Few years. I wouldn't say we have the wind at our back yet, but we're sitting in that nice neutral territory where it's no longer hard to make progress. In Australia, I think the economy has slowed slightly, but the nature of our businesses means we are much less tied to economic performance in Australia. The reality is, in Australia, we occupy a number of niches where those niches are going well despite the state of the economy. We're a much smaller business in Australia in terms of overall market share. In New Zealand, because of our market share, we naturally feel the impact of the economy on our companies. Another highlight for us in September was releasing the climate statement that talks about the group's emissions across New Zealand and Australia, as well as our focus on transition planning for the years ahead.
I just want to talk a little bit about the blueprint. This is really the piece that makes us tick and links all of the brands and businesses we have together. Fundamentally, what we're involved in is picking up, processing, and delivering over 100 million items every year. They might be letters, packages, bins of destruction or medical waste, archives, could be data we're picking up, processing, and delivering to customers through businesses like Dataprint or TIMG. That is the common link through Express Package, Temperature Control, Information Management, and Waste Renewal. There are four key things that if we can do well, we can be successful. The first one is really being efficient. The reality is, when you're handling over 100 million items, if you take or are held up a little bit at each stage of that network, you lose your efficiency and you lose your profits.
Our teams are very good at maintaining that level of efficiency through the business. The second thing is that everything we move matters. Whether it be a medical file that's sitting in an archive warehouse that needs to be delivered to a hospital within two hours, whether it be a package, urgent medical supplies, etc., everything we do really matters in terms of timeliness. That's critical to maintain service levels, keep the customers we have, and attract new ones to us. Loving our customers, you know, kind of sounds trite, but the reality is, for many of us that have been in this business for around 30 years, we still see the same customers that we had 30 years ago. We still have a relationship with those same businesses that we might have called on as a courier or a sales rep or as a manager 30-odd years ago.
Loving your customers and really making sure that they feel part of the family is a really important part in our business. Customers judge you by your last delivery. If you don't do it well and if you don't recover well, you run the risk of losing a customer. Really looking after them and loving them, as we talk about, is critical to our business. The last one is just being a little bit entrepreneurial, having a bit of innovation and thinking about different ways of doing things every day. I think that's one of the things that the team of people here really thrive on, is every day having a new challenge and thinking about how do we solve that particular problem. There are common principles I think apply across all of the Freightway s' businesses.
If I travel around branches and companies, I see these same three traits everywhere I go. It's a really high level of ownership. People take ownership for the business, for their people, for their performance, for maintaining customers. There are really high levels of ownership that go all the way down through each company. We think commercially, you know, there are many customers that we will walk away from and say, "Hey, that is not profitable. It doesn't work for our business, and so we won't be serving you." An example of that fairly recently was Temu, where we tried that for six months and at the end of that period really came away and said, "Hey, that's not doing as much for our business as it really should do." When they're prepared to pay the right price, we're happy to serve you.
Working as a family, our teams where they can work as families really well and individual branches and brands and departments tend to perform really well. We do push that philosophy. If we can do all of those things, we can move you to a better place. The people we're moving to a better place are the customers that stay with us and ride on that service journey. There are our team members, many of which would grow up from the ground floor to become general managers, and many of those people are in the room here today. It's moving shareholders to a better place that if you invested in Freightways, you know, 22 years ago it was $1.60, and your share price has moved you to a better place.
Your dividend, what Mark Cairns showed you previously around dividends and performance of the company, that's our attempt is to move you to a better place from that point of view. Finally, for our community, and that community these days is really heavily around the environment. How do we play our part in moving our community to a better place in the areas that we can take action around decarbonisation? Just a few of the strategic initiatives across those four divisions. In Express Package , really the key initiatives for us are to continue driving profitable market share growth in B2B, business-to-business deliveries, and B2C, business-to-consumer deliveries. B2B is about 80% of what we do still. Think auto parts from Toyota being delivered to a mechanic before 8:00 A.M., sometimes by 5:00 A.M., so they can start work.
B2C are the items that you might have bought online when you don't have an internet outage and are delivered to your door. We're expanding a couple of key hubs. We have key air freight and road freight hubs in Palmerston North and Christchurch. Those two centers are going through more than a doubling of capacity to cope with the volumes we have today and the growth we expect tomorrow. Thirdly, continuing to scale up our oversize, the big and bulky, the ugly freight, as we used to call it, 25 to 60-odd kilos. A real big part of the Allied Express business in Australia, the Betty and the team have grown really well, and a burgeoning part of Carl Dietz's business here in New Zealand. We were following the same blueprint and growing that here in Aotearoa. In Temperature Control, we're targeting opportunities to build out the network.
There's a number of locations that we can build out and continue expanding into. Doing that profitably, doing it with customers that support us, where we can take hold in another center like we have this year in New Plymouth. We have a number of other branches that we'll look at establishing over the coming years. We're also assessing future 3PL opportunities. These are the large cold store warehouses that hold food products on behalf of customers where we pick and pack it and then dispatch it out when it's ready at a restaurant, a cafe, or a supermarket. In Information Management, improving the utilization of the warehouses we have, so the sites we have around New Zealand and Australia. Our objective is to keep pushing the utilization of those facilities higher and also target high-value digitisation activity.
That's where we have customers who ask us to digitise their paper records and provide it back to them electronically. Pick up the data, process it, and deliver it back to them. Finally, in terms of Waste Renewal, our objective there is to optimize the network, assess the depots, find efficiencies through the fleet that we're running doing medical waste, document destruction, and high-value waste collection. Continue making gains in those markets like medical waste and high-value waste. There are some really interesting stories around what that business does. Fundamentally, again, it's pick up, process, deliver. We pick up tons of textiles, we shred them, and we deliver them to someone who can recycle them and keep them out of landfill.
If you want to know more about that business, go and have a chat to the big chap over there at morning tea time, and he'll be happy to avail you with plenty of stories about how that business is going. Terms and trading update for Q1. This is the consolidated unaudited performance for the company from the management accounts. You can see that revenue and earnings growth have been achieved through Q1. That's been led in particular by very strong performance in the Express Package & Business Mail sector with really good revenue growth. That revenue growth is from market share, and there is a bit of modest same customer growth now, which we haven't really had much of over the last two and a half years. There is an element of pricing to cover those costs.
We have had stronger growth in economy services than overnight air freight as an example. More customers are saying, "Hey, we will use a two-day service, North Island to South Island," rather than a more expensive overnight air freight service, Auckland to Christchurch. We are certainly seeing that trend, which often happens in recessionary times, but nonetheless, that growth is contributing to good revenue and earnings across the business. Really effective cost control, and as I said, those price increases that we have levied generally are helping offset inflation in most businesses. Not in every case, but in most cases. Slightly higher corporate costs. We will have an air fleet transition near the end of this financial year, and we will start to shift from 737-400s to more fuel-efficient Boeing 737-800s. In terms of operating revenue, up 8.6%, EBITDA up 11.9%, and NPAT up 22.5% for the quarter.
For the Express Package & Business Mail sector, revenue growth of 9% on 10%, EBITDA and EBITA 14%, 14.7% respectively. The Allied Express, Post Haste, and DX Mail brands have had really strong growth. They're market leading in their niches. What we do is have brands that aim to own a niche. Each of those brands are there to own a particular part of the market, specialize in that market, and do that job particularly well. Those brands are niches which probably go a little bit better in these economic times, and they're winning. They're number one in their niches, and that's why we're getting that really strong growth out of those businesses. Same customer growth in this quarter was 1.8%. That might not mean much to a lot of you, but for many, many years, or for the last couple of years, it's either been negative or flat.
Actually having our same customers just growing slightly, I think, is a signal that those headwinds that we've been riding into for so long have now turned around and it's a little more neutral. The increase in margins is particularly pleasing, from 12.7% up to 13.3%. In fact, that would have been a bit higher had we not invested around $1.5 million extra this year in an IT system that will enable us to bill more efficiently and effectively, price to a greater deal of granularity, and introduce different ways of paying couriers. The investment was much needed in that billing and courier pay system, and had it not been for that one-off cost of $1.5 million in the quarter, which we expect to be around $5 million for the full year, those margins would have been higher still.
The slide here just talks a little bit to the volume growth we have in the Network Courier business. This is New Zealand Couriers, Post Haste, Castle Parcels, NOW Couriers, if you think about those brands that you will see out on the road. The average daily volume growth was 4.5%. Again, quite a quantum up on what we've had in previous years where it's effectively been pretty flat. That has come from a combination of 3.1% growth coming out of new customers. Many of those are cross-border customers. It's volume that we're bringing in through our freight forwarding business, often out of China or other places overseas, and then injecting into our courier networks for last mile delivery. The customers we've lost or in some cases have closed down in these times was - 0.4%. Same customer growth around 1.8%.
The existing customers sent 100 items last year, this year sent 101.8%, just sent a little bit more. Information Management, slightly more muted revenue growth here of 3.4%. EBITDA was up 3% and EBITA up 2.6%. The revenue here, growth influenced by medical waste, growing at 9% per annum. Good strides made in winning market share, typically smaller customers to the medical waste facilities that we have across Australia. Document revenues up 4%, better price, better volume in there. Slightly lower digitisation in Australia, and that's just because we had a project that finished during the quarter and we'll have a new pipeline coming through, but not quite as much digitisation in Australia in that particular quarter.
We've had a number of initiatives at Tradex in terms of improving its performance, improving its efficiency, getting the right price for the work we do, and we expect to see the benefit of that coming through in the second quarter this year. Also, improved performance for our LitS upport business, which is part of TIMG in Australia and involved in servicing the legal fraternity with Information Management needs. Finally, just in terms of outlook and how we see things, it's slow improvement in New Zealand volume, but pleasing to see. In the second half of FY 2025, we had about a 0.6% improvement in same customer volume. It's nice to see that momentum building, but still relatively modest levels compared to what we would have had in historic times when GDP was humming along.
Any positive economic momentum we can get really helps boost our efficiency and combined with pricing initiatives and some of the other things that the team are doing in the business to intensify the network should help expand margins in the year ahead. In the meantime, outside of what the economy does, our focus is really on improving service quality, making sure we are the choice in each of our niches for each of our brands that customers choose to come to, even if we are a bit dearer, and we typically are dearer than our opposition. There's also a range of organic and inorganic opportunities. Those are flash words apparently for stuff we can do with our own resources, and there may be businesses or merger and acquisition activity that we could get involved in. Most of our attention is focused in Australia.
Most of it is focused in and around the transport sector, and we look at any number of opportunities every year to see if we can find a business that will fit with the Freightways' way of doing things. That brings to an end my presentation. I'll ask Mark to come back up and you'll have the opportunity to ask questions.
Thank you, Mark. Are there any questions, comments, or discussion in relation to the financial statements or presentations so far? Yep, perfect.
Thank you. [Foreign language] . Riki Manarangi, just on behalf of the New Zealand Shareholders' Association. I have some questions which relate to some of the shareholdings and some of the questions you probably have gone through with them with Oliver more recently, but I'll say them anyway for the sake of everybody else. Will Freightways explicitly disclose that director share ownership is not compulsory?
[Foreign language] , Riki. I've met with Oliver. We don't actually explicitly state it, but the policy is it's encouraged for directors to own a shareholding similar to a year's directors’ fees, but it's not mandatory. Depending on the type of director we're looking to fill, we don't make it mandatory. I think we probably should be stating that and we will do so in our next annual report.
Cool. Thank you, Mark. Just another question. The annual report includes a collective skills matrix. Will Freightways enhance the skills matrix to show individual directors' skills?
Again, I discussed that with Oliver and I can't see any reason personally, but I plan to talk to the board. I don't see an issue with presenting in the next annual report the individual skills matrix.
Thank you, Mark. You probably talked also about the ID Future Director program and whether you might participate or not.
I do. We do discuss it regularly with the board. I participate on other boards where we do it. It's probably something that we discuss from time to time. At the moment, we decided not to do it this year, but it's something that's on the agenda regularly.
On the radar. Cool. What's the total tenure of the audit firm, PwC?
We recently went out to market. Stephan, what's the total tenure?
Two years.
We did go out to the market and called for bids, but PwC were successful and we've had a change in lead audit partner as it's required, but sorry, I can't tell you exactly.
I think it's more than 20 years.
22, I think.
22, yes. Okay. Yeah, cool. Thank you. Last but not least, any indication on when Freightways will set defined emissions reduction targets?
We are working on that at the moment. I would expect that within the next two years, we will have targets.
Perfect. Thank you very much, team.
Thank you. Sir?
Freightways operates with a number of brands as a result of the growth over time and the niches that they occupy, as alluded to in this presentation. Is there a case now for amalgamating under one brand, the Freightways entity or overall overriding umbrella?
Mark, I'll get you to comment on that.
Yeah. It's a good question and one that we consider from time to time. I think the reality is we have such equity in brands like New Zealand Couriers and Post Haste. These are really household names that are known so well, and it'll be the same for Allied Express in Australia and Tredex over in Australia. There's so much equity in those individual brands, but probably more importantly for us, we do see the world in niches. What we do is sort of the opposite of our main competitor, New Zealand Post, who rumble everything up under one brand, in our opinion, maybe don't do any of those things well. What we really aim to do is to win each and every one of those niches. New Zealand Couriers' job is to win that race, to get those items in your hand to start your business day.
That's a different niche to Post Haste, which occupies more of a wholesale retail, and it's to replenish goods that you've sold the day or two days before. The niches may seem subtle, but actually our customers fall quite naturally into those categories. We think it's important that we're attacking each niche with a laser focus. If I look at our profitability by niche and compare it to some operators in our industries, which take a complete one-brand approach to it, gee, I'd rather have our margins and our focus any day of the week, but it's a good question. We do consider it from time to time.
Thank you. Any other questions from the floor?
Is this general business?
It's on the presentation so far. We've got the formal business, and then I was going to open again, but I'm happy for general questions now as well.
Sorry. Hi. Good morning. Should I hold it? You were talking about on the planes that you're going to upgrade. Do you have any problem getting them? Does it take long for you to, how should I say, no, could you just explain that a bit more?
Can you elaborate, Mark? Can you answer that?
We will more than likely just enter it. We'll enter an agreement with an aviation company to provide those aircraft to us. Availability of 737-800s is pretty good at the moment. If you've ever flown on Qantas from Australia to New Zealand, I reckon those 800s should be freight planes by now rather than passenger planes. They're terrible bloody things. The availability of those aircraft is pretty good. Conversion is probably about six months, I think, Ben. To convert a passenger plane to freight, it takes around six months. We're not concerned about the availability of those aircraft.
Thank you. I just want to also say fantastic report and amazing. That's all, bloody amazing.
Thanks, mate.
Thank you very much. Great question. Are there any further questions from the floor? Got one at the back.
I'm just asking about Trump tariffs. Are they going to have any direct or indirect effect on the business?
Mark.
Look, I don't think so. It's a very, very small amount of freight we have going out of the country. There's very little we're doing where we're supporting an exporter selling into America. I don't expect any material impact from that other than if it dampened overall economic growth for the global economy. That obviously will have some effect on New Zealand. In terms of us directly, 99% of what we do, we pick up and deliver within the country. We have a lot of product coming in, in particular from Asia into New Zealand that shouldn't be affected by any of Trump's tariffs. I sort of watch that with interest, but it doesn't keep me up at night.
Any other questions from the floor?
Yes, Neil Hart, minor shareholder. It's a general business question, but you mentioned New Zealand Post and how inefficient they are. Would Freightways be interested in buying their parcels if it was sold off by the government in due course? Thank you.
I think we wouldn't be able to, in terms of defined markets. We would have too dominant a position to actually acquire that business. Mark, do you want to add anything further?
I'd love to get my hands on it and fix it, but I think Mark's quite right. I mean, the Commerce Commission wouldn't allow that in terms of concentration of market share. Those roosters, I don't think it's too hard to fix what they've got. They just need to sort of open their eyes up to reading a P&L.
I'm just going to ask you, what is the split between New Zealand Post and New Zealand Couriers in that market?
Zealand Post probably 50% at the moment. They acquired a, your taxpayer's dollars were used to acquire another freight company, about the 10th one I think they bought. They acquired PBT around about a year ago. That was about 5% market share, which pushed them to, we think, about 50%. The Freightways business is probably early 40%, so their market share would be slightly higher, but I'll take our profit any day of the week.
Any further questions? Nicola, is there anything coming from online? Okay, so no online questions here. If there are no further questions, I'll now move to the formal resolutions to be considered at the meeting. As mentioned earlier, all voting on resolutions will be conducted by way of poll, and the results will be advised to the stock exchanges later today. Proxies have been appointed for the purpose of this meeting in respect of 96 million ordinary shares. As we indicated on the proxy form, directors standing for election or re-election will abstain from voting discretionary proxies in respect of their own appointment. As requested by the New Zealand Shareholders' Association, we will not disclose the voting of proxies received ahead of the shareholders voting on them today. The first ordinary business resolution is the re-election of David Gibson.
David was appointed as a director of the company in 2022 and is retiring by rotation and offering himself for re-election. The board unanimously recommends that shareholders vote in favor of David's re-election. He's considered by the board to be an independent non-executive director. I'd now like to invite David to address the meeting.
Good morning, everyone. It's lovely to see so many familiar faces from the Freightways family. I've been on the board now for just over three years. It's been an absolute privilege to work with the current board and management team. As both Marks have outlined in their speeches, the company is performing very strongly. Much of this is due to the hard work and dedication of our very capable management team, supported by a very high-quality board. It's our job to keep it going and on track and to make the most of the tremendous opportunities in front of us. If re-elected, my continued focus will be on maximizing shareholder value. My career background is in corporate finance and strategy with over 25 years of capital markets and M&A transaction experience. I also bring strong governance experience over the last eight years.
I'm currently Deputy Chair of Goodman, New Zealand, and a Director of Contact Energy. With your support, it will be a privilege to continue to serve Freightways and be re-elected as a director for a further term.
Thank you, David. Are there any questions or matters for discussion concerning this resolution to re-elect David Gibson as a director? If there are no questions on this matter from shareholders, I'll put the resolution to a vote. If you could please mark your vote. The second resolution is the election of Grant Devonport. Grant was appointed as a director of the company in November 2024 and is retiring and offering himself for election. The board unanimously recommends that shareholders vote in favor of Grant's election. He's considered by the board to be an independent non-executive director. I'll now invite Grant to address the meeting.
Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. I stand before you today both very excited but also humbled in seeking your support for my election to the board of Freightways . I believe I'm very well qualified to add value to both the board and in supporting management through both my industry experience and from over 25 years as a Chief Financial Officer for listed and unlisted corporates across Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. My industry experience with nearly 10 years at Toll Holdings in both New Zealand and Australia gives me not only expertise across both countries but also significant understanding and working with the major industry players, both competitors and potential targets in both markets.
My CFO experience provides expertise and leadership across both traditional CFO functions like financial control, performance management and reporting, treasury, taxation, and investor relations, but even more importantly, through a wider CFO portfolio leadership in health and safety, which is a major personal passion of mine, business strategy, mergers and acquisitions, risk management, technology, and large balance sheet financing transactions. While I've lived in Melbourne for 25 years, I remain a passionate Kiwi and certainly enjoy coming back across the Tasman regularly as I'm a director of Auckland Airport as it moves through a generational capital investment program for both Auckland and New Zealand. Freightways has been an iconic New Zealand business since its inception in 1964, has a clear strategy for growth and is investing in technology, enhanced health and safety, sustainability, and most of all, investing in its team.
In summary, I'm very excited to offer the experience, expertise, and leadership required to support management to continue to drive the stellar performance for shareholders and other stakeholders that you've heard from both Marks this morning. Thank you so much for your support.
Thank you, Grant. Are there any questions or matters for discussion concerning the resolution to elect Grant Devonport as a director? Okay, as there are no questions on this matter from shareholders, I'll put the resolution to a vote. Please mark your vote. Okay, this brings us to the next resolution on director fees. This resolution proposes that the total quantum of annual directors’ fee pool be increased by $85,000 from an aggregate of $965,000 to an aggregate of $1,050,000. Such aggregate amount to be divided amongst the directors as they deem appropriate. The directors review fees annually to ensure the aggregate amount available for directors' remuneration is adequate to allow directors' fees to remain aligned with market levels. Directors did not apply for any annual incremental adjustment to the aggregate pool of director fees last year, so the current fee levels have not been adjusted for two years.
This year, the directors obtained independent market advice from Ernst & Young. A summary of Ernst & Young's benchmarking report is attached, including an independent declaration from the Ernst & Young engagement partner. The directors propose to apply an increase this year, which allows non-executive directors to be paid at approximately the median level of the peer group market data presented in the EY report and to increase the headroom in the directors’ fee pool to give Freightways the flexibility to attract an additional Australian-based director if required by further expansion of the business in Australia. The increase in the aggregate fee pool requested of shareholders is 8.8%. In accordance with the NZX Main Board Listing Rule 6.3.1, the directors and their associated persons are restricted from voting on this resolution. The board unanimously recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this increase.
Are there any questions or matters for discussion concerning this resolution to increase the total quantum of the annual directors’ fee pool? Okay, as there are no questions on this matter from shareholders, I'll put the resolution to a vote. Please mark your vote. This then brings me to the last resolution on auditors' remuneration, which is largely procedural to authorize the directors to fix the auditors' remuneration. The present auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, will continue in office under the Companies Act 1993. Are there any questions or matters for discussion concerning this resolution? As there are no questions on this matter from shareholders, I'll put the resolution to a vote. Please mark your vote. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That concludes our discussion on the resolutions presented, and I'll close the voting very shortly. Computershare will collect the voting cards from within the room.
The votes will then be counted under the scrutiny of Computershare and the results released to both stock exchanges later today. Now, just a last call if any shareholders wish to raise any other questions, comments, or discussion, whether related to the presentations, the annual report, financial statements, or any other topics concerning the governance and management of the company, or any other matters that may be lawfully considered at this meeting. Okay, that brings us to the end of this year's annual meeting. I now declare the meeting closed and invite those present to share some refreshments with the board and executive. [Foreign language] . Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.