tactics to drive awareness, educate, and convert new consumers, and win the battle at the point of purchase, where the majority of decisions are ultimately made. We've done a great deal of research on understanding the U.S. consumer and their key drivers for purchase. We know that the key to the a2 Milk brand is to connect with consumers with both rational and emotional benefits.
Today, I'm happy to share our latest creative campaign that we're leveraging in connected TV, digital, and social platforms that we feel will allow us to own both taste with the support of the digestive benefit inherent in the brand proposition. Let's play the video now. Enjoy.
It can happen in any home, in any room, at any time, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. You just have to hope it doesn't happen to you. The liquid velvet that is a2 Milk. Taste worth crying over.
Half-and-half, a category that doesn't exist in Australia or in many other countries, represents a significant opportunity for consumer expansion and growth over the next couple of years. This launch represents a pivot from the intensely crowded creamer category to one that serves the same consumer need state of coffee modification, but with the extra usage dynamics of cooking. The category is north of $1 billion in revenue at retail. It's growing at 5% and has been populated by traditional and organic entries with little to no innovation for years. Response from retailers has exceeded our expectations in year one so far, and we continue to sell this based on the early success.
We are very pleased today to announce that The a2 Milk Company and Hershey's have executed a licensing agreement to create a co-brand that has the taste benefits of America's number one chocolate brand in the U.S., combined with the strong taste and health benefits of a2 Milk to address the flavored milk category opportunity. This is an exciting opportunity that will drive additional growth and scale in our U.S. business next year and beyond. We have progressed over time to optimize our co-manufacturing network locations that allow us to adequately supply the expansive geography of the U.S. As I mentioned earlier in my presentation, one of the keys to a path to profitability is achieving the lowest possible cost of goods, and this will require us to focus on further optimizing our supply chain over time.
Overall, we see the U.S. market as an attractive long-term opportunity for The a2 Milk Company with the largest fluid milk market in the world. Ultimately, our goal is to build a profitable growth company in the U.S. and deliver double-digit EBITDA margins in the long term. The following priorities will drive us to our goal of a profitable growth business by driving more consumers into the brand funnel with education and awareness building, ultimately increasing conversion and household penetration. Making the brand more visible in store will help to drive in-store velocities, and innovation will bring the a2 benefit to life in new categories and leverage the investment we've made over time to build awareness of the brand. In parallel with these consumer focus priorities, we'll explore participation in manufacturing as an enabler to achieving profitability and supporting innovation.
We've set strong KPIs to measure success in the U.S., and the entire team is focused every day on achieving these goals. Ultimately, management feels strongly that the U.S. is and will continue to be a significant opportunity for the company. I hope this brief review of the U.S. market and our business has helped you to understand how we move this on a path to profitability. We are building scale with a combination of strong marketing that is improving our brand equity and bringing new consumers to the brand. Our loyalty is helping to keep new consumers in the franchise, and our strong retailer relationships are helping to drive visibility on the shelf. We have a strong focus on building innovation into the long-term strategy with Half & Half and the a2 Hershey's co-brand being great examples.
We also have a robust portfolio of innovation that will allow us to build margin-accretive new platforms for growth. Finally, we have a parallel stream of work that is reviewing our manufacturing strategy to continue to optimize our cost structure. Thanks for your time today, and now I'll hand this over to Bernard to share insights on the newest member of the a2 family, Mataura Valley Milk.
Thank you, Blake. Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou, ni hao, g'day, and hello. Welcome to MVM. I'm Bernard May, and as the Chief Executive of MVM, I'm very proud to be presenting to you today as part of The a2 Milk Company's executive leadership. We've all felt so welcomed by the a2 family since a2 acquired a stake in MVM earlier this year. In fact, as is the case with this type of acquisition, we had all started to feel welcome through the integration planning process during the year. As David mentioned in the opening remarks earlier, I have been with MVM since its inception. I'm deeply passionate about the business and the opportunity we have here to harness our pristine environment, innovative technology, world-class facility, fantastic team, and strong farmer base to produce the highest quality products possible.
First today, I'd like to give you a quick overview of MVM. Mataura Valley Milk is located in one of the finest grass-producing regions in the world, Southland, New Zealand. Our plant here in Southland is a world-class dairy nutritional manufacturing facility. The facility was a purpose-built nutritionals facility with unique design features and is one of the most technically advanced nutritional sites globally. Our pasture to market supply chain produces a range of premium nutritional products destined for the world's most discerning markets. Our products are used in nutritional products manufactured by well-known nutritional brands who value our customer-centric approach. For MVM, it's all about quality, trust, and people. These values are represented in our trust mark, which is stamped on all of our products we produce.
The last point I'd like to make, and it's something that Jaron also discussed in the sustainability section, we recently proudly announced that the first major asset investment for the newly formed venture between The a2 Milk Company and the China Animal Husbandry Group will be the ambitious conversion of MVM's site to full electrification. We will be bringing the first high-pressure electrode boiler to New Zealand. This will reduce carbon emissions to almost zero. With climate change being one of the dairy industry's biggest challenges, the environmental investment in converting to a cleaner, greener energy source at MVM is an impactful step forward for our industry and our brand. We have partnered with Meridian, New Zealand's largest 100% renewable energy generator, certifying that the electricity we use is matched with electricity generated by Meridian from wind, water, and sun.
We thank our partners, EECA, Aurecon, and Meridian for their support in this important project. In these virtual times, we have a video to share with you to give you a feel of MVM, where we operate, and what we're capable of.
Nestled deep in the pristine valleys of New Zealand's South Island is Mataura Valley Milk. Mataura Valley Milk utilizes what New Zealand is famous for, passionate people, pristine environment, and innovative technology to develop and produce world-leading nutrition. With a focus on research and development alongside science-based innovations, Mataura Valley Milk was founded in 2016 with a vision from founders who saw the opportunity to build the world's best nutrition business manufacturing premium nutritional formulas for leading export markets. Our core values, quality, people, and trust.
Define our culture and guide us to fulfill our vision.
Turning to the next slide. The strategic intent of a2's acquisition of MVM alongside CHG remains intact. The acquisition provides the opportunity to participate in nutritional products manufacturing and the potential to pursue additional China label registrations and product innovation opportunities in the future. Importantly, it strengthens the relationship with our key strategic partners in China with China Animal Husbandry Group and China National Agricultural Development Group Co. Over time, we'll also offer access to insourced manufacturing margins. Furthermore, MVM gives a2 the ability to further enhance and protect its intellectual property by extending its capabilities to formulation, manufacturing, and greater farm provenance via MVM's A1 protein-free milk pool. However, as it has been communicated previously, MVM's short-term outlook will be challenging. We will improve over time as utilization increases and the product mix produced by the plant becomes more nutritionally based than commodity focused.
It had previously been expected that post-acquisition, MVM would process additional third-party volumes. Unfortunately, nutritional demand has reduced significantly. However, we are taking active steps to secure additional volumes. a2 also revised down its volume assumptions to produce and to be transferred to MVM during the transitional period FY 2022-2024, in line with generally lower volumes post FY 2021. Despite these challenges, we are advanced in exploring further business development opportunities and working with third parties to improve our financial performance during the transitional period. Our planning is to get to profitability during FY 2026 or earlier and to deliver reasonable manufacturing returns in the long term. We've outlined a very high-level plan on the slide for this. In step one, we're currently operating as a manufacturer of commodity and nutritional-based powders.
During FY 2022, we'll be targeting to start production of a2 Milk branded instant whole milk powder. Step two requires innovation. Our ambition is to be a key enabler to expand the a2 product portfolio. In step three, we are reviewing ways for MVM to play a role alongside Synlait in a2's IMF portfolio for English label and China label. The intention is for MVM to invest in blending and canning facilities and achieve SAMR registration for China label products in the future. I'll leave it there for now. I hope you enjoyed this quick overview of MVM. It is a wonderful facility with dedicated team and has so much potential, which we're working hard to unlock with a2 and China Animal Husbandry Group.
On behalf of the whole MVM team, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank David, the a2 Board, and the executive leadership team, and everyone in a2 that has been so welcoming to bring us into the a2 family. Exciting times ahead. With that, I'll hand over to Shareef to take you through supply chain and operations more broadly.
Thanks for that, Bernard. It's been great working with you at MVM. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Shareef Khan, Chief Operations Officer. We've continued to evolve our supply chain over several years of operations. From a fresh milk business in Australia and building our own manufacturing facilities, the business continued to evolve to include a more complex infant formula business out of New Zealand, along with three extended shelf life liquid milk processor partners located throughout the U.S.A. The vast majority of our products sold directly into China are sourced from New Zealand, and the recent acquisition of MVM will further enhance this. We continue to evolve our operations to support business objectives. This includes a capital smart approach. This is an innovative approach to our supply chain that covers both strategic partnerships along with direct ownership.
Quality systems and processes are the forefront of our business operations. The a2 system includes a proprietary suite of knowledge and know-how, and extends from farm through to manufacturing, down to branding and marketing to consumers. There's a continued focus on inventory management and traceability. This includes implementation of a new traceability system, enhanced inventory management systems, measures to improve channel inventory and progress, and an opportunity to improve S&OP systems and processes. While our focus to date has been on New Zealand-sourced products, our longer term business context and strategy will likely require supply chain capability in due course. As you can appreciate, the time from production through to consumer can be lengthy, depending on the route to market. Factors that also influence this includes a highly regulated category along with strict quality controls and measures.
For us, this means our supply chain can vary from five months up to eight months from production to consumer. The reason for this is that regardless of our channel, our product stays with Synlait for one month to receive QA release. From there, the product journey varies by channel. For China label going to MBS, product stays under a2 ownership for around four months, allowing time for transit to China, customs clearance, and then warehousing at China State Farm. From China State Farm, the product gets sold to tier one distributors who typically hold one to two months of inventory. Product is then on sold to retailers or sub-distributors who again, generally hold approximately one to two months of inventory. The result is an end-to-end supply chain of around seven to eight months. For English label product going to CBEC, the journey is somewhat shorter.
With product being sold out of Hong Kong, the time to a2 ownership reduces typically to around three months. Product is then sold to our distributors, who generally hold about one to two months of stock before it's sold to CBEC platforms who hold a similar level of stock. In total, the English label CBEC supply chain comes in shorter than MBS at approximately six to seven months. The English label reseller supply chain is the most efficient. Because product is sold out of Australia, it only stays under a2 ownership for around two months. Resellers do not typically hold onto stock, generally holding less than one month's cover. Although multiple layers in the reseller route to market because each layer prefers not to hold stock, product generally reaches consumers around one to two months after it leaves tier 1 distributors.
In total, the English label reseller supply chain comes in at approximately five to six months. We are working towards having optimal inventory positions at each stage of the supply chain, and this goes hand in hand with channel inventory data and improved forecast accuracy. We'll also be considering opportunities to improve flow and product freshness. In recent times, we've had to accommodate and pivot on the COVID challenges. As with many businesses around the world, we are faced with a number of operational challenges related to COVID. These challenges include unreliable schedules and port congestions, escalating logistics and shipping costs, labor and driver shortages in the U.S., and impacts to the way we audit and assess our partners throughout our supply chain. There are a number of activities we are doing to minimize the impact to our business.
These include staying well connected to the broader supply chain partners and ensuring we are well notified of changes in a timely manner, improving our forward planning and forecasting to also assist our partners, leveraging our strong relationships and continued negotiations to minimize cost impacts, implementing a number of virtual audits and assessments to continue to ensure the quality and safety of our products from farm through to consumer. We have also implemented several new COVID practices, including encouraging all staff to get vaccinated, complying with all local government COVID requirements, engaging proactively with our suppliers on potential COVID impacts, adopting risk-averse practices at Smeaton Grange to avoid potential COVID impact, including deferral of all non-essential factory visitors or maintenance, non-essential staff working remotely and high vaccination rates among site staff and proactive advice from suppliers regarding potential COVID-19 impacts.
Our team has had a lot to deal with over the past couple of years, but we relish the challenge. Supply chain and operations is the place we're expected to and do keep things moving for our business. We achieve this through long-term stability in our team and the vast experience we have in the categories we play in. As a2 grows, I have no doubt we'll continue to face complex supply chain issues that we'll need to navigate and the opportunities we'll need to pursue. I'm now going to hand over to Race Strauss to discuss finance and IT.
Thanks, Shareef, and hello to everyone. I'm sure I have met or spoken to most of you before, but for those I haven't met, I'm Race Strauss, and I'm a2's Chief Financial Officer. There are a few points I'd like to cover quickly with regards to our finance and IT function before providing a trading update and then opening up for questions. As you know, I joined a2 in January last year. My observations on the finance and IT team at the time were that it was an incredibly passionate and hardworking team. My goal was to invest further in this team, as well as in systems and processes to ensure our capability and support our ambitions for future growth. We have made a number of changes across our back office.
To focus on two of the most significant items has been the internalization and build of a dedicated IT team to support the business and investing in a new cloud-based ERP system, which we announced earlier this year. This system, Oracle Cloud, has now been successfully implemented. The slide here summarizes our key finance and IT priorities, which are all geared towards supporting the business in achieving its future growth objectives. Our first area of focus is to improve the accessibility and use of our data. A good example of where we have already made improvements is in the way we are managing data on inventory.
This will be expanded to provide a holistic data warehouse for the company with associated reporting and analytics, which will allow us to find new ways to use the data that we have. I've already touched on capability build, and this is something that we will continue both in finance and IT. With the acquisition of MVM, we have recently created a dedicated group treasury function by integrating MVM's treasury function into our finance team. In IT, we continue to balance our requirements on an insource versus outsource basis to ensure we are effective but also cost efficient. The next focus area is cybersecurity. We have made good progress on this over the past 18 months, and given the critical nature of this activity and the continually evolving threat, this will remain a strong focus for the business. I also touch briefly on our ERP.
We are now looking to extend our cloud-based environment with applications to support human capital management, S&OP, CRM, and farm services. Finally, we are focused on integrating MVM into our IT strategy and operations. These priorities and continued innovation in this space are essential for a business of our size and complexity. The key point is that we are clear on the capabilities we want to develop and have a strong group of finance and IT leaders to progress this program of work. The second topic from a finance perspective, which we wanted to address is a trading update. We have elected not to provide a detailed update, but in summary, there is no material change to the FY 2022 position as outlined at the FY 2021 August results announcement. A few points to note. There is a slightly different mix than what we had expected.
English label market pricing has increased across all stages with pleasing recent sales performance. Note that this still represents double-digit revenue declines versus the prior year in the first quarter, as we are cycling over a very strong comparator period. We are seeing moderate growth in the CBEC channel. We are also seeing a significant step up in the running rate of our English label sales compared to Q4 last financial year. As expected, we are seeing increased competition in China label and the market overall has decreased due to fewer births. We have reduced inventory levels at our tier one distributors, but as highlighted in our full year results announcement, we did need to hold back some China label sales in the first quarter in order to get the China label distributor inventory down to the required levels.
Due to this deliberate action, our China label ex-factory sales are running behind our original plans. Consumer offtake for the quarter is up double digits, but softer than planned. As a result, our China label growth will show decline for H1 , but as per our prior qualitative guidance, we are working to grow sales in full year 2022, albeit in a weaker market. ANZ liquid milk has continued to benefit from extended lockdowns, achieving historically high market shares, but reported sales are currently flat due to FX translation. Our U.S. business is tracking in line with our plan, but continues to experience distribution cost pressure. MVM volumes continue to be challenging in line with market conditions with a further decline in third party nutritional orders.
We are taking active steps to secure additional volume, but consider it prudent to revise our forecast for a positive EBITDA to be during FY 2026 rather than FY 2025 due to a higher mix of commodity versus nutritional product running through the plant. With the exception of slightly higher distribution and freight costs, all costs are running in line with expectations. The continued strength of the New Zealand dollar is creating an adverse translation impact in our results. Notwithstanding the continued uncertainty in the market and the different mix in the business, there is no material change to the FY 2022 position. We are still expecting a stronger second half compared to the first half. Finally, we wanted to reiterate that we have a strong balance sheet. Post the acquisition of MVM, we are still holding in excess of NZD 600 million of cash with no debt.
This slide is one we've shown before, highlighting our approach to capital management. I won't go through this in detail now, but of course, happy to address any questions. The key point is that the framework prioritizes investment in growth initiatives ahead of returning capital to shareholders. As mentioned throughout today, there are various areas we are considering investing in. I'm now going to hand back to David to introduce the Q&A session.
Thanks very much for that, Race. We're now going to open up to Q&A. If you'd like to participate in this session, you'll need to dial into the teleconference number with the details that have been provided to you previously. If you haven't registered, you can click the about key below and register now, and the details will come through promptly. If you'd like to ask a question, a gentle reminder to turn down the volume and mute the device that you've been listening to the webcast on, just so that we avoid any audio feedback. Today, we've focused our presentation on our insights in terms of the market and our growth strategy going forward.
I know some of you may wish to delve into the current financial year based on the comments that Race just made about our trading update, but I'd encourage you to focus our questions on the content from today and the longer term. With that, I'm going to hand over to Darcy, our operator, to facilitate the Q&A.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. Your first question comes from David Errington from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Morning, David. I really enjoyed the presentation. There's an enormous amount of detail. There's two questions I've got, if I may. The first question relates to can you give a snapshot. I mean, there was an enormous amount of detail, but can you give us a snapshot as to where you're currently sitting with the China label? Because it seems based upon. I know you don't want us focused on the trading update, but it does appear that there's been a significant deterioration in your performance based upon the comments that you're currently running well below where you're expecting to be, and that you're well below fourth quarter levels, which was a rundown period. Can you give us a rundown on where you're at with China label? Why you're running behind?
Is there a problem there that we should know about with regards to you know, in addition, because it does appear that, you know, you are running. The second question I've got is with regards to your route to market. On one of the slides that I think it was Eleanor presented, she presented an excellent slide. That slide was, or it might have been another slide, but it was one right with regard to your brand investment. It showed that in FY 2021 brand investment was flat with FY 2020. I would have thought that in 2021, given that you had to, you know, really step up, given the change in market conditions, you need to step up your brand investment. Can you give us a bit of an idea as to what your thoughts are?
How aggressive are you going to be going forward with your brand investment? Are you prepared to, you know, to compromise short-term for the longer-term growth, or do you have to marry both? Because I think that's the key thing for investors right now. How much are you prepared to compromise short-term performance for longer-term gain? If you could ask those two questions, David, that'd be wonderful. But a great deal of detail today, a lot to consume. Thank you for the opportunity to ask those questions.
Thanks, David. I appreciate the questions. The two issues are really important to us. Firstly, on our China label performance. We said, I mean, last year, we grew China label reasonably well. We said at the time of our announcements, both in May and at the full year, that we would need to pull back sales into the channel in distributors to manage our inventory levels in the channel. Again, at the August result, we said that we'd have to do that into the first quarter. We have been constraining our sales from a2 or China State Farm being our distributor in China to our distributor network quite significantly in the end of the fourth quarter, but particularly in the first quarter of this year.
That's why we are down significantly, both versus last year and the fourth quarter. Pleasingly, what's most important is the offtake at retail and also our distributor ship out. Both of those are up double digits, so that should give yourself and the market some confidence that our business has continued to perform well in China label. Also note that we're the only multinational brand that is actually gaining share at the moment at scale. Also the most recent Nielsen data from in relation to the MBS channel shows us gaining share again in the first quarter of this year. You know, that kinda gives us some encouragement. It's really a question around the ship in versus distributor sales out and retail sales. That's the dynamic that's going on at the moment.
I would hope that from the second quarter onwards, that our shipments more reflect the distributor shipment out and our retail sales going forward. Secondly, in relation to our brand investment, our absolute level of investment in FY 2021, as you noted, was incrementally up on FY 2020. The reason why it's not up significantly is because in the first half of the year, we did not go ahead with a major campaign in the first half because of the timing of COVID and financial constraints on the business at the time. Going forward, we are planning on lifting our investment this year, increasing it to, I think we previously said, a significant increase and almost up to, you know, previous levels around, you know, just under NZD 200 million. We're planning on a significant investment going forward.
Over the longer term, it's a great question around to what extent we are willing to invest for growth versus, you know, manage a financial result. We are investing for growth going forward. It's going to be a dramatic change in terms of materially impacting our financials in the short term, but we do intend on increasing our reinvestment rate in our brand going forward, David. Hopefully that gives you some color in terms of both of those topics on our China label as well as our brand investment.
Thank you, David.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Matt Montgomerie from Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, David. Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can now. Sorry.
Thank you. Maybe firstly just on pricing. Just how far do you think you are off the English label, or do you think you've sorta reached a new normal and the, you know, the work that's been done over recent months is sort of we're going to plateau from here?
I'm going to maybe hand over to Yohan in a moment, but we are seeing some good recovery in pricing in the market based on the actions that we took back in May. I must ask Yohan to comment further on that.
Thank you. So yes, what we've seen in the past couple of months is quite pleasing, as a result of the actions that we took in late FY 2021. We are now seeing that pricing for English label is improving. We're also seeing other metrics such as inventory freshness improving as well, and our sales by stage as well improving. Our early stage sales is also going up, which is all pleasing. To your question of, you know, how will the pricing plateau?
Obviously it's all dependent on the way demand and supply works in that market, but what we do expect is that we'll continue to see some improvements in the English label pricing for each of the channels, but over time it'll stabilize to a natural level.
Great. Thank you. I guess just from the EBITDA margin commentary on slide 16, I'm just trying to go against what David said on the call around is it possible to get to low 20s% over the medium term? Does that sort of imply, you know, base case from here is the high teens% EBITDA margin and we should sort of expect it to ramp up to that level over the next few years? Just commentary was a bit unclear.
I'll just give some opening remarks on that and I might hand over to Race in a moment. Based on our modeling of the current shape of the business at the moment, we believe that over the planning horizon out to five years or more consistent with our sales forecast, we believe that the EBITDA margins are likely or probably will be in the teens. In my commentary in the presentation, I said that potentially as we come out of COVID and the market starts to recover, then that may move into the high teens. I've noted that possibly it may move into the low to mid-twenties, but that's going to require a higher than ex.
You know, primarily require higher than expected in growth in English label, in terms of the channel and potentially our share around that as well. There's a lot going on in terms of the mix of the business going forward that's impacting our margin structure based on our plan. I might just hand over to Race to provide you with a little bit more color on that.
Yeah. Thanks, David. Hello, Matt. Yeah. I think the key thing here is our business has fundamentally changed. As David mentioned, the mix impact is quite significant because we are now disproportionately growing in our at the moment we're growing in our liquid milk business and we are growing in China label as opposed to English label, even though we are seeing very pleasing results in our English label business. We're seeing a step up in competitive activity, which is going to put pressure on those margins. As we've talked about with the resellers, that used to be a very competitive nature, a very competitive marketing approach for the business. What we are going to have to do is to continue to invest in marketing to replicate what we used to get from that, from those resellers.
That's going to put some downward pressure on our margins. Going forward, as we talked in the presentation, we will be doing a lot of innovation, but that innovation won't be at the same level by and large, which we are getting from our current IMF business. That will be a margin.
Pardon me. This is the operator. We seem to have temporarily l ost the line. Please hold while I get them back on the line.
Sorry, we're having some technical difficulties here. We've lost the line, I think, to the teleconference line with the Q&A participants, and Race was just answering that question around our margin structure. We're just waiting for the operator to reconnect the teleconference line. If you can just bear with us, hopefully we'll get that back into the webcast in a moment.
Pardon me. This is the telephone operator. We do have you on the line. We just couldn't hear Race's voice coming through.
Oh, apologies. Can you hear Race now? Race, would ou like to start again?
Yeah. Operator, are you able to hear me now? Operator, can you hear me?
We cannot hear Race's connection.
Sorry, Operator, can you not hear Race?
No.
Oh, that's okay. I'll address the question and hopefully we can get Race back on in a moment. Just in terms of the EBITDA, the longer term EBITDA outlook and why we think that's more likely to be in the teens. In terms of the mix of business, we're seeing that the relative growth of our business, because then from a delivered margin structure, English label has a higher margin versus China label versus Australian milk and U.S.. We're seeing that there's a degree of mix pressure on margins going forward based on growth in the core business, with China label expected to grow the fastest. Then in terms of innovation and growth in other categories, other nutritional products are at a lower margin, and so is Australia or the U.S. and emerging markets.
We're seeing some pressure on mix over time. We're also to David Errington's question, we plan to reinvest more in our brand going forward, that reinvestment rate will increase over time. We will get some operational leverage on our SG&A base going forward. The net impact of that versus, say, if you were pro forma-ing the, you know, the FY 2021 result, which might have been in the low 20s if you adjust for our stock provisions impact, is that that'll probably lead to, you know, some downward pressure on those pro forma margins as we grow through the plan.
As I said, it is possible that we could move back into the low- to mid-20s%, but primarily what you'd have to believe there is that English label grows ahead of our current expectations, because that's our highest margin product. I hope that helps, and sorry for the technical difficulties.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Larry Gandler from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Thank you, David. I second David Errington's thanks for the presentation. It was very detailed, comprehensive. Appreciate it. Just in terms of my questions, some things I'm still learning about your business. You know, I see that your competitors there have been able to innovate in China label quite rapidly and very recently. I'm just wondering from learning about a2, it seems like it's such a long process to innovate. How come the competitor brands seem to be launching new products, you know, quite rapidly and in recent times?
Larry, you're right. I mean, fundamentally in our category, because it's such a, you know, the quality is so important and the development process is quite long associated with that, quite understandably so. There's natural long lead times in development. With China label, the added complexity is obviously the product needs to have SAMR registration as well. We haven't had to focus on that in the past. We've had a very successful one brand, two label strategy that's been incredibly successful until, you know, quite recently with the disruption that we've experienced. We haven't focused, you know, with Synlait and our other partners to actually secure additional China label registrations.
Other competitors who have been, you know, have focused on this more in the past and have through various ways, enabled access to additional registrations over time, including our local competition as well. That's one of the key focuses of our strategy going forward together with our strategic partners in China, CNADC, China Animal Husbandry Group and State Farm, and also with Synlait and other options that we may have, is to enable us to gain access to more China-label registrations and then to deliver the innovation that we'd like to over time. Our next biggest innovation is obviously the renewal of our current a2 至初 registration, which is in process at the moment, and you would expect that we're implementing around that.
What's important to our future growth and innovation is actually gaining more market access in terms of registrations, which is a high priority for us.
Okay. Your upcoming registrations are likely to include modifications and improvements to your existing formulations, and then you need further registrations to innovate beyond that. When you say you're working on that, is that sort of you have a series of products that you want to launch and you're developing them, and then you need to go and register them? Is that sort of just the process?
No. We have a perspective on the products that we'd like to innovate and bring to market. The concern that we have or the issue that we have to address is to gain more registration access to it. It's quite a complicated process that I can explore with you offline, but it's, you know, both the facility that is producing the product needs to be SAMR registered, as well as the formulation needs to be SAMR approved under the new GB standard. It's quite a complicated process that we're going through in terms of renewing our current registration, but we would need to adopt a similar approach in relation to new registrations and new product. Conversely-
I understand.
Conversely, English label, we are free to innovate in relation to our English label, so we have greater flexibility on innovation and new product development in relation to English label, which we plan on.
Yeah.
I think we sort of mentioned that in the presentation. You can probably expect us to do some form of update in English label at some stage, over the next year. Our China label re-registration will come through, which will be a new innovative range. You would expect us to probably innovate again in English label. I think I mentioned our intent to potentially premiumize in English label. After that, the challenge for us is to gain more registrations for a China label, because our China label registration then goes for five years in our new registration. That's a long period of time, which is great for the current range, but we'd like to be able to innovate more and expand. I hope that helps answer your question, Larry.
Okay. Understood. Yeah, no, I get that. You also mentioned in passing that there are many brands that require re-registration. I wasn't aware that it was an industry-wide re-registration date. Can you indicate how many? Is it the whole industry or just some brands?
Yeah, it's pretty much the whole industry. I might actually hand over to Eleanor to talk about the registration regime in China and how this applies.
Thank you.
Thanks, David. Yeah, you're right, Larry. When China introduced its registration regime, every single brand in China needed to have registration to participate, and then those registrations last for five years, and then we're now sort of approaching the five-year mark. All brands on market will need to apply for re-registration and also to reformulate under China's new GB standard. You know, the whole market is impacted at roughly the same timeframe.
Okay, understood. My last question now. I'd like to come back. I have plenty of questions, but same store sales for China Label, as you indicated, have been running flattish. Can you elaborate on why you think that is? You know, and what you intimated about initiatives to spur some growth there. Maybe you can give some color around that.
Yeah. Larry, as I mentioned to David Errington at the outset, our China Label sell-in has been constrained.
Actually, sorry, David, I'm actually referring to your sellout. I'm talking about your you
Sellout.
You commented on the sales.
Yeah, no problem. I might ask Li Xiao to respond to that. At a high level, our sellout performance has been in double digits and we're encouraged by that performance at the moment. I'm going to hand over to Li Xiao to provide you with some additional color on our China Label sellout performance at retail and distributor level.
Yeah.
Yep. Thank you, David. Our sellout growth is remaining at double-digit growth.
Yeah
We have an early on our September news and results. I mean, we are reaching another new historical high. We are pretty confident that China Label is gaining share as well as I mean with a double-digit offtake growth. We have a 12 national key customer with more than 3,000 stores that their POS data is on our radar that we also see very strong consistent growth. I mean, that's the underlying these goals is our strong brands differentiated product, and plus we are increasing the investment in the brand. I mean, to educate the consumer, building the awareness.
You know a2 is, I mean, has much more room to grow when the consumer really gets familiar with the concept and the benefits. Plus, I mean, we have an integrated approach, I mean, along the consumer journey from awareness, interest and to the discovery, trial, retention. We basically are integrated our activation campaign like a mama class, roadshow or PG promotion girl, brand ambassador and a POSM so that we touch, educate, convert along these key touchpoint. We have a pretty established, successful, I mean, use case or playbook, I mean, to further support us to expand it. I hope I answered your question. Thank you.
Li Xiao.
Yeah.
Just before you finish there, would you like to comment on our domestic online performance, which is becoming a bigger part of our China Label performance as well?
Yes. Yeah. David, sorry. Thank you very much for the answer, but I just want to make sure, my question probably wasn't understood. You've got a slide on slide 58. It says, "Like-for-like growth in mature stores has been flat, making this an increased future focus for us.
Understood.
That's my question.
Right.
Why is the like for like sales flat for China Label?
Understand. Sorry. I thought you were talking about the our total China label sales and our sellout. Li Xiao, would you like to comment on our like for like comp growth performance, which is, you know, 2% more recently for the last year?
Yes. We see that, I mean, well, we are gaining share, and we have a double-digit offtake growth. Most of the growth is driven by distribution expansion, while, I mean, in the recent year, the like-for-like growth is flat. I assume this is the question. I mean, that's probably the, I mean, we have a, I mean, our market share is, I mean, skewed to key K&A cities and plus key accounts, national key accounts. We have a much bigger share there. We have also a stronghold in the select province. These are the battlegrounds.
We need to, I mean, we kind of, I mean, coming to a high percentage share and also a very, I mean, a big distribution, like in he key K&A city, we have almost 76% of weighted distribution. That's why, I mean, we need to, in the future, focus more on, I mean, the more on the marketing investment, I mean, to really educate consumer so that we can grow this a2 pie. I mean, that will ultimately give us more room, I mean, to drive, like, for-like the growth, I mean, with the expanded consumer base.
On the other hand, we have improved, I mean, keep on improving our store execution. Also we deployed, I mean, our success in the key account. I mean, the trade marketing mix, I mean, to the, I mean, a higher like-for-like growth. Also, I mea If you look at, I mean, our presentation, the disparity of QNA versus BCD, national key account versus regional key account. I mean, there's a lot of room to at least really deepen our brand and the trade marketing investment going to the lower tier city.
Also, I mean, we are utilize our data analytical capability, I mean, to keep on improving our return on investment and the activation mix. I mean, there's a lot of things going on, and I mean, in the future. First, because this is the first year that we see a little bit of flattening in the like-for-like growth, it's going to keep on being our priority, I mean to expand it, I mean, the like-for-like growth. Thank you.
Yeah, that answers my question. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Yep.
Thank you. The next question comes from Sam Teeger from Citi. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, David. Thanks for the presentation. Look, I've been following a2 Milk company for some time, and look, it's clear that the U.S. business hasn't worked. There's limited synergies with your core China business, and it's a long wait till FY 2025, 2026, the business to achieve profitability. Just like if you can please explain what you're holding on for now and at what point would you from the U.S.
Sorry, Sam. The audio broke up a little bit then, but the question's around the future direction for the U.S. and, you know, what confidence do we have in the profitability, path to profitability and would we consider other options. I'll hand over to Blake in a moment, but really our focus is on leveraging the great work the team's done in building the brand and national distribution. You know, we're really focused on growing the top line and improving our margins and returns in the business over time. You know, that's our primary focus at the moment. If we ultimately can't get comfortable with the risk-return profile of the business, then we may consider other options, but I'll hand over to Blake to talk about our path to profitability in the U.S.
Thanks. Yeah, thanks, David. Before Blake starts, just wondering how much time are you prepared to give it?
Well, I think, you know, we've laid out our plan to, you know, grow the top line by circa NZD 100 million in sales on a base of, you know, NZD 60 million last year, which would get us over $100 million in U.S. dollar sales, and we're targeting a return on sales of greater than 10% EBITDA margins. You know, we'll be working on our plans to achieve that. We already have and we will, and I think some of the innovation that's come to market now is a good sign of that. You know, we should come to that conclusion in the next year or two in terms of the confidence in the plan going forward.
It's not as though we're going to get to FY 2026 and say, "Sorry, we didn't achieve that." Like, it's constantly, it's a constant focus of our team, Blake and the U.S. team, to drive growth and returns in the business. I'll just hand over to Blake to add any further comments on the U.S. outlook.
Sure. Yeah, Sam, thanks for the question. Look, there are the key building blocks to building a path to profitability on any business, but particularly in the one that we're focusing on in the U.S., are a factor of scale and getting your economics, your cost of goods down. And, you know, from a scale perspective, we've got multiple initiatives for driving growth in our core business. That's been increasing distribution, increasing awareness, driving household penetration against the brand. Innovations, say, close-in and further out, close-in ones, good examples are the Hershey's that we announced today, our co-brand with Hershey's, the Half & Half products. Those are opportunities to continue to grow the business.
When you look at in terms of cost of goods, look, we realized that part of our strategy right now is to review our operating or our manufacturing situation to look at ways of constantly improving our margins. Margin-accretive new products as well as reviewing our manufacturing and how we go to market in that respect are both parts of that side of the equation. We remain comfortable that we can continue to grow the business at the levels that we've put out in the long-term forecast and achieve a path to profitability in the timeframe that we've put out there.
Got it. Thanks. Just second question on the Daigou channel. It's evolved positively over the last few years. From an a2 perspective, are you expecting this channel to deliver a materially different margin than what it did for the company previously?
No, we're not expecting any materially different margin structure, whether it be an increase or a decrease. From a gross margin and delivered margin perspective, we're actually forecasting at the moment that that'll be, you know, of course, there'll be some variation over time, but reasonably comparable to recent history. We will, however, need to invest more in the brand and our go-to-market and, you know, in that particular area, we're looking to, over time, to take more control over our distribution to simplify and de-layer it and get more involved in that and get closer to our customers. There'll be some incremental increase in cost of doing business, if you like, but no fundamental change in margin structure associated with English Label, which as you know is, Sam, is our highest margin business from a delivered basis.
Got it. Thanks. Just lastly, when you talk about the 30,000-35,000 MBS store target, would you hope to be there over the next five years when you hit the NZD 2 billion revenue target, or is this a longer-term journey?
No, over the same timeframe, Sam. Hopefully, over the longer timeframe, if we can gain access to more China label registrations and be able to innovate more in the portfolio, we can hopefully expand our distribution much further. We've set out some of the comps in terms of what other companies have been able to achieve with a broader portfolio, and that's perhaps indicative of what we might aspire to in the longer term. The 30,000-35,000 points of distribution and the weighted distribution of around 50%, aligns with the life of the plan, which is, you know, around five or more years.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Marcus Curley from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. I just wanted first if we just talk a little bit about the O2O opportunity. Yeah, could you talk a little bit, David, about, you know, who's running, you know, that for the business, in particular, you know, who's going to be responsible for the development of the O2O in the existing China label stores?
Marcus, thanks for the question. I'll hand over to Yohan because he's going to be primarily responsible for it from an English label point of view. We're actually thinking about sort of how we can collaborate with our China label and China business as well. Yohan, would you like to add some more color to that?
Sure. Thank you. Regarding the O2O opportunity for English label, absolutely, as you saw in the presentation, there's great opportunity for us to leverage our offline China label store distribution. In order to bring that opportunity to life, what we're doing is working closely with our field team and our China label store network key accounts so that we can get access and get ranging in their O2O functionalities in store. That's the primary way to drive growth in O2O.
Do you want to comment on the?
If you think.
Yes. Sorry. Also.
Sorry.
No, sorry. Go ahead.
This allows you to accelerate the widening of the range in terms of a you know, a premium/super premium offering in mother and baby stores?
Exactly. The benefit, and as we saw in the pilot, is that by having English label and China label together, they're actually complementary. They speak to slightly different consumer needs. There is definitely a distinct consumer segment that is looking for the brand of a2 and sees overall value in the English label product. As you can see in the pilot study that we did, that when we had English label and China label co-located in store, we actually had an overall growth in sales with very minimal cannibalization. Also to David's-
Just finally, what's the pricing and margin model? You know, is this akin to a normal English label sale for yourselves, or is there a lot more rebates and marketing support that go with it?
Overall, the margin structure is not materially different. Absolutely, we do need to invest in marketing support to be able to drive in-store and POSM, et cetera. It's not materially different margin structure.
To English label?
Correct.
Then my second question, David, is just, you know, could you talk a little bit to the timeline, you know, for, you know, your new products? You know, are we needing to wait for MVM, you know, to be infant formula capable? Or, you know, is there a possibility, for example, with the English label new product, you know, that that comes, you know, earlier, you know, and uses possibly someone like Synlait to accelerate that process?
Yeah. Marcus, we'll still work with Synlait on innovation as well, and we haven't exactly worked out which facility will be producing what products when. You know, as I was mentioning before, you could probably expect some form of an update to our English label range next year. Then we'll be followed by our new GB standard of our China label product, and then we'll probably do a more substantial innovation in English label after then, as well as hopefully China label again after that. That's the kind of sequence of events that you should hopefully see coming through over time in our IMF portfolio. In addition to that, in our other nutritional space, you should see innovation coming through over time in our whole milk powder, our broader macro milk offering as well to market.
We're thinking about a number of different areas that we can innovate in both our IMF core category as well as our other nutritionals or adjacent categories over time as well. Some of that will be in Synlait, and some of that will be in MVM. We just haven't worked out the details of that.
If you look at your plan today, you know, with the more substantive innovation in English label, which sounds like it's, let's say, two to three years away, is that penciled in for MVM or Synlait?
As we said in the presentation, in terms of the MVM utilization, our first step is to transition our whole milk powder. Secondly, we highlighted innovation, which could include updates or new products in relation to English label. Lastly, we've indicated that over time, we'd like to, you know, explore how we're going to share the production of our range with Synlait. Now, obviously, our core Zhi Chu China label product is with Synlait, and the registration will be with Synlait, and there's no impact on that business. In terms of English label, you're correct. Like, we're going to be exploring ways that we can utilize the MVM facility over time. You know, we may need to partner with Synlait in relation to that.
I suppose just where I'm heading with this, David, is that if you're going to be waiting for MVM to be capable, that could easily be three years, you know, if I'm judging the requirements in terms of you putting the facilities in place and getting them ready for manufacture.
Well, not necessarily. From a producing the base powder point of view, Synlait, or sorry, MVM is capable of doing that now and has done for other third-party customers as well. The challenge that we have is around blending and canning, and we've already announced our plans to invest in blending and canning facilities at the MVM site. In the meantime, it is possible that we could partner with somebody else on blending and canning, including partnering with Synlait, which would be logical because you know, they do blend and can our product, you know, really to a high quality now. There's different ways that we could achieve this. I'm reluctant to be too specific about that because we haven't defined our plans and worked that through with Synlait yet.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Richard Barwick from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for your time. Hi, David.
Hi, Richard.
I think slide 45 with the birth rates or the number of newborns is obviously a critical one for your outlook. You've got a what is a very wide range of possible outcomes, looks roughly something like 14.5 million newborns at the top of the range and maybe 7.5 million at the bottom. In the context of the growth targets that you've given for your English label and Chinese label, what are you assuming here? What's the sort of the underlying assumption with regards to birth rates given these revenue and share targets?
Yeah. Richard, we haven't been specific on that. But you know, the page that follows that, which gives you an indication of the profile that we're forecasting by stage for K&A and BCD cities, might give you an indication of that. There's a wide range of possibilities. You know, the way that we think about the birth rate is that there has been a structural incremental decline over time for sociodemographic reasons, which we've talked about in the past. We've now got this period that's been COVID impacted, which we're seeing a downturn initially, and we expect, assuming that it doesn't have a long-term impact on family planning, that then there'll be a rebound in the birth rate after that. The real question is, where does the long-term birth rate for China come back to?
You know, will that be stable in growth or in decline? You know, that's the one that's really difficult to predict. We don't underestimate, I guess, the level of focus that the China government has on this and already some of the policy settings and initiatives that they're putting in place. We believe that that'll have a, you know, a countervailing impact on the underlying trend. It's a very uncertain matter at the moment, so hopefully that helps you understand how we're thinking about it at the moment.
Understood.
We've had to adopt a certain scenario or range of scenarios for our planning.
Yeah. Well, that's the thing I was just hoping you could give a bit of a view. I mean, that's right. There's no one can hold you to how many babies are going to be born in China over the next five years and so, but it'd be useful just to understand what the underlying assumption is.
It's just a bit.
Is there any number you can add?
It's a bit sensitive to comment on our expectations specifically on the birth rate in China at the moment. We'll just wait to see how that evolves.
Okay. Okay.
Yeah.
Okay. Well, if I could just clarify another point around this, a little bit around the same topic. You talk about the Chinese label, doubling this year or the target is from that 2.5% to 5%. I mean, you've got some great data within the presentation, but it would look like that 2.5% is where your share is today, just within the MBS channel, as opposed to across the entirety of Chinese label. Is that right? I'm just making sure we've got that correct if you're thinking about the 2.5% to 5%.
Yeah, that's correct. At the moment, it would indicate we're probably slightly above the 2.5%. Our online share, which accounts for just under 20% of our business, is closer to 2% share. You've got to kinda blend those together, and you get a you know, slightly lower number. We're aggregating those together over time and saying that our total share would double from a roughly five, 2.5% to a 5% or more combined share for China label.
Right. Okay. All right. It is actually the blend of the two.
Yeah, the blend.
Gotcha.
Yeah. Yep.
Yeah. Okay.
We'd hope over time that we can, you know, we can really focus on our online growth and have our online growth ahead of our MBS store growth and ultimately our share in online ahead of our MBS share. That's the plan that we've put in place today.
Right. Understand. Just one more from me. I mean, there's been lots of talk and discussion and explanation around the margins for the English label, as the high margin part of the business. How do we think about the margin for the Chinese label? Obviously, you're expecting to add a lot of revenue, a lot of scale into that business.
How do we think about that from a margin perspective, specifically for the Chinese label?
Yeah, no problem. I might hand to Race to comment on that. Hopefully, the audio works. If it doesn't, I'll come back and answer the question. Race, let's see if it comes through this time.
Let's try it again. I hope you can hear me, David and Richard.
There we go.
I can hear you. Great.
Great. Listen, with China label, over the period, we're expecting about the same in terms of where we are now. What we're going to see is we are going to see more competitive pressure. We know about that. That will put some pressure on pricing. We do believe over time, we will be able to recover that. Similarly, any increase in COGS over time, we expect to recover it. In this plan, we're expecting roughly the same, maybe slightly under, but call it roughly the same, from a gross margin perspective for the China label business.
From an EBITDA margin though, Race?
Well, from an EBITDA, as we've said before, we are going to have to invest more in marketing. Of course, we don't talk specifically about the EBITDA by each of our product groups. We look at it more across a geography because of the interrelationship. If you advertise in China, of course you're getting the benefit across our international business as well. We do know we will be having to advertise and spend more in marketing, particularly whilst the reseller channel rebuilds. We do expect that will be higher marketing. We will be investing to continue build the capability. Therefore, from an EBITDA perspective, if you look in China, I would expect that to come down a little bit. The key point, which David said before, about our margin is English label.
That if we can get that English label better than what we're assuming, then we will, as a business, be able to get into the low 20s%. That's the key point.
No, I understand that. All right. Thank you, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Adrian Allbon from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, team. Can you hear me?
Yeah. Hi, Adrian. I can hear you.
Oh, good, thank you. Just a couple of questions. Like on the China label MBS expansion plans, can you just give us a sense of like in terms of the increased marketing investment that's going into that space to support not only same store sales growth, but also probably network growth into the lower tier cities. Just give us a little bit more detail to what you're actually planning to do there.
In terms of where we intend to invest or the level of investment?
Yeah, just maybe in terms of like how much goes to distributors, how much is required at the store, how much is sort of brand investment. Like, I mean, I guess you're stepping up the marketing investment for, you know, probably another NZD 50 million this year. Just trying to get a good sort of sense of how that's been allocated.
Yeah, sure. Like, I'll hand over to Li Xiao in a moment, but we are intending on investing in both above the line and below the line activities where we're being, you know, really successful in our push for below the line. It's clear that in terms of the level of investment that the competition's making in China, that we're going to need to lift our game and change our communication approach and also change the mix of our communication as well in terms of the channels we're using and upweight our digital communications. I'll ask Li Xiao to comment a bit more in terms of, you know, where we're going to invest and how that's going to come to life going forward.
Yes. As we shared in our presentation, I mean, you see there's a potential opportunity in the BCD city. I mean, I assume that most of our distribution expansion are going to come from the BCD city. We also talk about, I mean, China is a huge geography. If you like look at our market share, I mean, by province, there's a big disparity. It's like in some stronghold market, a2 stronghold, we have a higher share as far as 4.3%. There's also other seven provinces, which is under 2.5%.
If you look at our key account performance, we are relatively, I mean, very strong with, from 11% to 7%-8% in the national key account. We have customers, 3,000 stores, while, I mean, we have a relatively low share in the regional key account and the local key account. If you look at our, I mean, DOL business is improving and catching up quickly as an online business. But I mean, we are still under index with MBS share, and there's also room for growth. All these are going to, I mean, involve, I mean, investment, I mean, first to build brand. I mean, building more brand awareness, educate consumer about A1 versus, I mean, a2 benefit versus A1.
That's, as I always said, the ultimate drive growing of the pie and more consumer base. Secondly, I mean, we are going to deploy, I mean, the our marketing investment on those priority provinces with a high potential. Plus, I mean, last year we are doing. I mean, people ask me why we are growing share being exception, I mean, to other multinational losing share to local brands. If you look at last year, I mean, below the line activity, we have 8,877 roadshow, mega roadshow in 158 city. That's almost triple than the previous year. We have 42,000 mama class, which is important to educate consumer. I mean, that's almost increased by six times than the previous year.
Also, we talk about, I mean, store ambassador, who is important, critically important, I mean, to convert consumer for trial and to retain the consumer and to build a relationship. Lastly, the POSM, which is critical for the consumer shopping experiences. Last year, we built, I mean, from scratch, 106, I mean, flagship store plus 2,000 POSM store. All these are, I mean, going to involve, I mean, investment, and those are going to, I mean, be critical for us for, I mean, for us to have this integrated approach to drive the consumer from awareness interest to, I mean, consult, investigate, and to the trial. I think that's where most of the money is going.
I heard that you asked about the split on the distributor. I think our distributor's margin is pretty decent at the moment. I mean, most of the money, I believe the distributor also want to, I mean, grow the business together, and they can get some more profit from growth, absolute dollar rather than percentage. Thank you.
Okay, that's good. Thank you. Second question, just maybe switching to the English label. Yeah, you're talking about that sort of good growth sequentially in the trading update. Just wondering if more broadly you can sort of talk about what success you've had, I guess, replacing C2C with new e-commerce channels and how you're again, if there is success here on the back of that, allocating more marketing support or brand support.
Yeah. I might actually ask, Yohan to talk to that. Probably after that, we've probably got time for one more question.
Thanks. Yeah. In terms of English label, particularly in this quarter, as I mentioned earlier, we are seeing some good signs in terms of market pricing and freshness and some of our sales and share. To your question around, you know, how we're going in other channels, a good example is CBEC. For CBEC, we've been heavily focused on new user recruitment, and it's definitely going to be one of our strategic priorities going forward. But what we've seen in the past two months is some good early signs. Our share of step one and step two in CBEC has grown by about 1.9 percentage points, respectively, for step one and step two.
That's reflective of our approach to test and learn new approaches to be able to drive new user recruitment through digital channels, which we think will become particularly important going forward as new moms become more tech-savvy and more comfortable purchasing for the first time through CBEC channels.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. That is all the time we have for questions.
Thanks very much. Thanks, everybody. We'll close the Q&A there. It's been a great discussion, so thank you for your participation. In conclusion, it's clear that the market that we've been operating in has been disrupted significantly over the past 12 or more months. You know, that's required us to reflect on our strategy and to adapt and to, you know, modify our ambition and announce our strategy today. Hopefully you'll, you know, you'll be aligned with the strategy that we've presented and feel that that's well thought out and have confidence in the team to execute successfully around that. Anyway, we'll look forward to updating you on progress over time in relation to the execution of our strategy. Just a few words of thanks.
Firstly, to my executive team, thank you so much for the effort that's gone into developing our strategy and communicating it today. It's been a big effort by everybody. A special thanks to Eleanor and Laura and Alison, David, Becca, Jen, and Sophie. Huge effort's gone into managing the preparation of the materials today and the management of the event. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Lastly, for the investment community, thank you very much for your time today, your support and interest in the company. I look forward to continuing the conversation over the next several days as we move into analyst meetings and investor one-on-one. So thank you very much for your time today. We appreciate it. Thank you. Stay well. Goodbye.