Welcome to Lerøy Seafood Group's fourth quarter presentation of 2022. My name is Henning Beltestad. I'm CEO in Lerøy Seafood Group. With me today I have Sjur Malm. First of all, I will start showing our fantastic value chain of red fish and white fish. Our goal is to create the world's most efficient and sustainable value chain for seafood. The last 20 years, we have done huge investments, going from being one company, one exporter out of Norway with seafood, to be a fully integrated company, from roe all the way out to consumer packs out in the shops in Lerøy brand and also the same from the fishing boats, fishing vessels, all the way out to the consumers.
Last fall, we set some targets for 2025 and beyond. We set the target of NOK 50 billion in revenue by 2030. We have a goal of reduction in total emission by 2030 of 46%. We have a target to be number one farming company, all inclusive, including VAP sales and distribution. We have a target of NOK 500 million EBIT for wild catch in 2025 and a NOK 1.25 billion EBIT for VAP sales and distribution segment and a volume in farming for Norway of 205,000 tons.
Got some challenge with the resource rent tax proposal. I will say that this is a dramatic change for our company and also the whole industry, the farming industry in Norway. Lerøy has invested significantly also in human capital to build an integrated value chain for seafood, a value chain that meet customer need and drive demand for salmon. The proposal is challenging for integrated business models and has a significant risk of lower the demand for Norwegian salmon. We are concerned that this proposal will delay the development of Norwegian salmon in the global industry. Okay. Then I will go through the highlights of fourth quarter. It's been a record revenue for the year.
We achieved a EBIT all inclusive of NOK 15.2 per kilo. We have seen a positive development in VAP sales and distribution, a further improvement is expected for 2023. It's been a challenging biological situation for some of the farming assets. Expected harvest volume included the joint venture of 193,500 tons. We see some signs in lower demand in some markets segments, overall a very strong demand for seafood. The proposed dividend by the board is NOK 2.5 per share. We see the EBIT in the quarter is of NOK 800 million compared to NOK 902 million same quarter last year.
Lerøy report in three segments: farming, wild catch, and VAP, sales and distribution. I will then go through the highlights for each segments. We start with the farming. It's been a fairly okay quarter with EBIT of NOK 14.5 per kilo compared to NOK 13.7 same quarter last year. It's been a healthy performance in Lerøy Aurora, but more challenging biology in Lerøy Sjøtroll and in Lerøy Midt. The contract share in the quarter is of 36%, and the contract prices in the quarter is well below spot prices. We've seen an inflationary trend brings higher price realization, but also significant year-on-year cost increase.
Overall cost in box is up NOK 6 from 2021- 2022. At current feed price, another NOK 5 lift is expected in 2023. If we look at Lerøy Aurora first, it's been good biological performance in the quarter. Still we see some cost increase year-on-year with the feed cost as a key driver. As in 2022, there will be a significant seasonality in the harvest volume, so low volume first half and a high volume second half. Winter one situation is much improved, but not completely eliminated, but much better than the last couple of years. The expected harvest volume is of 47,000 tons gutted weight in 2023. Up from 40,000 tons in 2022.
A good outlook for Lerøy, and they are really on the way back to top performance in the industry. When it comes to Lerøy Midt, some more challenging situation in the second half, and this has impact of growth and quality of harvest. We see a significant year-on-year increase in cost where higher feed cost is the most dominant factor. Expected harvest volume for 2023 is of 64,000 ton compared to 68,000 ton this year, so 4,000 ton down, and EBIT per kilo of NOK 14.3 .
Lerøy Sjøtroll, challenging biological quarter, high number of treatment impacts growth. We see that trout is outperforming salmon in EBIT per kilo, so good biological situation for the trout and a good performance on quality and also on price achievement. Cost increase year-on-year again with feed as the key driver. Expected harvest volume of 64,000 tons for 2023 compared to close to 66,000 tons in 2022. We have Norskott Havbruk or Scottish Sea Farms. It's been an extremely challenging situation in Scotland in general and also for Scottish Sea Farms. Result is negatively impacted with the issue with micro-jellyfish and AGD and a very high mortality cost in fourth quarter 2022.
There has been a low average harvest weight of fish, and the contract level have been as high as 59%. This also will affect the harvest volume for this year and especially for the first half of the year. The total volume expected is 37,000 ton compared to 36,000 ton in 2022. The situation is improving. The biomass in sea now is of good quality and good growth, and we believe that we will come out of this situation in a good way. When we look at the farming volumes in total, I repeat the volumes for the different regions. Lerøy Aurora, 48,000 ton.
No, for next year, 47,000 ton. Lerøy Midt, 64,000 ton. Lerøy Sjøtroll, 64, and a total of 175,000 ton. Including Scottish Sea Farms, 50% share is 18.5 thousand ton. That's a total of 193,000 ton. If we look at the wild catch, it's been a challenging quarter. Most of-- Yeah. The rest of quotas is down compared to same quarter last year, which gives a negative impact on profitability. It's been-- The total year for 2022 has been on the positive side. Good price realization for the trawling fleets, but more challenging for the land-based in the industry.
The volume in the fourth quarter, we have fished 5,700 ton cod, 2,700 ton saithe, 1,400 ton haddock and 3,300 ton other. We see especially the volume of cod is down by 3,000 ton compared to fourth quarter 2021. In total, we keep the same volume in 2022 as of for 2021. For VAP Sales and Distribution, it's been a challenging year, but it's been a year with an all-time high revenue for the total year.
The first half has been challenging, but the second half, and especially the fourth quarter, we see we are back on track with an improved Profitability. We hope and we believe that we are going into 2023 with a normal performance in this segment. Our sales and processing operation now span 14 countries. We have developed this segment over the 20 last years and our strategy is to build facilities close to customers and to develop the categories together with customer to grow the demand for seafood in general. Sjur.
Yes. Thank you, Henning. Beyond the resource rent tax, a key theme in 2022 has been inflation, and inflation obviously impacts our price realization. It's also more and more impacting our cost. It is also impacting our balance sheet as we will see. If you look on our profit loss statement, we see that we have a higher revenue, 9% higher this quarter compared to last year. This is mainly price driven. Looking at the drivers for the operating result or EBIT in the red fish value chain, we can see that the farming EBIT is up this quarter compared to last year, meaning that the price realization is up more than the cost is up. Still we see a significant cost increase Q4 this year compared to last year.
Our price realization is significantly impacted by 36% contracts. Further, the operating profitability downstream, as Henning Beltestad has pointed out, is lower than last year. In sum, our EBIT all inclusive is a little bit down compared to last year. If you look on whitefish, this is where we see the biggest deviation. This is much driven basically by lower catches as Henning Beltestad has highlighted. We had a lower cod quota that gives a lower catch volume this quarter. It must also be mentioned that the value of inventory is higher end 2022. If we had the same level of inventory end 2022 as end 2021 of whitefish, our EBIT would have been NOK 23 million higher within the whitefish segment and in total.
In sum, healthy profitability in red fish, weaker profitability in wild catch gives the EBIT of NOK 800 million . Income from associates, it's been a very, very challenging quarter for Norskott Havbruk, in sum these factors drive, sorry, EPS down 26% from last year. There's a lot of talk in a particular Norwegian newspaper about super profitability in this industry. I think this figure, which is not a great quarterly result, but it's not a bad quarter result in historic perspective either, shows a EBIT margin which is lower than many industries and no clear indication of super profitability. We also see a return level. Here showed as Return on Capital Employed of just about 12%, which is no obvious super profitability.
We think that among other things, what is not thoroughly understood among policymakers in Norway, are the significant investments needed to run a value chain like Lerøy's. We can see that at the end of 2022, we had a total assets of NOK 37 billion, which is a high number. Obviously if you compare our quarterly EBIT to that number, it's not very high and it's no clear super profitability. This is what we try to communicate to policymakers, because in this balance sheet we clearly see the capital need both in tangible assets but also in working capital items. We see inventory is significantly up. We see also receivables significantly up.
There's a huge working capital build in 2022 compared to 2021, which also highlights that this industry needs access to capital to be able to operate as we would like to operate. Our balance sheet is strong. We have investment-grade credit rating and a net interest-bearing debt of NOK 4.3 billion. The slide also then on changes in net interest-bearing debt this quarter. It's basically the factors already commented upon. We see the EBITDA, we see the working capital build, we see CapEx, which is not much more than normal. There's a finance cost on net finance including IFRS 16 effects. We see that in sum our net interest-bearing debt is not changed this quarter.
Another key point discussed in among Norwegian policymakers and Norwegian media is whether or not this industry contributes to the society. This slide. Here we will also point to our hearing response to the ground or resource tax, which has much more detail. Some key points is obviously here the red dots is where we operate. The black dots is where we have suppliers. We have in our own company 3,500 employees in 60 municipalities. These companies where they work, they buy goods for NOK 13 billion from 4,500 suppliers in 300 municipalities, and that generates around 13,000 jobs in Norway. On top of that, we have paid more than NOK 1.5 billion in taxes and fees.
To some extent, this map also shows a little bit on the discussions, because if you put this map close to a population map of Norway, that population map wouldn't show that most people in Norway live close to the capital. We can see that most of our investments are along the coastline. To big extent, what this discussion is about is, should we take capital from the coastline, to central neighborhoods, or should we keep it as investments along the coastline? That is, I would say a pretty harsh debate these days in Norway. Because investments is obviously important for growth, and investment comes also with knowledge.
If you see in our company and if you see in this industry in recent years, there's been significant investments that has driven significant knowledge. Norway today is world-leading when it comes to knowledge in this industry. That had not been possible if we hadn't done the investments and if we hadn't seen all the learning. Here we can see that we have a maintenance CapEx need at current inflation. With inflation is probably in our NOK 900 million range. With the resource rent tax, it will be challenging to do investments beyond that going forward. If you don't see those kind of growth investments, we will not see the same kind of knowledge need or knowledge build, and over time, that will build down this industry.
It will not take one or two years, but in five to 10 years, it will make all the difference in the world for where this industry is positioned. Today it's NOK 40 billion of investments are stopped post the resource tax proposal, which is a big number. What will be extremely interesting to see when we see the final suggestion closer to summer is if the policymakers are able to make framework conditions which makes those NOK 40 billion investment return, because those are imperative to see continued growth and position of this industry in Norway.
For our company, we had already before the resource rent tax proposal, decided to allocate for one harvesting site in Lekneskjølen , that will lower our cost and give some investments around NOK 400 million in 2023. That was already decided and the building process was come so far, it was not possible to stop. We will build a new factory in Båtsfjord, which is a CapEx around NOK 200 million, and that is in whitefish. We had also planned to build a value-added processing facility in Skjervøy in Laukeng, that was stopped due to the resource rent tax proposal. Those investments, when it comes to processing facilities, are important for efficiency gains.
They're also important when it comes to the ability to efficiently utilize all raw material of all quality, and they lower our GHG emission footprint when it comes to transportation. We are terribly sad we had to stop this investment in Skjervøy. With that, Henning, I give the word back to you for some outlook.
Thank you. We start with the supply side, and we see that for 2022, there was a global negative supply of 1%. If we look into 2023, we see Europe up 2.8% and Americas is up 1.2% and a global growth of 2.3%. That is updated Kontali numbers from 13th of February. If we look at the consumption side, in fourth quarter, we see that actually the only growing market, that's the U.S., and we see a strong growth every year now from U.S., and also it looks very promising going forward.
So we believe that this development will continue in the U.S. market. In the EU, we see a more challenging, there is a zero growth situation where, you know, the retail is very strong in this market. There is indication is in fourth quarter that the retail volumes are stopping up and not increasing anymore. That is a key challenge going forward, we believe. If we look at the prices, we see last year we had the prices, NSI prices of the top week of more than NOK 120, and then falling down during the last two quarters, and then we see into first quarter that the prices are increasing again.
So far, this year, we see prices of NOK 91 in average. We also see that the last couple of weeks, we face a high increase in prices again. It seems like we have to live with these kind of fluctuations going forward also. Of course, it's more challenging now to handle these fluctuations when the contracts levels are much lower than normal. If we look at the outlook for the different segments, for the farming, of course, there is a lot of uncertainty when it comes to resource tax.
We focus operationally to handle the situation as good as possible together with our customers and our partners in the value chain. To keep, you know, the stability and as good as possible to be able to grow the category even though the circumstances are really difficult. We expect the harvest volume for this year of 193,500 ton. We also see that the we see higher cost also going into 2023. But we have a strong focus on cost cutting and also operational improvements in all parts of the value chain to cope with the increased cost.
When it comes to wild catch, it's been a healthier profitability in 2022. We also expect high prices and a good profitability on the fishery side for this year. If we look at the quotas, we see that the cod is down by 20%, haddock down by 5%, saithe north up by 15%, and saithe south up by 19%. If we look at what sales and distribution, we expect improved earnings this year compared to 2022, which were a very challenging year, especially the first two quarters.
ound resource access is not optimal and it's hard to handle. We are trying our best to cope with this together with our customers in a good way. We see demand impact from a lack of contract is difficult to evaluate so far. We believe that it will be a challenging situation going forward, but we need to cope with that. When it comes to operational efficiency, you know, we have the target to develop the most efficient and sustainable value chain for seafood.
We see that the, we are working very well and in a structured way with strategic initiatives to increase operational efficiency and profitability in the farming segment. We have a lot of initiatives that is ongoing and also a lot of initiatives that's where effect realization phase is on track. We will have continuously work, you know, to improve all parts of the value chain in the farming segment going forward. We believe that this will make us able to reach our goal in 2025. You know, to make the world's most efficient and sustainable value chain, the sustainable part, it's important to also have on top of mind in the daily operations.
We are working on reducing our environmental impact in the daily operation across our value chain. This describes our value chain and also where we can do the most impact. It's extremely important that all people working in Lerøy is working in a structured way with the continuously improvement also for the sustainability part. We are on a good way in this. We will continue to focus a lot on that going forward. Our goal is to create the world's most efficient and sustainable value chain for seafood. We are not there yet, but we are on the way, and we believe that we will be there in 2025. Thank you very much.