Good morning, good afternoon to all our shareholders and participants, wherever you're dialing in from. It's 4:01. I'm just going to leave, I would just hold for another minute or so to allow other participants to come in before I start today's presentation. Again, good day to all. Welcome to Barramundi Group's first half 2023 webinar update. Let me start off today with our key highlights during this period. As you're aware, our Australian business had entered into a voluntary administration sometime in May, and two of our subsidiaries then were eventually acquired by Tassal. The results for this will then be consolidated for first half 2023. However, the accounting impact for the disposal will only be reflected in the full year results.
I'll move on to Singapore. So in Singapore, we had done our scale drop disease vaccine trial at our St. John's site. However, as we had already conducted two rounds of the vaccine trial, the data had proven to be inconclusive. As such, management took a decision together with the board to cease our grow operations on animal welfare and ethical grounds. It was not sustainable to carry on without a efficacious vaccine. So that was that decision to cease operations was in June 2023, fairly recently. We had taken the remaining biomass, harvested the amount to quickly tighten our operational costs and to cease any seaborne costs also that was associated with the grow operations.
On the sales front, with the biomass in Singapore now unavailable, we have, we have tapped into our regional Kühlbarra allied farm partners. This was something that we had started earlier, negotiating and working with farms that have shared our similar farming practices, high standards in terms of sustainability as well as food safety. We have been importing product from these allied farm partners to supplement our inventories and sales. In Brunei, we had signed a distributorship agreement with a premium retailer. This is just the first of many of the outreach that we are planning for in Brunei.
In terms of other notable highlights, our Bruneian RAS system had produced 5 batches of juveniles and have shown a very encouraging, very stellar FCRs with the facility that we have. This was something that we had done intentionally to test out the viability of a RAS grow out in Brunei. Next point will be, as a group, we had reduced our net losses by 55% from SGD 11.9 million in the first half of 2022 to SGD 5.3 million in first half 2023. We've achieved this through a combination of a very aggressive cost cutting and also decisive operational changes. For example, the cessation of the farming activities in Singapore.
This was all done during this six-month period. Revenues in first half 2023 of SGD 16.6 million is slightly lower than 2022 of SGD 16.9 million with a sales volume of 714 tons. This drop in sales tonnage was compensated by increased retail prices and greater contribution by our value-added processing business, Fassler Gourmet. We've also, in this last six months, worked on what we call the BG 2.0 plans for a grow out RAS system in Brunei. This is now in fairly advanced stages. We've worked, the team has worked, pretty much right through the six months to work out the details of this, and we will be announcing shortly the details of this important pivot for the group.
I will also then share on the capital raise required at that point. At this point, I'd like to introduce my colleague and our new CFO, Vanessa Tan, who will run through the numbers in our financials, and give you a little bit more insights into the numbers. Vanessa?
Okay. Thank you, James. Good day to everyone. I'll start off by giving everyone an overview of the main statements for this first half 2023. As mentioned earlier by James, our group's strategic initiatives have yielded rather encouraging results and financial outcomes for the first period. The main noteworthy progress really is the 55% reduction in our net losses, from SGD 11.9 million to SGD 5.3 million in first half 2023. This is attributed to a combination of proactive cost management strategies and decisive operational adjustments executed during the timeframe. For revenues, there has been a modest decline, but it's been compensated with a larger and stronger contributor from—contribution from our VAP enterprise, Fassler.
This has offset the impact of our lower sales volume from Barramundi, which stood at only 714 tons whole fish equivalent this year, as opposed to 930 last year. Moving down to cost, one notable change that you'll see is the increase in raw material costs, and this is attributed to both the increasing farming costs, such as the worldwide increase in feed prices, as well as raw materials input on our VAP front. Next, you'll notice that our fair value adjustments on biological assets is very substantial, and we have seen a positive increase of SGD 1.7 million this year, as opposed to a negative SGD 7.2 million last year.
This is largely due to an effect of us gliding down Singapore operations, harvesting our biomass out, and hence not experiencing the same sort of mortalities that we saw during the same period in 2022. Next, I will move on to our balance sheet. Our balances for this year have not fluctuated very much as compared to December 2022, save for a few. First, that I'll bring your attention to will be our inventories. Our inventories have reduced rather significantly by about SGD 2 million, and this is mainly due to tighter inventory and procurement policies that we have put in place. Next, I'll bring your attention to our cash balances. Cash balances stands at SGD 6.5 million, a reduction of almost SGD 5 million as compared to the previous period's. And this is reflected in a corresponding drop in our loan balances.
This brings me to our cash flow statement for the period. So cash from operating activities have turned positive in tandem with our operational and organizational changes. Reduction in the sea operations Singapore has helped very greatly in reducing our capital requirements for biomass production, and also helped to relieve our cash requirements. Next, you'll also see that our inventories working capital has also increased to SGD 2 million, and this is an effort by management as well as the working team as we continue to review and improve our inventory management and turnover. Finally, we have our loan and interest repayments, which remains a big, as a very big cash burn for the group. Management is currently in close discussions with our bankers to explore alternative repayment approaches.
Next, we'll move on to the key financial and key financials, as well as highlights for the different regions and operations. For Singapore, we do see revenue reduced by 40%, mostly due to limited product available. As mentioned, this has been affected due to our glide down of our local sea farm operations, which first held an SDDV vaccine field trial and subsequently ceased operations in June 2023, following the inconclusive results. In an effort to fill the gap, we have established partnerships with our verified aquaculture farming counterparts to bridge the supply gap. However, there has been a teething transition, and this has unfortunately affected our revenues for the period. Cessation of farm ops has helped to relieve cash flow pressures as Singapore pivots now to specialize in broodstock genetics as well as breeding programs.
Finally, on the administrative cost front, aggressive cost-cutting measures, especially on executive management spending, has helped to reduce our spending by SGD 1 million just during this six months period, and you see that reflected in our operating EBITDA, which has improved from a negative SGD 1.6 million last year to just a smaller loss of SGD 320,000 in this period. Next, for Brunei. Early this year, we have signed a distributorship agreement with Ben Foods Brunei, who operates a premium retailer chain in the country. And this distributorship has given us the necessary and important outreach for our Kühlbarra brand in the local market.
So while small, you'll see that there is a slight improvement in our revenue numbers, and this, and this is due to limited local limited volume from our local production. However, we do expect sales to grow in tandem with future production, as well as when BG 2.0 comes into play. On the operations front, we had previous trial grown fish of up to 2 kg in our land RAS system, and we have noted that this has yielded stellar FCRs. The data collected has strongly support our case for investing in an RAS growth facility. So as mentioned by James earlier, our RAS grow out broodstock, hatchery, and facilities development, and planning, and budgeting are in the final stages, and we should be able to share with the market in the near future. Moving on to our VAP enterprise, Fassler.
Fassler revenues have increased modestly by SGD 0.5 million or 7% compared to the same period last year. And this is due mainly to the complete lift of pandemic restrictions. We saw the increased demand from HoReCa markets. However, energy and raw material costs continue to remain high, and we expect that to continue so, and this is seen in the slight erosion in our EBITDA margins. So Fassler management will be doubling down and tightening our procurement policies, continually reviewing our operational processes, and improving efficiencies to mitigate this increased cost. Next, we move on to Australia. The Australian operations had been disposed in July 2023, and these highlights presented are pre-disposal and have been consolidated within our first half report.
So sales tonnage for Australia has dropped about 20% to 580 tons in the first half, and this is mainly due to reduced sales to a national supermarket retail chain beyond the base committed amount. However, the absolute revenue has remained relatively constant due to the increased retail price that kicked in in the third quarter of 2022. Administrative expenses have increased with necessary spending on the application for our new leases, as well as slightly higher salaries from the increased headcount in local management. Next, I'll pass it back to James, who will run through the outlook for the group.
Thank you, Victor. I'll now share a little bit more on the outlook for the business, as well as the strategic plans we are working on to see the group pivot, to future viability and profitability. So with the financial burden lifted from the Australian operations, together with cessation of farming activities in Singapore, this has now allowed us to really focus on the pivot and, to basically bring the center of gravity of our production, our production activities, to Brunei. For the benefit of those who are not as familiar with Brunei and our operations there, let me just run through a quick recap. We currently have in excess combined more than 8,000+ hectares of sea and land leases available for developing our plans.
I think this was in a way announced in the past, but just as a quick recap, we have ample leases for us to develop our plans. We also have a state-of-the-art RAS nursery that was built and is currently operational in Serasa. That's very close to the city center, and we have already produced five batches of juveniles from there very effectively. As mentioned, also, the previous five batches have shown that we are able to do so with very, very impressive FCRs, and this has led us also and validated our plans to consider a land-based RAS for our future plans. We have also commissioned our UVAXX diagnostic lab, and we have a team of veterinarian and lab staff there to support the growth in Brunei.
So this is already in place. In essence, we have a very strong start in Brunei for us to build upon. Brunei also represents a tremendous opportunity for the group as it enjoys significantly lower energy, labor, and land costs compared to Singapore and Australia. Energy costs, for example, can be up to 7-10 times lower than other countries like Singapore and Europe. The Bruneian government have also been very staunch and very committed supporters to the group. In part, it's due to their commitment to developing aquaculture for their national food security, as well as a key economic pillar. So for all these strategic reasons, we have built our transformation and pivot plans based in Brunei.
This plan, which you've heard now called, is, as Vanessa and I've mentioned, advanced final stages, and we will be announcing details of this plan very soon. But let me just give you a little bit of a teaser. BG 2.0 will highlight the strong case for a land-based grow-out facility using RAS, Recirculating Aquaculture System, to realize a 3,000 metric ton production capacity, 3,000 metric ton annual production capacity. Again, the unique attributes and advantages in Brunei will make this an attractive proposition. And I again look forward to sharing more with you very shortly, at which point I will also share the plans for the capital raise.
With the cessation of sea operations in Singapore, we have also stemmed significant burn of our cash as an international research and talent hub, our plans will be then to focus our business activities here to high-value, IP-rich activities. So this will include the work that we're currently doing our funded research programs right now on broodstock and genetic and breeding research, as well as our UVAXX autogenous vaccines development capabilities. We will also be accelerating efforts to develop sales channels for UVAXX. On this front, we are exploring with several large producers in the region to produce tailored autogenous vaccines for their farms and for their production.
We have also tie-ups with multinational pharmaceutical, tie-up with a multinational pharmaceutical to help with diagnostic services which they are unable to perform. In short, there are significant opportunities that we will be tapping on for UVAXX to really grow this arm of the business of this group, of the group independently. And I will be also hoping to give you more updates in the future. On the retail and commercial front, as Vanessa has mentioned, to replace the biomass from our farms, we have developed and engaged with these partner farms. So this is how we have managed to supplement the loss in biomass from our wind down and eventual cessation of farming activities.
So despite the supply disruptions to some of our B2B customers, which has reflected in a little drop in our revenues, our Kühlbarra brand still enjoys strong brand recognition and brand equity. We will double down again and prioritize on improving our top and bottom line performance, and also increase sales channels moving forward. Again, Fassler, our value-added business, has performed rather well in the start of the year, but we are managing challenging raw material and energy costs situation. We will try to mitigate that through again at the operational level improvements to efficiency so that we can mitigate the erosion of our margins.
So with this, we end the update for the first half 2023, and I'll just now pause for questions from our participants. As usual, please submit your queries via the Zoom chat function, and we'll try to answer them.... Okay, we have a message, a question from Zuraidah Merican . Thank you. When you say you will focus on broodstock and genetics, will you be working alone or with SFA? So in short, we have several programs currently that we are working with international research institutions as well as some government-related bodies. So, no, it will not be independent. It will be with, in tandem with, other research—external research institutions. Hope that answers your question. Another question from Megan Chia.
Hi, could you give us a rundown of what is the difference between Brunei and Singapore in terms of space and productivity? So, maybe I'll just give an indication again. I think in our Singapore operations, sea farm operations, we have three leases, which are approximately about 30+ hectares. In Brunei, we are looking at about 6,000 hectares at sea. And on land, we have also quite substantial availability of land.
But we have already shortlisted and in fact proceeded with some preliminary works on a site, for example, in Paku, which is, I believe, about 17-19 hectares, as well as Muara Salut, which is a very prime site by the waterfront with no neighbors. So again, it's hard for me to answer as to what is the difference in terms in quantitative terms. It is very, very much larger in Brunei versus Singapore. In terms of productivity, the BG 2.0 project that we are planning and will be announcing is to develop land-based production through an RAS of 3,000 metric tons annual.
In Singapore, I think, in 2019, we have grown up to about 950 ton annual. So in terms of productivity, I believe Brunei will be again the center of gravity for production moving forward. I have a question from Robert. Why RAS in Brunei rather than net pens at sea? So, Robert, I think one of the key challenges as the new management has evaluated, as you know, we have endemic viral pathogen in Southeast Asian waters. In Singapore, our assessment is that net pens at sea without an efficacious scale drop vaccine is just not commercially viable. And why RAS in Brunei?
So as I mentioned, the favorable energy, land, and labor cost in Brunei is a game changer. It allows, for example, one of the highest cost components of RAS, which is energy and land costs, in a way to be largely mitigated. And again, at the levels where, as I mentioned, the per kilowatt cost in Brunei is very, very much lower than in most parts of the world, and that will be a sustainable and consistent rate. When we factor all that into our modeling, RAS provides us that predictability even though it is CapEx intensive, but it gives us that predictability in terms of the biomass that can be produced annually.
While there is always going to be some level of mortalities, it will be much easier to manage once it is on land and with disinfection systems, that's part of an RAS. So I hope I've answered that question. Okay, Zorida, you've another question. Target of 3,000 tons annually in Brunei. When do you expect to reach this target? Give us some potential markets for this fish. Any idea on the cost of production in RAS? Zorida, I think a lot of these questions will be answered when we announce the full BG 2.0 prospectus and plan. The target 3,000 tons has been considered based on obviously all the factors that you've asked, right?
Which is, the market where, where the fish can be, off taken to or sold to, as well as at a, at, at a cost of production that is, favorable for that. So I just ask you for some patience so that we can answer those questions in detail shortly. Megan: What is the percentage of the barramundi you produce for Singapore consumption versus produce for exports? Currently, we do not have farming operations, as you know, in Singapore, so I would assume that you're asking about our plans for Brunei. Now, as I mentioned, the Brunei target of 3,000 tons annual is a significant, a significantly large number.
However, there are markets that will and channels that will absorb this capacity, this volume, sorry. For Brunei and Singapore, I'll just say that, as if you have kept up with the SFA and the Singaporean government's food security Thirty by Thirty announcements, Singapore and Brunei are in many ways symbiotic. Our productions for Brunei will be well beyond, I guess, their own for their own domestic consumption. A large portion of that will end up in Singapore as well as other markets. Give you more details. If there are no further questions, I thank you all for your attendance, and I look forward to giving you further updates shortly. Thank you.