All right, good morning everyone. Close enough to 10:00 A.M., so we'll get underway. Thanks for joining us for this presentation on Skellerup's H1 , FY 2026 results. For those of you that don't know, I'm Graham Leaming, the CEO, and with me is Tim Runnalls, our CFO. As per normal, Tim and I will provide an overview of our business, and then we'll take questions at the conclusion of the presentation. Please do keep your microphones on mute until we get to questions. Okay, I think we're good again. We might have just temporarily moved into mute mode there. We'll move to slide two. As reported earlier today, very pleased to report record revenue, operating earnings, net profit after tax, and cash flow for the H1 of FY 2026. EBIT was up 16% on the PCP, which was also the prior record.
As the graph shows, over the past seven years, we've achieved a compound annual growth rate of 11%. NPAT was up 20% on the PCP, which again was the prior record. As the graph shows, over the past seven years, we've achieved a compound annual growth rate of 12%. Cash flow was also up 20% on PCP and a record first-half result. Record earnings and cash flow means we've again increased the interim dividend to NZD 0.10, up NZD 0.01 per share or 11% on the prior comparative period. At the close of the first half, at December 31, 2025, net debt stood at NZD 17.5 million. That's just 5% of the value of the total assets employed in our business, or 7% of the net assets. As our results suggest, our business is very well placed.
I think our team are doing an excellent job focusing on the things we can control, executing on current business well, and that provides the platform to win new opportunities. Of course, the geopolitical uncertainty persists, and that makes forecasting difficult. However, based on the year-to-date results and our prospects ahead of us, we've increased our FY 2026 earnings guidance for net profit after tax to be in the range of NZD 57 million-NZD 62 million. Before we get into more detail at the divisional level, Tim will discuss the key drivers of net profit after tax change and the key financials for the H1 of FY 2026. Tim.
Thanks, Graham. The waterfall chart, with which most of you will now be familiar, reflects the key drivers of the 20% increase and reported NPAT for the H1 of FY 2026. Moving from left to right on the chart, I'll start with the industrial division, where more than 60% of this division's revenue is derived from the key potable and wastewater applications, as well as the roofing and construction application. We're pleased to report good growth in both of these product applications this half year. Firstly, in potable water, we've seen a strong increase in demand and market share gains in the U.S. infrastructural pipe-fitting market, and a positive return to more normal levels of demand from a key U.S. tapware customer.
Revenues from the sale of our vacuum systems in the U.S., primarily used in wastewater, continue to grow through market share gains and new product development and launches. We've seen a return in demand for roofing products, primarily roofing washers into the Asian market, as well as indications of a rebound in the Australian residential construction sector, which has been subdued for several years now. Demand for solar roof flashing products has continued to provide a key driver of growth, particularly in the U.K. Pleasingly, we've seen solid growth in all other industrial applications, except for automotive, impacted by weaker demand in the European gas/automotive market, and in health and hygiene, where a key customer paused production or paused their production to relocate their operations for most of the H1 of 2026. Supplies now recommence to this customer, with volumes consistent with prior levels.
Moving to the agri division, dairy has benefited from a strong demand from international customers, both from OEMs and from our own high-performance dairy rubberware products sold under both the Skellerup brand as well as our own Conewango brand in the U.S. New products, customers, and markets have contributed to this growth, something that Graham will touch on in a bit more detail. Pleasingly, we've seen significant growth in sales of our silicone tubing manufactured in the U.K., particularly in the U.S. market, and to a lesser extent, growing sales of our Ambic-branded animal hygiene products. Across our dairy manufacturing operations, the stronger demand flowed through to production volumes, which, together with our ongoing focus on equipment and productivity improvements, meant a lift in gross margins. Demand for our specialty rubber footwear has been solid, with revenue growth in New Zealand and the U.S.
Increases in raw material costs and lower overhead recoveries from a deliberate slowdown in Q1 production volumes to managed inventory levels have negatively impacted margins in our footwear group for the half year. The unfavorable FX result for the period was largely a factor of settlement of currency hedges at rates unfavorable to market spot rate. The benefit of the lower spot rates on the underlying operating earnings is reflected within the product applications on the chart. A reminder that as a group, we have a fairly strong natural hedge, so our net exposure is relatively small when compared with top-line sales. We remain well hedged for the second half of FY 2026 at rates comparable to market spot rates currently.
You will note that across the two divisions, we estimate the impact of U.S. trade tariffs on the first half to be around NZD 1.7 million falling within the industrial division and NZD 300,000 falling within the Agri division. This is the net impact after taking account of the mitigations put in place to reduce this cost. Moving to slide four, which reflects the group's key financials over the past seven and a half years. Revenue growth has been broad-based across divisions, markets, and applications, resulting in an 11% increase against the prior comparative period. Gross margins have improved for the industrial division through the introduction of new products at better margins and a focus on operating improvements. Agri division margins grew favorably in dairy, but as previously mentioned, footwear margins somewhat eroded the impact.
Indirect costs were well controlled, up 8% on the comparative period and below the growth in both revenue and gross margin. Around half of this increase is due to the impact of the weakened New Zealand dollar on the translation of foreign operations. However, ongoing investments have been made in additional headcount within sales and development to drive revenue growth and product innovation. Lower financing costs and a lower effective tax rate against the prior period have meant NPAT finished 20% above the comparative period. As Graham mentioned earlier, operating cash flow is a record for the first half and, in fact, any half year. With the increase in after-tax earnings and prudent management of working capital, where inventories had reduced following some pre-tariff build to more manageable levels, although still elevated to mitigate the impact of tariffs, supply chain disruptions, and to meet increasing customer demand.
Net debt at NZD 17.5 million reflects a continued low level of gearing despite an increase in the FY 2025 final dividend paid in October 2025 and an increase in capital expenditure to around NZD 8.9 million. This increase reflects the timing of investment activities in modernizing production equipment, primarily in the agri division. It's important to note that this is not the new run rate of the group's CapEx rather reflects the timing of those cash flows relative to the execution of the projects. With that, Graham will cover more detail on the individual divisions specifically.
Okay, moving to slide 5, and again, this will be a chart you're familiar with. We're just waiting for it to come through. There we go. So group revenue by market geography. As this shows, and as we've talked about many times, more than 80% of our revenue in the H1 of the year was generated from international markets. We are a global business. North America continues to be the largest share of our market, with an increase there from 35% in the prior comparative period to 39% in the H1 of this year. As Tim's mentioned, we've increased sales into the key dairy, potable, and wastewater applications when Tim discussed the earnings bridge.
New Zealand remains the next largest market, and while down 1 percentage point on the PCP, absolute revenue was up just over NZD 1 million, or 3%, primarily from increased sales into the dairy sector. European revenue ticked up 1 percentage point, principally due to the growth of dairy applications in the H1 of FY 2026. The Australian market was down with some growth in roofing construction, offset by the timing of project-related sales for mining applications. We expect this to recover in the second half of the year. We have a good strong order book for sales of products into mining applications. Asian revenue share was flat, with growth from sales into roofing, construction, and dairy, partially offset by the lower sales into the health and hygiene sector, as Tim mentioned, where a large customer paused production for a period while they relocated their assembly operation.
Business resumed at the very end of the first half, and we expect that will be at normal levels for the second half of this year. The U.K. and Ireland's share of revenue was maintained, with sales into roofing and construction, and in particular, the solar application continuing to grow compared to the H1 of last year. We'll move to slide 6. Slide 6 provides revenue cut a different way, split this by market application. We continue to focus overall our development and our manufacturing activities and investments on products for what we talked about this a lot, high performance and high conformance applications. In the first half, more than 50% of our revenue came from sales used in the transportation of milk and water.
Sales into dairy applications grew to 27% of group revenue, and sales in potable and wastewater applications paced the overall revenue growth of the group, comprising 25% of group revenue. As we noted, roofing construction revenue moved up a percentage point with growth in sales in Asia, the UK, and Australia. Health and hygiene was down, as mentioned, the customer pause, resulting in a fall of about $850,000 in the H1 of FY 2026 compared to the prior year. Mining was also slightly down due to timing. The percentage of sales into footwear and all other industrial applications remained in line with the prior comparative period. Moving to slide 7, which is a bit more of a focus on the industrial division. We've touched on some of these factors, but if we look at things on a constant currency basis, headline revenue up 6%, earnings up 12%.
If we adjust for currency movements and express it in a manner consistent with the prior comparative period, EBIT was still up 9%. That compound annual growth rate of EBIT over the past seven and a half years sits at 11%. As we've touched on, potable water and wastewater growth was strong, up 17% on the prior comparative period. The largest contributor for us was in the U.S. market, where we had good growth, we believe, in share into the pipe market, where we sell gaskets, and some recovery from some of our tapware customers contributing to that increase. Also, we continued to do well in the Australian market with some good growth into the pipe gasket market there as well.
Demand for our vacuum systems, which are used in wastewater applications, again increased, reflecting the position that we hold in the market there with a high-quality product very well delivered to our customer base. Roofing construction growth up, as I noted there, in all of our key markets, with the exception of the U.S., where we had a very strong finish to the end of FY 2025 and, as a consequence, slightly softer first half for our roofing sales into the U.S. Health and hygiene sales impacted by the key customer production pause , as we've noted. On the back of that revenue growth, we've also improved gross margin, and that really does reflect three factors: pricing improvements we were able to make in the market, the mix of products we sell, and productivity gains.
Very pleased to achieve these despite the impact of tariffs, in particular in the first half, as Tim noted on the preceding slide, incrementally around about NZD 700,000 of additional cost to us net of the changes we made and mitigants that we implemented compared to the H1 of last year. Equally importantly, we have a healthy pipeline of opportunities for both OEM customers and our own branded products. There's a couple of images on the page there. On the right-hand side in the middle there, the sectioned image of a dual check valve is used in smart metering applications in Australia, something we've talked about before as an area where we think we'll get good growth in the coming years.
We expect that growth to begin to materialize in the second half of this year based on the forecasts and orders we're getting from customers and to be a good incremental revenue growth for us over the ensuing 2-3 years. On the left is an image of a product that we manufacture that's used in a water-tempering valve. That product includes, again, a couple of check valves, which are used to moderate the flow and the mixing of hot and cold water in behind the wall in large residential and commercial buildings. That's a new product that we've developed that not only services new valves going in, but also as a replacement product into existing valve installations.
A nice feature of that product is it doesn't show on this picture because it doesn't present very well, but a sleeve we supplied it in allows for easy installation as an example of some of the innovation we bring. So there's just a couple of examples. We do have a very healthy pipeline of opportunities for the industrial division, and I think the quality of that pipeline is better than I've seen for a number of years. So we're in good shape there. Moving to slide 8 in the agri division. Obviously, an excellent result for the H1 year for agri, with revenue up 21%, earnings up 20%.
Just noting there that the agri division, which has the largest net currency exposure and therefore was impacted by the hedging arrangements put in place, if we adjust for that, EBIT was actually up 24% on PCP on a constant currency basis. That performance means that the compound annual growth rate for EBIT over the last 7.5-year periods now sits at 10%. The dairy growth, as we've already touched on, was broad-based. And importantly, there's a strong contribution from new products. There's a couple of images there again in the middle of the presentation. Those of you who have sat in our presentations of recent times will recognize on the left-hand side, there's a Thriver calf feeding teat. That was one of the contributors to revenue growth in the first half.
First half revenue from sales of this product were a little over NZD 1 million, and that quadrupled the revenue we achieved from that product in the prior half year period. We've also had good growth for sales of our own branded liners and strong growth through the OEM customers that we service as well. The image alongside the Thriver teat there is a high-performance liner that we've been selling and growing very strongly with in the U.S. market for the past 18 months. And actually, just this month or next month, we'll begin to sell that liner in a single-use shell, which is what's shown in that picture there. We have been supplying a silicone liner in lower volumes in a single-use shell over the H1 of the year. Just to note, outstanding results for the agri division.
There was a small boost or a contribution to that growth from a change in customer Inco terms with a couple of customers, which grew revenue by 4%. So again, if we normalise that out, our revenue growth would have been around about 70% for the agri division, still a very good number. And as we've talked about in the past, our opportunity for growth is most significantly in the international market. The international sales for the H1 of the year were up 29% on the prior comparative period. But the New Zealand domestic market was also robust, as you might expect, given the overall environment for dairy, up 16%. And it also includes some improvement from the range of products that we sell. The increased production volumes have been delivered with improved productivity.
You've seen the capital investment we've been making over the past couple of years to modernize our capability in our facilities, and that's continued in the H1 of this year. As Tim touched on, footwear revenue up in the first half, New Zealand domestic revenue up slightly. We have a significant market share in this market, so the opportunity for growth from our existing product range is somewhat capped. But we've had good growth in the international market, and in particular for our specialty footwear into the U.S. used in the U.S. utility applications. We're continuing to make investments in our development capability and the manufacturing platforms and the positions sorry, the business is well placed for growth. And just from a footwear point of view, I mentioned there the strong market share we have in New Zealand that caps the opportunity from existing products.
In Q4, you will see us launch a new product in what we're calling our lifestyle range, which will be a really exciting step forward for Skellerup. I'm not allowed to show you any images of that yet, but you'll begin to see that in the very near future. So we're pretty excited about that as well. Okay, moving to really our final slide. Again, this is a page you've seen before. We're keeping to the core principles of our business strategy, and that is utilizing and investing in the deep technical expertise that we have to make predominantly polymer-based products for high performance and high conformance applications. Development activities continue to be customer-focused to ensure we understand their requirements and deliver what they need. We are a global business.
At the end of December, almost 60% of our just over 800 people were based outside of New Zealand. Over the past six months, we've added additional sales resource in the U.S. and Asia to ensure we can capitalize on the opportunities for growth we see. We have made further investment, as I said, to boost capacity and productivity in our manufacturing facilities, both agri and industrial. And we continue to evaluate further investment in international markets. Alongside these focus and priorities, our business model with accountability and resources where we make and sell products, i.e., in the markets that we're in, remains a cornerstone of our business now and in the future. Thanks for your time. Let's take some questions. So I can see three hands up already, and we probably could have predicted those. We'll start with you, Guy.
Yeah. Good morning, Tim. Well done on a really strong result. Very impressive. I guess the first one for me just around the dairy side. I mean, that growth, particularly, as you say, from the international markets, North America and Europe, has really accelerated. How should we sort of think about that annualizing? I know you sort of called out a little bit of the contributions from new products, but it appears to be some pretty reasonable underlying share gains. Is that fair?
Yeah, I think you have to conclude that we've won some market share. The difficult thing is always there's a number of nodes in the supply chain, so how far through can you see those, and is there any inventory build happening somewhere in the chain? But notwithstanding that, we have definitely won market share in the U.S., and we believe we've won market share in Europe. We're beginning to win some new business in markets we've been focusing on in Europe. France is a market where we haven't had much in the way of sales in the past, and we've picked up a new customer there. And also, we are beginning to sell some product into customers in Eastern Europe as well, which has been a focus and a priority of us.
We did have the boost from a change in Incot erms in the first half as well. Even allowing for that, a really strong performance from us in the first half, it does reflect and, I guess, validate the work we've been putting into investing in our product development team. My observation is we are able to complete development projects a lot more quickly than we were, say, even two years ago, three, four years ago. That gives us an opportunity to grow at a faster tempo than we did in the past.
Okay. And just given that growth in agri, how should we think about the seasonality of earnings going forward? I mean, if I sort of looked historically, I think seasonality of impact was always second half weighted. But if you take the midpoint of guidance, we're closer to a 50/50 assumption this year. How much of that is this change in earnings mix maybe in favour of agri versus sort of general conservatism around geopolitics and supply chain disruption?
Yeah, I mean, I think we're right to be cautious about the second half. Obviously, if you take the midpoint of our guidance range, that's a modest increase over what we achieved in the second half of FY 2025. Geopolitical is something that we're mindful of and what impact that could have on demand. We have got a slight incremental increase in tariff costs. So we talked about how it compared to the H1 of last year, there's about NZD 1 million of additional costs net of the mitigants we've undertaken in the first half result. We're still continuing to make inroads on that cost. But one of the benefits that we enjoyed in the first half was the inventory investment we've made. That's largely worked its way through now. So we expect about an additional NZD 500,000 of tariff costs in the second half of the year.
You might recall when this thing first broke about a year ago, we said we think we can get back to an annualized incremental cost of about NZD 5 million. We're probably now back at an incremental annualized cost of NZD 3 million. I expect by the time we get to the end of FY26, we'll have made a further dent in that. I'd like to think we're back to an incremental cost annually going forward, assuming no other changes of a couple of NZD million dollars. Continue to strike that. I guess the other thing in the second half of the year, something to be a little bit cautious of is the New Zealand dollar has strengthened a little bit. A lot of our earnings are overseas. Yes, we do hedge our transactional exposures, but the currency is a little bit stronger, so we're mindful of that.
We've certainly protected from a transactional point of view, but there could be some translational headwind there. We're continuing to invest for growth. Both Tim and I mentioned we've made some investments in some additional people. Whilst those aren't massive, but in the last, what would be the last three months, we've added in three personnel at the front end in the U.S. and also employed someone to head up our growth initiatives for dairy in China. We're adding in costs. Whilst I think we'll get a pretty rapid payback, I'm not sure that we'll necessarily recover all of that cost in the second half. Yes, we're being cautious with the guidance we provide, but we think it's appropriate given all the factors out there.
Yeah, and just our second half split.
Sorry, first half, second half split. Traditionally, I would think that we would continue to have a stronger second half than we did in the first half. You might recall during the COVID time, that got disrupted a little bit, and we've gone back to a slightly more normal pattern. I think I did say last year that the weighting to the second half was probably a little bit stronger than we might expect going forward, and we expect that gap to narrow a little bit.
Generally speaking, with the seasonality of some of our business, whilst that has less of an impact now than it once did, if you think about the H1 of the year includes a Northern Hemisphere summer, and particularly in Europe, things slow down for a period, and then Thanksgiving and the Christmas period, typically, our second half is a little bit stronger than the H1 of the year.
Yeah, no, understood. And then I guess just one last one from me. I mean, you sort of talked about the additional investments you've made. There's also, I guess, a reasonable step up in CapEx, as you flagged previously. Can you talk a little bit about expectations for the full year for that number, but also maybe just where some of that additional investment is going?
Yeah, so I think in the preceding couple of years, we're around that sort of NZD 9 million, NZD 8 million, NZD 9 million, NZD 10 million mark. And I said, I think for the foreseeable future going forward, you can expect to see us spending an extra sort of NZD 2 million-NZD 3 million. We have, because of the success in the results that we've had with some of the investment we've made in modernizing the equipment capacity, particularly at our largest facility in Wigram, we've probably started to move a little bit faster with investing in more of that. So there is some timing of payments going on. We expect full-year CapEx for this year might be sort of NZD 13 million-NZD 14 million range. Then in ensuing years, I think perhaps we come back closer to sort of NZD 12 million-NZD 13 million.
But you certainly wouldn't want to take the CapEx we've incurred in the H1 of this year and double it and think that was a new normal. It's more that sort of 12-14 range I see for the near term because we're seeing the benefits of the investments we're making in terms of providing us with the additional capacity we need to meet the growth and demand, both for agri and industrial, and doing it in a more efficient and effective manner.
Great. No, I appreciate the time. I'll pause there. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. We'll move to you, Rob.
Morning, guys. Congratulations on a great result.
Thank you.
To kick off with, I believe you said that you did 10% year-on-year impact growth in the first quarter 2026, and then you've delivered 20% for the first half. There's obviously been a pretty strong acceleration in the second quarter. Can you speak to what drove that? Is it like revenue or?
Yeah, so traditionally, the second quarter is our weakest quarter of the year. So we're always somewhat cautious on that. And certainly, it was our weakest quarter in the year last year. The second quarter has been stronger for us this year. If you look at the delta between Q1 and Q2, it is much smaller in the second quarter of this year. And there's a bunch of factors driving that. We have had stronger demand than we were anticipating, continued strong demand than we were anticipating three months ago for our potable water products, particularly in the pipe gasket market in the U.S. And we've continued to see strong demand for our dairy rubberware products. They're the two biggest contributors to that result in the second quarter.
As I say, when we look at the profile of our earnings, typically over many years, the second quarter normally shows a stronger dip than what we've seen this year.
Okay, but just to be clear, so yeah, but a year-over-year basis would take out that quarter-over-quarter strength. So I guess what I'm saying is that revenue is very good for the half, 11%, but that might have accelerated in the second quarter.
Yeah, certainly compared to the second quarter of the preceding year, there was a greater acceleration. If you look at the quarter-by-quarter, the growth rate in Q2 of FY 2026 compared to Q2 of FY 2025 was larger than it was for the Q1 comparative.
Okay, wonderful. And just on the guidance, so you're guiding to second half impact of about NZD 31 million at the midpoint. And that's like 1%, but obviously, there's tariff impacts. So I think there was NZD 1 million tariff impact in the first half, and you said you'll expect an extra NZD 0.5 million. So long story short, taking out the tariff impact in the second half, it implies underlying growth of 4% impact. What is driving that? Because that's a pretty significant slowdown from the 20%, and the revenue is accelerating in the second quarter. So what's driving that slowdown in the second half?
I think it's, I guess, the slowdown hasn't occurred yet, Rob, but I think it's caution. If you look at the strength of the agri result, particularly dairy in the H1 of the year, we are always mindful of, could there be some timing with the demand from some of our international customers? Remembering, for a lot of these customers, we sell product on a delivered basis. We have had some changes moving to FOB, which gives us greater certainty over when we book the revenue. But with that dairy revenue so strong in the first half, we're cautious over whether this year we might have brought forward some demand from the second half into the first half result. So that's certainly one of the reasons. And then I touched on a few of the other ones. Yes, there's a small impact from the tariff.
We have added in some additional costs, which we think is good for our growth relatively immediately, but certainly moving into 2027 and 2028. And we've taken a cautious view on where the FX rate may sit in the second half of this year compared to where it sat in the H1 of this year and indeed in the second half of last year, I guess. So yes, we've been cautious, but I think that's appropriate at this point in time, given where we are.
Yeah, no, no, that makes perfect sense.
We're not backing away for our ambition for the business and the opportunities that we have. But I think it's prudent that we consider all those factors when we provide some future guidance for the near term.
No, no, that all sounds good. And because obviously, there's been a bit of volatility with stocking and destocking in agri, so good to be cautious there. But just to be clear then, because it's obviously stellar growth in agri in a division that's historically been about 4% revenue growth. But to date in the second half, are you seeing any indications that there's been stocking into the channel in agri?
No, obviously, we're one month into the second half. So our January result was good, fractionally above our expectations. So we've made a good start for the second half. But we don't have a long visibility, really, for much of our business. Whilst we have the pattern of demand we have over time, suggests we have customers with pretty robust businesses and therefore pretty robust demand for us. In terms of open orders on the books, other than for sales of products, which are going to be on a delivered basis, which is some of the agri and dairy sales, as we've talked about, we don't have a long visibility on an order book. So we can't see too far into the future.
No, that's fair enough. Congratulations again, guys. Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you, Rob.
Rowan?
Oh, I just turned my camera on. Oh, it's turned off again. Sorry.
There you go.
Hi. Hey, sorry to go on and on about guidance. But through that presentation, you said mining will be up in the second half, health and hygiene's restarting, so that's up in the second half, tap was more normal, so I assume that it wasn't that good in the second half of 2025, so that'll be better. You've got new agri products, which are doing NZD 4 million-NZD 5 million incremental revenue, calf feedings, 4x. You probably didn't have that second half last year. You used to talk about tariffs being a NZD 5 million headwind full-year run rate, and I know that's probably phased in over this year, but that's now 3, so there's a NZD 2 million upgrade.
Smart metering comes in second half, productivity and margin benefit run rates build because you've been installing the CapEx over the half, so I'm assuming that gets better in the halves ahead, hopefully. Footwear's in the fourth quarter. And Inco terms, I'm not sure whether that repeats or not, like you said, but there's a possible benefit there. Are you just being way too conservative?
No, I don't think so, Rob. I think if we sort of break down, we could tick off and address all of those things. What did I say, Rob? Sorry, Rob. Sorry, Rowan.
No, no, they're close. They're close.
He's been called Wes.
Yeah, that's right.
Just sort of going back to the calf feeding piece for a moment. Yes, we did have reasonable sales in the second half of last year. So that's a little bit of an unknown for us in terms of what sort of level of market penetration or growth we might achieve in the second half of this year. We are trialling on U.S. farms, and we're sort of into our third round of trials now. But we don't expect that to be a material contributor to the second half performance of the group. But we will have the normal seasonal demand in the New Zealand market, which is most of our calf feeding for our other sales at the moment. So yeah, we expect to get some incremental growth in the second half of the year.
I think we're right to be cautious on liner sales because the numbers we achieved in the first half exceeded our expectations. The Incoterms boost will not repeat in the second half of the year. We picked up all of that benefit because essentially, what it meant was we got some both delivered sales and then switching to FOB, the timing of recognition became sooner. So that won't repeat in the second half of the year. Thinking about on the industrial side with pipe gasket sales, they were very strong in the first half. I think we called out potable and wastewater sales were up 17%. They were also pretty strong in the second half of last year. You'll remember last year, I think our first half EBIT splits were sort of 24 and 30.
Some of that improvement was driven by about a lift in potable water sales into North America. Again, we're a little bit cautious that we won't necessarily see that continue. It's always difficult no matter how many conversations sometimes you have with some of those customers, and they tell you, "Yep, yeah, it's true demand," then all of a sudden, you find out it's not true demand, and they've got a little bit of inventory. We have some caution around that. Smart metering, that was really just a hint for the future. This year, I don't want to overstate the contribution of this, but it's good business to have in Australia. Our sales in Australia next year, we expect to grow to an excess of AUD 1 million, and then the ensuing year up to sort of AUD 1.5 million.
This year, it'll be less than NZD 500,000. These are good jumps for a business in that market. But we're not talking NZD 2 million or NZD 3 million-dollar incremental jumps from a product set like that. Then just mentioning there also your question, Rowan, on the absence of the GOJO product in the first half, we expect the second half to be in line. We'd expect the second half to be sort of in line with what we achieved last year. We'll wait and see how that plays out. No, we don't obviously provide a range for a reason. We will be providing our best endeavors to achieve, obviously, the best we possibly can. But we think, given the factors that I talked about, that's a sensible range for us to project for the year.
Okay, thank you. Just on the kind of product suite going forward and the kind of market entries that you've done, I believe foam in Europe, you were hoping to get to kind of break even relatively quickly. Can you give us an update on how you're going there and also the other agri products, the calf feeding clusters and those sort of things in terms of timing on market launch and expectations?
Yeah, so foam in Europe, it's a good one. First half was broadly in line with our expectations. We're not going to get whilst we've got a fantastic pipeline of opportunity, the conversion's a little bit slower than we thought. So achieving that sort of, if you like, break-even point's probably moved out to the end of the fiscal year rather than the midpoint of the fiscal year where we are now. So it's a small headwind against their expectations in the second half of the year. But at the moment, that's a relatively small business, so it's not a massive headwind or contributor to the group overall. So that's where we're at with that. Your other question was on some of the developments in the dairy side.
So as I noted, in the image on the page there, we are about to launch the rubber liner, which we've sold in very high volumes, the high-performance liner, about to launch that in a single-use preloaded shell. So I was actually speaking to the guy who runs our business in the U.S. this morning on the way to work and said, "How are you feeling about it?" And he's notoriously conservative, but he's pretty optimistic. And he said he's had a few customers that, first of all, said to him, "No, we wouldn't want that," saying they now want to talk about it. So yeah, that's a good opportunity for us. It's not that selling it in the shell creates a significant large increment in revenue capture for each product sale, but it gives them another reason to sell our product.
So capturing more liner sales is the motivation on providing a product like that to provide the customer with that benefit of faster change out. In terms of the development of clusters and what have you, that's at an earlier stage. So we're not in market with anything like that yet. We've got some prototype products and some early trials happening at farms, but that won't be a contributor to the second half results. What we have done quite well, I think, Rowan, is we also talked about wanting to grow our share in some of the more developing markets. And the two that we're primarily focused on is kind of what we call Eastern Europe, but also slightly a wider part of Western Europe that we weren't accessing. And I called out France as a small example there.
But also in China, we have existing business in China, but we've now put someone in place over there to provide us with the opportunity to capitalize on what we think is a pretty significant medium-term opportunity to have a more direct relationship with some of the big players over there.
Excellent. Thank you. I'll let someone else have a go.
Okay, is there any other questions? We can't see any other hands up, but anyone else got any questions? I can see. I can just quickly check the chat as well. Nothing in there. Okay. Well, if there's nothing else, we'll close it out. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. As I said at the start, obviously, we're very pleased with the result and very appreciative of the contribution that our team make across the world. So I'm sure there'll be a few of them on this call. So thank you, guys. You've made a great contribution, and we're in a good place. I look forward to future success. Thank you.
Thank you.