Thank you, Anders. Good morning. One year ago, I held my first presentation as a new group CEO in Orkla. I've now been through my first year, and it has been eventful. I'll take you through some of the main points here. Let me begin with the macroeconomic situation, of which you're all very well aware. As the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were finally being lifted at the beginning of 2022 , the war in Ukraine began. These events have had major consequences and have led to disruptions in our supply chains. Cost of transport, energy, and input factors, all of them have risen to unprecedented heights during this period. Furthermore, there's been sporadic scarcity of commodities and goods, which have required extraordinary efforts from skilled employees in several parts of Orkla.
Let me now move briefly to Orkla's financial results for 2022 before Harald Ullevoldsæter comes back with more depth. We achieved an EBIT adjusted growth of 21% for Orkla overall, assisted to a large extent by Hydro Power. Further, we saw higher organic growth as a result of quite necessary price increases following on from higher cost levels throughout the value chain. Given such a complex situation, it's unfortunately been impossible to maintain our operating margin. One key priority for Orkla in the future will be to reattain our historical margins. We've implemented extra cost-saving initiatives in several areas to ensure that we do not reattain our margins through price increases alone. But allow me to make it clear, however, we will continue to invest in our brands to ensure value creation in the future.
Activity levels have been relatively high on the mergers and acquisitions front over the last year. We've continued to build on our franchise pizza for restaurants efforts by acquiring 74% of Da Grasso, one of Poland's leading pizza chains, with more than 190 retail outlets. Since our first acquisition in 2018, we have to date acquired short of 900 franchised restaurants in Finland, Benelux, Germany, and Poland. We are well on our way towards becoming one of the leading players in Europe. Further, Orkla Food Ingredients has entered the U.S. market with its acquisition of Denali Ingredients, a leading manufacturer of ice cream ingredients in the United States.
At the same time as we announced this acquisition, we initiated a process to see if we could find a partner to continue to develop the potential in Orkla Food Ingredients. This work is now well underway. Another company we acquired in 2022 is Healthspan, a strategically important acquisition designed to strengthen Orkla Health within the fields of consumer health and direct online sales. And just before Christmas last year, we also finalized an agreement to purchase 100% of Bubs, the Swedish confectionery manufacturer. This acquisition has significantly strengthened the position of Orkla Confectionery and Snacks in the Swedish market. And we're also very proud of the fact that we are a completely new biscuit factory in Latvia, as you've seen here, which started production at the end of 2022.
Here, we have consolidated all production of biscuits in one location across all our markets. This has been an exciting project, and the first biscuits from this factory and facility are already available on the market. Let me now move on to what I said one year ago. I made it quite clear that we were going to speed up our strategic trajectory and pave the way for more dynamics in our portfolio. This mandate was the one that I received from the board of Orkla ASA in April last year, when I was appointed to the position of Group CEO, to transform Orkla ASA into an industrial investment company focusing on brands and consumer-oriented operations. Here, it's important to emphasize that we will look after our core values in Orkla.
Transformation will consist in the way we operate and own our companies, and how we develop and continue to develop these for the future. This has been an extremely comprehensive project that has demanded a huge effort on the part of many employees. On the 27th of October last year, we launched our new operative model, which was well-received, and I'm proud that it's been well-received, and we went online first of March this year, and I'm proud of the team we have with us. Let me give you now a few more details about our plans for new Orkla. First thing you should note here is the core of our value creation. That is the 12 portfolio companies you see at the bottom of this slide. These are currently being established with separate boards for each individual company.
Here, we can also recruit external board members wherever this makes sense, and it will also create additional value. Our goal here is to increase value creation through more entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, independence, responsibility, and short decision-making routes. At the same time, these changes will facilitate for more rapid structural initiatives if this contributes to value creation for Orkla's shareholders. We will retain our two financial investments, Orkla Real Estate and Hydro Power. On the right-hand side of this slide, you see we have established three business service companies, purpose of which is to secure important expertise, synergies, and competitive power for our portfolio companies. The uppermost company in Orkla, that is Orkla ASA, has been considerably reduced to fewer than one hundred employees.
We've established an investment team, where we will not only exercise our active ownership, but also take care of Orkla's DNA. That is the expertise we possess regarding brand building, our position in terms of sustainability, sales, et cetera. In addition, we have retained important support functions such as finance, HR, legal, and communication, with a somewhat changed focus. And to lead with me, I have in place a new management team made up of sound Orkla expertise and experience, combined with external experience of active ownership. In order to succeed, we also need to work on less tangible elements such as creating a culture of value creation and motivation in a new Orkla ASA that will be in a position to exercise active ownership of our portfolio companies. In this connection, we have made efforts to determine our new values platform.
In our opinion, bold, inspiring, and trustworthy are values that are key to our organization, and still fit in well with the values of new Orkla ASA. For this reason, we wanted to build on these values, but have formulated a new mission statement with the following wording: creating sustainable value through active ownership of brands and consumer companies. We look forward to beginning to utilize this mission statement, both internally and externally, in respect to our stakeholders, potential investors, and partners. Our next step will be to formulate more clearly what we wish to be Orkla ASA's strategy for the next three- to five-year period. This is an ongoing project, and this, in combination with our portfolio company's strategic plans, will be presented at our planned Capital Markets Day on the 29th of November this year.