Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Nordic Aqua Partners' presentation of Q1. With us today, we have myself, Ragnar Joensen, CEO, and Tom Austrheim, CFO, and from China is our Managing Director, Andreas Thorud. The agenda for today, I will start with giving some highlights. Andreas will come and give us an update on the market. I'll come back with the operations and projects, and then finally, CFO will take us through financials, and I will end with summary and outlook. If we look at the highlights this quarter, we can see that we have had an excellent production. Production is running very well, over 2,000 tons in production. We can say that Phase 1 is running as it should fully and almost also full run in Stage 2. Very good, even though we started without having some of the capacity in this quarter.
It was finalized during this quarter. Harvest, just under 800 metric tons. We are building up biomass, not harvesting as much, filling up these new production facilities. If we look at the price, we can see the price achievements for the bigger fish is also very strong. We can go for the cost. The cost is coming down as the production is going up. Operational EBIT was -EUR 0.5 million in the quarter. For March, we had a positive EBIT. We are moving in the right direction, definitely. We can also say that we have started to design for the next Stage 3, as planned. We will come back to exactly when production start could commence. The market, as Andreas Thorud also will take us through, is extremely strong in China, growing very fast.
With this, I will just head over to Andreas and please take us through the market part.
Yeah. Thank you so much for that, Ragnar. I think it's very exciting to be able to present this market part and also the sales part because we see two things are happening now in the Chinese market. First of all, the market is happening. We will get back to that, but I think it's also very exciting to see that Nordic Aqua commercially is starting to happen, and we work very hard for that. We saw for the Q1 this year that we had a very good increase in both sales and harvest. We also had a good HOG size on the 771 tons that we harvested. This is actually our best quarter in terms of harvest volume so far. As we get back in the outlook, we will also continue to have strong harvest.
4.4 kg HOG. We are now closing in on what is the Norwegian average, as you can see from the graph on the left-hand lower corner there. As we have said before, our goal is to even increase that further because then we are meeting the demands of the Chinese market when it comes to size. Speaking about size, if we look at our pricing, then benchmarked towards Sitagri in the same periods and weighted, we are 13% on the 5+ kg, which gives us a healthy premium. Obviously, we hope to have that even further. It just is a testament to the strategy of having bigger fish and also the realities of the Chinese market with that preference of bigger size. The average sales price we achieved in the quarter was EUR 7.79.
Obviously we had some parts of our harvest during the quarter was a little bit of a lower size. That means that the prices came down a bit. Overall, we are slightly above the quarter in terms of the average Sitagri price when we take all sizes into consideration. Just to repeat something we have talked about before, the Chinese market likes larger salmon fish. They think it's a better taste, there's a better texture to it. They have better yield when they manually cut it, and there's also a lot of sashimi consumption here, which they are drawn to the bigger size. That's why we see some price sensitivity when it comes to the weight variation, which we don't necessarily see in other markets. I think the graph on the right-hand side just illustrates that.
That when we look at the average Sitagri Index and also our sales in the market, we are 1% above. Once we go above 5 kg , it really shows that the Chinese market has a premium to that, which was 13%. This is just something to take into consideration when you look at China because it's not a fully developed salmon market in the sense that you might see in Europe. There's also a demand for the whole range of sizes from a harvest, which you tend to see there. Moving forward, we are also working hard to establish our brand, our position. We work in different channels. We have a strong sales and commercial team that is working on that. We had some events in the quarter which we think were relevant to talk very briefly about.
We had in Shanghai an event with a famous restaurant, which really put our Nordic PureAtlantic to shine in terms of talking about the origin of our product, the quality of our product, and also adapting it to a local flavor. We see that this preference for what is put in China, the pride of buying a high-quality product in China, is something we are now seeing in this Atlantic salmon market as well. We think that is very good for our further future positioning by building a premium brand of our Nordic PureAtlantic. We were also part of a Ningbo city promotion event in Shanghai, which showcased the product to many embassies or consulates and also business stakeholders. It seems like a few months already, and that's actually what it was.
There was a Chinese New Year in February, and we had a special edition we made this year, which we celebrated the uses of the whole fish, and that was also something else well-received, where we had a small-scale limited edition that we provided to certain stakeholders in the market. If you look at the value proposition we bring here with our Nordic PureAtlantic, we talk about our freshness, which is unique. What is at the top of mind of Chinese consumers when they buy seafood? It's freshness. We have an unparalleled story when it comes to talking about freshness, given our localized production Atlantic salmon. The very high safety profile of our products. We are not using any antibiotics. We have a very controlled environment, and we are free from other medicines and parasites.
That's also highly valued in the local market, where food safety is also a key concern when people are buying food. We also have a sustainability factor to take into consideration. We don't have very little CO2 emissions when it comes to the transport side. We are localized here in this market, which is growing and booming, and it makes a lot of sense to produce an Atlantic salmon on land to cater to what we see is a continuous demand for Atlantic salmon. That also shows us the agility we have by being here locally and building those strategic partnerships that we are aiming through this year, which our sales are working hard on.
That's also based on how we are now getting into a very good rhythm of stable harvesting, and we can be in close contact with our customers and just building the brand equity and also providing a special product to the local market. We seek to do that in food service and also in retail. This is also size dependent. Ragnar Joensen has talked about this many times, but we are in China. We are in Ningbo, south of Ningbo. For those of you who are not that familiar with China, we are in the eastern seaboard of China, very strategically localized. We have a close proximity to Shanghai. It takes us five hours with the truck to get products there. In this wider Yangtze River Delta area around Shanghai, there is a high-income area. There's a focus on health.
We also have a good availability to reach other high-end markets such as Beijing, which we have developed, in Guangzhou, and also inland. We think this is a very good starting point to cater to market. We are very close to the biggest market, which is the greater Shanghai region. We are also an area with suitable water quality, and we have energy at stable prices and also the modern infrastructure that China is so good for that can facilitate an efficient logistics also within cold chain to our customers. There's a lot of talk about the Chinese market these days, and then there's no wonder because there's an explosive growth that has been going on here.
It started last year particularly, but we see that it's continuing into this year with a very impressive 55% year-on-year growth for Q1 in terms of import of fresh Atlantic salmon, which reached around 46,550 tons. If you just use that number as an example, you have a run rate of between 180,000, 190,000 tons potentially for the year. We have earlier talked about an estimate, which was from 2023, for 2030 by Alibaba, who said it should be around 210,000 tons in the Atlantic salmon market in China. We think that is going to be surpassed way before 2030, and we have now looked at another estimate, which is showing a 300,000 tons market in China in 2030 by Pareto Securities, also including Hong Kong, but that's usually around 10,000, 12,000 tons for the Hong Kong market.
It just shows that where we are now, we feel very much we are in the right market at the right time with the right product because there is a very nice growth opportunity here. What we are doing now with getting the sizes there, building that sales organization, we feel very comfortable where we are. If you look at, just quickly, the nature of the Chinese market, there are many competitive origins here. They all want to have a piece of this market. Norway had a strong market share here during the COVID years as it was able to deliver. Last year and this year, it's grown the market share further from after pre-COVID. That's obviously because the prices have been a bit lower. There's a strong preference for Norwegian origin. Obviously, we are here based on Norwegian heritage of Atlantic salmon. We have Norwegian technology.
We also obviously have an association to this Norwegian salmon story by doing it localized here. Also here again, the Q1 numbers are fantastic if you look at compared to last year and the years before. It's really a booming market in China, and we are very excited to be a part of that. Then finally, in terms of pricing, we hope to see that the pricing will return to what has been the average price in China, which has been about EUR 10. If you follow the graph here, we see there was a bottom point last year during the summer. It has been slight improvement in prices as we differentiate between the European origin and the Chilean, Australian.
We hope to see this as the more return to the normal, return to the average, and that puts us in a very good position to leverage our prices and our products. Thank you.
Thank you, Andreas Thorud. I will just continue with the operations. I mentioned briefly in the start that the production has been going very well. Production over 2,000 tons, nearly 2,200 tons for the first quarter of this year. We started with full capacity in mid-February of phase 2. We nearly have a full run rate of Stage 2 without having all the capacity available. We expect this also to continue into Q2. Instead of harvesting much, we can see over the past two quarters, we have built up biomass into the new facility. Nearly 2,000 tons more, or just about 2,000 tons more in stock, which we can generate more harvest from. We have said that we will harvest slightly more in Q2, especially from Q3, we will start having a full run rate on the Stage 2.
If we just have a look at how have the KPIs been since we started operations in 2024. We have produced just over 12,000 tons. All batches have shown low mortality. We have harvested now just over 4,000, and this will continue into this year. We have set the estimates for this year is between 5,000 and 6,000 tons. Average weight was high, then we had a little dip last year, it's coming up again now and also continuing into Q2. Very high, superior rates also. Going to have a brief look at Stage 2. We have Stage 2 in full operations now, which can bring us our capacity up to 8,000 tons of harvesting. If we look at the cost, we have said that previously that we took the cost down. We had an estimate of EUR 77 million for Stage 2.
We took it down to EUR 65. Of these 65, we have paid so far out just around EUR 50 million. We still have some to pay, but most of all systems are fully in operations now. Some slight auxiliaries that still needs to be completed. Of course, we are also looking at our Stage 3 now, which we are starting to design on already. I will give the word to Tom, our CFO, to the financials, please.
Yeah. Thank you, Ragnar. Looking at first quarter, the financials, the revenue as we have touched upon was EUR 6 million, which is 771 tons at EUR 7.79. The released cost from stock was EUR 4.8 million, just shy of EUR 6.3 per kg . That is significantly below our Q4 figures at EUR 2.7 reduction, also below what we guided on for the quarter. That gives an operating EBITDA of EUR 920 and operating EBIT of -EUR 529. We had a net cash flow for the period of -EUR 6.8, and that negative is primarily driven by a reduction in working capital, so payment of payables and also investment in biomass. We spent EUR 1.2 million in investments in the PP&E for Stage 2 and ended the quarter with a biomass of EUR 35.4 million, including EUR 8.6 in fair value adjustments. The equity ratio was 59%.
In Q4, we entered into this transformational financing and financing transactions on the financing side by refinancing existing debt with a syndicate of Chinese banks, onboarding a group of Chinese banks, not only for Stage 2 but also for the working capital purposes that we'll come back to, and also for future Stage 3. The debt is now financed with Chinese banks in CNY. We have RMB 385 million in the syndicated project financed facility, whereof RMB 272 million was drawn at the end of Q1 in CapEx for Stage 2. We have the working capital facility where we have an active dialogue with the same group of banks and some others.
We expect that to come into around RMB 200 million or EUR 24 million, and to be completed within 2026. Last but not least, the same group of banks are in principle looking at Stage 3 when we get to a final investment decision on that one. Together, these credit facilities have refinanced our short-term credits and some of that was repaid during Q1. Thank you.
Thank you, Tom. I will just continue to the last part of the presentation. That's the outlook and summary. If we look at the outlook for Q2 this year, as Andreas Thorud was touching upon, market is growing extremely well. Harvest, we expect to harvest between 1,000 and 1,200 tons for Q2. Average weight is going to be slightly higher than Q1. Estimates for the year, still the same, 5,000 to 6,000 tons. Prices seem to be strengthened also. If you look at the costs, we expect to have slightly decrease also from the current level into Q2. The production is going well still. As Tom was touching upon, working capital is going to be fully subscribed during the year. Project finished with Stage 2, and starting to design and moving towards a final decision when to start on constructing Stage 2 throughout this year.
All in all, we think that this quarter has been very good for us. Good growth. Market is growing. Financing are well in place. Looking into the future by expanding into Stage 3. With this, I would just like to thank you for listening, and then you have had the chance also to put out some questions, if you're interested, during the presentation. You have to write them down. I will just look to Tom here to see if we have received any questions so far.
We have, Ragnar. We have received only one question, which is regarding the Sitagri Index. There was a question here. The Sitagri Index does not include the transportation cost. How should we think about this component going forward?
Please, Andreas, can you?
Yeah. I think the transportation cost is obviously somewhat of a fluctuating cost driver in this. We have to pick something that we can benchmark ourselves against, and we see that by looking at Sitagri at as is, that's one way of showing what we are getting paid for here in the Chinese market compared to as if it was exported from Norway. One can do one's own calculations in terms of estimating a freight cost and doing a type of import duty type of estimation. That's what we chose to have a benchmark, just to show that the premium for the bigger size is something that China has shown to have.
In Q1, we saw sometimes that the prices from Norway in terms of the larger size fish, 5 kg-6 kg, 6 kg-7 kg, 7 kg-8 kg , was the same as the smaller size fish. It was also a little bit of a peculiar market in that respect. In Q1 last year, when we had the same type of comparison, at that time, we had a 20% premium. We hope to increase our premium further as the market comes back to perhaps more normal rhythm when it comes to the demand for the big fish and also obviously the supply of the big fish, which have been a lot in the quarter that was just happening.
Thank you. We can see that there are no other questions in the inbox for us. Maybe we can just wait a few seconds and see if something should come up. Okay. We know that there is sometimes a delay in the system also, so that's why we just have to wait a little bit to see. If not, we can just say also that if somebody raises questions after we have seen them, before we end now, we can come back to you on email perhaps.
Yeah.
With this, I'll just say thank you very much for listening, and thank you from the all three of us. Okay.
Okay.
Okay.