Hello, welcome to the Q1 Presentation for Aker BioMarine. Today's presenter is Katrine Klaveness, the CFO, and myself, Matts Johansen, I'm the CEO. Just want to remind you that we will have a Q&A session at the end. You can just type in your question to the chat. Then we will go through them at the end. Before I dig into the presentation, I would like to share my helicopter view on the business for the quarter. First of all, it is a weak quarter that we're reporting today. I did not expect to report numbers like this when we planned the IPO a little bit more than a year ago. There's three kind of very distinct things that is impacting our business this quarter. Number one is the weak harvesting season of last year.
As you might remember, we left $50 million worth of product in the sea due to the technical issues and the struggles that we had with harvesting last year. That makes less product available for sale in the beginning of this year, and it also drives up the production cost and reduces the margins of the products that we sell in the beginning of this year. Number two is that one year ago, the first quarter of last year, our Korean market for krill oil was at its peak. Even though Korea today is one of the biggest markets that we have for krill oil, it is still not at the level it was at the peak.
We don't expect it to come back to those peak levels either, which means that all the growth that we're seeing for krill oil all around the world is just filling that hole that we now have from Korea. Number three is that in the U.S. retail market, it has been quite volatile through COVID. Normally the first quarter of every year is the weakest quarter for our retail business, especially on the private label side. Last year it was a record quarter. Consumers were stocking up products, and retailers were running campaigns prior to the closure of COVID. Through the year, it's been quite choppy and volatile, impacting the comparison first quarter of this year over first quarter last year.
Even if we're reporting a weak first quarter today, we are still expecting good growth for the company as a whole for the whole year of 2021. The main and most important driver for that is that we now have a harvesting fleet that is functioning well. All the three vessels came early to the fishing field, no technical issues. Everybody is producing well, and we have set new harvesting records through the quarter, which means we will have significant more product to sell in the aquaculture market in 2021, and we will have significantly improved margins across our products. In Aker BioMarine, we are well-positioned with clear differentiations, clear value proposition in big markets with good growth projections, meaning that we are staying put for our long-term growth projections for our company. Let me then take you through some more details, starting with the highlights.
As mentioned on the operational sides, things have been working very well for the quarter. Offshore production are really good, and also, we have taken now delivery of Antarctic Provider, the new service vessel, and that is now in operation in Antarctica. Also in Houston, things are continuing to surprise us positively. We had to do a controlled shutdown for two weeks during the winter storms in Houston. Despite that, we are seeing growth in output out of the Houston factory compared to last year, and we are seeing good progress both in outputs and in costs in the Houston facility. The big topic of this quarter is the lower sales. The aquaculture sales is low due to lack of product, as I talked about, but also because of slow startup of or delayed startup of new contracts. We're lower sales on Superba year-over-year.
That's driven all by the Korean markets, but we see positive developments in important markets for the Superba Krill Oil. Like the mass market in the U.S., we're starting to see an impact of what Korea have been doing, and we see growth now in the mass market in the U.S. We see quite significant growth in e-commerce throughout the COVID period, and we see good growth in some of the emerging markets in Asia. Kori continued to grow both with sales out of stores but also with new retailers coming on board. On the innovation side, we are progressing well. We launched INVI protein earlier this year and have gotten good feedback after the launch. Also, our Lysoveta project is developing positively. We will give you more details about that a little bit later.
Revenues for the quarter was $50 million, down from $70 million last year, and EBITDA was $7 million, down from $30 million last year. A little bit more detailed look on the financials. As you can see, compared to last year, there's a $20 million gap on the revenue side. That's about 60/40 split between the ingredient and the branded business. On the branded business, this is all about the private label business, where basically the main difference is that we had a really strong first quarter due to COVID and then had a challenging year following after that with closure and less activity in retail in the U.S. On the ingredient side, the main contributor is on the aqua side as we have less product for sale, but also, as mentioned, the difference of sales to Korea. On the EBITDA side, we have less impact.
The key drivers for the gap in the EBITDA is that we have now basically zero margin on what we sell in the aquaculture industry. We have lower margin from the branded business since we have lower sales there. I think it's also worth mentioning that we're no longer adjusting out the marketing costs of Kori. That's now included in our costs and impacting the EBITDA. As of last year, we actually adjusted those costs out. Giving you a little bit more details on the core business. On the offshore side, we produced close to 20,000 tons in the first quarter. 12% growth versus the same quarter last year, and a significant growth versus Q4. As mentioned, the fleet is now functioning very well. Antarctic Endurance, the new vessel, it's really coming to its benefit.
As you know, we have set new harvesting records both for Antarctic Endurance but also for the other vessels. Far this year, we caught 73% of all the catch of krill globally with our three vessels, and that's a new all-time high when it comes to Aker BioMarine's share of catch. Antarctic Provider service vessel is in operation. No issues related to that; we have now dismissed the service vessel that we have rented. La Manche, our own service vessel, will be dismissed later in the year. On a full- year basis, Provider will provide us with about $5 million-$6 million in OpEx savings, as well as doing the offshore offload more efficient and getting them, through that, more fishing days for all the fishing vessels. On the offshore side, we continue to see great performance.
They're tuning the process, getting costs down, and increasing the output. There was winter storms in Houston, so we had a controlled shutdown as it was not safe for our employees to travel back and forth to the factory. Nevertheless, even if we had closed two weeks, we produced more in first quarter compared to the same quarter last year, and we expect to also catch up all that lost production from those two weeks later in the year. We're making good progress on what we call our project 2000 in 2022, meaning that we should have 2,000 tons capacity in Houston by the end of next year. On the Superba side, it's a 32% drop year-over-year. Mainly result of South Korea shortfall.
I think what is important is that first half for Korea was very strong, and then second half, after the regulatory change, it got weaker. It's a tough comparison year-over-year for us on the Superba first half this year, but then the second half it will be quite different. As mentioned, we are starting to see an effect of what we have done with Kori and increased consumer awareness around krill oil, and we see now increased sale of krill oil in the mass market in the U.S. compared to the same quarter last year. The same, not surprisingly, e-commerce is seeing really strong growth throughout the COVID, and krill oil is a product category that are doing especially well on e-commerce in the U.S. these days.
We have good momentum in some key emerging markets such as China and Japan, which are large omega-3 markets, where we are a good position and ready for growth. On the QRILL Aqua side, 17% lower year-over-year. We had both challenges with little product available for sale. Typically, or last year, we sold everything that we produced. We had a slower startup of some of our new contracts for 2021. Pet side, we continue to grow. I would say modest growth, in the first quarter, but we have good and strong demand both from existing customers and new customers on the pet side. Especially in the Asian markets and the shrimp markets, we see really strong growth for QRILL Aqua, and India has now come up as a new market for us, and in the first quarter it was the third largest market for Aker BioMarine.
On the branded business, the results that we present for our private label business is according to plan. Normally, the first quarter is a weak quarter because it's in the second quarter where all the retailers reset their shelves and you get your new products in there. Lang has done good in innovation and sales towards the retailer this year and have 30 new products that's going to come into the shelves in the second quarter. There's some discontinuations as well of products that did not perform too well and did not deserve the place on the shelf. As you can imagine, Lang is selling mainly through physical retail, and the COVID situation the last year has impacted their sales as a lot of consumers have been doing more of their shopping on e-commerce.
We start now to see normalization of the retail behavior and a good development of the Lang portfolio. On the Aker side, I think I'm just going to skip to the next slide, where I have some more details on Aker or the Kori development. Here you can see sales out of store quarter by quarter, and the red dots, it's how much marketing we're spending. As you can see, in the first quarter, we spent significantly less on marketing than the previous quarters. The reason for that is that we are optimizing now the marketing channels, the messaging, and using all the data and experience we got last year to get more and better return on investment on that marketing spend.
Through that work now in Q1, we have increased the efficiency of that marketing four times, meaning that we get four times more lift in sales immediately in retail for every dollar that we spend on marketing compared to how it was last year. We're exploring new channels like streaming platforms where you can actually target the advertising directly to the consumer that you're looking for. Now, through half a year of experience, we know what the core consumer looks like. Two new retailers coming aboard, Swanson and Wakefern. Wakefern is the biggest co-op kind of grocery chain in the U.S., so an important channel. Also just want to highlight our new ESG platform or sustainability platform that we launched in the first quarter. It has kind of two main aspects.
One thing is the transparent reporting, adopting the standards for ESG reporting, both with GRI, but also climate risk, like TCFD. We have also now implemented full CO2 mapping and measurement throughout our value chain and going to report that on a yearly basis transparently. We have also set new ambitious goals for sustainability across our business, both on the positive side in terms of how our products are improving society and the challenges that we face in society, and how we are kind of operating responsible by reducing our footprint. We have 10 KPIs altogether. The most important ones on the positive side is that by 2030, the next 10 years, we will have 1 billion annual servings of healthy nutrition that will improve the health of people and combat lifestyle diseases. Sorry, 5 billion doses of those health nutrients.
Through our ingredients in the aquaculture industry, we will contribute to efficiency gains equal to 1 billion servings of seafood, meaning that our ingredients is responsible for producing 1 billion extra servings of seafood. On the responsible side, two most important KPIs is CO2 reduction. We're going to reduce our CO2 50% over the next 10 years on top of the 50% we have already reduced it the last 10 years. We're going to have an ambition to have a net zero by 2050, meaning that we will have to phase out diesel as fuel on our vessels. The second key one is that we aim for full circularity for all our primary waste stream, which was also the reason why we established AION, which we'll talk more about a little bit later. Quick update on the innovation side.
On Lysoveta, as you know, we signed the first pharmaceutical deal recently with our partner there, MD3. They are now in the end of their kind of investment road shows and discussions, we're getting closer there. Good interest from investors have now increased the aim of capital to $50 million. We hope to have that closed, or they hope to have that closed within the next months. Going out and targeting those brain and eye health diseases. We are now ramping up production for the Lysoveta product in Houston, and we now have product available for R&D purposes. As you know, we have already launched two R&D partnerships with universities to continue to explore the benefits of Lysoveta.
On the supplement market, we are now preparing to file the regulatory file to FDA, the U.S. regulatory body, and are planning for an approval end of next year, and that's when we can start to commercialize in the supplement side. INVI protein, launched in January, moving fast pace. We have already submitted the regulatory files both for Europe and U.S. After the launch in January, we had quite extensive customer dialogues, lots of interest coming in, both from specialist protein companies, but also from the larger, fast-moving consumer goods companies interested in our new novel protein that is easy for them to formulate into food type of products.
We are now focused on making prototypes for how you can use our protein in different type of food products to kind of demonstrate how it actually works, ramping up the commercial teams related to that and preparing for the Ski factory that we're going to build soon. Just a quick summary. As you know, all those innovations that we're focusing on, both the ones that we have launched, INVI and Lysoveta, but also what we have in the pipeline, are focusing on developing new products where the customers are willing to pay more, and we can get better value for the raw material of krill. Before I hand over to Katrine, I'm going to give you a little update on AION. As you know, AION is aiming to be the global leader for circularity solutions for plastic.
It's a model set up where we control the entire value chain, meaning that we help those that have plastic waste to handle that in a responsible and transparent way. We manage the value chain and then offer plastic products to companies that want to have circular recycled plastic product with the same traceability and documentation. This is managed through a software solution that makes this automated and easy to scale. We offer this in what we call a circularity-as-a-service model, compared to software-as-a-service, where it's basically providing both leasing services for the plastic products our customers buy, but also with those value-added services coming from that software, including all the reporting, all the tools they can use in their marketing to their customers, and the full traceability of where their plastic is coming from.
We have now done some more work on building a plan for AION, and you can see the highlights of it here now. We are in this year focusing to build the organization and gain commercial traction. We want to prove the business model with three to six new customers and build capabilities and organization to handle Nordic markets, because that's what we are focusing now. Using Aker BioMarine's plastic and plastic from the Norwegian aquaculture sector. We have already utilized all of Aker BioMarine's plastic and are now working with the aquaculture sector. As you can see, we're aiming for $4 million in revenue this year, with quite some significant CO2 impacts of all that plastic that we're capturing through this system.
Next year, in 2023, we're going to scale this up, both on the supplier side to make sure that we have local suppliers through the local markets in Europe, then follow our accounts and network throughout Europe and North America. After that, from 2023-2025, we're going to scale this fast in Europe and in North America, both get the large amount of customers and a good control over the whole supply chain network. In the longer horizon, the $2.3 billion in revenue represents 1% market share in PE and PP, which is the plastic types that we are focusing on. As you can see, a quite steep development on the revenues, $4 million in 2021, $20 million in 2022, 2023, $60 million in revenue in 2023-2025, per year we're talking about there.
What have we been doing the last quarter and since launch of AION? First of all, we have now successfully scaled the McDonald's business internationally and now starting to deliver already in first quarter to Sweden as well. We plan to continue to scale that internationally to other countries. We have a new customer, KAOS, which is a fast-growing children's clothing and furniture brand, where we are providing all the plastic products. We have built now a large pipeline of both use cases, different type of plastic products that we offer, and a large prospect list that we are now systematically following up. We're recruiting quite heavily these days to get the competence and hands needed to scale quickly. Focus area now in the short term is that we are continue the recruitment process.
We're going to be in AION 15- 20 people by the end of the year, so we're growing quite fast on that side. We are now in the next phase of software development and plan to launch that and make that available for demonstrations in third quarter this year. We're going to get several new customers and are in close dialogues with many now, and we plan to have that also closed in the near future. Also very important, we have started now exploring the different options for how to spin AION out of Aker BioMarine to Aker BioMarine's shareholders with new ownership structure. As soon as we get clarity on the direction for that, we will update the market. With that, I'll give the word to Katrine, which will take us a little bit more detail through financials.
Thank you, Matts. I will take you through the financial figures for the quarter. First quarter 2021 has been a challenging quarter. We knew already in Q4, due to the shortfall in harvesting, that we would struggle with high unit costs translating into low gross margins, as well as limited product availability for the QRILL Aqua. On top of that, South Korea has not bounced back to earlier levels as we had expected, affecting the Superba sales negatively. Looking at the revenue, the effect of the above materializes into a top line that is almost 30% down from same quarter last year, and also down compared to our expectations for the quarter. Lang performed according to plan, but with a record high Q1 last year, the shortfall is still significant when comparing year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA is 46% lower than Q1 last year.
The majority of the reduction stems from the brand segment, with Lang's decline in sales significantly affecting the EBITDA due to a high fixed cost base, as well as Kori marketing no longer being an adjustment item. EBITDA margin is down from 18%- 14%, driven by the brand's negative development. The ingredient's EBITDA margin is up in the same period. On a more positive note, the net interest-bearing debt has come down with 27% from $406 million- $293 million as a result of the capital increase last summer of $224 million. The company now has a robust liquidity with more than $100 million available in cash and unused capacity under our debt facilities.
The ingredient's revenue is down 28% year-over-year for the quarter, with Superba being the main driver, accounting for two-thirds of the decline due to the loss of sales from South Korea. The sales from South Korea was at peak levels in Q1 last year. QRILL Aqua sales was hampered by low harvesting volumes in Q4, translating into low inventory beginning of the year, limiting product availability. Throughout the year, the seasonality of the aquaculture industry is clearly visible, with Aqua increasing sales every quarter and ending last year with a record high December month. We also see some Aqua volumes now being pushed over to the next quarter due to setup of new customers with frei logistic and import regulations taking longer than anticipated. Moving over to the adjusted EBITDA.
We are more or less on par with last year's EBITDA, despite a large drop in sales, clearly indicating the effect of our operational scale, as well as a strong cost discipline, where we have been able to reduce fixed overhead cost with 9% compared to the same period last year, driving the EBITDA margin up from 19%-24% for the quarter, on track for delivering on the year as planned. For this quarter in isolation, lower-than-planned sales of Aqua has limited impact on EBITDA, as the Aqua product carries almost zero margin in the first quarter as a result of low harvesting and high unit cost coming in from Q4 last year. Looking at onshore and offshore production volumes on a 12-month rolling basis, we see the significant shift in performance for the Houston plant in the top graph.
More than a doubling of production levels on an LTM basis last year shows continuously robust and steady operations. The plant had to shut down in February for two weeks, but we expect that the lost 40 tons will be fully recovered throughout the year. In addition, the ongoing capacity program, with the ambition of lifting total Houston output to 2,000 tons by 2022, is already showing good progress. The production improvements in the offshore segment came off to a slower start, as Antarctic Endurance took almost two years before it was fully ramped up. With a good Q1 harvest, 12% up from same period last year, and a well-functioning fleet, we expect to further reduce the unit cost throughout the year, which will yield higher margins for our products. Current market share is 73%, which is up from last year's estimated 60%.
We have now sublated the leased support vessel, Trinitas, and is also currently reviewing options to take out La Manche from our fleet, as Provider has now commenced operations as intended. The brand segment declined with 30% from Q1 2020 to Q1 2021. For first quarter last year, there were no Kori sales, but Lang had a record quarter with a combination of an early COVID boost in physical stores, as well as several promotional campaigns from the large clubs, Sam's Club and Costco. We do see signs of mass market recovery in the U.S. Kori was launched during Q2 last year, contributing positively, but still marginally, to sales in the brand segment. For adjusted EBITDA, the gross margin percentage for Lang remains unchanged between the quarters. The EBITDA margin is significantly affected by lower sales, combined with a mostly fixed cost base, reducing operational leverage.
In addition, as Kori is no longer in a launch phase, we will not adjust for Kori marketing spend. That will continue through 2021. Kori marketing spend for this quarter was $1.6 million. I will now take you through a few key items from the P&L. Looking at the SG&A line item, it is slightly up, mainly driven by brands where Epion is now included in the cost base. Cost related to the Oslo Børs process is also included. If removing all volume-related costs and the innovation department, overhead costs are down 9% between the two quarters. Net financial items. By end of last year, we had booked our mark-to-market value for the fuel options on this line item. By end of last, however, as we have now moved over to hedge accounting, this is now reflected in other comprehensive income and is removed from this line.
Realized gain or loss on the call options will be recognized as an operational item netted against fuel cost. The company had a net realized gain of $200,000 for Q1. Tax expenses are still limited, with the company only paying state tax to the U.S. up until now. However, we expect to start paying federal tax by the end of this year or early next year, as our tax loss carryforwards will be fully utilized by then. For Norway, we don't expect paying tax for another three to four years. Depreciation and amortization from production assets shows a slight increase as a result of the new service vessel, Antarctic Provider, coming into the books. Finally, this leads to a negative net profit or loss of $9.8 million for the quarter, significantly down from Q1 last year.
The balance sheet is up from $681 million last year, first quarter, to $749 million this quarter, and also slightly up from year-end 2020 with $700 million. The main changes include significant buildup of inventory after a good harvesting quarter, first quarter, combined with lower-than-expected QRILL Aqua sales. The fuel hedge, as mentioned on the previous page, is recognized as a derivative asset on a mark-to-market valuation basis, currently being in the money with a positive value of $9.8 million. Antarctic Provider is moved from prepaid expenses to property, plant, and equipment, adding $72 million on the balance sheets. Q1 2020 included the Juvel vessel, which was sold May last year.
Interest-bearing debt is significantly down from Q1 last year as a result of the capital increase and subsequent repayment of the Aker ASA debts, but up from year-end due to the addition of the Antarctic Provider debt facility of $60 million. With cash on hand of $13.9 million and undrawn capacity under our revolving credit facilities, the company currently have more than $100 million in available liquidity. With an equity ratio of 49%, the company has a robust financial position. Finally, on the cash flow, the net cash flow for the period shows a positive change in cash of $3.2 million as a result of the Antarctic Provider debt facility funding the takeout, but with the company having prepaid $16 million to the yard. Cash flow from operations was negative by $3.5 million as a result of inventory build-up, leading to a negative change in working capital.
On the cash flow from investing activities, payments for property, plant, and equipment was affected by the takeout of Antarctic Provider, and this is mirrored on the cash flow from financing activities with the addition of the new debt facility in net change in external interest-bearing debts. We have also drawn $10 million under the RCF, which is a net item in proceeds from debt issue and change in overdraft facility. With that, I will give the word back to Matts to conclude the presentation.
Thank you, Katrine. Just want to take you through the outlook. I touched it on a little bit earlier. First of all, we plan and expect normal and good harvesting for the 2021 season, 60,000-70,000 tons of production for the year. As mentioned, all vessels are functioning perfectly technically. We also expect Houston to continue its performance and improved performance with higher output and lower unit cost. As a result of those two things, we're going to realize the scale effects as our fixed cost base is more or less the same. As we produce and sell more, the unit cost drops and margins improves, and that's an important EBITDA driver for 2021. We expect sales to improve significantly, especially in second half when we get more product for aquaculture and our new contract starts.
As mentioned, we don't expect Korea to fully recover, but we see good growth in other markets that will compensate for that. We see less cost now related to COVID compared to what we saw last year, and that is now impacting us over a lesser extent compared to how it's been earlier. With that, we still are expecting growth as a whole for full year 2021 compared to 2020. Not as high as the 17% that we had last year, but still growth. We're going to have higher revenues in the second half in the first half for the reason that I have already mentioned, and we expect the EBITDA margins or adjusted EBITDA margins for the year to be improved versus last year. We still retain our long-term ambition of $200 million in 2024.
Then I just want to end with a slide to just illustrate the importance and the impact of good production, both in Houston and on the offshore side. What you see on this slide here to the left, it's the harvesting in tonnage and how much we produced each year. Then you see the unit cost as the line on top. On the left side, you can see the significant drop in unit cost that we are now expecting in 2021 over 2020, which means that the margins that we make for all our products, not only aquaculture, but this is also the ingredient going into our oil production. The margins will improve significantly in 2021 versus 2020. Then on the right side, you see on the Houston side, you see that continued improvement that we have seen over a longer period of time.
We also see then a continued improvement in margin cost or unit cost and margins in 2021 compared to 2020. I have mentioned it before, and I just want to repeat it again, that the performance of Houston financially is actually having a bigger impact on our company than on offshore as we have larger revenues on the oil side than we have on the aquaculture side. With that concludes our presentation. We'll now go through the questions that you have put in. I'm just going to move this over here and then going to start with the questions. Okay. First question here, why do you not expect Korea to come back to peak levels? We have seen that it's starting to slow down its growth.
It's been building up since the shutdown and it's starting to flatten out and because of that, we don't expect it to come back to the peak levels. We're still working on that, looking at innovations and new claims for the Korean market to boost it back to the old level. We haven't given up, but right now we're planning for the sales to stay around the levels that they are right now. Next question, which is I think related. In February, you said that South Korean market for Superba reopened in November, and that you had recorded 50% of peak sales. What is this proportion today? Furthermore, if the U.S. market is the largest market and was up year-over-year, and the other markets that are seeing negative sales growth. We are a little bit higher, but around 50% still of the levels at peak for Korea.
The question was what other markets are seeing negative growth? There's pocket of negative growth, driven by COVID. Little bit in Australia where we sell a lot through retail, a little bit in the health and vitamin specialist stores in U.S. and Europe. Basically, the negative drive is coming from Korea. Yeah, y our chart on Kori shows quarter-over-quarter growth in numbers of units. Is the sales price unit unchanged so that the sales value is showing the same growth? Yes, it does. There's no change in prices for Kori throughout the quarter, t he price has been the same. Okay, next question. You state that you know how the Kori consumer look like, how does he look? How does he compare to your expectations? Actually, it's a she. The typical buyer of Kori is female, a little bit younger profile than what we expected.
I think that is one of the reasons why we are changing the marketing because our typical buyer sits in a higher age range compared to those that actually are buying Kori today. That's one of the things that we're tuning in to target a little bit more older consumers. I think we are now in the kind of group 40- 50, the typical buyer of Kori. They have high education, high income, which is what we expected and what we are targeting, and kind of focused on health and getting the maximum out of their life. I would say it's only the age which is a little bit different than what we had planned, and that's one of the things that we are adjusting now. Next question, which I think is relevant.
As India has emerged such an important market for Aker BioMarine, should the current COVID situation adversely impact sales in Q2 2021? That's a topic that we're following very closely. Right now, it seems like it has the opposite effect, meaning that there's a lot of local supply chains that are disrupted, meaning that they have more need of imports of ingredients to their food production, which they need to keep going. I haven't seen any negative effect of that, but it's something that we are watching very closely. Next question. Could you comment on the target pre-money valuation range for Lysoveta? I think that's too early to comment on, so we will update the market as soon as that's starting to materialize. How is harvest so far in April? Harvesting is continuing to be good. All vessels working well and producing and harvesting well.
What is the catch volume so far for April 2021? We don't report that on a monthly basis; you'll get the updated numbers once we report Q2. Has the offshore production continued at the same pace so far in Q2 as seen in Q1? I would say so, I think also one important information is that the Q1 season started a bit late. It was first in April; it really started to pick up with large amounts of krill. No, February, sorry. Beginning of February. That's when the large amount of krill came into the fishing field. If you look at the February and March harvesting, April is continuing at the same level. Okay, n ext question here. What are your long-term ambitions, I guess it says, in South Korea, given the weak catch up?
I think we are now planning for it to stay at the current level, we are working hard with our partners in Korea to innovate common new claims and different ways to boost that market, because we know the potential is there. Right now, we're planning for it to stay at the current level. Sales should be skewed to second half this year. Do you expect a year-over-year growth in Q2 2021? I think we're not guiding on Q2 specifically. Typically, sales will pick up throughout the year, but with the heaviest part in the second half. Next question, y ou said it took two years to bring Antarctic Endurance up to full capacity. Can you elaborate on why that was? Can you expand on the regulatory framework outlooks for Korea? Yeah, Antarctic Endurance is advanced vessel, l ots of technology on board.
You can do just so much in models in theory at the yard. You need to get out on the fishing field to experience it and adjust all the innovations and the technology on board. We know that from previous vessels that we have built, that that takes just two years to tune in. What happened last year is that we had big challenges all the way until the end. Typically, we gradually improve it. That's the reason, and that's something we have seen earlier. You can say that maybe the alternative is to spend two years more in the yard to model and test theoretically. For us, we get more value getting down to the fishing field and start operating and actually getting production on it. On the regulatory framework outlook for Korea, that's quite stable now.
It's just that earlier krill oil was regulated as a food, which has come out quite loose in terms of regulatory requirements. A change came in where it's now regulated as a health product, and that's much more stricter and more documentation needed, and that's what impacting our sales. There was a full stop while we were getting all our documents into the Korean FDA, and getting the green lights for our products, which we now have. I expect that to be stable in the years to come. Okay, n ext question: As India is the third largest market for krill, do you see any negative effects accrued related to COVID-19? I already answered that. Why weak demand in shrimp? Another question here. Actually, there is not weak, it's very strong demand in the shrimp market.
All that growth that we see in India, for instance, or in Asia, it's the shrimp market. Shrimp is a really high growth market for us now. Could you give some color on China Costco sales, other channels? Yes, we've been in China for quite some time, since 2011, building relationships, which you have to do over a long period of time in China, preparing regulatory approvals, which also have been taking quite some time for us. We're starting to make good inroads now with customers that are launching products and having good experience. We have a large team there systematically working with both key opinion leaders and in the market to convince new brands to launch krill oil products, and more important, do marketing and educate the Chinese consumers about the benefits of krill.
In China and in these type of markets like Korea, it's all about just one of them cracking the code and starting to be really successful, and then everybody will follow up behind and want to do the same. Costco sales, I'm not sure if that's related to Kori or related to China. I'm not sure how to answer that. Yes, that was the last question. With that, I thank you for listening today, and see you next quarter.
Bye.
Bye-bye.