Good morning, everyone. Obviously I'm David Mair, the CEO and Managing Director of Skellerup, and on my left, your right, is Graham Leaming, CFO. Thank you for your time today. First of all, just to reassure everyone, compared to all the other issues that are floating around New Zealand at the moment, all our staff in Auckland in particular are safe and all of our sites are secure. It's a good result. I'm going to go through the results and then we'll have some questions at the end. I'd like you to. You don't have to write the full question in the chat part of Zoom, if you could just say that you would like to ask a question, Graham will bring through, you know, unmute you and bring you through in order.
I think it's just easier if we do it that way. I should check first, since I can see you, Jenny, can you hear me clearly? Yeah, just hold your thumb up. There you go. Well done. Thank you. I just wanna make sure everyone can hear. We had some technical issues the last time. Okay, let's get into it. First of all, obviously it's been a tricky period over the last couple of years. From my point of view, it's very pleasing to announce another record group EBIT. If you move on to the next slide, Graeme, please. Thanks. I'll just go through the slides carefully. Obviously, we have a lot more detail later and then welcome questions. Yeah, here we go.
The key points are, really the group EBIT of NZD 33.5 million, it's up 3% on the prior corresponding period. Record Industrial division EBIT of NZD 21.4 million, obviously up 14%. Agri division EBIT of NZD 14.6 million, down 12% on the PCP. We have separate slides for both the Industrial and Agri, and we'll dig into that a little bit. NPAT is down 1% on the record result achieved in the PCP. We've seen some of the higher interest costs and tax costs eroding EBIT growth. Operating cash flow, round figure's NZD 20 million, so it's up NZD 0.5 million on or 3% on the PCP. We've talked about this in the past. We have a higher level of in-inventory, and we made a number of strategic decisions, particularly around key raw materials.
Of course, we're in the second half of a process that I'll come back to later, where customers are now realizing their true demand is a bit lower than they were expecting. We are, in many cases, experiencing the slowdown that many other businesses are. Having said that, I think we're in good shape because our inventory doesn't perish, and it will sell through. The kind of the obvious question is: When will that happen? We have a very strong focus on inventory, but we can come back to that later. Pleasing to increase the dividend. It's a small amount, but NZD 0.05 per share increase, bringing it to NZD 0.08 for the interim payment. Our balance sheet remains robust.
Our net debt has increased to NZD 39 million, mainly due to working capital investment and remains 11% of our total assets. No concerns there. We have a strong platform for growth. Our FY23 NPAT guidance remains unchanged, somewhere between NZD 48 million and NZD 52 million. It's important we continue to invest in people and technology to sustain our growth. We've been doing this throughout the last three, even more years, and we continue to do that. We're not slowing down our investment. In fact, the number of opportunities is opening up even more. I can spend some time giving some examples later on how that's playing out.
I guess in simple terms, I see the next 12 months as being stronger than the last 12 months, and we still have a number of key projects being realized even in the next six months, but in some cases in the next 9 or 12 months. We've started work. We've been doing some work, but we've started a lot of work to model the impact on, of climate change on Skellerup, really to help us make better investment decisions, but of course also to meet the reporting requirements. I feel over the past few years, going right back to when I took over as CEO, we've made a number of investments. You know, some are reported in the annual reports over the years. And it's accelerating in terms of the opportunities that are there.
The big things are about, obviously, electricity. We're a large user of electricity, for example, in Wigram. We face issues with our U.K. businesses, with energy and those kind of things. It's just, it's a really important Energy is a large part of how we think about this, of course, as a, as an international business with a lot of intercompany trade, the Scope three emissions is going to be an interesting thing to review, and we have a longer-term plan how to deal with that. Just sticking with the numbers, I'm really pleased. Again, through a tough period of time, we had the disruption, particularly of China going through the opening up and causing issues, particularly for our shipments from China to New Zealand, for pretty obvious thing these days is footwear. We've been living hand and mouth.
All I can say is I think the team has done another fantastic job in continuing to solve issues, and new issues are arising almost daily, and we've still managed to get through it. I'm very pleased with how we've performed. Next slide, please. There's a summary of the financial highlights in tabular form. Revenue up NZD $15 million, 10% on PCP. The numbers there for EBIT and NPAT. The interim dividend, I've explained. The operating cash flow, I've explained. We'll go into more detail, as I said, but that's a useful table for you to work through just the changes on the business. It's key that we, the last bullet point, we acquired the remaining 65% interest in Sim Lim, which is now wholly owned.
We still see, and I've talked about this in the past, liquid silicone as a key material that we have not really had access to. We see a lot of growth opportunities there, and I'll come back to that on the industrial slide in particular. This is a technology that links with heat-cured silicone. Remember, silicone as a material is particularly used in healthcare applications. In other words, black rubber, you don't really want touching your skin in simple terms, but silicone is inert, so it's used a lot in healthcare applications. Silicone, whether it's heat-cured or liquid, is a very important material that we need to understand better and be able to produce as part of our products. Anyway, that's enough on that for now. It's a very small investment.
Just it's worth pointing out, we were looking to acquire bigger businesses, particularly in the U.S. related to liquid silicone. We just couldn't get one, there was a roll-up happening by a private equity company, so we were just unable to find a suitable acquisition. Really, you should see Sim Lim as very, very small in the scheme of things. It was effectively a start-up, we now fully own it. It is now starting to contribute. We have some key customers. They are Gulf U.S. customers, really it's controlled through Gulf U.S. We see a bright future for that in the U.S market in particular. Okay, next slide. Let's dig into the industrial division.
Again, a very good result and revenue's up 13%, EBIT up 40% on PCP. We had a record first half result. Again, the numbers are there. Where did the growth come from? Particularly, it came from the high-performance foam applications and vacuum system sales. We also had very good growth from some parts of DACH. For example, in Europe, there's been a lot of focus on adopting solar inter-roofing systems, as I'm sure you're aware. We benefited a lot from that. Having said that, even in the Australian market, which is particularly tough at the moment, we've done a very good job, I believe, in servicing the market and seeing other ways of keeping our revenue and margins up.
There's been a big process in Melbourne, where we have relocated, very successfully relocated DEKS to a much better location. We're clean off the old site. This is a far more industrial area of Melbourne, and the team have done a fantastic job there. Of course, it gave us the opportunity to get our layout right, so we see productivity gains. We're also closer to main routes for trucking and things like that. So it's freeing up some of the complications we had from a bad site. The same in Auckland, just for a minute. We, we did the same in Auckland with our, we had three businesses. We consolidated them into a new distribution center in Savill, which is in Ōtāhuhu. That has paid dividends. Of course, it's a relatively new building.
Fortunately, we haven't suffered from any of the rain or the cyclone that's gone through. The lower New Zealand dollar boosted the translation of overseas earnings. Most of our industrial division earnings are derived from international markets on a constant currency basis. Revenue was up 6% and EBIT up 8%. The new facilities, both in Auckland and Melbourne, that's not the end of it. We're constantly reviewing our locations because of course, Skellerup originally was a bunch of businesses with some interesting locations and things like that. We are still thinking hard about some of the location of our businesses in the U.S. for example. Overall, very happy with the industrial division.
At this stage, I'll just talk about, I mean, the obvious question is what's gonna happen in the second half and the same when we get onto Agri. Something to think about is usually the cycle is the second half in both divisions is stronger than the first half. That's not always the case, but that's usually the case. The reality is here, where we have a number of new products and new customers in that sense, we see the realization not just for healthcare products, but across a broader range, including vacuum systems and foam will continue to grow and those kind of things. We see a lot more applications. I mentioned Sim Lim. We have a large OEM customer there. We will be providing flow control componentry. That's a great opportunity with a really good OEM business.
Also we have continuing growth in infrastructure pipe rings. We have seen, for obvious reasons, in the U.S. growth in infrastructure. Overall, a robust, I'd call it broad-based growth opportunity, not just for the next six months, but over the next three years. Very confident about how we've been going there. Again, it's pleasing from my point of view that despite the inability to travel and to market, now that it's freeing up, and we're re-establishing those key connections face-to-face, I just think more opportunities will come. In a small way, even Moen. I've talked about Moen in the past. And Graham was reminding me yesterday that we've suddenly had a tickle from Moen about maybe some new products. The good thing there is they're coming to us first.
The OEM model heavily relies on, in effect, locking customers in. As I've said in the past, customers choose us. What we're finding is we're getting a lot of invites to talk about business. I see that as really positive. That's not just the industrial division, that's also the Agri division. Let's move on to the Agri slide, Graham. Revenue was up 5%, EBIT down 12% on the previous corresponding period. Of course, which was a record. Fundamentally, dairy rubberware sales have been down, volumes have been down, and particularly in Agri, some of that is related to destocking from one or two of our key customers. Obviously the lower production volumes affect our margins. We've had very strong footwear growth. In fact, we've been hand to mouth, particularly in the New Zealand market.
Of course, we have technical rubber products going into the U.S. market, for example. Particularly in New Zealand, we've been struggling to get containers in. With the opening up of China, for example, we had five containers sitting in Shanghai port. Again, full credit to the team that managed to enable those to arrive here. Almost literally, when Bunnings in Auckland, and I know it's not all about Auckland, but when Bunnings were almost stocked out, we managed to get some containers in. The issue we have is we still have a shortage of inventory, and the factory in China is doing a great job to continue to produce and send through product. The footwear has been a kind of a star in this area, particularly for the New Zealand market. Again, we have great opportunities on the dairy rubberware side.
There's been a benefit of the lower New Zealand dollar in the first half, which was offset by hedging. If we get into the hedging side, I'll let Graham go through that in more detail if needed. On a constant currency basis, revenue was down 1% and EBIT down 14%. Thanks, Graham. There's a little bit of a reconciliation of bridge, if you like. Obviously, starting from the left-hand side, we've seen growth in, as I mentioned earlier, marine foam, particularly sport and leisure. We've seen market share gains from the sale of existing and new products into roofing and construction, and lower sales into temporary applications. Moen in particular, their big growth market was China. That kind of, for obvious reasons, died through the first six months.
We're starting to see an increase there now that should strengthen through the second half of this year and then into the next year. That's all good. Dairy rubberware sales, I've talked about lower following a strong fourth quarter. This is really important. If you do the previous comparative period. Sorry. Prior comparative period. If you do the comparison, we had a very strong finish on the previous year. We had a very strong finish in the previous year, and this year a lot of our sales were actually earlier. What it means is that, I expect to see a much stronger second half for agri, in particular. The same in industrial. We expect the second half to be obviously much stronger. The industrial side is not so much destocking and things like that.
There's some of that going on, but it is the introduction of a lot of new products and new opportunities. Corporate costs are down on PCP and obviously the higher debt and rising rates increase interest expense. Just a thought. Of course, we report NPAT. Within the business we drive EBIT. Our leaders talk about EBIT. That's the way we think about the business because of course a lot of the tax and interest decisions are made here at the head office. We keep people focused on how do you improve EBIT. Right now, how do you sell through inventory? Thanks, Graham. Let's talk about the growth, and this is a two to three-year sort of view. We continue to invest in people, including new people.
For example, in the States, in an area where we had some new products, I've mentioned previously, vacuum systems and things like that, we've hired a key person from a customer. It's a good leader situation. Person that has a lot of experience, and we believe that this will help us to grow our business faster in the U.S. That's just one example, so you're clear. Certainly in Agri, if you go back, there was a lot of change in the Agri division. Hayley Gourley came in. Over three years, she's formed a strong team, and that team includes a lot more technical expertise, a lot more manufacturing expertise, and in particular, I think we're doing a much better job on the customer services dispatch system side.
We are seeing the benefit of working hard on our digitization process of data so that we can make better decisions. That's not just in agri at Wigram, it's also, we've been rolling out a system called NetSuite among a number of the individual industrial businesses in particular. I think Graham's right. When he joined almost 10 years ago, almost every business on the industrial side used a different system. I think we're up to nine, Graham?
Yeah nine, businesses now use the same, effectively the same system, NetSuite. Which is a second-tier system, by the way. It's not one of these huge, costly SAP type systems. Very appropriate to our business. That's also important. As well as that, we are investing in new technology, particularly at Wigram. We still see a lot of opportunity to improve productivity there through investment in equipment. Also standardization in general of a lot of other equipment there. We have quite a sophisticated understanding of how to think about materials, so we've been doing quite a bit of rationalization of materials, for example. Also we now have better equipment to measure what actually happens within the production process.
A benefit of that, of course, is we expect to reduce process waste, and by definition, that also leads to more efficient energy use. One of the answers to some of the geopolitical questions I get asked, what happens if China invades Taiwan or those kind of things? To be honest, I don't know. One thing we can focus on though, is we can focus on our in-market presence and where we have particularly manufacturing assets, but also distribution assets. We're almost regardless of what happens, if we can strengthen the U.S. market, and you can see from the market share kind of growth and Skellerup. That's been our target market for years. That was part of the reason for acquiring Sim Lim. We are looking harder. We have a manufacturing partnership in the U.S.
This is where we are doing a joint venture to manufacture some of the infrastructure pipe rings. If we didn't do that, we might be limited in terms of the ability to supply the U.S. market, the buy American-made kind of attitude that's taking place over there. One thing for sure, almost regardless of how the geopolitical thing plays out, having a strong presence in the U.S. is very, very good. Of course, we have a strong presence in China as well. Some people say to me, "You should get out of China." Well, that's interesting when China, in the next 50 years, is going to be a very strong part. Difficult place in some cases to work, but at the same time, an important market to consider. We have a presence there. We have very long-term relationships.
This year is the 25th anniversary of Jiangsu. We have a good relationship in terms of selling high-quality product, but our customers demand that we're there as well, like supplying Moen earlier. From my point of view, we as a global business, are actually very well positioned to deal with some of this geopolitical unrest. Before I go on, there's a couple of other things that happened, I've mentioned in the past, certainly on the agri side. The DeLaval purchase of Avon milkrite has caused some disruption in the markets, and of course, they've now got an issue in Europe. That has provided opportunities for us and I believe, you know, opportunities to grow profitably, not just in Europe. Of course, in the U.S. market, of course, some dislocation there.
That comes down to the quality of our teams and the quality of our products and things like that. In another way, we've had Atlas Copco. Again, relatively small, but Atlas Copco have acquired NVE. NVE is the largest competitor for our vacuum systems business. Atlas Copco being on a, an acquisition binge, it's unsettled customers that rely on NVE for their products. Of course, we've launched some new products that we believe, of course, are better than the NVE offering. What's happening is there's a lot of discussion happening. In fact, next week there's the big annual WWETT Show, so wastewater and something or other, ETT. There's a big conference there. A number of key customers are reaching out to us.
Some of these are completely new customers and saying, hey, we're very nervous about some of the changes in the market. Can you help us? Of course, we have an A team there. That's great. The information system stuff, you can invest in all these systems, but unless you turn it into information to make decisions, then, you know, what's the point? It's just a cost, an additional cost. I think we've done this very, very cost effectively. I mean, I understand how much money can you spend in this area. Particularly on the agri side with JDE, but also with NetSuite, we have very competent people to do this quickly and effectively. Speed is very variable. Velocity is very important to get through these things quickly because it's very disruptive to businesses.
What you don't want is for it to take longer than six months. It just causes way too many issues. What kind of information are we looking for? The obvious thing is, I mean, you'd assume we have this information, but it's interesting how many businesses don't. We want to be able to rank our customers on profitability and our products, our product families on profitability. We want to understand from a product family point of view, the processes in behind and how we can drive improvement. I've said previously that one of our strategies is key customers and then the key products for those customers. If you take, for example, Moen, we probably have 6-8 items. I don't know exactly. But the point is we can focus in on those items and see where the opportunities are.
The key thing here is the ability to rank and re-rank as business opportunities change. It's the same with product development. We have proven that we can develop new products, solve a new issue faster than our competitors, particularly in the U.S. market. The initial OEM business comes when a customer cannot get what they want. The problem cannot be solved from an existing supplier or supplier base. Our opportunity to grow, it's not only in the U.S., but that model is very strong. I think if you look back over the last 5-10 years, we've explained the OEM model, but it's starting to really prove its value. Remember, I'm happy to talk more about the bullwhip before we finish off. The bullwhip started where money was cheap, raw material was cheap, labor cheap. Everything was cheap.
That's longer than COVID. COVID came along, and what we saw was, in many cases, we saw an acceleration beyond the long-term demand. The start of it is customers order more, but then when they don't get it, they order even more than they need. Over the last three years, we've seen that start to flatten out. It's inflationary, what happens is, of course, at the same time, you find it hard to get raw material, and you find that prices are going up. We've been through a period where I think, in general, and not everything's perfect, but in general, we moved quickly on pricing, anticipating, in many cases, the raw material effect. We got some of it right, we got some of it wrong. That's the way it works.
Now we're in a period where it'll be interesting to see how quickly inflation expectations are brought under control by central banks. What we're seeing now is where customers, in some ways like us, they've found their inventories are a bit high. If we're not careful in the second part of the bullwhip, which is where they try to rapidly to meet some financial deadline, get their inventory down, which of course is tied up cash, and that's just as dangerous. We have some customers who of course, are trying to either cancel orders or extend orders or those kind of things. What's the answer? Without dwelling on this too long, we have limited time this morning, by the way. We have to finish at 10:30 promptly.
One of the issues is to understand their inventory, and if we can see ideally weekly, but even monthly, the decline in the inventory, we can then predict when they will order from us again. Forecasts are not very helpful in that way because there's often delays, and a one or two-month delay can have a big impact on what you do, what you focus on. Overall, I have to say, I think again, that we've managed the business well. Graham and I are very focused to free up cash over, certainly the next six months, but certainly over 12 months. I would expect our debt levels to resume pretty much to where they were previously, and we will see a lot of cash freed up certainly over the next.
The easy ones will happen over the next three months, some are sticky. They'll take longer. Please remember our inventory in general, I don't know of any inventory that kind of goes off, it will sell through. I don't see any risk there in that sense. An important other couple of parts here before going to questions. I'm probably talking too much. Climate change. We are modeling the impact of climate change, both physical and transition risks. We're preparing a framework for both the board and Graham and I to aid in investment decisions. We have, we need to explain clearly our climate-related goals, our FY23 annual report will include an update on the progress ahead of the FY24 mandatory climate-related disclosures.
Please keep in mind, we still see this as an opportunity to improve the business. We expect through this process to deliver better returns for shareholders and even more importantly, more opportunities for our people. I think I'll end there. We have a disclaimer, I think. Other than that, I welcome questions. Thank you very much.
Okay, I'll just.
Skip through.
I'll skip through that. In fact, I'll stop sharing the screen. We had requests for a couple of questions firstly from Josh Dale. Josh, I'll find you on here and unmute you. We'll go to Christian Bell. Okay.
Good morning, it's Josh here. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can.
All good, Josh. How you going?
Brilliant. Yeah, good, thank you. Just the first one was really about cotant currency, and I know you sort of split out performance by division. In terms of the overall business, you know, reported NPAT was down 1%, but what was constant currency NPAT down by? I presume it was a bit weaker.
The outcome of obviously the New Zealand dollar, and we've talked about this before, our key currency peers are the Australian dollar and the U.S. dollar, both of which were beneficially weaker for us in the first half of the year. That generated, without any hedging, that would have delivered around about NZD 1 million of improved NPAT. As a consequence of the hedging we had in place, it pretty much neutralized that benefit. The bottom line is the impact of FX on this first half result compared to the prior year is relatively neutral.
Okay, great. Thanks. Just looking about the second half, looking at your guidance, which you've maintained to get to the midpoint of that NZD 50 million of NPAT, it looks like you need 10% growth for the second half versus PCP, which would probably need to be even stronger than that on a constant currency basis. It looks like you're needing a record second half by quite some margin. I'm sorry to labor the point, but can you just run through the key drivers of that second half uplift once more?
There are a number. I covered some of it. We will continue to benefit from some new products and new customers that are already in hand in that sense. We start production, I know one of the key questions people have is the healthcare-related product GOJO. We start production early in March. It's still relatively small. They're suffering from the sell-through of their older equipment. They're gonna build carefully, but they have a hard stop in October this year for a full launch. We will see the benefit certainly in the next financial year. From our point of view, of course, we have to start earlier than that, we'll see some benefit. That's still relatively minor.
I'm expecting a much better second half from the agri division because some of the sell-through of inventory, you know, the reduced demand from our customers as they reduce their inventory is going to come back, and we've seen that happen in January. Another way of saying it is we had a very good start to the first half in January.
Second half.
Second half, sorry. Apologies. We had a very good January, which is the second half, the start of the second half, we see that continuing on. You're right. It's a big leap from where we've been in the past, but some of that is just the even flow of the cycles. From my point of view, it does come down to us delivering on a number of those new initiatives, but it's broad-based, so I don't expect all of them to come through at the same time. It's, you know, it's not just GOJO, and it's not just the blower from vacuum systems, and I mentioned Sim Lim. There's a customer, Hayes, in the U.S. that we have a key flow control component, and that will come through strongly, and not just Moen in China, for example.
If you add all that together, we had a huge kind of disruption through the first six months, particularly from China. That had a big impact on some of our business. Also a number of customers started really trying to de-stock, and they may go too far with that. That may cause us an issue. Don't know, but I don't think so. You know, where we can, we have discussions with them, and we're smoothing the effect. It is a big lift, but we're confident. I mean, by definition, we're confident we get there, otherwise we'd change guidance.
Yep. No, that's really helpful. Thanks, Dave. Just last question on inventory? You did talk about this, but, you know, it is up NZD 20 million over the last 12 months. I guess, where do you see that leveling out at, short to medium term and at what rate?
That's a good question. Look, the rate is in some cases we put in place genuinely strategic investment in things that will not be sold through by June. Be very clear that Graham and I are focused on this at certainly over the next three months. One kind of way of thinking about it, I guess, is to say we expect to free up, what's the number, Graham? NZD 10 million? I would say NZD 10 million by June 30th. We might do better than that, but that's certainly a target Graham and I have. Free cash flow should come in for the full year at about NZD 50, I guess. Something.
Yeah.
Something of that order. I mean, I'm just giving you round numbers. We can dig into this in a bit more detail if you like. Look, the real key thing here is not to cause an issue in the same way that some of our customers are. If we suddenly cut off and try to sell through inventory, then you cause other issues for the first half of next year, so we take a longer term view. I'm not concerned about the buildup of in-inventory because most of it, not all of it, was planned in that sense. Now, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. If your customers say, we need this, and they have orders, and then they suddenly realize they've over-ordered, what do you do when they try to cancel?
I mean, it's an interesting question. You don't just say, yes. You can agree to a delay or even a cancel of an order, but always ask for information. Ask them to share their monthly inventory or whatever, so you get a read on the real situation. From my point of view, that's the key. But you're, you know, analysts want to know the hard numbers. We think we'll have very strong cash flow and of course, we consider that when we consider the dividend, but also the year-end result. Very confident we can deal with that from a systems point of view. I hope that helps.
That's very helpful. Thanks, David. Thanks, Graeme. Appreciate that.
Christian, I can't see you on the screen. Are you on a phone without a name identified to it? Guess you can't answer that.
Can't answer.
I'm gonna take a punt and think this might be you. Let's see how we go. Nope. Let's have a look here for a moment. My apologies. We'll just try and unmute. See. C. Bell. There we go. Found you.
Found you. There we go. Sorry about that, Christian.
One moment. We'll just unmute you.
No.
There you go.
I was hiding from.
You free?
Yeah, I was hiding from you.
It's okay.
Yeah, yep. Sorry. I'll just, I'll start with a couple of questions and then if there's still some time, I might jump in again if possible. Sorry again to labor the second half, I guess, but just trying to tease that out a little bit more from what you've already provided. Expecting a strong second half in agri, obviously. You've also pointed to some product launches, the hygiene customer being one. Just curious, in the past, you've spoken about four or five large projects that could be game changer type of projects. Are they separate to some of those product launches that you were talking about before?
Yes, they are. The short answer is yes, they are. They probably won't have an impact on the second half of this year, or if they do, in a minor way, much like the GOJO product, the sanitization product. No, they're not included. That's why I guess I'm very confident that over the next 12 months, the business is gonna be in great shape, you know, compared to the last 12 months. The timing of these things, the only downside of OEM business is ultimately you don't have full control over when the launch happens. You know, remember that our products are essential consumables, so in most cases. There's some retail products like gumboots and, I guess some of the DEKS products for roofing. In general, these are, yes, they sell through.
In other words, they get used and so, and they have to be replaced. That's the point of essential consumables in that sense. We should see that flow through and come back quite quickly. We've already seen some examples of that. Please remember that certainly on the industrial side, we have strong growth in two areas anyway. We highlighted two particular areas. One is ultra-low foam, and that's gonna carry on, we think, and we've had a very strong January, and we see that carrying on certainly through to the end of this financial year. Also vacuum systems is one, but there's some other areas, the opportunities with Sim Lim, which is really new product. If you take the kind of the momentum and then add in the new products, we're confident on the industrial side.
On the agri side, there are a number of moving parts why, for example, in the U.S., the U.S. became overstocked. It's mainly one key customer there. We weren't getting regular updates on their stock on hand. We're just starting to get them again. Interestingly, on a couple of items, they're stocked out, so we're going through this issue. One of the hidden issues that is starting to settle down is the inconsistency of shipping. Too many people focus on the price of containers, not on the regularity. Of course, if you think about it, if the ships actually deliver the container or the container gets unloaded them on the train faster, and that is certainly happening in the U.S., we ship a lot to the U.S.
What happens is, the customers suddenly realize it's often a surprise to them that they're overstocked. If we're not careful, the answer is they just don't order for a month. Well, that might suit them, but certainly doesn't help us. The stop-start is the bullwhip. It's the killer of companies. Anyway, so there's a lot of discussion going on, but I guess to summarize it, we already have a momentum on the industrial side. For a number of reasons, agri will come back. Add those things together and a reduction in inventory, I still think, you know, we'll have a strong second half, and it has to be a really strong second half. I get that.
All right. No, cool. Thank you very much for that. Just in relation to those larger projects, which, yeah, I'm sort of keen on understanding the medium-term sort of outlook, which sounds very optimistic. What do you actually mean when you say game-changing? Like, if argument's sake, if you were to get all four or five projects, would that, just to give some sort of sense of size, could that double the size of Skellerup as it is today? Or is it like, are you able to sort of, I don't know, loosely give any sort of sense of what those project sizes could be?
I know what you're asking. I don't think I'd double the size, but certainly we don't need all five to come through. I mean, it's very hard for people to maybe understand what you're asking. For example, let's talk about some of the other trends that are affecting people. Around the world, direct labor costs are going up, minimum wage. It's not just New Zealand. You can see it in the U.K. and things like that. How do you solve that as a company? You invest in technology and fundamentally capitalize labor. One of the internal sort of projects, this is just something we do internally anyway, is to move rapidly to be becoming far more effective at how we produce products.
Ultimately, I mean, the aim is to be the lowest cost producer of whatever you do, 'cause then you have a lot of choice. At the same time, offer a differentiated product. Christian, you helped explain it. Differentiated product, differentiated service, and you end up with a really good solution. That's how you maximize the margin. You get your front- end right, and then you really work out on the back end. What surprised me in a couple of places is how much more we can do on the back end. I think certainly on the agri side, that helps. One of the things that's hidden, I mentioned Scope three emissions. For example, for a key product, and it's quite high volume, we effectively get the raw material.
I think I've said this before, but just to give you an example. We get the raw material from America. It comes down to Auckland. We mold a plastic component. It's sent to Vietnam. Carefully, it's overmolded with rubber. It's sent back to Cleveland, which, if you work it out, is not far from Chicago, and it runs down automated lines. What happens is, in that whole mix, there's a whole lot of inventory and everything. We have now proof of concept that we could do that all in one place, in one machine, just maybe in Cleveland or certainly in Chicago. Those are the kind of game-changing things. To maybe help you put that in context, I think the value of in-market. Take the U.S. market. If we could do everything in the market, then there's huge value in that.
You know, would it double the size of Skellerup? It certainly. It's not 2% increase or something. It's a big step change. In the same way, our old model was to make rings in Vietnam, and we've taken a small selection of rings, and we have a joint venture in the U.S. producing these infrastructure pipe rings or about to.
To produce them.
To produce them. That's right. The tooling is just being finalized now. Once that happens, you can see how we can respond very, very quickly to changes in demand. We've been hand-to-mouth for, I don't know, two years, a long time now. It's been, you know, edge of the seat things. If you just think of the cost structure that that eliminates, it's huge. It sounds very operational, even as I'm saying it. It does rely on new products, you know. Again, we've been continuing to add to our product development team. I mean, the easiest thing to do to hit a number would just be to stop doing that or even get rid of some development. It's just not my view. Of course, that kills off your medium-term.
In this hygiene product, this, you know, whatever you call it, the GOJO kind of thing, Once we get that right, and, you know, we've got a hard launch in October, I believe. Once we get that right, the credibility that that gives in other similar areas. These are areas that we have not played in the past or not been involved in. The market is opening up, and our ability to supply through pretty tough times in almost every country through COVID, our credibility has gone up. We haven't always got it right, but we've done what we said we would do. We've built trust through a tough time. That's really important. You know, I'm not answering in NZD terms deliberately because I think that's for the future. I don't like to talk too far ahead.
Very confident about certainly the next 12 months in terms of some of these things being realized. We have got samples made in Austria of how to do the stuff in one go for a particular product. That is the next generation, we believe, of tapware, the critical component in tapware. We need to have a meeting with, you know, Moen and other key customers that do that stuff. The size of that is if you are careful about it, you become the essential supplier. On the downside, we have Europe. We have four or five businesses, you know, Italy, and three in the U.K. We have, you know, some of the issues are going to be what are we gonna do about Europe? I don't see that being solved in the short term.
You know, one of the questions the board has put on us really is, what are you gonna do about that? You know, not saying they're not performing at the moment, but, you know, Italy's a hard country to do business, and so is the U.K. now with, one, the increase in costs for people, but at the same time, energy. Energy's gonna be an issue there for quite a while, and that's just a cost structure. There's not a lot we can do about it. It's not about putting in solar panels or that thing. Anyways, I'm talking around it a little bit, but Graham's focus and my focus has to be on the next 12, 24, 36 months, not necessarily. I mean, of course, we're very focused on 30th of June, but we've always taken a longer-term view about doing that.
The good thing is, I think again and again, we're starting to prove we can do that. You can see that in the historical EBITDA. I know you'd like more detail. That's as far as I'm prepared to go for now.
I guess that's kind of what I was expecting. I wasn't expecting a dollar number, thank you. That's very useful, very useful context. Sorry, just bringing it back to Agri. Obviously, alongside the volumes lost in the first half, there must have been quite significant cost increases given that your top-line sales actually still increased. Just curious, as volumes come back in the second half, as you've sort of pointed out, do you think the boost to operating leverage on the back of that, do you think that you can restore your EBIT margin in the second half? I mean, there's a NZD 500 EBIT loss in the first half.
Can you sort of go back to where you were in the second half?
That's our aim. Obviously that's our aim. Whether we get there or not, I mean, some of that depends on the volume obviously. In January, we've seen a lot of the volume that was lost in the first half come back. That's just straight out volume. We have some things we can do operationally, immediately. I just emphasize, you know, if you compare us to a tech company, you see tech companies, what do they do? They just lay people off. We have a loyal workforce that have got us through a lot of things. I'll come back to a few other costs. The cost increases really have been around raw materials. In general, and I'll be careful how I say it, we've passed a lot of that on.
The issue we've had in a number of the agri businesses is we'd already accepted forward orders. The effectiveness of the price increases that are agreed, we will see. We'll see a volume increase at better pricing in the second half. Those are agreed and locked- in place. We didn't see the benefit of those price increases in many cases in the first half. That's another one. It, you know, straight out, if you have a price improvement, it drops straight through to EBIT. If you have a volume improvement, it drops through, but not at the same rate, obviously. I'm quite confident there. We do need volumes to hold up.
Again, there are a couple of reasons why in the New Zealand market that we believe we will get the volume sooner than previous years, so we will be producing and supplying product ahead of the normal May, June, July. I can't go through the detail of why, but I think it's sensitive, but at the same time, we're seeing those orders. Actually from my point of view, I don't mind. I just want the orders. We're seeing those orders come through. You know, I guess the thing I keep saying, even to our board, it's in our hands. Graham and I, we're responsible for getting the inventory in good shape and delivering the numbers. There's still time to make this happen. It's not a fait accompli. You make these things happen.
You know, I think over time, our team has been strengthening. It's not like we had a problem. Easy way to say it, we didn't really have a problem in the first half, but we saw the lower volumes have a much bigger impact on the effect of the bullwhip, the second part of the bullwhip affecting agri far faster. From the first of July, round figures, we lost 100,000 liners a month for the U.S. market. You know, roughly a liner's NZD $2 us, bit more.
Oh, no. Beautiful. Thank you. Actually, Graham, is there anyone else that sort of put their hand up for a question otherwise?
No, there's no further people in the queue at the moment, so you can ask another one.
Start with me. Sorry. This might be come across as a bit of a random question, but what is the actual process that you go through when you set your guidance? Like, is it probability weighted with a higher probability assigned to more defensive streams like wastewater and a lower probability to streams that are more exposed to the cycle? Are you able to sort of talk through it?
It's not probability so much, but we do do three scenarios. We do most likely, we do worst case and best case, and we do that business by business, and we go through them in a lot of detail. We put it on a big A3 sheet, which we share with the directors. Graham and I interrogate it, of course, before we share it with the directors. We have a sense, so we understand where people are bullish. We have a couple of business unit managers, as you would expect. Their background is marketing and sales. They tend to be a bit more positive about what the number would be. Then we have a few more operational people who they want to promise less and then deliver more and be heroes. We've got a few of those.
We got the usual gamut. The critical thing is this, I think that we provide very clear understanding of the historical numbers and the likely future, certainly over six months. Each time and we have a, I think it's every quarter, Graham, or it's not just at the six months that we share this with.
No, no. I mean, we share this information. We maintain a view of what our forecast result is and what our likely range is throughout the year. Every month, we refresh that and have a look at it, and consider, what our range of likely outcomes are.
Good.
As David says, it's on a BU basis, and it's based on an understanding of what's happening in each of those business units, and it's based on our understanding of the people we have managing those businesses as well, in terms of how they think about their forecasts.
Yeah. Just to be really clear, it's not a probability of a forecast. It's real specific product.
Bottom up.
Yeah. Bottom up.
Bottom up.
Yes.
Okay. Yeah, cool. You do have reasonable visibility over the next six months, as you just sort of mentioned. That's based off, based off forward purchase orders that you've kind of received and stuff like that.
Some of our businesses have a longer lead time and therefore have a better forward view of what their demand's gonna be over a two- or three-month prediction. Some of them have a much shorter order book, so they have less visibility. They are relying on their customers' forecasts and therefore their assessment of their customers' forecasts. 'Cause much in the same way as David has explained, we're looking at how we know our businesses traditionally perform and what our managers' styles are. They have a view of how their customers historically perform against their forecasts and where they should be more cautious and where they take a slightly more optimistic view.
We don't have perfect vision of the next six months, or else obviously we'd give a narrower range. As I said, it depends on the businesses in our group, and it depends on some seasonal factors. Of course there's always the things outside of your control that you don't know are going to happen. We try to take that into account giving the range.
I think it's fair to say we're taking a dim view of where we perceive retail products other than gumboots for New Zealand for kind of obvious reasons, without being clever. The reality is some of our other near retail products, we expect. I mean, who knows? We expect recessionary conditions in all our markets really for those kind of products, and it comes down to discretionary spending, so if inflation stays high. Just a couple of other thoughts. One thing I'm proud of is, you know, some people would of course disagree, I believe we pay our staff well. The minimum wage, it has no effect for us in New Zealand, and also the changes in the U.K., they're bringing in effectively the same kind of thing. Really, it has very little impact on our business.
We're in a position where we've been trying to attract new talent. It's not like that we have talent so much, we're all talented. We actually need people that can do things. The ability to attract people that can do things and hit the ground running, we're finding a far better quality of people joining Skellerup. That's one reason I think it's important to be seen as a company that wins. We do talk a lot of, you know, we're very competitive. We do talk a lot about winning and so it's a lot easier when you have, you know, the old saying, you know, does it make the boat go faster? I think we have a focus that is coming through. Deeds is words.
The, you know, the reality is the pressure's on Graham and me, and the directors rightly pointed out the increase in debt, and they want to see the inventory down. I wanna see the inventory down. I don't like too much inventory tied up. You know, slow-moving inventory is the thing. I'm focused on the process of doing that. I don't wanna try and finish it. Well, I don't think it's practical to finish it by the 30th of June. There is some low-hanging fruit. We'll drive that through very, very quickly and I'm very confident that we'll get there. We will deliver a very good result at year-end.
Oh, cool. Cool, cool. Sorry, just two more questions from me. The first one in regard to roofing and construction. I mean, just given, you know, a downturn in construction is kind of difficult to ignore given, you know, it probably creates the most earnings risk. You've previously pointed out that the stats would say there should be a problem for Aussie in the next couple of years. However, the sort of business unit leader for DEKS, you know, you wouldn't bet against him, thinking that he can still grow against the market. That was, I mean, that was when we were kind of talking in August of last year. Is he still quite confident about that?
Are there any specific plans in place that also give you confidence? Like, I mean, is it combination of price increases and more products or that sort of thing?
Without calling out individuals, he would be one of the top three to get his pricing right quickly. He's developed a fantastic relationship with Bunnings and manages that relationship incredibly well. The relocation has given us opportunities to reduce our cost structure.
The series of little subtle things. We were used to, in some cases, sell individual products. We now sell by the carton. That might sound minor, but I can tell you in a distribution business, that's huge. Of course, he always goes up. If we were selling in a bad number like sis or eight, he's moved it to 10, a magic number, which is always good. That solves a lot of issues. These things sound really small. I know this is one of the hardest things I've been explaining over the years. It's not the big queen sacrifice checkmate if you use the chess analogy. It's the accumulation of a series of small advantages which they seem imperceptible, but actually, they lead to it just creates some momentum.
I'm kind of loosely paraphrasing Warren Buffett when I say that, but it is truly the continuous improvement process. What staggers me is when we have a good hard look at certain processes, how much more opportunity there is. I've been to Melbourne recently, and I was absolutely gobsmacked. I don't know how many places the leadership team there visited to get the layout of their warehouse right, but just to dwell on that for a second. The layout is completely different to how I would have thought about it, and it works, and there's good reasons. They visited Amazon, they visited all these things, and I think they visited 30 sites. They've taken the best of all that and put them in one place. Of course, you get some gains.
You're right, I wouldn't bet against them. I think I said that yesterday at the board meeting. He tends to be an optimist. Specifically in areas where roofing washers, these are used in roofing products. DEKS kind of controls that, not just in Australia, but in other export markets as well. Christian is bringing through more of that business. When he sees his like, you know, I think in principle, we are not here to manage just market fluctuations. When the market's up, we're heroes, and when the market goes down, we complain about the market. We're here to make growth, profitable growth, regardless almost of what the markets do.
That's our role. In a number of our businesses, and maybe Graham's probably going to give it some flavor, but What surprised us, it's, you know, occasionally we have a positive. How long is the U.K. part of the roofing business going to deliver through solar? The answer is we don't know. It's very hard to get a read on that. It's been a great performer for more than six months. I just don't have a read on that. Just on building products in general.
Opportunities arise with change. New Zealand, for good or for bad, has brought in a new insulation standard. Most of the existing insulation, professional insulation, 50 mm, 70 mm, 80 mm thick insulation for buildings like the downtown convention center and that. Which again, we expect another round of supplying them some critical building products. When there's a change in standards, and you've seen this, I've talked about it with the Agri division, there's big opportunities for us to work with our customers and make them more competitive. That in itself is creating opportunities. There's always an opportunity if you're looking at things the right way. I appreciate. I think the bigger risk has been in construction. You've seen a number of businesses fall over.
Are we going to get paid? One thing I feel some people take it for granted. Graham and the financial team and I'm focused on this. We've done a very good job of making sure we get paid.
I mean, that's really important. Because we're doing such a good job in that area, people are almost taking it for granted. There's still a lot more we could do.
Awesome. Thank you.
It's part of working capital, obviously. We're thinking about that a lot as well.
Yes. I'll just squeeze in one more, two minutes. I guess it's partly in relation to Talbot. Are you able to sort of say what the sales number was for the first half of the medical and hygiene segment split? I think it was the second half last year was NZD 4 million or something. I was just curious to see the sort of progress in that area.
Yeah. It's not materially different to what it was in the first half of last year. I think you know that there's a big healthcare company in New Zealand that's one of our customers in that area.
Yeah.
Obviously, their demand's been down a little bit. It's not materially different, or else we would have called it out in that bridge. As David said, the biggest contributors to growth from an industrial point of view in the first half was on the foam side, the roofing construction, particularly in the U.K., and vacuum systems. There was no material growth in that medical hygiene type area in the first half. I think we'll begin to see a bit more of that in the second half, as some of this new business comes on board. Certainly when we're talking in 12 months' time about the first half of next year, it'll be a bigger contributor.
Much bigger. Yeah.
Cool. Oh, sorry.
No, no. We need to wind it up.
Yeah.
First of all, thanks, everyone, for your interest. Of course, if you have any specific questions, feel free to reach out to Graham or me. We need to get moving. We've got a couple of meetings downtown, and inevitably there'll be some updates from the press and things like that. Again, thanks for the interest. I'm really proud of what we've achieved in Skellerup and look forward to not only a good six months but a good future over the next two or three years. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.