Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of Aker BioMarine's Fourth Quarter 2020 Results. My name is Martin Stenshall. I'm the Head of Investor Relations in Aker BioMarine. With me today here in Oslo are Matts Johansen, our CEO, and Katrine Klaveness, our CFO. They will share some reflections on the fourth quarter and provide financial highlights. At the end of the presentation, we will have a Q&A session. Questions can be submitted in writing through Microsoft Teams during the presentation and will be addressed in the Q&A session at the end. With that, I leave the floor to you, Matts.
Thank you, Martin. Starting with some highlights from an eventful year for Aker BioMarine of 2020. We closed Q4 with $75.5 million in revenues and $21.1 million in EBITDA. In general, we are quite satisfied both with the year and the quarter. We had a significant sale that we were planning for Superba in 2020 that was shifted over to 2021, and also the harvesting season didn't come into full effect before January 2021, also impacting harvesting in Q4, which also made us do an adjustment on the values on the inventory that impacted EBITDA negatively. Because of those two elements, we were slightly below our guiding for the year, ending up with an EBITDA of $78.1 million. Still showing quite good growth for the year, 17% top-line growth. Good growth both on the ingredient side and on the branded side.
Growth somewhat hampered by the regulatory situation that we talked about before in Korea and also product availability on the back of a low harvesting season for 2020. Onshore production continues to develop very strongly throughout the year, also in Q4. Capacity continue to increase. Costs are coming down, improving the unit cost and the margins for our Superba business. As we have mentioned before, the performance on our onshore manufacturing impacts the profitability of our company more than the performance offshore. When it comes to offshore harvesting, the vessel came out record early from the shipyard. A very good shipyard this year, both on budget and on time. The two biggest vessels were out on the fishing field already in November, and technically everything was working perfectly.
The krill was sitting at depth, and outside the area that we typically fish at that part of the year. The harvesting for Q4 in November and December was significantly lower than what we had planned for. As a result of that, we wrote down the value of our inventory because the unit cost becomes higher than what we sell the product for. That negatively impacts the EBITDA for Q4. In January, as temperature rises, the krill came higher up to the surface, and we could start fishing properly. Throughout January and February, we have set numerous records, both individually for the vessels and in totality. The harvesting season now is in full effect and performing really, really good. Kori continued to develop positively. We're going to go more into details about that later.
Continue to grow on the consumer side, getting new retailers on board. Most important ones, with Rite Aid, 2,500 stores in the U.S., and Walgreens with about 15,000 stores coming in and listing Kori during fourth quarter last year. Also it's been a quarter of innovations coming to life. As you know, Aker BioMarine has a large innovation pipeline, and we have told the market all along that we were accelerating the launch of these products. In fourth quarter, we launched LYSOVETA, our new delivery molecule for EPA and DHA to the brain and to the eye, and other vital organs. The back of that, we also signed a pharmaceutical partnership to develop pharmaceutical products for five different indications within eye and brain health.
We launched AION, which is a full circularity solution company that was kind of founded on the back of Aker BioMarine's need to achieve full circularity on our primary waste streams, but are now positioning itself as a solution provider for everybody else that have the same goal of getting full circularity of plastic products. Addressing both those that have plastic waste, but also those that use plastic products in their business. We're going to talk more about that later. Okay. Moving into the numbers. As you can see, 5% growth in fourth quarter, on the revenue side, 8% on ingredient, -12% on the branded side.
Brand's been developing very well throughout the year, but in fourth quarter last year, we were shipping a lot of promotions for our private label business that boosted Q4 2019 numbers. That's why we don't see growth for fourth quarter 2020. Generally, the brand segment is performing very well. The ingredient segment were hampered by that quite big sale that we were planned for Superba for 2020. That will shift into 2021. For the year, we had a 17% growth, reaching $289 million in revenue. On the right side, you can see our operational leverage coming from that growth. That's 17% year-over-year growth for revenues yields 47% growth on the EBITDA side. That's coming on the back of increased revenues with limited additional costs.
It's coming on the back of good performance onshore and continuous reduction of unit cost, generally good control over costs in Aker BioMarine. Little bit more details on the operational side, starting with the ingredient segment. Talked already about the harvesting season. Started record early, have now fully functional vessels, Antarctic Endurance, all the problems are fixed. They're now producing like they have never done before. As mentioned, we did not reach the planned harvesting for fourth quarter that impacts the EBITDA for 2020. Nevertheless, total offshore production is up 10%, we were expecting more than that when the year started, we're going to talk more about that later. Houston is producing 36% more than what it did last year, with also more or less the same cost base. You can imagine that drives the unit cost and the margins in the right direction.
On the Superba side, we have a reduction of sales or decline of sales in Q4 2020 versus last year. That's on the back of very strong Korea sales in fourth quarter 2019. We have now, as you know, solved the regulatory challenges that we were facing in Korea, and sales is picking up week by week, month by month, but it's still not back up to the peak levels that we saw in fourth quarter 2019 and first quarter 2020. We also see positive development in other markets, for instance, in the U.S., and we're now starting also to see the effect of Kori on other brands and krill oil products in the U.S. market. Also, we see good development in the emerging markets in Asia and especially China, that we also see now real volumes coming through in sales and looking very promising for growth going forward.
On the QRILL side, we had great growth, almost 40% growth in fourth quarter, for the aqua segment and also good growth in the pet segment of about 30%, and also the byproduct from our Superba production, QHP. As you can see on the slide, we achieved an award for the Fastest Growing Branded Ingredient in the Chinese Pet Food Industry. Both India and China looks very promising, with large volumes already, but big potential for further growth. Growth in the aqua segments were hampered by product availability. Basically in 2020, we sold everything that we produced. The slow harvesting season of 2020 also impacted sales in the QRILL segment. Looking at the branded side, we had good sales during 2020. More than 30% growth on the private label business.
As mentioned earlier, in Q4 2019, we had big campaigns that were shipped out, that's impacting the year-on-year comparison for fourth quarter 2019 versus 2020. Generally, our branded business is developing very positively. We can see also getting the operational leverage out of that business, meaning that when we have growth and we sell more, the cost base doesn't increase, and that's why you see more than 60% growth on EBITDA on the Lang business that we're running. The Lang, the private label business, they are selling primarily in physical stores. As you can imagine, during COVID in the U.S., that's been challenging environment to operate. Lang has been able to manage that in the perfect way and kept products on stock, on shelf, and achieved great scores from the retailers on those parameters.
We know that the competitors of Lang Pharma Nutrition have really struggled to keep products on the shelf because there is supply chain discrepancies on the back of COVID. That is also continuing to strengthen Lang Pharma Nutrition's position in this space and makes us optimistic for the continued good growth for the private label business of Lang Pharma Nutrition. When it comes to Epion Brands or Kori, I am going to jump to this slide, starting on the right side. We have some new retailers coming on board. Walgreens, which is one of the biggest drug chains in the U.S. Rite Aid, which is the third largest drug chain in the U.S. with 2,500 stores. Sam's Club also coming on board. That is Walmart's club concept. Then also a couple or more retailers listing Kori during the fourth quarter.
With existing base of retailers, we have now had the rounds for the planning of 2021. They're all very happy with the development of Kori. They're all continued commitment or continue to be committed to Kori and making sure that we have enough shelf space in the right places in the stores also into 2021 and 2022. Looking at the sales development here, I think the most interesting thing to look at is the development that you will see in January. We are now recalibrating our marketing. During January, we are not doing marketing. We only do digital marketing, while we're optimizing both the TV spots and our media buys. As you can see, we have strong sales now of Kori, even if we don't do any marketing.
I think that's a very strong sign of the robustness of the Kori brand and also shows a promising status in terms of when we're going to start to put marketing back in a little bit later in the quarter. Going to do a couple of deep dives into a few parts of the business. Going to start with the harvesting side. As you know, it's been a really challenging year for Aker BioMarine when it comes to harvesting. What we would like to say is that looking at historical numbers on the left side, you can see how much we are harvesting every year. As you can see from the history, the harvest in Aker BioMarine is quite predictable. Every year, stable or increasing production.
This type of development that we had in 2020 with a big deviation on harvesting, it's something that we very seldom see in Aker BioMarine. There is quarterly fluctuations. There might be some ice conditions, some weather and things like that might shift volume from one quarter to another. It is not normal to have this type of deviation on total harvesting that we had in 2020. As you can see on the middle side, we were planning for this year 65,000 tons of product produced on board vessels. We ended on 45%. That's a 31% shortfall of harvesting. Again, this is the opposite of the operational leverage that we have in our business model. When we harvest less, cost base is the same, then unit cost goes up and margins goes down.
As you can see illustrated on the right side, this has huge impact on the profitability of our business. Luckily, Aker BioMarine is a robust business, and through improvements on the onshore side and other parts of the business, we're able to compensate quite a big chunk of that shortfall that we saw on harvesting in 2020. Those improvements are structural improvements that will carry with us also into 2021 and the years ahead. You can imagine when we come back to a normal harvesting season, that will be about between 60,000 and 70,000 tons of product produced on board our vessels. We have sustained the positive effects that we saw on the other parts of the business, into 2021 and 2022. You can imagine that there's quite a significant impact on EBITDA and profitability as we get harvesting back into normal levels.
As I mentioned, vessels are now producing in full flesh. We have been breaking records, both individually on the vessels and in totality on a daily basis these days. All vessels technically are working as they should and at full capacity. We also took recently delivery of Antarctic Provider. Antarctic Provider is the new support vessel that we've been building over the last couple of years that will replace La Manche, which is an old vessel we use today to change crew, pick up product, fuel the vessels so that the fishing boats can stay in Antarctica throughout the whole year. Now also with Endurance in the fishing field, La Manche doesn't have enough capacity, so we have also leased in extra capacity on the common support vessel side. Now we have taken delivery of our new Antarctic Provider vessel.
It's now on its way to the fishing field, and will go into operation in March, April. As this goes into operation, we are getting several benefits. Number one is that we get significant more capacity, 2.5x more capacity of offloading and fuel compared to what we have in today's setup. That means that we don't have to go into shore that often also with the supply boat. They can just offload the vessels and then stay out in Antarctica until they are full again and then do another offload before they head into shore and take the product to land. That's going to help and create flexibility in our operation.
You can see that the operational unit cost is significantly being reduced on the logistical side, more than or about 50% reduction in the unit cost of the logistical operation and also fuel costs, and CO2 emissions goes down significantly, 58%. The offload here will go much faster. That means that instead of spending 24-48 days on an offload, we can do that now between 12-24 hours, which means that we will have more fishing days and each vessel can fish more. The cost savings of getting Antarctic Provider into operation is $5.5 million on a full year basis. This is now coming into operation in March, April, as I said, so we will not have a full year effect in 2021. From 2022, we're going to have a full year effect of those $5.5 million in cost savings.
A little update on LYSOVETA, our new technology for delivering of EPA and DHA to brain, eye, and other vital organs. As we talked about when we launched, we are addressing some large markets here. Just the supplement market is twice the size as omega-3 market. We are also addressing pharmaceutical markets and infant formula markets. In general, this is a business with great potential, bigger potential than we have in the current products of KRILL and Superba in Aker BioMarine. As you know, our plan was to do partnership with pharmaceutical companies and R&D companies. Sorry. As you know, we already signed the first agreement recently with MD3, a pharmaceutical company that will focus on five indications for brain and eye.
They're capitalizing that company now, $37 million of cash coming in to fund the development for the early development of those five indications. There's investor meetings ongoing as we speak, and those investor meetings are going very well, and it looks very promising to be able to fund that company in the near future. We have also done two R&D and IP deals on the research side. Sherbrooke University, we announced yesterday, we're going to do study with them on Alzheimer. They are going to use our LYSOVETA ingredient to study the effects on Alzheimer, and a part of that deal, we are also going to get all the IP, and that's going to come out from that research. Also earlier we announced a deal with University of Illinois Chicago, where we both acquired and/or get an exclusive license to all the IP they have in this space.
It's important, University of Illinois has worked on these molecules, alongside Aker BioMarine since 2014 and have a large and important IP portfolio. We have now an exclusive right to all that IP. Together with University of Illinois, we're going to continue then to research the effects of LYSOVETA and LPC in new brain areas. This is looking very promising. Also yesterday or on Sunday, we announced a partnership with Play Magnus, where we're starting now to position LYSOVETA in the brain space with a partnership in the chess space, addressing those 650 million players of chess globally and getting focus on brain health and nutrition. LYSOVETA is developing very promising, and we're continuing now to work in the market with new partnerships, both on the pharmaceutical side, but also in other segments. As we close those deals, we'll update the market.
AION, we also launched recently. As you know, we are providing a value chain of taking plastic from those that have plastic waste, then managing that value through trains, through the different various technology partners that turn that plastic waste into fuller circular products. As we talked about before, example of a customer is McDonald's, where we taking now waste from the aquaculture industry in Norway and making into serving trays at McDonald's. All the serving trays from McDonald's in Norway today are made by AION. That's being provided in what we call a circularity-as-a-service model. A restaurant, they pay a monthly fee per tray, it goes in an endless loop.
As they get old or need to be changed because they're damaged, AION will pick them up and recycle them again, so you get an endless loop of circularity of these type of plastic products. There's a large market that we're addressing. McKinsey have estimated about $16 billion of profit pool in 2030 when it comes to recycling of these type of plastic products that AION is focusing on. After we announced AION, there's been a large amount of incoming calls coming from customers that really are looking for these type of solutions. Aker BioMarine was not the only one, or McDonald's was not the only one that wanted these type of solutions. There are many customers out there that really are looking for a solution like that, and we are having ongoing negotiations and discussions with these partners.
As we have scaled this up and proven the business model, we will spin AION out to the Aker BioMarine shareholders and list it separately. That will happen during 2021 or 2022, depending on how things develop in the coming months. Also, 17th of January, we launched INVI, which is our new protein ingredient for the human market. It has a great value proposition. It has an amino acid profile that is better than the proteins that are on the market today. It's easy for brands and products to use, easy to formulate into food products, to drinks. It's water-soluble, it's heat stable, so you can pasteurize. It's easy to flavor, which might be hard with some protein products out there. It's easy for our customers to work with.
Also it has a very strong ESG profile, especially on the CO2 side, where we're mapping up CO2 all the way from the fishing fields to when the krill is on the customer side, and it has a significantly lower CO2 footprint than most other proteins on the market. Protein markets are very large, $40 billion estimated to be in the coming years. We are going to go into the premium side of that market, and we're going to go in and take 0.5% market share in the premium market of global proteins. That will drive us up to between $74 million-$100 million in revenue as we scale this up in the coming years. Also, after the launch of 17th, we are now active in the market promoting this to protein brands globally, and also the response here has been very good.
Just ending here to position these two innovations, INVI and LYSOVETA, when it comes to margins. You can see here an illustration of the margin contribution for the different products, starting Aqua on the left side and Superba there in the middle, which is our current high margin segment. As you can see, LYSOVETA will be even higher margin than Superba, and INVI will be placed somewhere between Superba and KRILL Pet. Both these two new innovation provides high margins for the company and contributes to increase the EBITDA margin of the company going forward. With that, I'm going to give the word to Katrine that's going to take us through the financial numbers.
Good morning. I will take you through the financial figures for the quarter. As Matts said earlier, 2020 has been an eventful year with some significant challenges. Despite these unforeseen events, the company has managed to deliver a good quarter and a year, although somewhat below the guiding for the full year. We delivered a revenue growth of 17% with $289 million in sales, up from $246 million in 2019. This further led to an adjusted EBITDA of $78 million, 47% increase from last year, yielding an adjusted EBITDA margin of 27%. Net debt is down 41% as a result of the capital increase of $224 million in July 2020, ending the year with a solid financial position with 53% equity ratio and almost $100 million in undrawn capacity under our debt facilities.
Quarterly developments show relatively stable sale figures per quarter up until Q4 2020, where there is an increase of 5% from the same period last year due to strong December sales, particularly in the ingredient segment. Gross margin shows a steady increase with the exception of Q3 2020, which was an extraordinary quarter due to reversal of earlier accruals for out-of-spec inventory, where the company was able to find sales outlets and hence reverse the accrual. It should also be noted that the company has made a reclassification in its P&L, resulting in smaller changes to gross margins from the year 2018 - 2020, but no impact on EBITDA or net profit. EBITDA development has seen a steady increase since Q4 2019 as we have managed to take out significant amounts of costs.
Q3 2020 was a record quarter with higher Superba sales at a higher margin than for Q4 2020. Q4 was up significantly from same period last year, more than 2.5 x due to significant improvements in onshore unit costs that led to lower group eliminations, coupled with lower SG&A costs. Q4 2019 also saw a high net realizable value adjustment as a result of very poor harvesting in Q4 2019. Looking a bit closer at the ingredient segment. The ingredient segment has performed well with strong growth in Aqua, with all-time high sales in December 2020 of 6,500 tons, driving revenue growth of 9% from Q4 2019 to Q4 2020. Superba was down compared to same period last year because of the regulatory changes in South Korea. For the full year, revenue for the ingredient segment was up 12%.
EBITDA showed solid development, growing 79% Q4 year-over-year and 34% year-over-year. Key drivers were strong onshore production improvements and SG&A reductions, where the company has implemented several cost-saving initiatives. In addition, some development projects like protein and LYSOVETA has transitioned over to the development phase, and hence cost is now recognized as CapEx. Improved gross margins from Superba sales are partly offset by lower margins from Aqua sales on the back of increased costs combined with low harvesting. Looking at the production volumes onshore and offshore on a rolling 12-month basis, operational leverage or utilizing our scale is a key driver for our EBITDA growth going forward. Over the past two years, we have seen production improvements both onshore with 8% increase from start of 2019 and 15% increase in offshore production from start of 2019.
Onshore has delivered above expectations for 2020 and is now producing close to full capacity of around 1,000 tons per year. The ambition is to double this by the end of 2022, continuing to drive down unit costs for Krill Oil. For offshore, 2020 was a disappointing year and we did not see the production result we had planned for, and hence not the effect on offshore unit costs. Harvesting volumes in Q4 2020 was negatively impacted by KRILL not arriving in the Area 48 until late January, landing the Q4 production at 2,522 tons versus the expected range of between 6.5 thousand tons and 7.5 thousand tons. With Endurance now coming up to full capacity, we expect to see 2021 coming in with an improved unit cost also on offshore. Moving to the brand segment.
Revenue for the brand segment, consisting of Lang and Epion, was down for the quarter year-over-year as a result of Q4 2019 being a record quarter for Lang, with large promotional activity and shipments to some of the largest retailers. Year-over-year, a revenue increase of 27% was seen as a result of Lang having a very strong first half 2020 on the back of COVID-19, as well as Kori sales coming on stream. EBITDA development was only slightly down from Q4 2019 to Q4 2020, despite relatively lower sales, the reason being that the high promotional activity driven by the clubs for Q4 2019 is low-margin business. For the full year, EBITDA was up 84% compared to 2019, mainly due to scale effects for Lang and Epion contributing to EBITDA as well. Please keep in mind that we acquired Lang March 1st, 2019.
If looking at pro forma figures for growth rates, for revenue and EBITDA year-over-year, the growth rates are respectively 16% and 75%. If we have a quick look at the profit and loss statement, as mentioned earlier, we've done a reclassification of two items that previously were recognized under other operating income cost net. The first one being leasing liabilities that has now been reclassified to SG&A costs. There are no effects as a result of this. The other being inventory adjustments that is now reclassified to COGS, which in turn will change the gross margin slightly, but no other changes to EBITDA or net profits. Both reclassifications are restated from 2018. A few comments to some of the key items in the P&L.
Looking at the COGS, we see an increase due to high sales both in the quarter and for the full year, compared to same period last year. The majority of COVID-related costs are also reflected in the Q4 COGS. SG&A includes the core marketing cost of $6.7 million for the quarter and $17 million for the full year. We also see higher freight costs as a result of higher Aker sales. If removing core marketing and other volume-related costs, SG&A is significantly down since 2019. Net financial items includes two larger income items. The unwinding of the NMTC facility we put in place to finance the startup of the Houston plant, and an adjustment of the Lang earn-out to reflect a somewhat lower EBITDA growth expected in 2021. These two items amounts to almost $16 million in positive financial income.
Tax expenses relates to U.S. payable tax as a result of the NMTC unwind, where we had to tax on the gain, as well as Lang also being a tax-paying entity for state tax in the U.S. Finally, EBITDA reconciliation showing total depreciation split between operational assets included in the COGS and non-operational assets included in the depreciation and amortization line. Key adjustments for the year includes Kori launch, $17 million, IPO-related costs, both related to the Euronext Growth listing in the summer, and also planning for the shift to the main list now in 2021 of $2.5 million. Juvel gain, which is a negative adjustment of $1.1 and non-recurring material COVID costs related to chartering of planes and overtime of $3 million, leading to an unadjusted EBITDA for 2020 at $56.6 and an adjusted EBITDA of $78.1.
The balance sheet totaled $700 million as of 31st of December 2020. Total equity was $373 million, implying an equity ratio of 53%. Cash and cash equivalents amounted to $10.6 million as of end of December 2020. Net debt was $232 million. A few key areas to be aware of. There has been a significant increase in accounts receivables and inventory as a result of high sales activity end of year, as well as increased production from third-party manufacturers and our facility in Houston driving up inventory levels. The company has hedged fuel consumptions for 2021 to 2024. This is recognized in the balance sheet as a derivative asset and liability. For 2020, the mark-to-market valuation is recognized as other comprehensive income.
Interest-bearing liabilities show a reduction as a result of repayment under the corporate RCF and the Lang RCF in Q3 2020, and then an additional draw in December of $10 million. Other non-interest-bearing liabilities include the fair value of the Lang earn-out, now estimated at $31.7 million after a reduction of $8 million. Finally, the cash flow. Net change in cash and cash equivalents amounted to -$10.6 million for Q4 2020 and -$2.9 million for the year 2020. Key drivers include a significant buildup of inventory and accounts receivable, resulting in a negative change in working capital, both for the quarter and for the full year. Furthermore, for the year 2020, accrued interest of $15 million were paid to Aker ASA as part of settling the shareholder loan in Q3 2020.
Cash flow from investing activities included the sale of the harvesting vessel Juvel, netted by capital expenditures related to provider milestone payments of approximately $10 million, shipyard expenditures of $6 million, and a milestone payment to previous Lang owners of $10 million for the Kori launch success. Project costs related to protein and LYSOVETA are included in the payments for intangibles. Cash flow from financing activities includes changes in the RCF draw, as well as the capital increase from the private placement in July 2020 of $224 million. With that, I give the word back to Matts.
Okay. Thank you, Katrine. What's the outlook for Aker BioMarine now going forward? When it comes to harvesting, I think one can expect that from one quarter to another quarter, there might be some variation and fluctuations. When it comes to the total yearly harvest, you should not expect big deviations. Aker BioMarine are quite predictable when it comes to the amount of harvest that we have every year. For 2021, we expect to harvest between 60,000 and 70,000 tons of meal or product from the vessels, and you can expect a steady and growing amount of harvest year-over-year as we move forward into the future. As we get that extra capacity or extra product produced without increasing our costs, you can imagine that has big impacts on the margin for our business.
2021, we will have significant impacts on the EBITDA of the company as we get that scale effect, as we get those vessels up to full capacity, and we're able to utilize the operational leverage that we have. We also expect Epion Brands to continue to improving the margins on the human health and nutrition side. A key driver and a significant driver for EBITDA growth in 2021 will be on those scale effects coming from the supply chain. The company will focus now on commercializing the three new innovations, LYSOVETA, INVI, and AION, and we're very focused on starting to create business from these new products as soon as possible.
We still have a COVID situation, but we see that we have now less impact on our costs and efficiencies due to COVID, as we have learned to operate in that environment, also in an efficient way. Going into 2021, we expect lower costs as a result of COVID. On the financial aspirations for 2021, we have planned our sales a little bit cautious for 2021, on the back of having less product coming into the year and also the uncertainties that are around the COVID situation globally. We don't expect the same 17% growth in 2021 as we had in 2020, but somewhat lower growth. We're still planning for significant growth in 2021. We expect adjusted EBITDA margin to significantly improve on the basis of those scale effects that we have in the supply chain.
We remain at our ambition of reaching $200 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2024. We are also now making the move over to the main list on Oslo Stock Exchange. That will happen within the first two weeks of April 2021. We have met all the requirements that the Oslo Stock Exchange asked us for, except for the free float requirement of minimum 25%. We have gotten an indication from Oslo Stock Exchange that they will give us a waiver for 18 months when it comes to the free float requirements. Because of that, we are not planning any transaction or issuance of new shares in connection with moving over to the main list. We're going to end here just sharing also a little bit more details on this scalability on the supply chain and looking at what this does with the unit cost.
What you can see on the left side here, you can see our harvesting year-over-year, and then you can see the unit cost. In 2019 and 2020, we got the Endurance coming in and only slight increase in production. As a result, you can see our unit cost goes up. With the plan now we have for 2021, you can see that significant drop of unit cost with more than 30%. That's going to impact significantly the margins of our business in 2021 and beyond. On the KRILL side, you see a much more steady development, year-over-year improvements, continuing to drive that unit cost down and improving the margins also on the human health side. That's a key driver to get that scalability through our supply chain that will yield significant improved EBITDA for the company in 2021 and beyond.
I'm just going to leave this here. I'm not going to go through it now in detail, but just again, restate the objective or ambition of $200 million EBITDA in 2024. We are ahead on our curve when it comes to EBITDA margin, delivering 27% in 2020, and expect this to be above 30% already in 2022. I think we have had the challenging year behind us, but given that we're still able to deliver performance like this makes us very optimistic for 2021 and the years to come that Aker BioMarine is a robust business. We are in attractive markets with good underlying growth, and Aker BioMarine has a good outlook for good profitability going forward. With that, we're going to open for questions.
If you have more questions now, you just put that into the chat that you see through this Microsoft application, and then Martin here will read them to us.
Okay, at this time, we have one question from Øyvind Mosengen, SpareBank 1 Markets: "Could you please comment on the expected product mix within ingredients in 2021 versus 2022, please?
I guess we're talking about the mix between KRILL and Superba, I would imagine. We are expecting growth in both segments, but on the back of more products coming in as Endurance moves up to higher capacity, you could expect a higher growth in the QRILL Aqua segment than in the krill oil segment.
Okay. We have four questions from Ole Martin Westgaard in DNB. I'll read up one at a time. The first one is as follows: what is causing the lower revenue expectations for Lang in 2021, given the earn-out adjustment?
Yeah. I think the answer is that Lang, as we've done, have planned a bit conservatively for 2021 as the back of the COVID situation in 2020. It's fair to say that Lang has probably felt the COVID pandemic, being close to the situation in U.S. and seeing that the ingredients that they provide not necessarily fall into the COVID basket. They've suffered a bit from that situation, and as a result of that, being a bit more cautious when planning 2021 growth. Still, we are expecting growth in both sales and EBITDA from Lang in 2021. On a bit lower scale and then expecting them to come back on the same kind of growth trajectory towards 2024 as indicated here on this page.
I think also just to add in there that the earn-out structure for the Lang transaction is also based on a very aggressive growth trajectory. We planned for achieving that full when we made the transaction. There's still good growth plan for Lang in the future.
The second question from DNB: what was the revenue for Kori in the fourth quarter 2020?
We're not going out with detailed revenues on the Kori sales. Those are competitive situations.
Following: why is the harvesting guidance soft if you have such a strong start to the first quarter of 2021?
I think it's more or less in line with 60,000 to 70,000. It's a broader range. I think we talked about between 65,000 and 72,000 earlier. I think we're just being a little bit cautious in the planning. There's no fundamental structural change in the outlook of harvesting.
The last question from DNB now: what are the main drivers of the improved EBITDA margin in 2021, and how should we expect the margin to develop during the year?
Yeah. I think maybe that question came in before we talked about the outlook, but I can just repeat that again. We expect as we get harvesting back to normal levels, I think you saw on the previous slide how much that impacted our business in 2021. You will have a significant uplift on our EBITDA just by the fact of getting harvesting up into the normal levels. On top of that, we're going to continue the improvements on the onshore side to get also improved margins from there. Also, we expect quite good growth still, where we will not have the cost following the top line growth. That will also benefit on the profitability and the margin.
As you can see on the slide that we have on the screen right now, we expect continued improvements on margins and also EBITDA margins in 2021 and the years ahead.
We have a question from Carl-Emil in Pareto, and I believe this also relates to the question from DNB, but I'll read it anyway. What is the main driver behind the lower expected catch volumes for 2021 versus previous guiding, and should we still expect it to reach 74,000 tons in 2022, 2023?
Yeah. There's no new information or anything like that that changes the guidance. We're just a little bit more cautious on our planning. Yeah. You can see that on the historical catch levels that we have, that year-over-year, we'll continue to improve harvesting as we do small adjustments and improvements on the vessels every year and throughout the year.
2021 will also be a year where Provider needs to come up to full speed and into operations. Also planning again for some commissioning issues in the startup phase makes us also a bit more cautious on the harvesting volumes for 2021.
Just a reminder, questions can be submitted in writing through Microsoft Teams. We will just hold for some time to see if there's any other questions coming through. We have no further questions at this time. With that, we will end the Q4 presentation. Thank you very much, and have a nice day.
Thank you.
Bye.