Hello and good morning all, and welcome to this fourth quarter presentation from Proximar Seafood. We are today broadcasting from our offices here in Japan. The presenter today will be our CEO, Joachim Nielsen, and myself, Ole Christian Willumsen, CFO. It's been yet an eventful quarter for Proximar, and we will also in this presentation take you through some subsequent events. As we have some new owners following the private placement in December, we would like to start this presentation by a quick "Who is Proximar and what do we do?" session before moving into the highlights of the quarter. With that, I'd like to hand it over to Joachim for picking up.
Thank you, Ole Christian. Proximar is well positioned to be the leading provider of sustainably produced seafood in Japan. Our local production gives us a significant cost advantage and is a key in our business model. We're now into production with ongoing production in both buildings and approaching harvesting coming up this year. Proximar has a well-established platform with an experienced team from the industry, a strong local partner in Marubeni for sales and distribution, and also strong support from our Japanese banks. We're well on track to meet our goals and to benefit from the strong market outlook going forward. From 2015 up until now, Proximar has developed through several stages, starting from planning and engineering, moving into approximately two and a half years of construction, then into production, and now this year also approaching sales and revenue generation.
The first harvest is approaching in the third quarter this year, and we're now intensifying sales preparations together with Marubeni. We are a first mover in Japan, located close to major cities, one and a half hours' driving distance from Tokyo, and within approximately six hours' drive from other major cities in Japan. The production is showing good progress. We see stable conditions in the water quality and encouraging system performance. We're also on track and on our plans to meet the targeted production volumes of 5,300 tons in 2027. Some equipment installation is still ongoing in the grow-out, but this is also aligned with our needs and production plan. We have now one module in operation, the second module coming up for operation and first fish in April, and the remaining two modules to be completed around mid of the year.
Our focus in 2023 has been to build our biomass and also the organization. Through the year, we have now, by the end of 2023, reached a biomass of approximately 40 tons, divided into 10 separate batches. In terms of employees, we have gone from 12 employees by the end of 2022, counting 33 employees by the end of 2023. In terms of the market in Japan, the conditions remain attractive, and the fundamental strong outlook remains. In terms of highlights for the fourth quarter, I would like to emphasize one major event, and that was the startup of our grow-out building and successful transfer of the first fish in December. That was a big milestone for the company. We also raised NOK 140 million in a private placement in December.
We continued ramping up the organization, securing all key positions with relevant people and with people with background and experience from the industry. In terms of biomass, this has continued the positive development through the fourth quarter, and we see stable water quality and good growth conditions continuing. I will now hand it over to Ole Christian to go through the business model in brief.
Thank you, Joachim. Our business case remains solid. In addition to competitive cost levels, there are two main factors supporting very strong economics. One, the very high transportation costs between Norway and Japan, and two, the price level of sold salmon in Japan. Looking at the graph on the left-hand side, we see the implied transportation costs that over the last five years have increased from about 20 NOK per kilo up reaching 40 NOK per kilo. The last 12-month average is now standing at 37 NOK per kilo. On the right-hand side of this slide, you see the red line as a benchmark over the market prices in Japan, represented at the Toyosu Market being the largest auction in Japan. Prices have been stable above 100 NOK for many years and then also increasing quite a lot since middle of July 2022, reaching more than 160 NOK.
Looking into what this means for our business case and our margins, we see on the right-hand side of this graph the various EBITDA cost levels at various production volumes. Our target is to produce, like Joachim just mentioned, 5,300 tons a year, then corresponding to an EBITDA cost of 59 NOK per kilo, as you see in the dotted frame. That is quite below the estimated net price of 143 NOK. And we also see that we can remain profitable at all these annual harvested volumes depicted on this graph, including as low as 2,000 tons per year. And I'd like now to hand it back to Joachim to take us a little bit through the market outlook in Japan and also in the other key Asian markets.
Thank you, Ole Christian. When it comes to the Japanese market, we have seen the prices increasing quite significantly the last couple of years, approximately 50% up since 2021. This has affected consumption and demand, and we have seen the demand falling approximately 30% during the same period. We believe there has been a substitution from Atlantic salmon to other species like tuna and yellowtail, which have, relative to Atlantic salmon, not seen the same price increases and have become relatively cheaper. So that is a short-term effect that we believe also has impacted this substitution effect. However, we believe the long-term positive demand growth will continue. We have seen for many years a stable and steady growth in the Japanese market for Atlantic salmon, and we believe that this will continue going forward. Part of this is also explained by the younger generation's preference for Atlantic salmon.
Atlantic salmon was introduced in the 1980s to Japan, so it's a relatively new fish and still not part of the main menu. However, the younger generation has a strong preference for the fish, and we believe that will also be a key driver when we look into the future. Still, we see a relatively low consumption per capita in the Japanese market compared to other markets. Our main market is Japan, but we are also considering export of some volumes to other markets in Asia. The Asian market is a high-growth market for Atlantic salmon. We believe the growth will also continue here, showing a positive trend in the years ahead. Proximar wants to take a position also for exporting some of our volumes. This has also been the plan since inception, and it's something we want to develop, certainly when considering future capacity expansion.
Japan has a strong reputation of seafood, and this combined with our Mount Fuji image, we believe, represents an attractive opportunity for Proximar in markets abroad, and we have also received incoming interest for our fish. In April 2022, we signed a 10-year offtake and sales and distribution agreement with Marubeni Corporation. This also means that Proximar can now focus on production, leaving the sales and distribution to Marubeni going forward. We would deliver fish at the facility, and that is where Marubeni takes over and takes the fish to processing and further to the market. All volumes will be handled by Marubeni. We are now in discussions, planning on the sales and marketing strategies, which are, of course, increasing in terms of intensity going forward. We receive very strong and good support from Marubeni. They have a dedicated team working with Proximar, also assisting on marketing and branding.
Having said that, the brand is owned by Proximar, and we are in the progress of registration of name and logo. We continue to see strong interest, and we can also see that the potential customer group is becoming more targeted and more specific in the discussions. Regretfully, and as communicated on the 5th of February, we had a breach in one of the large production tanks in the grow-out building. The breach was caused by leakage between the floor panels and the center module in the tank, the section below the tanks, again causing a sudden breach in one of the floor panels. This is unfortunate, and we are taking the measures and actions needed to avoid similar situations in the future.
This means that we will take actions for all the relevant tanks in the PSG building or the grow-out building to avoid leakage and eliminate the risk of such breach. Specifically, we are planning to put polyurea in all connections, combined with strengthening of the foundation around the center modules to prevent leakage and strengthen the connection between the center module and the floor plates. The cost estimated for these measures is around NOK 5 million, as previously communicated. We believe this is a good investment to make sure that we have the necessary safety margin in terms of similar situations going forward. As we have still limited fish in the grow-out building, we can easily also take preventive measures for all the tanks. This is what we are doing now going forward.
The tank breach also had implications to our fish in the tank, meaning that we had a loss of approximately 50,000 fish. This represents approximately 5% of our total amount of fish in the facility, but still 50,000 fish that were scheduled to be harvested towards the end of fourth quarter this year. It does impact the harvesting volumes in 2024 by approximately 250 tons. The loss of fish has a short-term effect on volumes, however, a limited impact on the medium term, considering 2024 and 2025 harvesting volumes. It also has a cash effect towards the end of the year due to the loss of revenues, which should have been generated by the 50,000 fish, but still within the contingencies of our financial planning.
In terms of production, we are very encouraged by the development and continue to see the system performing very well in terms of adequate water quality and good growth conditions for the fish across all batches and all departments. The graphs here show some of our batches, and we try here to illustrate the effects that were deliberately done in December with the reduction of temperatures in the nursery building to make sure we had sufficient contingency in time for the transfer to the grow-out building. So we reduced temperatures to slow growth, and we can see this also impacting the growth curves starting around December.
Since transferring fish to the grow-out, we have also needed to get the biofilter mature, meaning that we had for a large part of January to restrict feeding to maintain adequate ammonia levels before we could get the right bacterial culture in the biofilters and get them up and running and proceed to regular feeding. By the end of January, the biofilters were matured, and we could proceed on regular feeding, as you also see here. And exiting January into February, we see that the growth pace is picking up again. So we now see production back to normal in terms of feeding and in terms of temperatures, which have had the impact during December and January. We continue to see low mortality across all departments.
Going forward, we will also continue to insert a higher amount of eggs through 2024 as a contingency in our production plan to secure adequate buffering in case of future incidents during the startup of our grow-out building. For the hatchery and nursery building, as for the third quarter, we did not have any issues during the fourth quarter. We've shown this slide before showing the water parameters, some of the water parameters in the production. This slide, for the first time, is for the grow-out building where we have now transferred the first batches of fish. So we see that the water parameters remain stable and well above the threshold values, with the exceptions of ammonia, which is the illustration of the biofilter activity.
You see on the graph here that up until around 22nd of January, we had ammonia levels well above threshold values, which is explained by the immature biofilter. It gradually started to mature, and we could see activity picking up towards the mid of January and then getting up and running to full functionality towards the end of January and into February, which again permitted us to go back to regular feeding, as I described on the previous slide. In terms of staffing and recruitment, we continue building our team and are well on track for 2024 and for the first harvest. I keep repeating myself, but I'm very pleased about the strong and dedicated team we've been able to put together. We have also now filled all key positions with people with relevant background, not just from aquaculture, but also from wastewater, water chemistry, etc.
We're now counting 38 employees, up from 12 at the end of 2022, and we'll continue recruiting also going forward, but are well in line with our staffing plan. Our team is doing a fantastic job and working hard to deliver on our targets going forward. I will now hand it over to Ole Christian for the financials.
Yes, thanks, Joachim. Starting with the profit and loss, we are in the quarter reporting loss of NOK 53 million before taxes and NOK 44.8 million after taxes. There are two main contributors to this result that I'd like to highlight. One is a charge of NOK 14.3 million, which is an adjustment we've made due to the unutilized production capacity during 2023, as our facilities are still in the ramp-up phase.
In addition, a large part of the net financial charge of NOK 22.7 million consists of a disagio in connection with an intercompany transaction where we converted part of the debt in our Japanese daughter company into equity in order to strengthen the balance sheet. When doing so, due to the Japanese yen having decreased towards the krone, this resulted in a disagio of about NOK 14 million. Looking at the balance sheet, about 92% of our assets are represented through the value of our land, buildings, and equipment. Moving over to the equity and liability side, our equity stands at NOK 372 million, while the liabilities amount to just over NOK 1 billion. The largest part of that is the syndicated loan here in Japan, consisting of about NOK 615 million. Then it's the convertible loan we have in Norway, about NOK 205 million.
Finally, on the non-current liabilities, it's the shareholder loan to Grieg Kapital of about NOK 95 million. Together, the non-current liabilities then amount to NOK 914 million. Finally, on the current liabilities, the biggest part of that is the remaining part of the JAML loan, which now consists of NOK 53 million. Some subsequent events relevant for financing. As Joachim has already mentioned, we had a private placement in December. This was approved by a general assembly on January 3rd this year, and it led to NOK 132 million in added liquidity for the company. Another NOK 23 million in added liquidity came from the subsequent offering that we carried out now in February. And in combination, we have then covered a large portion of the funding requirement that we communicated in our third quarter report in November.
Finally, also, we are now working on refinancing the remaining part of the JAML loan of NOK 53 million that I mentioned. That loan has a current repayment date at the end of March, but we are in the process of extending that loan by at least one year. And with that, I'd like to hand it back to Joachim one final time for the summary and outlook session.
Thank you, Ole Christian. Wrapping up, we are very encouraged by the performance of our system. We see that it has a good capacity to maintain the water quality, and we also see the growth of the fish across all batches according to our expectations and good fish health.
We're also excited to have started up the grow-out building and will continue transferring fish as we proceed in the year and approach also the milestone of 2024 with the first harvest in third quarter. The outlook remains attractive with good fundamentals for the Japanese market in terms of Atlantic salmon prices, and we also expect demand growth to continue going forward. We have a good team in place working dedicated to secure a good production, and we are looking forward to the years ahead. Thank you, and we'll now open up for questions, which will be led by Marius from our office in Bergen. Yes, welcome to this Q&A session in conjunction with Proximar's four-quarter reporting. My name is Marius Birkenes. I'm the Director of Strategy in Proximar, and we'll function as the moderator in this Q&A session.
Our CEO, Joachim Nielsen, and CFO, Ole Christian Willumsen, will be answering the questions from our Yokohama office. We have gotten a few questions already, of which the first one is whether the tank breach incident affected production in any other tanks in any way.
No, it did not have any direct impact on the other tanks and the production, so it was for all practical reasons unaffected. Thank you. The second question is related to branding and what will be the main selling points for Proximar, the Mount Fuji/Japanese product or the Nordic heritage? As we see it, we are targeting more the Japanese angle, and this is something that we have been working on for quite a bit. Our value proposition to the market is locally made salmon from Japan, and this is what's important to also build in our profile.
We'll get back to the more specific brand as we proceed, but for the market, we believe that the Japanese is the key selling point. From the distributed graphs, both the growth and water quality seem to be very good. Do you see any issues going forward?
I think what we've seen so far is that the system has very good capacity in terms of maintaining adequate water quality. We've seen it from the nursery building, which is the same type of system as now taken into operation in the grow-out. There's a high efficiency in oxygen saturation, in CO2 stripping, and in the biofilter. We see also at higher densities that the water parameters are well in line with what should be the adequate levels for the fish.
From the graphs, you see that we've been through a period of maturing the biofilter, which was the main impact on the growth as such. In December, we tuned down the temperatures to slow growth. That was intended. Now that the biofilter has matured in the grow-out in the first module, we expect the water capacity and treatment to work as we've seen in the Nursery.
Another question, if we could please elaborate on the expectations regarding marketing and sales of the salmon in Japan?
Yes, we are working together with Marubeni on the marketing and sales strategy. We have, as said several times, received quite a lot of interest for the product and for our project as well in the Japanese market and in the media.
We believe this is also valuable going forward and will be more visible once we get closer to harvest and have more market-sized fish to show. We are working also on the branding, and this is coordinated together with Marubeni.
Okay, then we have no more questions, but you are always welcome to send any additional questions to Ole Christian Willumsen by email. Our next reporting is the 2023 annual report, which will be published on the 22nd of March, and we will also distribute a production update at the beginning of April. We also will return with the first quarter 2024 report presentation at the 16th of May. And also, so we just got a question at the end here. We can take that before we round off. The estimated EBIT cost levels per kilo on different utilization rates seem slower relative to your update at the third quarter. Is there any changes?
Yes, I think the change is that we are now reporting on the EBITDA level. So before, and that's what I think the question is referring to, we reported at EBIT cost. Now we are reporting at EBITDA cost. So that is lower by approximately 10 NOK per kilo representing then the expected depreciation and amortization. So there are no changes as such, but change in what we report on.
Okay, thank you. And with this, we conclude the Q&A session and wish everyone a nice weekend. Thank you.
Thank you.