Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the New Zealand King Salmon Investments Limited half-year results announcement. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation, followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question via the phones, you will need to press the star key, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please enter it into the Ask a Question box and click Submit. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Carl Carrington, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the New Zealand King Salmon half-year results. This morning, I'm gonna be presenting this presentation in conjunction with Ben Rogers, our CFO, Graeme Tregidga, our Chief Commercial Officer, and Grant Lovell, our GM of Aquaculture. So firstly, I'm going to take you through an exec summary of the results, starting with the GAAP net profit for the first half of NZD 6.0 million. That compares to first half last year of NZD 10.6 million. Compared to the prior comparable period, the GAAP results have been impacted by the non-cash adjustments relating to biological inventory, which was a loss of NZD 3.6 million, and a smaller contribution from the unwind of earlier closed-out forex contracts, which was NZD 2.6 million, compared to NZD 3.6 million in the prior period.
Importantly, the first half pro forma EBITDA, which is our preferred performance measure, and the profit measure that we steer guidance to, was a profit of NZD 13.5 million, compared to NZD 10.7 million for the prior year. That's an increase of 26%. That takes our rolling 12-month pro forma EBITDA to NZD 27.3 million. Very, pleasingly, this is the second summer through the adaptive farming strategy, and the mortality continued to track within our within management's expectations, following changes to that farming model. Mortality for the first half was 8.5 million, versus the prior year at 7.8 million. The slightly higher mortality reflects a slightly higher biomass on the farms.
We are continuing to invest in R&D, trying to further improve fish health outcomes, and in particular, with a focus on thermotolerance work and continued vaccine developments. Our focus remains on optimizing earnings to increase that self-funding component of the Blue Endeavour project. And turning briefly to Blue, Blue Endeavour, our baseline monitoring is now well underway, and the open ocean infrastructure, specifically the pens and mooring grid, have been ordered for the pilot trial, and we expect delivery of those pens into Picton in January 2025, where they will be assembled for installation on the farms around July 2025. The pilot service vessel is under construction as well, and we expect delivery of that in September 2025. And it's very pleasing to see that the fish for the pilot farm are currently being grown at our first feeding facility in Tentb urn.
Talking about the balance sheet, it remains strong, with net cash on hand at NZD 32.5 million. FY 2025 CapEx, excluding the BE pilot, is forecast at around NZD 14 million. Projects are focused on our business-as-usual asset replacements, improvements to resilience, which we'll talk about a little bit later, and reducing volatility. The FY 2025 BE pilot CapEx is estimated to be NZD 9.6 million. Our pro forma EBITDA guidance range has been adjusted to NZD 26 million-NZD 30 million for the full year, based off the back of expected harvest of 6,800 tons. To some of the operational highlights, very pleasing to see revenue increase 11% to NZD 101.7 million for the half year, on the back of just over 3,360 tons.
Our export distribution remains very solid, 33% domestic sales, 44% into North America, and Australia at 11%. Asia was essentially stable. Very promising early green shoots in China. China's now 2% of sales, and we're very happy with the way that market is slowly starting to build distribution with very good quality retailers. Our half-year GAAP result NZD 6 million versus NZD 10.6 million the year prior. Quite pleasing to see the pro forma operating EBITDA at NZD 13.5 million. Good, solid improvement trend there. I'm just gonna touch on building a resilient future, because this is where we have been putting a significant amount of focus in order to reduce volatility in the business.
We have ongoing research and development projects to support our fish health, in particular, a strong focus on breeding programs now focused on thermotolerance and ongoing vaccine developments, and implementation of trial pens. The trial pens allow us to carry out ongoing fish health work, such as diet trials, on a much smaller population, rather than trying to do that sort of work on a commercial scale pen. For climate resilience, we are completing hydrology assessments at both freshwater sites in Takaka and Tentb urn. This is to better understand the flood and drought risks on our operations, particularly as we think about the impact of climate change over the longer term.
To support mitigation of climate risks, investigations into freshwater reuse systems at Takaka and RAS systems at Tentb urn are also underway, as well as we have completed significant works on the culvert at the Tentb urn site, which further reduces flood risk. For Blue Endeavour, the pilot project is progressing very well, with work having commenced on the service vessel, the infrastructure build of mooring grid and pens, and the fish for the pilot are already in the first feeding facility. Thinking about our capacity and productivity to handle the scaled-up Blue Endeavour volumes, we are continuing work on a greenfield feasibility study. This has also involved trialing of automated processing equipment. It is early days on that journey, but we are well into feasibility assessments.
Licenses, very pleasing to see the Marine Consents Extension Act has passed into law. It has provided us certainty of tenure for all of our resource consents going forward, and for the circular economy, the ensilage plant has become fully operational during this first half.
Thank you. Thank you, Carl. On page seven, we turn our attention to the building of our brand equity, and we're giving our customers a reason to engage with our brands by promoting the success of our Ōra King ambassadorships and our key food service customers. This helps us drive credibility and build results in building organic social media content. We continue to align our advertising and promotional spend with sales growth and margin targets in each of our markets. And we are using our cost-effective in-house digital and social media programs for our retail and food service brands to maintain a brand presence with our relevant audiences. We are dialing up usage occasions such as brunch or entertaining in creative and engaging ways.
And you may have seen recent examples of, "Celebrate Dad this Father's Day with a bagel board fit for a king using Regal salmon," or the, "Be the star of any platter party by showing up with a Regal King Salmon platter." And we're also building on our specialty retail strategy for Omega Plus. That's our pet food range in the domestic market, and supporting sales growth with retail, key retailers through targeted promotions across social, digital, and in-store events. Under our brand, Regal Insights, Regal remains New Zealand's number one smoked salmon brand across preference, awareness, and consideration, and demonstrating the high degree of trust in the Regal brand. Our imported Regal Epicurean continues to drive engagement among the younger demographic, and are directly contributing to our overall positive market share across the Regal range.
The expansion in our export markets is coming from retailers wanting a point of difference from the commodity market, and for those who are seeking out a strong premium offer. On page eight, we talk to our sales performance. In general, the global consumer demand landscape remains weak, with the food service sector experiencing a more pronounced downturn. Within this challenging environment, sales for our premium products have remained robust. This resilience is attributed to consumers' ongoing preference for high-quality protein. There's been a significant increase in retail compared to the previous year, and it's mainly driven by a trend of increased at-home dining. That retail growth trend has been seen in New Zealand. While the food service channel is consistent year-on-year, our imported Regal Epicurean range is showing solid volume growth. North America demand continues to perform well. Ōra King demand continues to exceed available supply.
We've seen an increase in our frozen sea freight program, and this is driving our overall volume growth. Our Regal-branded retail smoked products continue to perform well, and we have expanded our distribution. We've seen a slight reduction in volume in the Japan market, and this was driven by increased prices, and that volume has been redistributed to other markets. The Asian markets have seen consistent performance, with Regal smoked products performing well. In China, as Carl mentioned, represents a growth opportunity with untapped potential. We continue to work together with our importer partner to build our brand and in-market relationships. The Australian market continues to hold steady across both food service and retail, and our European market has had overall growth, as we've seen sales transition from smoked to frozen fillets.
I'll now pass you over to Grant Lovell, who will talk you through our fresh performance.
Thanks, Graeme. Yeah, so the first half of FY 2025 saw us complete our second summer of our adapted farming strategy. Look, it's really pleasing to see that the performance here remained consistent to what we saw in FY 2024. Just to recap on what that involved, it involves us-
... avoiding summer, essentially. So having the vast majority of our fish in the Tory Channel region over those warmer months, and then relocating some of those fish through to the Queen Charlotte farm, Queen Charlotte Sound farms of Otanerau and Ruakaka. In terms of harvest volumes, these were up on the first half of last year as we continue to optimize the model. But the full-year harvest has been revised down slightly to 6,800 metric tons, but this decrease is a reflection of some early runting challenges that we have experienced in the first half of 2025. The ongoing longer-term forecast for our current farms remains 6,800-7,200 metric tons. Feed pricing still remains highly volatile due to the constant changing of commodity prices and the geopolitical issues around the world.
However, we have started to see some positive trends, which we expect to flow through into FY, into the second half of FY 2025. As Carl mentioned, we are nearly finished building a new trial pen facility, which will be at our Ruakaka farm. This is gonna allow us to have more focused R&D in conjunction with our feed and science partners. And one of the key attributes of this is it allows us to trial with a much smaller volume of fish, but also in our operational environment, all of the challenges that the seaside brings, as opposed to a more refined laboratory environment. I'll pass you now over to Ben Rogers to talk about sustainability.
Kia ora koutou. Good morning, everybody. Just to reiterate both Carl and Grant's comments from earlier, the environment is incredibly important to us. Without a good quality environment, we do not exist as a business because we can't grow our fish. In terms of sustainability updates, I would highlight the following: We released our first climate-related disclosure in May 2024. This was a significant undertaking for the company. This is despite sustainability being embedded in what we do, as we continue to make investments in areas such as vaccine development, thermal tolerance work, and hydrology mapping, as we do appreciate and acknowledge that the climate and the environment continues to evolve. The pictorial on the bottom right highlights King salmon as a low-carbon protein. This is a great starting point for us as a business.
However, we do acknowledge we have an impact, and we will continue to investigate opportunities to get better. A good example of this is our ensilage plant pictured in the bottom left, which was commissioned in April 2024 . The intention of the ensilage plant is to remove salmon mortality from landfill, and the output of the ensilage currently serves as a feedstock for a biogas plant. This creates an improved environmental outcome for New Zealand Inc. Moving on to our headline financial performance, which Carl spoke to earlier, relate to it as a solid first half result. Speaking first to GAAP performance, so excluding the drivers of pro forma EBITDA, which I will cover in the next slide. When compared to the prior comparable period, one HY 2024, gross margin was impacted by non-cash fair value impacts to our biological assets.
This is predominantly a result of the decrease in our forecast biomass to 6,800 metric tons as a result of earlier result of early runting, which we've previously talked to. The revised FY 2025 forecast biomass of 6,800 metric tons is at the bottom range of our expected range of our available biomass on a forecast basis, which we estimate to be 6,800-7,200 metric tons. The other key period on period GAAP movements included a NZD 2.6 million contribution from the early close out of FX contracts, which occurred in FY 2022. These contracts will continue to unwind in our GAAP results until FY 2026. The NZD 2.6 million, recognized in the first half of FY 2025 is NZD 900,000 left in the prior comparable period.
We also have experienced a NZD 650,000 increase in the tax expense relating to a change in tax legislation, with buildings no longer eligible to be depreciated. Moving on to our preferred measure of performance, pro forma EBITDA. New Zealand Consumer reported a pro forma EBITDA profit of NZD 13.5 million for the period. This is an increase on NZD 10.7 million, reported for the first half last year. The results benefited from an increase in biomass on the prior period. This is despite the earlier mentioned runting challenges, with harvested biomass up 12% when compared to the same period last year. This additional volume, combined with price increases and continued optimization of product and customer choices, has driven an increase in revenue.
COGS has also increased, which is a combination of an increase in biomass, when you have more fish, you need to feed them more, and cost inflation. The two critical costs in producing our fish are feed and labor, which have both been under inflationary pressure, as Grant has mentioned before. Mortality also increased, albeit this is consistent with an increase in the biomass at sea. Mortality performance remains within management's expectations, noting we continue to make improvements to improve our fish health outcomes. On the freight front, we've seen some good news in relief in freight rates, predominantly in the air component of freight. The one thing I would highlight is we are exporting slightly more volume, and exporting does carry a higher per unit freight cost than selling domestically.
Also, want to quickly comment upon the increase in corporate costs in the period. This can be broken down into three areas, the first being an increase in capability. We believe this is required to support the future growth aspirations of the business. Examples being a new company CEO, with Carl coming on board, and also with GT moving into a newly created Chief Commercial Officer role. A second contributing reason will be the right sizing of the business. Post the mortality event in FY 2022, FY 2023, we cut costs pretty hard during that period, and as we sort of come out the other side of what was an extremely tough set of circumstances, we are in a much better position to assess what the business needs on a going-forward basis.
As a result, we've made deliberate investments in our relationships, risk capability, and marketing functions. Last but not least, is the compliance landscape of a listed entity, which has required further investments across finance, technology, legal, and sustainability functions. A good example of this would be the mandatory CRD reporting, which we sort of talked to on the sustainability slide, which required investments in people, technology, and professional services to support those disclosures. In acknowledging the increase in corporate costs as a business, we remain focused on ways we can sensibly reduce expenditure, which is important to us as a business, as in the short term, our production capability of our inshore farms is capped. As a management team, we do see opportunities for further financial performance improvement across all areas of the supply chain, which we will continue to focus on.
So in summary, a solid result, but we have both the opportunity and the need to do better, as the core business underpins our future growth opportunities, which we will come to later. Just quickly looking at the balance sheet. The balance sheet is pretty consistent with the year-end position. The comments I would call out is, the balance sheet has capacity to fund future growth initiatives, with the business currently sitting on net cash of NZD 32.5 million. As previously noted, we have some large capital investments in the second half of the year, including the Blue Endeavour pilot infrastructure. Biological assets have decreased. We're looking at the year-end position, and that's due to the earlier runting challenges we've covered this morning.
And the last one to comment on would be the decrease in inventory since year-end, is predominantly due to a decrease on feed on hand, noting this balance can vary with the timing of deliveries from our secondary feed supplier, who does not supply feed to Chilean salmon on a consignment basis. Right. I'm gonna hand back over to Carl to take us through future earnings guides.
Thanks, Ben. So as mentioned before, the guidance is now revised to NZD 26-NZD 30 million for EBITDA for year-end. The first half result was, we would consider to be very solid in the face of some headwinds. We've talked about elevated levels of runting, which has resulted in a slight downward revision of the harvest, 6,800 tons. And also for sales at the start of the first half of the year, was impacted by some variability in fish size, which in turn impacted on customer confidence. But there has been significant work to improve forecasting and produce a more consistent, sustained fish size, which has helped to rebuild much of that confidence. Management, we have increased optimism going into the second half of the financial year.
As an addition to improvements on the above two issues, there are several other positives when looking ahead. Firstly, on sales, we are making slow but steady progress in developing our presence in China. This is not a quick play. This is building a premium position in that market for the long term, particularly when we look ahead to scaling of Blue Endeavour. But also, we note that sales across all of our markets, by and large, have held up very well, despite global cost of living pressures and the issues above. Cost management, despite the lower forecast harvest volumes, we've managed to keep agriculture, processing, and freight operational costs in line on a cost-per-kilo basis. And we have noted that the corporate costs increased, and Ben has explained a bit about what's driving that.
We have had some very positive fish trials, particularly in response to early runting issues, and very promising if we're able to successfully roll out the identified mitigants, that will provide future earnings upside. The board has reconfirmed that dividends will remain on hold for the foreseeable future as we develop the Blue Endeavour project.
Just touching base on the sea farm resource consents. The Marine Consents Extension Act came into force in early September, and that can be seen on the table on the left-hand side there, with no farms now expiring until 2044, which is obviously,
you know, very significant to us. The extension of the tenure in the Pelorus is particularly important, as we do require these sites to develop the Blue Endeavour opportunity. Now, these sites will be utilized as nursery farms and a harvest location as we move forward to the Blue Endeavour operation. One thing we do need to call out is the older licenses, Ruakaka, Otanerau, Forsyth, and Waihinau. It is highly likely that the conditions of these will need to be updated, and New Zealand King Salmon will work with the Marlborough District Council, but we do anticipate this process may take some time. Looking at the Blue Endeavour pilot so the baseline monitoring, as detailed earlier, is well underway. That will continue through until October 2025 , when the fish are relocated onto site.
The service vessel is currently being constructed in Haiphong, Vietnam. We have signed our contract with ScaleAQ for the pens and moorings, and the build process will take place in Picton early next year, and as also mentioned, you know, the first fish going out to Blue Endeavour are now currently at our Tentb urn first feeding facility and growing away quite nicely. Last check, they were about four-to-five grams in size. All right, I'll just pass back to Ben for a second.
If you just go back to slides, sorry, Grant. Yeah, just in terms of a couple of financial considerations we'd talk to from a BE perspective. The change in the farming strategy has led to a recovery in business performance in FY 2024 and forecast for FY 2025. This has enabled the investments into the BE pilot. We estimate the BE pilot CapEx to be around NZD 15 million, and that includes two pens, mooring grid, and a service vessel. This excludes working capital and operational costs. As Grant and Carl have both mentioned, the pilot is a key part of the overall BE program, as it allows New Zealand King Salmon to reduce the uncertainty around any larger future spends. As Grant mentioned, we are looking to reduce that uncertainty by running two production cycles, which will take us through to the end of 2028.
We will look to share further information about the extent and the timing of the larger capital program as results of the pilot inform our future decisions. Any funding requirements will be driven by ownership structure of assets and infrastructure, so considering lease versus own considerations, the timing and speed of the development of the site and supporting infrastructure, and this is all underpinned by the performance of the existing business. EBITDA will play an important role in helping both fund future CapEx and unlocking leverage on the balance sheet. So that's a summary from me. I'll hand over to Carl for final remarks, and then we'll hand it back to the caller for questions.
Okay, thanks, Ben. Overall, we characterize this half year result as a solid performance, but management remains strongly viewed. There's more upside in this business, so we continue to be focused on operational improvements, and we are cautiously optimistic about the future for Blue Endeavour, but we are cautiously stepping into that environment through the pilot trials, and we are very excited to see them coming to life in front of our eyes right now. That's, I guess, a summary of the half year. We'll hand over for questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question via the phones, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type your question into the Ask a Question box. Your first question on the phones today comes from Guy Hooper with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, team. I was gonna just start asking around, I guess, the underlying market trends. Was the part of the revenue uplift is, I guess, product and market optimization. Can you talk a little bit about the underlying pricing environment? I know there's a comment in there around price increases and- Increases in Japan. Can you talk a little bit about what the market has been for price increases and those markets' ability to absorb them?
Yeah, good, good question. Thanks, Guy. Look, in Japan and, specifically, that's been a market that has been, you know, well, well-documented as being in a pretty much stagflation period, for many years. So, that's not, not the same conditions that we've been subject to. So we've seen cost increases between 5% and 7% at times, right across the market that we've had to go and pass on. That's pretty substantial into markets like Japan and really difficult for them to go and absorb. But, pleasingly, in that market, they've done really, really well. At some point in there, I think we were well into double-digit price increases, and, the market has responded, with a smaller-than-anticipated decrease. So, that's the main effect that we've seen in that market.
But in a wider context, globally, the two markets have been in an inflationary period, so, a bit more accepting, if I can probably term it that way, of, price increases. That's getting a little bit harder now as things are starting to settle down, but demand is still very strong for a premium product, and we're finding that right across all markets, that we're in at the moment. Only comment to add to that is that change that we've seen in retail, which has probably been harder hit...
So food service has been a little bit harder hit, as it's been well documented in the downturn in the food service, and a transition in the channels across to retail, as people try and take a little bit of that experience that they would've had in a restaurant, bringing that into the home, and dining out on a better cut, a better quality protein. So we've seen a bit of a transition in that respect. But overall, we'd say that these price increases have landed, and have not impacted negatively on the demand profile for our... In line with our supply.
Great. Thanks, that's a good follow on the pricing. Just on the fish health, I guess, could you dive a little bit deeper into what caused the fish runting, or a bit more detail around that?
A bit more detail around that.
Meaning that you've maintained the-
Maintained the,
Long-term volume expectations?
Yeah, no, no worries at all. So look, fish runting is what you describe as failed smoltification. So it's when fish go to sea, and they do not adapt to the seawater. So although it is, it's not an expensive mortality at all, but it does create some challenges in and around forecasting. And that is the key aspect on there. So we've done lots of work in and around here, particularly, about what we can do to assist fish in their smoltification process. The main international trends here are around photoperiod, ensuring that we give them the correct photoperiod cues to transition, and also salt, so a bit of brackish water prior to transfer.
Those are the trials that we've been undertaking in conjunction with our science partners. Just finished some very nice work with, in conjunction with Cawthron Institute, and we're looking at what we are able to implement then from a commercial basis. The brackish water is incredibly successful here. However, that can't be implemented in a flow-through hatchery system, and this is where the RAS technology at a site like Tentb urn could become incredibly valuable for us, particularly just to eliminate that volatility that we do see. Anything further for that?
Yeah, just, I was curious, there was a reasonable increase in the feed conversion ratio. Is that just linked to the runting, or is there some other data-
I know.
In play?
I know, that's. So, you'll also have noted that the average fish size increased quite a bit there as well. So naturally, fish biological feed conversion will always increase with increasing fish size. Fish convert at a higher rate as they grow larger. So, the increase in size is one aspect that will show an increase in overall conversion rate. I would say that the feed conversion rate is a little bit higher than what I would like to see it at. And I would like to see that come down from its, I believe, it's at one point nine. And I'd like to see that drift down more into around the high one sevens, low one eight range moving forward.
Cool. Thank you. That's. I'll pause there. Thanks for taking the questions.
There are no further phone questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Ben Rogers to address any webcast questions.
Thank you very much. So the first question is for Grant Lovell. This is from Bill Potter: Can you reconcile the runting in the announcement with the optimism for Blue Endeavour?
I think the two of them are actually relatively separate. So, the optimism for Blue Endeavour is, you know, certainly the ability to grow our long-term business. Yes, we have seen some runting. I would point out, too, that runting is not a new phenomenon for New Zealand King Salmon. It is something that has, you know, existed for many, many years, and actually it exists across the industry and across the world. It is, the last year, it has been at a high, slightly higher level than what we have seen previously. Our key aspects there is just to ensure that, you know, we get our fish in the correct state to go to sea. Once we look at...
You know, fish will not go direct from a hatchery through to Blue Endeavour. They will go to a nursery site first, and generally, in the first year, we will be relocating the fish into the pens for Blue Endeavour. At that time, any remaining runts will be removed, so that we're able to ensure that Blue Endeavour is, the trial work and the pilot work at Blue Endeavour, is not influenced by any other aspects in the production cycle, so we can have a clear answer for them, for overall fish performance.
Thank you, Grant. We'll keep moving through the supply chain. So second question is from Christian Bell. So we'll throw this one to GT. In relation to China, what is your current pricing right now? Is it at a discount to your other markets? What type of products are you finding success with, and what type of customer feedback are you getting at this early stage?
Okay, yeah, good question, Christian. So in relation to pricing, no, there is no discount given for China. It is in line. The product that they're taking is mostly in whole fish. In fact, it's entirely in whole fish, and it is in line with the rest of the world. So there's no real difference between them all. The product that we're finding success in there, as I mentioned, is whole fish. That is going into retailers. And naturally, no one eats a whole fish, so they are cutting it down in store, turning it into mostly a sushi and sashimi-type product for a grab-and-go evening or a lunchtime meal.
We're also having really good success in Asian fusion or Japanese fusion restaurants in mostly in Shanghai and in southern China, Guangzhou, where the two main landing points are. Feedback that we're getting at this early stage, well, they're loving the product. Remember, king salmon is less than 0.5% of the total world supply, so it's very rare, and even in that market, it's finding its way into the premium outlets. So we're dealing with a very small subset of the entire market, but naturally, it is going and finding its way into the premium part of the market, as they're paying a significant price over and above the commodity Atlantic salmon. So they're enjoying the product.
It's a big market for us to do an education program to talk to that many people, so we've got a lot of work still there to go. But that's our point about an untapped potential, because they are really enjoying the product.
Thank you, GT. Another question from Christian, so I will take this one. At year-end, what would you expect to see net cash broadly in line with the prior comparable period, assuming total FY twenty CapEx of NZD 25 million, including the pilot trial? Feel like a little bit of a politician with this one, Christian, but it depends, so definitely, CapEx for us is significantly weighted to the second half of the year, this year. We've talked to some large CapEx costs with the Blue Endeavour pilot project. My gut feel is net cash on hand will be down on what it would have been at the prior comparable period, albeit will be in a positive cash position.
A lot of it will probably just depend on timing of working capital. So we still have a little bit of finished goods on hand. So if we can convert some of that into cash, that would be a little bit of an upside. And then also talk to timing of sort of fee payments, would be the other variable we have with our secondary supplier on a non-salmon basis. So yeah, expect the cash balance to go down, but still be positive. What would I expect maintenance CapEx to normalize to over the next three years? My gut feel is, on average, you're probably looking around that sort of NZD 10 million mark, albeit I think in year will probably vary between NZD 8 million and NZD 13 million, and that depends upon timing of or type of spend.
If you're replacing a boat or you're bringing in a new pen infrastructure, your CapEx can vary year on year, but I would sort of probably guide to that NZD 10-11 million on a BAU maintenance CapEx basis, excluding Blue Endeavour. Hopefully, that's helpful. Last question I'll throw over to the boss, strategically. This is a question from Alistair Hubbard: At what time will dividends begin being paid? Is it after the Endeavour project... Is it after the Endeavor project is working successfully?
Yeah, that's, that's a good question. It's a long-range forecast, that one. I would suggest that's most likely the sort of timing. Once we've funded our way into Blue Endeavour, and Blue Endeavour's ticking along, generating cash, then, that's the time we would start redistributing that back out to shareholders. But in the meantime, we're trying to preserve as much cash as we can to maximize the self-funding component of Blue Endeavour.
Thank you, Carl, and that completes the online questions.
Thank you. We do have one more question on the phone. This question comes from Joris Sels with AlphaValue. Please go ahead.
Hello, and good morning, everybody. I had to jump very late into this call. Sorry for that. And thank you for your answers on normalized CapEx. Can you please remind us what the total CapEx of the Blue Endeavour project is, and how much of that has been spent already, and how much is to come in this year and next year, please?
Yeah, so when we talk to Blue Endeavour CapEx at the moment, we're only talking to the pilot. So we estimate the pilot CapEx to be around NZD 15 million. That excludes working capital and operational costs. So obviously, with the pilot, there is a significant investment in the biological assets and the fish that go to sea. In terms of that NZD 15 million of CapEx, I think we're sort of saying we expect NZD 9 million of that to be incurred this year, or NZD 9.6 million. So NZD 5 million of that will span into next year. What drives that is the payment timings with a couple of our key suppliers.
So they're on progress payments based on milestones, and that's for both our service vessel and the Blue Endeavour infrastructure we're procuring.
Okay, thank you.
Your next question comes from David Oxley with ACC. Please go ahead.
... Thank you. Morning. Could I just quickly check something? The issue with runting, which is a new one on me, the fact that those fish, as I understand your comments, are dying quite quickly in the life cycle, does this mean there's an offset in terms of the amount of feed discharge that you'll need during the year as a result of that? And could you just comment more generally on what feed discharge has looked like and is likely to look like for the full year, relative to sort of initial expectations? Thank you.
Yeah, no, thanks. I'll obviously grab that one. You're correct. These fish go to sea, and they do not eat. So that it absolutely does impact overall feed discharge, and feed discharge will be a little bit lower than original expectations, in line with the slightly reduced harvest forecast. I would have to confirm exactly what that number was. It's not a number that I have off the top of my head. It was somewhere in that 15-16 thousand, so I believe somewhere in that probably 500 tons or so lower than original forecast.
But it lines up very neatly with, you know, with the reduction in the overall harvest as well, so from a 72 to a 68, where you're looking at approximately 400 tons of reduced feed for that particular brood. I mean, then as we bring the new brood into the water, it'll balance out.
That, that's great. Thank you very much.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Carrington for closing remarks.
Okay. Well, thanks very much. That essentially concludes the presentation update, so thank you for your attendance, and I look forward to presenting the full-year results next year. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.