Throughout the recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, and I would now like to hand you over to the management team of ReFuels. Philip, Baden , good morning.
Good morning. Thank you. Yeah, welcome to everyone watching this, whether you're doing it live or on a catch-up. As mentioned, we're going to take you through, sorry, our Q2 results, for the July to September period. Please, do take the opportunity, if you do have any questions, to put them in the chat box. As always, you can also get hold of us after this call at any point in time. We've got our email addresses out there. Without further ado, let's crack on. What is it we do? Just a couple of highlights. We own, or ReFuels owns 40% of CNG Fuels, which again has 16 large grid connector stations in the U.K.
The dispense is 100% renewable and sustainable biomethane, into trucks, or as we call it, Bio-CNG, which offers greenhouse gas emissions in the range of 85%-90% compared to regular diesel. For calendar year 2024, we supplied more than 50% of all biomethane that goes into trucks, whether that is supplied through Bio-CNG, which is what we do, or through Bio-LNG. By putting biomethane into trucks, we can also generate Renewable Transport Fuel Certificates, RTFCs, which Baden will touch a bit upon later on with regards to earnings. As of, currently, we've got about, currently it's about 2,150 trucks using our network. What's important to understand there is this is no longer a niche application where we've got a couple of large customers that do this. We've got more than 165 unique customers that use our network pretty much every day.
There are benefits to our customers here, not only greenhouse gas emissions, but also saving cost. Over the last five plus years, we have helped our customers save more than GBP 50 million of fuel cost. Finally, for the last year, or this is calendar year 2024, we have helped our customers reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from typically long-haul transport by more than 220,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. We always have a slide showing one of our stations, just to give you a bit of a visual image as to what it is we actually do. We change it this time around. Today it's Warrington. That's the M62 motorway you see there, the one that goes between Manchester and Liverpool. Why are we showing Warrington? We built it in, or we opened it in late 2019.
It currently refuels north of 500 trucks a day, dispenses more than 700,000 kilograms into trucks during a month, is cash flow positive. As such, you know, it's a good metric for what a typical station can do. We often talk about how many kilograms we can put through a station, you know, the fact that it provides positive IRR, et cetera. I think one aspect we haven't been speaking that much about previously is the fact that when we come into an area, we buy some land, and we develop that land, we often also provide a direct uplift to the value of that land. Warrington is a good example. We bought it for X back in 2019, and today the land value is estimated at 4X of what we bought it for.
It is not only the ongoing operations of that, of that site, but it is also banking some land value for the future. If we then look at the highlights for this quarter, we had 16% growth year on year with regards to volume. Now, most companies would be happy with the 16%. We are not really happy with that. We feel we can do better and we should do better in the future, but still, it is not a bad number. Why do we feel we can do better in the future? Because we are now starting finally to see 6x2s arrive. Not massive numbers yet, but given the visibility we have, given what we are hearing from customers, we do expect that to ramp up quite quickly next year. We have got raised funding, GBP 25 million that we announced six weeks ago, whenever it was, to build another three stations.
The first one of those in Magor has gone into build. If you look at that EBITDA, we are up 190% quarter on quarter, and we are pleased to have announced that we are raising our guidance for this financial year from GBP 8-10 million up to GBP 10-12 million. Finally, we often have questions, you know, are we looking to list somewhere else or change our listing venue? Yes, that is something we're considering, whether that is through an uplisting in Norway or through also a dual listing on another exchange, which is something that we'll get back to in 2026. If we then just take a quick look at the operational review, the left-hand side here, I think is a good illustration of what we can achieve once we really get going.
As of today, we are about 10% of the so-called four by two market, where there are about 21,500 registered 4x2s in the U.K. Today, about 10% of those are CNG trucks. If you then go back to when we founded the company, of course, the graph here only shows back to 2020. If you go back to when we founded the company in 2014, the number was zero. I think it is a good illustration of the type of adoption we can see. On the right-hand side, we have split the dispense volume into two. The lighter green is from our grid connector stations, and the darker green is from our mobile refueling stations, which are an important, you know, have an important role in making sure that we can get volume into fleets that do not happen to have a distribution center nearby, one of our stations.
That is a solution we came up with in 2020, and it is something that we're looking, or we expect to grow quite quickly going forward. If you are a fleet in the U.K. and you're adopting Bio-CNG, there are two key metrics you look at. The first metric is you are looking at the economics. As our customers say, yes, they might be large PLCs, they might have very strong balance sheets, but at the end of the day, they can't really afford to go green and lose money. That's just not an option for them. What are they benchmarking us against? Your day-to-day benchmark might be comparing Bio-CNG to running a regular diesel truck on regular diesel. The other benchmark is against HVO.
We've seen positive price spreads there develop over the last, let's say, six months. We're now at 25%-30% cost savings compared to regular diesel, and now we're north of 40% cost savings compared to HVO. Particularly HVO has really, that spread has really blown out in favor of Bio-CNG in the last six months. What is it that's driving HVO prices up? For those of you who've seen these presentations before, you know, we've spent a lot of time talking about how sustainable aviation fuel largely uses the same feedstock as HVO. Now we're starting to see the effect of sustainable aviation fuel mandates gradually starting to tighten that market. As a result, sustainable aviation fuel prices are going up, and it's dragging HVO along with it. A couple of exciting customer announcements in the last two, three months.
Tesco and Co-op, and now we have eight out of the 10 largest supermarket chains in the U.K. are now customers of ours and are now running CNG trucks, and all of those have plans to continue to order CNG trucks into the future. Next year, we'll see a lot more other customers come on here as well. The 6x2 offering here is an important one because, as I say, you know, here you see two examples of so-called 4x2 trucks, which is a much smaller market than the 6x2 market. As such, as the 6x2 really starts to get into customer hands, we will see our customer base also rapidly expand. Here is one of the 6x2s. This is an M&S photo. As of today, we've got about 130 6x2s in operation.
It's a very, very small part of our customer base and an even smaller part of the overall fleet of 6x2s on the road in the U.K. There are about 144,000 6x2s in operation in the U.K. today. So 130 of those being CNG is negligible. However, if we look at the interest in the 6x2, if we look at the interest in demoing it or trialing it, it is something we've never seen before. We've basically given up trying to stay on top of the demo list and the trial list, but the interest, as I say, is extremely encouraging. We are expecting the number of 6x2s on the road to start to expand rapidly.
We announced probably about six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, that we've done our first, meaningful fixed price Bio-CNG biomethane contract, with one of our customers. Why is this important? From the customer perspective, it gives certainty. The majority of our customers are not risk takers. They see fuel, they see trucks as a necessity, not something that they're there to speculate on price movements. As such, that gives them longer-term visibility. Of course, their finance department can then plan according to budgets, et cetera. From our perspective, it also gives us visibility. We get visibility on volume, et cetera, et cetera. This contract is, for now, it stretches out 18-24 months. We are very excited about it because, one, it's the first one we've done, at this scale.
Two, now that we've got the first one done, we're excited about rolling this out to other customers. I mentioned the GBP 25 million that we announced about six weeks ago. That GBP 25 million is currently being deployed into building more stations. The first one has gone into build already, and then there will be two after that. We have an ambition here to basically essentially double our refueling capacity from currently north of 11,000 trucks up to basically 20,000 trucks by the end of 2028, through a mix of new grid connected stations and additional mobile refueling stations. Here you see that the last new station we opened was Livingston back in May. We've currently got Magor in South Wales in construction. We've got Swindon going into construction pretty soon.
The third station that we'll be building under the GBP 25 million facility, we will announce that in Q1, which one that will be and where it will be located. Sometimes we, you know, get questions. How hard is it to develop the type of infrastructure you're doing? The answer is not so hard, but also very hard. Why is that? First of all, there's a lot of clearly design and R&D that's gone into the actual, how the stations are designed, operated. There's a lot of stuff that goes on underneath the hood here. If you look at just the process that leads up to something that we call shovel ready, which is when you can put digs on site, as you see here, a lot of people just think that is a short process. It's not.
It could take many, many, many years, unfortunately, from negotiating with landowners, agreeing with landowners, doing your surveys, getting, submitting a planning application, finally getting the council to provide planning approval, then discharging conditions, and then being ready to go on site. This is a really, you know, drawn out process, from we identify a location where we would like to have a station until we get to shovel ready. Best case, we're probably looking two to three years, but we've got sites that have taken us a lot longer. It's not just if you look at the competitive advantage we've got, it's not just about how do we actually build the stations, how to design them, how do we operate them.
There is also a competitive advantage here in the fact we have our own land team, who have made sure that we have a pipeline of future sites we can develop, which has been ongoing for many, many years. I mentioned RTFC prices previously. If you look at historically, the average price has basically been GBP 0.26 . We are now trading just marginal, the certificates are trading marginally above that. What is it that is supportive of the certificate price? A couple of things. First of all, the biodiesel market is in a better position and more balanced than it was previously. Finally, we have now started to see the impact of sustainable aviation fuel and the fact that feedstocks used to produce sustainable aviation fuel are also dragging up the price of biodiesel.
Finally, this is a hot topic within the EU currently, but we're also starting to see the effect of EU member states now starting to adopt RED III, RED meaning Renewable Energy Directive number three. With that, I will hand it over to Baden.
All right. Look, I just might describe what you're seeing here. First of all, these are the results of CNG Fuels, and the metrics of CNG Fuels, the operating business which ReFuels has the 40% share in. We show this because, of course, it's the best proxy for considering the value of ReFuels itself and the performance of the underlying business.
If you want to see ReFuels standalone accounts, they are available at the end of the presentation as well as in full at the end of the report, as well as a more comprehensive view of the CNG Fuels figures as well. Obviously very pleased to say we've increased our guidance for 20% for this financial year. You know, it's easy to say we're sort of seeing, say, it's easy to say we're seeing continued favorable market conditions, where it's actually the reality that these, we are sort of bang in line with historical market conditions that we've seen on average across many years of this business operating, with, you know, with the exception of a period of depressed prices about a, you know, a year and a half, two years ago now.
With that, the underlying growth of the business has continued to provide, to boost earnings, and the improved visibility we now have on EBITDA generation from a combination of both the station network and the biomethane RTFC business enables us to have the comfort in raising our guidance, as we have done. Why is that? The station business itself obviously has predictable earnings, given the captive fleets that come through us and the visibility we have on the orders of new vehicles showing up. On the biomethane and RTFC side of the business, we have had the ability to forward sell a lot of our RTFCs for the year and forward purchase biomethane.
For the periods of 2025 and a lot of 2026, we have a high confidence in the earnings that can come from that side of the business too. Gross profit margin on the RTFCs sold in the quarter was 29.7%. You'll notice there's a difference in the way it has to be accounted for in our formal accounts at 22%. Of course, this will balance over time, but our financial year is a difference to our, to the calendar, calendar obligation year. It just depends on the timings of when RTFCs arrive.
For the purpose of the business and the understanding of performance based on how we've shown it historically, the gross profit margin has been 29.7%, which is very healthy and in line roughly with our historic average around 30% gross profit margin on these RTFCs. We've had a 20% increase in revenue over the year. You'll note, Philip mentioned a 16% increase in volume corresponding to a 20% increase in revenue. However, our EBITDA has more than quadrupled for the first half of this year versus the first half of last year. You can really start to see that operating leverage we have as we continue to boost revenue. We're having an outsized impact on our earnings at the same time. Continued growth in volumes is translating to excellent bottom line growth.
I just wanted to mention here, a couple of items you see. First of all, there's a growth that we have. We are continuing to grow the station profitability in the business in this quarter. Last quarter, we had roughly an even split in the gross profit between the CNG station business and the biomethane business. We were slightly undersourced from the biomethane business last quarter, which has been largely caught up in this quarter. In this quarter, we had a two-thirds, one-third split between RTFC, the biomethane part of the business, and the station part of the business. EBITDA contributions between the two were GBP 3.5 million from the biomethane side of the business versus a negative GBP 650,000 on the station side.
However, that station, that negative performance on the station, negative earnings on the station side, is improving, and it is approaching, approaching zero. You have, we'll have seen previously that we showed the earnings of the stations as being very positive, which is absolutely correct. However, of course, now that we've brought the entire business together, we now have the full overhead of the CNG Fuels business, including all of our development activities and transport activities. When you combine those two parts, that entire side of the business, it's currently negative earnings.
However, with a modest amount of the deliveries that are already confirmed for delivery over the next year, we see the station part of the business, on its entire basis, breaking even in the first half of 2027, along with the continued performance of the biomethane side. What's really great about those two revenue streams is they are intrinsically linked to improving volume. However, they are two separate streams, two separate revenue streams from what they are derived from. With those two streams being positive, it's really going to help underpin the earnings growth of the business and help de-risk the business as well.
I'd just like to also mention the overheads and efficiencies across the business, which we've been really focused on, on our cost, on our cost base over the last year as we continue to grow volume through and utilize the resources we have already deployed, and CapEx we've already deployed into the business. Now that we have brought them together, we can see the overheads of the entire station side together. What we see is from the first half last year, we had a GBP 0.26 per kilo overhead across the entire station business. That has reduced to GBP 0.215 per kilo in the first half of this year. That is about a 20% decrease in overhead per kilo.
We anticipate that will continue as we maintain cost control but continue to drive new volume through the station network. Here you can see a picture of the new financial, the balance sheet of the CNG Fuels business. It was a very strong part of the narrative and consideration we had in the transaction we completed with Foresight to bring the stations back into the CNG Fuels business and bring the RTFC shareholding under the CNG Fuels business as well. Everything was in one place. What we have now is dual revenue streams coming in from the stations and the RTFCs and a strong balance sheet with GBP 105 million of PPE, which is essentially the station assets, able to support and continue to generate those earnings.
We've got a GBP 25 million credit facility we took out with the Foresight Group in the last quarter. That's going to go into three new CNG stations, which will again further boost our asset base up to GBP 130 million. A GBP 25 million credit facility means we'll just be about 20% levered. Very conservative leverage and room for that to be increased over time as we continue to recognize that, as we continue to roll out additional CNG stations. A healthy cash balance of GBP 12.5 million within the group also to underwrite our working capital requirements. Thank you.
Thanks, Baden. I will summarize briefly and then we will go into Q & A's, and I can see there are a couple of questions come through already. Please don't stop sending them through. I like questions.
Just to summarize slightly, you know, Baden's already mentioned we're starting to see how our operational leverage works in a very positive way. We've had an outsized growth of EBITDA versus our increase in volume. We're also driving currently operational efficiencies through the business. At the end of the day, this is all down to basically scale effects. You know, we've done a lot of the heavy lifting with regards to building a nice strong platform, if you want. Going forward now, we'll be able to actually harvest from a lot of the seeds that we've been planting over the last 10, 11 years.
When we did the transaction with Foresight Group back in April, we gave a bit of an illustration to our shareholders what might the picture look like in 2030, just to give a bit of a crystal ball gazing exercise. If you assume that we have 8,000 trucks on the road in 2030, something that we feel, or that goes through our network in 2030, something we feel is conservative, then we'll be looking at a quarterly EBITDA of roughly GBP 25 million, there or thereabouts, an annualized EBITDA of GBP 100 million. As of today, we're on track for that target.
Yes, we've still got many years to go, but I think this is just a good illustration to say that, you know, if we achieve the 8,000 trucks in 2030, then, you know, the numbers that we can deliver on will be a long way up from where we are today. We often get the question, how realistic is it with 8,000 trucks in 2030? Just to give you a bit of a reference point, we had zero trucks going through our network in 2014, because that's when we founded the company. In September 2019, we had 250. In March 2021, we had 1,000. In March 2022, we had 2,000. Now at this point in time next year, we expect to be at 3,000. The adoption here is accelerating.
As such, we're feeling quite good about this slide and what it could, or what we could achieve, in the next four or five years. Just to summarize where we've come from on this quarter before we get into the Q& A, we've continued to deliver good volume growth. We expect that volume growth to either stay at its level or move up from there as 6x2s really start to hit the road in the coming quarters. We have raised that EBITDA guidance. As Baden said, we have much better visibility on that now. That's clearly a nice message. Finally, we've got the GBP 25 million facility, which puts us in a position to now build another three stations.
We will be looking at the listing venue in 2026, whether that means uplist in Norway and or a dual listing. With that, we will go into questions. Let's see what we've got here. All right, I'll start with one about 6x2s . What is the planned output by OEMs of CNG 6x2s ? First of all, they do not tell us exactly what the numbers they want to produce next year and the year after. What we can say, however, is that we have not been told that they have any realistic constraints as to how many 6x2 s they can deliver. We have been told that if there is demand in the thousands, they will produce them in the thousands. There is a minimum amount of tooling changes we need to make at the factory.
As such, they will react to demand. Probably more importantly, what are we seeing in general on lead time or vehicles? For those of you who've been following the car manufacturing, truck manufacturing industry for the last three, four, five years, you'll probably recall that during COVID there were component shortages, which then meant that if you wanted a new car or a truck, you'd have to wait a year. Prior to COVID, the lead time for a typical gas truck was about six months there or thereabouts, depending on the spec you wanted. That blew out to nine-12 months, typically, maybe even a bit longer. What we're seeing now is very positive for us.
If you want to order a CNG truck today, your lead time, if you ignore Christmas, because of course, factories shut down, your lead time is currently four to five months. We are actually now on the shorter end of the lead time that we have historically seen. To get back to the 6x2 question, no, we are not aware of any constraints from the manufacturers. On the contrary, we are hearing customers of ours now starting to talk about orders into the hundreds over the coming years. That is that one. We have one here on, this one for you, Baden. Can you talk about a potential uplisting or dual listing in 2026? Would an uplisting alter your access to capital, cost of capital, or strategic flexibility for European expansion?
Yeah, I am sure.
Look, this is, we had flagged an uplisting, you know, in 2023 when we first listed on the Euronext Growth with the intention of obviously moving to a main list to increase the liquidity, and yeah, and access to capital for the business. We know we had challenging, challenging market conditions for the first year and a half or so, you know, taking us through till, well, the first year, year and a bit or so, of being listed. That was not a priority for us. Now that we've completed the restructuring with the Foresight Group, cleaned up the capital structure and managed to bring in some, yeah, some debt in order to continue our growth, we think this is probably the time to go and have a look at addressing the equity part, equity side of the capital stack.
you know, what, what does it do for us? Yes. Number one, of course, it will improve, should improve the liquidity of the share. We have a well-functioning, well-functioning stock, that's able to fully reflect the valuation of the underlying business as opposed to the complexity of trading it. That, of course, is something to be welcomed by existing shareholders, but also by incoming shareholders, having access to be able to get hold of the stock in the right amounts that they would like to do so. The other thing, of course, is access to capital and the flexibility that brings.
and so the question, of course, then is how much we would go and, and look to have a listing, which is, you know, which is a matter of discussion and where the optimal place for investors to be able to come and access the stock is. we are conscious that it is currently more difficult to access than it would be on a main, on a main list. that is something, again, we're looking to address, increased visibility, increased access, and increased liquidity, and increase the flexibility of the, of the business itself in order to, to, to raise capital for anything it needs.
Thanks, Baden. we have a related question, which we'll just dive straight into given that we're on the topic. How can we trade the ReFuels shares, now ahead of an uplisting?
Yeah, I'll take that one.
I'll take that one as well. Absolutely. Yeah. Look, Euronext Growth is a non-regulated market, and therefore is harder to access from certain jurisdictions, Joe, and certain trading platforms that simply don't have it. However, we do, I think on LinkedIn, we have a page and we'll add it to future presentations on some of the places you can. This is not a sponsored ad, of course, for where you can go and trade nor advice on trading the shares. However, the Saxo platform is available from most countries. The DEGIRO platform is available again from most countries. There are a number of Nordic platforms as well. That's Avanza and Nordnet. I believe it's also tradable if you have accounts with Arctic Securities, et cetera.
There are ways to trade it. Setting up some of those accounts does not take a long time. That is how we have found access for investors. That was, that is how investors have found access, from countries all around the world.
Thanks, Baden. We have one on biomethane procurement that I will take. How are the biomethane procurement contracts structured? And what is your exposure to feedstock price volatility or regulatory changes? First of all, I will not go into the details as to exactly how our contracts are structured. There is a bit of secret sauce internally, which I think we will keep secret for now.
What I can say is we have a mix of short term, medium term, and long term contracts with also a wide range of pricing structures, for a number of reasons, because certain producers have a preference for that. We have a preference for, of course, to have a bit of portfolio exposure. You know, are we exposed to the thing, you know, things like feedstock prices, in general? No. Are we exposed to regulatory changes? I mean, sure, the business will always be exposed to regulatory changes to some extent. In general, I'd say we have a mix of contracts. Maybe more importantly, what we currently see in the market, you know, we're not finding it challenging to source biomethane at the market at this point in time. There is a lot of investment currently going into new biomethane production capacity.
We are aware of about EUR 30 billion going into upstream investments over the next, increasing biomethane production over the next four to five years, probably other investments out there that we're not aware of. There is a bit of a mega trend currently going on across Europe with regards to upstream investment happening, which means that there's a wave, and it's starting to happen already, but there's a wave of future supply coming. As such, we're quite comfortable with the sourcing position at the moment. Yeah, it's not something that we're really worried about. Of course, it's something to keep our eyes on because, you know, markets are always cyclical and they have an ability to change. All in all, we're seeing a quite healthy sourcing position in the biomethane market currently. What else have we got here?
Here's one for you, Baden, with regards to owning or leasing land. If you lease, aren't the lease liabilities on your balance sheet too low?
No, we have a strong preference for owning land. We do own the majority of our sites. We do not, we don't lease them. I think we believe currently on our balance sheet, we have about GBP 6.7 million or so worth of non-current lease liabilities, which relate to the land that we have leased. No, we have a strong preference for owning land where possible. It provides us additional flexibility in what we want to do with it now and in the future. Of course, as Philip showed earlier in the presentation, a number of our sites now have doubled, quadrupled in value since we bought them.
We also have a valuable land portfolio as well, which helps us underpin the value of the asset base of the business.
Thanks, Baden. Here's one that I'll take. Not many 6x2 s have been delivered yet. Is this an indication of poor uptake? The answer is no, absolutely not. As we showed in the presentation, we've got about 130 on the road. Our customers have got 130 on the road at the moment that go through our network. What's important for people viewing this to understand is that the 6x2 s in the current configuration have really only been on the market for the last 12-18 months. The majority of our customers will want to trial trucks before they buy them, want to demo them before they go ahead and buy them.
There's been a limited amount of demo trucks available in the U.K., both from Iveco and from Scania. That has meant that a lot of customers have had to wait, sit on their hands and not being able to order. That situation is changing. There is now a considerable amount or volume of demo trucks in operation as we speak. That is resulting in orders being placed that we are aware of almost weekly. I'm sure there are orders being placed that we're not aware of. As such, it's a function of time. It's not a function of lack of interest. It's just the fact that there are certain hoops they need to jump through.
As such, we're really excited by 2026 because that will be the full kind of first calendar year or financial year that we can actually see, orders being placed and being delivered. No, we're not, we're not worried about that. There's another one on 6x2s , to just do that one as well. Is the uptake of six by twos affected by the weak overall truck registrations in the U.K. or the weak overall truck market in the U.K.? Good question. It gives us an opportunity to talk a bit about the overall truck market. Yes, it is true that the logistics sector in the U.K. and across Europe, by the way, and the truck market in the U.K. and across Europe is in a downturn at the moment. There was a lot of expansion during the COVID years.
That, you know, these markets are cyclical. We are, we are seeing a downturn at the moment. I think for the first half of this year, new registrations of trucks, this is not for CNG trucks, just in general, was down, I think, about 15% in the U.K. and similar numbers in the EU. Does that affect necessarily 6x2 interest, CNG 6x2 interest? Not really, for the following reason. As of today, there are about 165,000 articulated trucks in the U.K., 4x2 s and 6x2 s, about 144,000 6x2 s, 22,000 4x2 s. So 165,000 there and thereabouts. As of today, there are 2,100 and a bit that are CNG. So we have only, you know, so far penetrated a very small part of that market.
If the overall market, I think there are about 15,000, 12,000- 15,000 6x2 s sold every year. If that market has a bad year, one or two bad years, let's be honest, it's not really affecting our growth. Yeah, it might shave one or two percentage points off our growth, but we've got so much left of the market to grow into. As such, that's not an issue for us. What it of course does indicate is that we do have a quite weak economy in the U.K. at the moment. As I say, we are largely insulated from those effects because we have such a large market to grow into. Then we've got one more on trucks. How long is on average the demo period? For instance, when M&S will make a full commitment to 6x2 trucks.
Clearly we can't speak for M&S. They'll make their own decisions on the demo period. It varies. Some will go down the so-called seed vehicle route where they might order one truck without demoing it and take delivery of that and then run that for six-12 months. Then they'll decide if they want to order another 10 or 50 or 100. If they don't do that, they will run a demo vehicle. We're getting our own demo vehicles in the new year of the new updated models. A typical demo period is in the range of two to four weeks. You know, therefore when we have a list of plus minus 100 fleets that are interested, it takes a lot of time to churn through that.
That is why getting a large number of demo trucks on the road has been important. That is what we are now starting to see with an increased number of demo vehicles on the road. I think we have time for one final one. It is for you, Baden. What do you mean by operational efficiencies? Please, can you elaborate?
Absolutely. We run a U.K.-wide network. It is a 24/7 network. Availability at our stations is absolutely critical. We have an unblemished record since, you know, 2020 now of having availability at all of our stations, 24 hours a day, which means a customer can show up to one of the stations and they can get CNG. We are very proud of that. That is very important.
With that came a very substantial investment into the resources, into both human capital and the resources, CapEx, the way we build our stations, the way we operate them, and a lot of excess capacity in doing that in order to make sure that what was running was always going to be running. Now what we're trying to do is make sure that we focus on those resources deployed so they're able to use them in the most efficient ways. We're able to grow into those resources without compromising the operational efficiency of the business, but trying to hold that cost line as steady as possible. Actually, I was only looking at this yesterday as part of a discussion.
Over the last, this half compared to last half, our operational cost base of the business is actually slightly down on the same period last year. What we've got is about 5%-10% saving on operating costs over the last year where we haven't been, haven't been excessively overinvesting in, in excess, in new excess capacity, versus a 16% growth, of course, on the underlying volume. What that means, of course, that's why you see about 20%, 20% or so percent , boost in our or cut more to the point in the cost per kilo of, in the cost per kilo of our operating overheads. We anticipate that'll continue. You know, we make healthy margins both, on at the CNG stations and the additional cost to us of adding a truck or a 100 trucks is essentially negligible.
We will continue to see, operate, we'll continue to hopefully see the healthy margins, low operating costs. And yeah, as I say, and continued efficiencies, but without compromising, of course, the availability of the station network.
That's great. Baden and Philip, if I may just jump back in there as you have addressed all the questions from today. Of course, the company can view all questions submitted today and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Philip, before I redirect investors for their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?
Yes. Thank you. Thank you once again for showing an interest in the company, whether you're watching this live or on catch up.
We've got some, yeah, a good quarter behind us, but there's a lot more to come and we're very excited about the growth we've got going ahead. Also, on the Q& A section, we always like getting in good questions, but, you know, we can't answer all of, well, we have answered all of them today, but if we haven't, and if you don't feel comfortable putting questions up there, please don't feel that you can't get in touch with us. You'll find our contact details on various announcements. Finally, yeah, see you back at the end of February when we have our third quarter results. Thank you once again.
Fantastic, Philip, Baden. Thank you once again for updating investors today.
Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the board can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of ReFuels, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good morning to you all.