Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. To all who are present today with us right here in Singapore in person, to all who are on the conference line and on a live webcast right now, thank you all for being here and for tuning in to our first results briefing that is run on a hybrid format since COVID-19. I'm Hung Hoeng of Olam's Investor Relations. Our senior management team, represented here by Olam's Co-founder and Group CEO, Sunny Verghese, our Group CFO, N. Muthukumar, as well as the CEO of OFI, Olam Food Ingredients, A. Shekhar, and myself are very, very pleased that we are able to convene in this form and manner to announce Olam's record results since its inception more than 30 years ago.
We look forward to unveil our results and to tell you how we have been able to achieve these results amid the circumstances we faced last year. More importantly, how we, Olam, as an organization, is transforming itself through its reorganization announced two years ago to create greater value, as well as how we think this year is gonna look like. To the agenda, please. Sunny will start off the presentation with an update on our reorganization, and Muthu will then explain the group consolidated financials. Following that, we will present the results by operating group. Shekhar, as CEO of OFI, will take us through the performance of OFI. Sunny, as CEO of Olam Global Agri, now known as Olam Agri, and the OIL operating group, will tell us about the financial performance of these two operating groups.
He will further discuss the group's outlook and prospects and conclude the presentation with key takeaways before we commence the questions. As I close my introduction, I would like to invite Sunny to begin his presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Hung Hoeng , and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I will first address the progress update on the reorganization of Olam. As most of you would recall, in January 2020, we had announced a transformational restructuring or reorganization of Olam in terms of splitting the company into three distinct coherent operating groups. The first of which is the Olam Food Ingredients business, OFI. Second, Olam Agri. Third, Olam International Limited, the remaining part of the Olam group. The objective and the reason we embarked on the restructuring program was to explore strategic options that would unlock the current value of the various Olam businesses and also develop new pathways that can create further additional value on a sustained basis.
We felt that we will be able to achieve that objective by reorganizing our portfolio, by simplifying it and focusing it, into three distinct operating groups, as I mentioned, with businesses that are most similar in nature, constituting each of these operating groups, and they are therefore tied together by an underlying logic. We then have developed a compelling vision for each of these new operating groups, a distinct equity story, as well as a reliable game plan for creating additional value on a more sustained basis in these three operating groups. The logic for segregating into these three operating groups was because we felt that the underlying consumer and food business trends and agri business trends that underpin each of these operating groups is quite idiosyncratic and slightly distinct and different.
Therefore, the potential investors who are the natural investors for these businesses could also be different. By restructuring the business in this form and manner, we would increase focus, take these individual operating groups to full potential, attract the right kind of natural investors for each of these businesses, and thereby potentially re-rate the company. That is the thesis. On the basis of which we have now organized the company into these three distinct operating groups, and we completed substantially the carve-out and separation of these businesses by the end of December 2021. The first business, the Olam Food Ingredients business, Shekhar will talk a lot more about this when he presents the results of OFI. We have envisaged this business to be an attractive play for the growing demand for plant-based, natural, on-trend, sustainable and healthy food ingredients and food ingredient solutions.
This business constitutes five of our business groups, which is our cocoa business, our coffee business, our dairy business, our edible nuts business, and our spices business. OFI is organized into two reporting segments, Global Sourcing and Ingredients and Solutions. The second operating group is Olam Agri, which is positioned as market leading and differentiated Food, Feed, Fibre, Agri business focused on high growth emerging markets. Because of its differentiated business model, asset-light business model, it generates superior returns.
This is catering to a different set of trends underpinning the agri business sector, which is the growing demand for food staples like Food, Feed, Fibre, the living essentials of life, which is growing in terms of demand as a result of growing populations, increasing per capita incomes as economies grow, and the transition in dietary habits from a carbohydrate cereal-based diet to a food and protein-based diet, and the emerging concerns around food security because of the global imbalance between supply and demand of food. We have seen food price inflation once again reared its head this year. The last time we saw it was in 2011. The previous episode was in 2009. It is getting worse, and many governments are getting worried about food security, particularly in countries which are importing a lot of their food.
This operating group consists of our grains business, our oilseeds business, our integrated animal feeds and proteins business, our edible oil business, our rice, specialty grains and seeds business, our wood business, our rubber business, our fiber cotton business, and our commodity financial services business. This business is organized in two platforms, the food and feed platform, the Fibre, Agri-Industrials and Ag Services platform. Within these two platforms, we have three sub-segments. In the food and feed, we have two sub-segments. One is origination and merchandising food and feed, and the second is processing and value-added food and feed business. The final piece is the remaining part of Olam, which is OIL, which will cease to trade as OIL.
In place, we will have Olam Group once the scheme becomes effective, which is expected to be around the 15th of March. Everybody who owns a share of Olam International Limited will now have share of Olam Group Limited, OGL, and that one share will be given free of charge and without any stamp duties and taxes. That structure will be effective from the 15th of March, expected by the 15th of March. What is Olam Group Limited or OIL going to consist of? Basically four things. Firstly, it will provide stewardship during the interim period as OFI prepares to list and concurrently de-merge, and then also stewardship for the Olam Agri business and the remaining part of the Olam Group.
Secondly, it will warehouse and responsibly divest the assets and businesses that we had earmarked for exit in our 2019, 2024 strategic plan. As you'll recall, we had decided to exit four business units, 17 SBUs, and about 28 assets. Of the 28 assets, we have sold roughly 11 of those assets. We have reinjected 10 of those assets back into OFI after the restructuring and Olam Agri. Therefore, what is left for us to sell now is approximately seven assets, which over the course of the next couple of years, we will responsibly divest those assets earmarked for exit.
The third thing that Olam International or Olam Group Limited will do is really to nurture the gestating assets that we are gestating, our Olam Palm Gabon Plantation business, our packaged foods consumer business in Africa, as well as our ARISE Logistics and Infrastructure business, which is organized into three verticals, the integrated industrial platform, which is the special economic zones, the infrastructure services, and the port and logistics business. As you know, post the year-end, we have already announced the full remainder sale of our stake in two of these verticals, the ARISE Integrated Industrial Platforms, as well as the ARISE Infrastructure Services. By the end of 2022, we hope to be able to sell our remaining stake in the last infrastructure and logistics platform, which is our ports and logistics business. That is our gestating assets.
We will partially monetize or fully monetize these assets over time at the appropriate time. The next activity of the Olam Group is to nurture and develop our Engine 2 businesses. These are our sustainability and digital startup businesses. We are incubating six ideas as we speak, and that is the other role that Olam Group Limited or OIL will have. Finally, we are carving out and separating our IT and IT-related services under a vehicle called Olam Technology and Business Services company. This entity will be responsible for providing IT, cybersecurity and information security services, digital services, as well as back office shared services for all the erstwhile Olam Group companies, OFI, Olam Agri, Olam Ventures, and OGH, Olam Global Holdco, under a long-term service agreement, which will be a 10-year service agreement.
With that, we expect this OTBS business also to look to develop third-party business opportunities in the same areas of IT and IT-related services. That is the reorganized Olam. It has taken us 33 years to build this company, and now it has taken us three years to plan and execute this restructuring and this reorganization. As you can see from the results which Muthu will present very shortly in both 2020 results as well as in the 2021 results that he'll present today, you will see already the benefits of this reorganization flowing through in significantly enhanced performance for all the operating groups within Olam. The focus has really yielded the results. The reorganization is really working for us. We had said that we will execute this reorganization in four steps. Three of these four steps is completed.
We are now on the fourth step of execution. The first step was to re-segment the business. That has been done. Re-segmenting into three operating groups, and within the three operating groups, new, reporting, segments, and within the reporting segments, developing new key metrics, performance metrics in which we will communicate our results. We have done that for the 2020 first half and second half results and the full year results. We are now doing it for the 2021 results along these new operating groups, new reporting segments and new performance metrics. The second step was to reorganize our business along these three new operating groups, which included, designing and institutionalizing a targeted operating model for each of these operating groups in terms of the functional, embedding the functions, embedding the country management structures, the businesses within these three separate operating groups.
Developing a dedicated leadership and management teams for the three operating groups, and then looking at the capability gaps to execute the new game plan for each of these three operating groups by bringing in the talent that we need to execute that plan going forward. That process is also being completed now. We have also completed step three, which is a very complex carve-out and separation process that Muthu and his team did with great dexterity and on budget, on time. We had 250 entities across 67 countries, taking all the assets, liabilities, cash, people from all of these entities and then deploying them into the new operating groups, which was a very complex and intricate program.
Muthu, as the head of separation, along with his team, did a fantastic job in completing that separation and carve-out substantially. We have a few things to tie up in the first quarter of this year, but 95% of the separation is already done by the end of December as planned and as expected. We are now in the last phase of this execution, and that includes two things. For OFI, it basically includes planning and launching the IPO of OFI in London and concurrent listing in Singapore, expected to be in the second quarter of this year. Shekhar will talk more about that. We are controlling everything that we can control and making sure that we can complete that IPO and concurrent demerger of OFI from the Olam Group in the second quarter of this year.
The second part of the fourth stage is for Olam Agri. We are exploring two main strategic options. One option is to attract and bring in substantial strategic minority investors into the company via a private placement and a secondary sale of shares by OIL or the OG Group to these minority investors. The second part of the strategic option for Olam Agri is to prepare the company for an IPO and a demerger on a sequential basis after the OFI IPO and demerger, because I think it will not be advisable to do two IPOs, two demergers at the same time. We'll leave some sufficient gap in terms of timing between the first IPO demerger and potentially the second IPO demerger. We are currently in phase four of this execution, which will complete as I just mentioned.
This is what the Olam structure is now looking like. The corporate structure now after the separation is that first graph on your left-hand side, where OFI is being separated and will be now a wholly owned subsidiary of OIL. Then the rest of the Olam Group is organized under Olam Holdings, and within Olam Holdings, Olam Agri Holdings and Olam Global Holdco, the Olam Technology and Business Services. OGH, Olam Global Holdco, is today holding Olam Ventures. Eventually, Olam Ventures will also be separated as a distinct entity. That is the structure we have at the end of December 2021 or the beginning of January 2022, the one on the left-hand side.
On the 18th of February, our shareholders approved our scheme of arrangement by which we are preparing the Olam organization structure such that it will enable us to pursue the strategic options that I outlined, which is the IPO of OFI and the concurrent demerger of OFI. We got an overwhelming mandate from our shareholders. More than 90% of Olam shareholders participated in the voting, and 99.99% of the shareholders, therefore, with the overwhelming majority, have approved the scheme of arrangement. We have now got a court hearing date for the 3rd of March, and if the court hearing progresses successfully, then we expect the scheme to be effective from the fifteenth of March, this year. Once that is done, we have now interposed two new companies, recently incorporated companies, between the shareholder and OIL.
One is OFI Group Limited, OFI GL, which is a U.K.-incorporated company, today a 100% subsidiary of Olam International. We have incorporated a second company in Singapore called Olam Group Limited. These two companies are now interposed between OIL and the existing shareholders of OIL. That is the structure that we will have on the 15th of March once the scheme becomes effective. The scheme has been approved by the shareholders. It has to become effective because the court has to approve that. Once we complete the combined transactions, which is a Scheme of Arrangement which has been approved, the dividend in specie to deal with the structure as an essential step for the restructuring.
The third is the proposed disposal, which is the permission from the shareholders to sell a secondary tranche of shares in OFI during the OFI IPO. The fourth is a potential dilution, which is that to get shareholder approval to raise IPO proceeds through primary offering. Finally, it is about the proposed distribution, which is distribution in specie to the OFI shareholders, all the remaining shareholding from that is being held by Olam Group that will be transferred directly to the Olam shareholders. Once all that is done, OFI, which will be held by OFI GL, will be completely separate, distinct, fully spun-off independent entity from the rest of the Olam Group. The rest of the Olam Group then will have Olam Agri Holdings, which will own Olam Agri.
It will have OGH, which will own all the gestating assets, exiting assets, and Olam Ventures currently. Then finally, it will have OTBS, Olam Technology and Business Services. This is what the structure will look like. Just as a summary slide, the company has now substantially, as you have seen, as I've explained, completed the carve-out and separation of its business into these three distinct operating groups. The company now has sought and received shareholder approval to implement the reorganization by way of a scheme of arrangement and by way of these combined four transactions, proposed transactions. Once the scheme is effective around the fifteenth of March, Olam Group Limited will replace Olam International Limited as a listed entity, and the IPO of OFI GL in London will take place.
OFI GL is planning to list in both London and Singapore, as I've mentioned, and there will be a public offering of shares of OFI GL, both through primary issuance and a secondary issuance. Therefore, this reorganization will serve to significantly streamline a diverse Olam portfolio that has grown and diversified over the last 33 years. This will, we believe, provide a significant driver to enhance shareholder value and will mark a very critical milestone in our journey to deliver to our shareholders on the promise of the reorganization and transformational restructuring plan that we announced in January 2020. With that, I would like to hand over to Muthu to walk us through the group consolidated financial results.
Thank you, Sunny. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Warm welcome once again for Olam's 2021 group financial highlights presentation. As Sunny had mentioned, it has been a banner year for Olam in terms of record PATMI and operational PATMI delivery, the best ever yet in the last 33 years of Olam Group's history. In terms of the overall results at a glance, we recorded sales volume of 45 million tons, a 2.3% increase over 2020. More importantly, because of the structural demand that was coming up for our agri portfolio and also the recovery from COVID-19, there has been an upsurge on commodity prices, and that had resulted in a 31.2% increase in our revenues to SGD 47 billion.
Our EBIT, which is a key financial metric that we track and report, grew 33% to $1.42 billion, up from $1.07 billion of 2020. PATMI grew 179% to $686 million, up from $246 million. The second important financial metric that we track and report, our operational PATMI, grew 42% to $961 million, just shy of $1 billion for 2021. We recorded a negative free cash flow to equity of $1 billion, primarily on account of the strategic investment that we made, and that I will talk about in the subsequent slides.
Even in consequence of significant increase in commodity prices, our ability to manage working capital in a very disciplined fashion has resulted in maintaining our gearing at 1.72 times, consistent with what we had in 2020. That can be clearly seen from the reflection of the overall cash-to-cash cycle of 59 days in 2021, down from 73 days that we had at the end of 2020. We talked about the 179% increase in PATMI from SGD 68 million to SGD 188 million. OFI recorded an EBIT growth of 17%, and Olam Agri recorded an EBIT growth of 51.5%, an overall 33% increase at the portfolio level. Operational ROE grew almost 50%, 5.6% from 11.2% to 16.8%, a significant increase in 2021.
We had a very strong cash position of $4.3 billion and adequate liquidity position as we went through this reorganization plan and debt restructuring plan that many of my banking colleagues here are well aware of. We continue to access diversified debt instruments through the year in 2021, and we are poised to again tap the market in 2022 in a similar fashion. Our equity position significantly strengthened because of higher retained earnings and as well as the rights issue that we did the middle of 2021. I talked about gearing. We maintained that at 1.72 times, and more importantly, adjusted gearing. Net of RMI and secured receivables stood at a very healthy 0.75 times at the end of 2021.
I'm delighted to announce that our board of directors have declared a second interim dividend of SGD 0.045, or a total of SGD 0.085 for 2021, as compared to SGD 0.075 that we declared in total for 2020. We move on to look at consolidated results by operating group. As you can see, the 45 million tons that we had recorded as sales volume, roughly 89.4% was recorded at Olam Agri. Around 9% of volumes were from OFI and the remaining from the rest of Olam Group. In terms of sales revenue of SGD 47 billion, a 31.2% increase on a year-on-year basis, here again, 66.5% was from Olam Agri, 31% from OFI and the rest from the Olam Group.
EBIT, which grew by 33%, roughly 61.6% from OFI, 58.9% from Olam Agri and the rest from the rest of the Olam Group. Finally, in terms of invested capital, just about SGD 19 billion, which grew 14% on account of significant investments that we made, both organic and inorganic, during the year, as well as due to increase in commodity prices resulting in working capital increase. Roughly 58.9% was from OFI, roughly 28% from Olam Agri, and the rest of 13.5% with the remaining Olam Group. Volume grew both in OFI and OGA marginal growth and, roughly 2.3% at the portfolio level, and OIL had a degrowth of volumes in line with, exits that we had talked...
That we had done during 2020 and 2021. In terms of EBIT, it increased to SGD 1.4 billion, a 33% increase on a year-on-year basis. Here again, OFI grew by SGD 128 million as well as, but Olam Agri grew by SGD 256 million. OIL, the rest of the group, had an increase in EBIT losses, primarily because of more plantations coming into maturity, and we have period costs that we had to record. In terms of operational PATMI and reported PATMI, reported PATMI grew 179% to SGD 686 million, primarily because of strong EBIT growth and offset by lower exceptional items. However, we had to provide for higher taxes on account of higher profit during the year, up from SGD 246 million to SGD 686 million.
Operational PATMI grew 42% from SGD 678 million to SGD 961 million. I talked about the 14% increase in invested capital, primarily both on fixed capital and working capital. Fixed capital during due to the investments that we made, especially in the spices business in the U.S., including the transformational acquisition that OFI made the middle of last year, the acquisition of Olde Thompson, as well as other organic CapEx investments in the rest of the group. Working capital also grew by SGD 1 billion and because of significant increase in commodity prices over 2020. As I had mentioned before, due to disciplined working capital management through 2021, we have been able to maintain our net gearing at 1.72 times, consistent with what we had ended 2020 with.
Free cash flow to equity was negative SGD 1 billion in line with the strategic investment that I talked about in the last slide, where we had invested more than SGD 1.3 billion on acquisition of Olde Thompson, our chili peppers business, as well as some organic CapEx investments that we had done across the group. Very strong liquidity position. You can see that from our SGD 16 billion of gross debt portfolio, we have SGD 5.6 billion of headroom as we ended 2021. I would like to take an opportunity to thank all our lenders, including bond holders, our perpetual securities holders, our relationship banks, and all our other stakeholders who have been unwaveringly supporting us through this complex restructuring that we had been going through 2021.
Many of you have already provided your consent for our debt restructuring plan as we optimize our debt portfolio for all the three operating groups and ensure that we have an optimal capital structure for all the three operating groups. With that, I hand over to Shekhar to take us through the OFI segmental performance. Thank you.
Thank you, Muthu, and a very good morning to all of you. It's a real pleasure to see at least some people in the room. It's been two years since we had the opportunity to meet each other. Very pleased to talk about OFI today. When we met last for the half-yearly results in August, there's been a significant amount of things happening in OFI. The first is the look of OFI, and you can see the bright colors behind me. We launched the new brand in October, as you might have seen. Along with the new brand, we also announced the new purpose of OFI, which is Be the Change of Good Food and a Healthy Future.
Simple words, but they mean very much to all of us in OFI and indeed all of Olam. You'll see that the brand as well as the purpose carries forward the rich legacy of the last 32 years of Olam, while creating a platform for a very exciting future that OFI has. That is one aspect of it. Alongside that, as Sunny was talking about the reorganization, the focus for OFI has been that it is in right front and center of some very key structural consumer trends, which are very exciting and for which OFI is uniquely prepared and positioned in terms of the future.
That has meant that there's been a lot of changes in the organization in terms of new capabilities, retooling the existing organization, and significant investments in innovation, in marketing and consumer insight, in changing our key account management structure, knitting digitization across the chain, bringing in very different form of sustainability impact creation, reporting in terms of what we do across our various product platforms. A lot many changes happening to support the strategy, to support the reorganized business, and I'm sure you'll see that in the results that I'll talk about in a minute. The last bit, I mean, we can rebrand, we can create new purpose, we can put in a lot of capabilities, but really the rubber hits the road with the customers.
The biggest thing that I'd like to kind of point out here is the kind of customer traction we've got, not just in the last six months, but over the last couple of years as we've reorganized ourselves and provided the entire portfolio of OFI, which is linked together by the common customers that we service, the common categories and end use consumption categories that we service, the common channels of private label food service, and the common capabilities that bring OFI together, which is the whole rationale for this reorganization. I think that is really what's been happening, not just the last six months, but over the last couple of years of this reorganization.
The last bit as we go through the whole process of separation and carve out, and thank you all for your resounding support for the scheme of arrangement last month or earlier this month. OFI in itself has been preparing for a potential listing on the premium segment of the London Stock Exchange with the concurrent secondary listing in Singapore. Pleased to also say that we are progressing that well. Of course, recent events has, we will see what happens in the market. What I would like to say is that we are ready. When we started this reorganization three years ago, we weren't trying to time a bullish IPO market last year or anything like that.
This was a very planned, deliberate, disciplined approach to unlocking value for all our shareholders, for all of Olam. Therefore, in OFI, we have done whatever we needed to do to reorganize the business, to position it for the future, and then prepare for an IPO, and we will see how that progresses over the next coming months. The last bit I'd like to point out is that in preparation for its independent future post the demerger and listing, we've also appointed a new board, and you would have seen those announcements. Niall FitzGerald joined us as the Chairman in September, and subsequent to that, five NEDs have also joined us. It's an operating board, it's an operating company, and it's a company going forward with a lot of excitement as you will see in the results.
Moving on. What is OFI today? End of 2021, it's almost $15 billion in sales, $1.2 billion in EBITDA, and almost $900 million in EBIT. We're spread across 50 countries with over 110 manufacturing facilities, 14 innovation centers and servicing customers across the globe. All the big names, whether it's the large CPG multinationals or the regional brands and champions, the large or small format retailers or the food service chains, OFI today provides solutions, ingredients and solutions, sustainable, traceable solutions across cocoa, coffee, nuts, spices, and dairy, but more importantly, across categories of consumption that all of us can relate to, the bakery, the confectionery, the beverage, the snacking, and which find usage across these integrated platforms. That's what we have built today.
If you look at the rationale for OFI that resulted in the reorganization two years ago and the organization that we are building, it's bringing together five leading platforms which are servicing very large end use consumption categories. While it's a business which is $15 billion sitting in sales, roughly $11 billion in turnover, it's a sizable business of relevant scale. What's more exciting is that it is servicing a target addressable market across these end use categories, which is $750 billion in size and growing at 5%-6%. That's the runway for OFI. Not in terms of volume, not in terms of turnover, but in terms of value pool that we can provide. We can add value to our customers and make value for all our stakeholders.
We do that because, not just because it's an idea that happened two years ago. We have built over the last 32 years, five very strong integrated platforms, which offer an integrated capacity to service right from the producing countries to the consumption centers and all the major consumption markets. We have built a digital capacity on top of that integrated physical network and an innovation capacity from plant science to product development, which deliver these ingredients and solution to our customers. So that is how we are participating in this large opportunity. Within this, because of this nature of this integrated platform and how we have built around that, we offer a very unique, differentiated sustainability proposition to our customers.
Today, every CEO of every food company in the world is going out there and wanting to commit to a sustainable, traceable supply chain, and OFI offers the how. It is not just the capacity to provide provenance and traceability, it is the ability to create sustainability impact, whether it's on the social front, livelihood front, environmental front. That capacity is what we deliver to our customers in a unique form through our proprietary insights platform, AtSource, which the customer is able to curate their own sustainability journey, define the metrics that they want to track, and then we are able to deliver that along with the product and solutions that we are offering there. That is really the power of that integrated capacity that we have built across these platforms.
All this is what is making us really a very different supplier, a partner of choice to our customers globally. This is a business which is not going out looking for new customers. Obviously, we always are happy to have more customers. What we are really focusing on is doing more with our existing customers, selling more to them, cross-selling our portfolio, upselling, and creating that additional value across our customers, across these end-user consumption categories, where our focus and our platforms offer a really differentiated proposition. You all are well aware about Olam's entrepreneurial DNA, the experience and expertise that we have built.
I believe the one thing beyond all the other things that I've mentioned, which will really be the predictor for our future success, is that entrepreneurial growth DNA that is there in every member of OFI, whether old or new, who are joining us as we speak, and carrying that forward from the Olam legacy that we have over the last 32 years. That is going to be a very critical part of our future. It's the mix of this strategy, this capacity to execute that we have built, is really translating into that proven, repeatable growth engine. At this size, it's a business which is still, in the last five years, growing at 8% CAGR. It is improving margins, conveying that capacity to expand margins, which is the strategy for OFI.
It is doing that at improved returns despite the kind of pressures on inflation that we are all seeing across the portfolio. That capacity is both organic and predominantly organic, with very targeted inorganic, where we see the capacity to transform like we did last year as we were investing for even as we are going through this reorganization, even as we are going through COVID, we were investing behind the strategy in terms of Olde Thompson or the chili pepper business of Mizkan. We have created this engine for growth, which has been built over the last 30 years, but even over the last five years has been moving and transforming itself. It's still a business in the making. It's not done. There's a lot to do.
I hope that the results ahead, or the results for this year and over the last five years, will show you that it is surely but steadily moving in that direction, which brings me to the results. I thought it'd be important for you to understand the context of these results within the context of the whole reorganization and what we are doing in OFI. very pleased to announce the full year results for 2021, which are showing a 13% growth in volume and almost 17% growth in EBIT. That focus on growing EBIT higher than our volume growth is really the proxy for the strategy of value addition and value creation for our customers as well as for ourselves. You can see that across both the segments.
We've got two reporting segments, as Sunny outlined at the start, global sourcing, and we have been reporting it in these two segments for the last from since August 2020. Both these segments are two pillars of an integrated business. The global sourcing, which drives the capacity to source as close to the farm and retain the sustainability, retain the provenance and creating the sustainable impact. That global sourcing capacity that we have built, on top of which we are building the capacity to create more ingredients, create more solutions, whether it's single product solutions, whether it's multi-product solutions, whether it's category solutions in private label of food service, and that is really the two pillars of this business.
You can see that the EBIT growth signifies that approach and shows that that approach is yielding results both in terms of EBIT growth and margin growth. On the invested capital, we have seen a fairly significant growth, as Muthu was highlighting. One part because of the acquisition that we have done last year, the other part because of the increase in input raw material prices, which has meant that there's a higher working capital, and you'll see that especially in the ingredients and solutions business, where we are carrying a lot of inventory on a sold basis for our customers. That is where the invested capital has gone through. I must highlight that in this results, we don't have the full annualized earnings of Olde Thompson and the acquisition that happened last year.
While the capital is all invested, the earnings are not fully flown through, at least the full annualized earnings are not flowing through, which we will see in the coming year. Talking about the segmental breakup on global sourcing, we had an exceptional year. Even within the larger performance of OFI as a whole, the global sourcing part of our business across our platforms did very well. This is a signal that during this very tough period, where we had periods of illiquidity, periods where internal logistics were shut down, periods where harvesting was hurt because people couldn't get to the farms, we were able to maintain across all our producing countries, all our origination operations. We were able to keep the wheels spinning, keep the shipments going.
A tremendous effort by the people on the ground who have managed to maintain that, offering solutions. The problems are real for us as much as anybody else. The capacity on the ground to keep delivering and providing options to our customers when this port shut down or that origin shut down, that has really resulted in the real traction from the customers who have given us this capacity to improve EBIT. Almost a 24% increase in EBIT. It is obviously an exceptional result. We think that this will correct itself in 2022, but still a very exceptional performance.
This was despite the fact that on almonds, probably the only product in our portfolio where prices are not going up, we did have a subpar performance, because of low prices which persisted through the year and also as we speak now. Invested capital, again, within the sourcing business, there was a lot of focus on managing working capital and operating cycle times efficiently, managing shipments. Despite the higher prices, the global sourcing business managed its working capital very efficiently, and then ensured that captive volumes were handed over to the ingredient and solution business for their delivery onwards to the customer. Which brings me to the ingredient and solution business, which also grew EBIT by 10%, which was moderate compared to the performance of the global sourcing business.
Like I mentioned, there were two reasons for this. One, which I outlined about the acquisition, the full annualized impact of the acquisition still not flowing through. Also, especially in the U.S., where there is a lot of our ingredient and solution business across spices, nuts, et cetera, we had lots of internal logistics costs, labor cost inflation, energy cost inflation, a lot of marine logistics in terms of imports as well as shipments. We did take a lot of costs, and in some cases, the lead lag in customer pricing is happening as we speak today in the first half of this year. There was that impact felt in the ingredient and solution business.
We think it is short-term and will correct itself, and we would expect the full impact of that flowing through first half of 2022 and beyond. Here again, invested capital was significantly higher, both in terms of the acquisition capital as well as the working capital. Nevertheless, the overall business, both platforms contributing to EBIT growth and well-positioned going into next year. That's the last part that I want to leave you with a message that it's a business that we have built over the last 30 years. It's a business that we have brought together in this new independent operating entity two years ago. We are seeing the benefits of the simplification, the cohesion in the portfolio, the things that bring this portfolio together and create significantly larger synergies.
That is really what is going to drive the future of this business. We will first extract full value for investments that we have made, including that we have made in 2021. Beyond acquisitions we talked about, we've also invested in greenfield facilities with the soluble coffee plant, which was announced in Brazil, and a dairy plant which was announced in New Zealand, as well as expansion in our cocoa processing units in Africa and Brazil. We are investing behind this business, and there is expanded capacity that will come on stream between 2022 and 2023, so there is capacity to grow just because investments already made or which are being made. There's significant growth possible with our existing customers across the portfolio by that selling more cross-sell and up-sell, and that's the second area of growth.
The businesses coming together in their current form creates significant synergies, and we are extracting that in terms of cost as well as with the same cost doing more. Last but not the least, the capacity to create more value through the sustainability and innovation solutions, that is really the organic engine of OFI. To that, we are adding very targeted investments, whether greenfield or inorganic, in terms of product extension or channel expansion, or category solutions. All this put together on top of the platforms that we have built, we believe can deliver us a high single-digit EBIT growth going forward. Thank you, and I'll hand it back to Sunny, to take us through the other equally exciting operating entities.
Thank you Shekhar. We move on to Olam Agri. As I mentioned, Olam Agri is a market leading and differentiated food, feed and Fibre, A gri- Industrials and Ag Services, global agri business. Because of its differentiated business model, which I'll briefly explain, has generated consistently higher or superior returns compared to the industry. Let's just move to giving you a rough idea of the size and scale of this business.
In terms of top line, in 2021, Olam Agri achieved sales revenue of $31.3 billion, which is a 40% growth over the last year. Although our volumes grew only by 1.7%, largely on account of commodity price inflation and all the underlying commodities that we deal in, but also because of a pivot and switch to more value-added processing during the course of the year. We moved about 41 million tons of various commodities during the course of the year. We have 50 manufacturing facilities. We employ roughly 8,900 people, and we operate in about 30 countries. The most important issue is that as a result of our differentiated business model, we have the highest growth rates and return profiles in our sector. As you see here, you
Our EBITDA at SGD 930 million this year and our operating profit EBIT at SGD 753 million this year has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 43% and 47% respectively over the last four years, 2018 to 2021. Our return on equity in 2021 is 65%. The average return on equity over the last four years is 37%. In terms of growth rates and in terms of return profiles, this is the best in the sector. If you look at the key features of the Olam Agri business, there are five key highlights. The first is we are strategically positioned in a very attractive global food and agribusiness sector, which is underpinned by very strong secular fundamentals.
Growing population, growing per capita incomes as GDP grows across the world, but also on the supply side, major impacts of climate change, lack of arable land, lack of water, all of which results in compounding food security. We are in an attractive industry. Second feature is that we participate in key parts in the global agri market and submarkets. Because of our differentiated, very asset-light business model, where all our fixed assets are concentrated in the destination markets, and we are very asset-light in the origination markets. Which is exactly the polar opposite of how our competitors participate in this business. That has allowed us this superior returns. Third, we have a clear pathway for significantly growing the earnings.
As you saw, we have grown EBITDA 43% compounded over the last four years and EBIT at 47% compounded. That does not happen by accident. There are clear granular growth plans in each of the participating markets for us to continue to sustain that profitable growth. The fourth is, we have a very highly skilled, experienced and engaged management team. Finally, we have market-leading sustainability credentials in terms of being livelihood positive, nature positive and climate positive across our business. This is what has resulted in the kind of performance that I've shown you over the course of the last four years. Let us just drill down a little bit into this year's performance.
As you can see, overall, the company's operating profits has grown by 52% from SGD 497 million last year to SGD 753 million this year. The important aspect is that our margins have improved by about $7 per ton from $12 EBIT per ton to $19 EBIT per ton, which is a 58% increase or improvement in margins.
Sunny.
From the overall portf-
Sunny can remove the mask if you want to speak. We can hear you better. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Hello, that is as far as the margins are concerned for the overall portfolio. In terms of our returns, which is operating profit by IC, EBIT by IC, we have improved that by 2.5 percentage points, which is a 19% improvement in returns between this year and last year. Moving on to the segments very quickly. As far as the food and feed origination and merchandising segment is concerned, we have improved EBIT per ton margins by $2 a ton, which is a 33% improvement in margins. Our EBIT has grown from SGD 187 million last year to SGD 267 million this year. In terms of returns, we have got EBIT by IC at a very high 32.1%, although last year was higher at 34.7%.
There was a 7% decline in margins, largely on account of higher invested capital because of much higher commodity prices. These are fantastic returns, 32.1%. If you move on to the next segment, which is a processing and value-added segment. The processing and value-added segment, EBIT has grown from $251 to $275, and margins have grown by about 5% from $58 EBIT per ton to $61 EBIT per ton. The returns in terms of EBIT/IC has grown about 5% from last year, from 13.3% in this segment to 14%.
Moving on to the final segment, which is where the big turnaround has happened because this segment was really impacted by the worst impacts of COVID in 2020 and had a very difficult year in 2020. There has been a very sharp turnaround in this segment from 2020, with EBIT growing from $59 million to $211 million. That is a growth of 256% from EBIT, absolute EBIT standpoint. But you can see the story in the margins from $29 EBIT per ton margin in this segment, it has grown to $95, a $66 per ton improvement, which is a 228% improvement in EBIT margins over a very COVID impacted 2020.
The invested capital in this business has improved by 6.3 percentage points, 630 basis points, which is a 137% increase. You can see that the EBIT/IC return at 11% is still the lowest among the three segments. It is improving and it is growing. With that, I want to go to the last slide for Olam Agri. So as I mentioned, you now understand what this business is, how it is differentiated, what its performance track record is, and how 2021 ended for the business. I also very briefly when I was talking about the restructuring exercise, explained to you the two next phases for Olam Agri is to pursue two strategic options.
One is we are trying to attract substantial minority investors who are strategic, who can catalyze the growth in this business, and/or we are contemplating an IPO. We are getting IPO-ready. We should be in a position to trigger one of these two options or, both these options as our phase two in terms of Olam Agri's growth. With that, I will move on to the last segment, which is the remaining Olam group, which is OIL. OIL is now going to be organized into these three parts, Olam Global Holdco, OGH. OGH will house, two basic aspects of the remaining Olam group. One is our divestment assets earmarked for exit. As I told you, there are seven assets left, and we will warehouse it in OGH. The second is nurturing and partially and fully monetizing our gestating assets.
There are three gestating assets which are also part of OGH. The second new entity within OIL or Olam Group will be Olam Ventures, and I'll talk a little bit about that. The final thing is Olam Technology and Business Services, which is our independent technology and IT and IT-related services company. If you look at the performance of OIL for the year, OIL's EBIT was a loss of SGD 206 million, and revenues were down marginally compared to the prior year. This was more or less in line with our plan and our budget, largely arising from the depreciation, amortization, interest costs for servicing these exit assets as well as the gestating assets.
Also the expenditure and investments that we are making in incubating the Engine 2 business and getting OTBS ready for being carved out as a separate company. These are the six Engine 2 ideas that we are incubating. We have a farmer services platform called Jiva, which is launched in Indonesia, and a smaller version of that is being piloted in India, but not the full-scale launch. It is attracting good traction for us and we are very optimistic that this business will transform smallholder livelihoods and be the global market leader in transforming smallholder livelihoods. We have also in beta one phase for the sustainability lifestyles platform called Adva, which is to enable consumers and households to become more sustainable in their lifestyle.
It is a gamified app that provides them daily nudges in terms of the things that they can change in their daily life to make it more sustainable. We have a smart carbon management platform, which was erstwhile called GreenPass, but because the European Union now has a COVID passport also called GreenPass, we have now, in order to avoid confusion, changed our name to Terrascope. This platform basically helps companies across sectors, it's sector-agnostic, to map their greenhouse gas footprint, and measure the Scope one, two, and three GHG footprint. Once they've done that, give them an optimizer simulator to abate their footprints and mitigate that footprint. That's the second engine in this business.
The third engine is, after they have measured it and after they've abated it, if they still got residual greenhouse gas footprint and they are on their net zero journey, and they want to reduce the footprint by 50% by 2030, 100% by 2100, then we are also offering them certified carbon credits, to provide offset, so scaling up the natural, voluntary carbon markets. That is the third idea. The fourth idea is we believe going forward, the supply of conservancy assets or conservation assets, to provide the offsets for heavy emitters and companies, would be very scarce. We are investing in conservation assets across various landscapes to be able to develop that as a business, which is a carbon trading and sustainable landscapes platform.
Then there's our Purpose Brand business, which is a branded consumer business based on sustainability. From the first week of March, 30 NTUC FairPrice outlets will carry that range of products, which is a nut-focused muesli brand and various nut brands. It'll also be launched in Cold Storage in April, and you will find it in other parts of Singapore as well. That is going to be launched and rolled out. We are excited about the prospects of that business. Finally, as we see our theory of change, the only way we can change and become more sustainable is individuals like each of us in this room have to change, which is the role of Adva and the role of Jiva. Secondly, companies have to change, which is the role of Terrascope. Thirdly, sectors have to change.
There's no point in having one or two good actors in the chemical sector or the pharmaceutical sector or the food and agribusiness sector. The whole sector has to pivot to becoming more sustainable. This last sixth idea that we are incubating is about industry-wide food and agri-industry-wide sustainability platform. We're getting our competitors and our customers and NGO civil society to co-create this with us. We are in the MVP development stage, and we will launch this in June 2022.
With that, I want to go to my last, but one slide, which is on business prospects and outlook. Very quickly, we believe that the COVID pandemic situation, while we are keeping an eye out for variants of concern that might emerge, we see across the globe, the 67 countries that we operate in, things are beginning to improve and heal from the worst impacts of COVID that we saw in 2020. That has meant that demand has picked up in both the developed world and developing world. Asia last year accounted for 52% of our sales. Africa, 27% of our sales. North America, 15% of sales. Americas, 15% of our sales. Europe, about 15% of our sales.
We are seeing across both the developed and developing markets, growth resume, and getting to pre-COVID levels and poised to grow faster. There has been a healing and recovery in the demand from the food services sector which sort of collapsed at the height of COVID, in terms of restaurants, fast service outlets. That is growing and coming back. OFI, as Shekhar explained, is right in the sweet spot of many of these trends and will seek to take advantage of these opportunities, in 2022 and beyond. Olam Agri is also benefiting from these trends that is about the heightened food security, food inflation, the concerns around governments, the impact of climate change and food production, the food security issues, quality issues, health issues.
Olam Agri is very well positioned to take advantage of that. As the group continues to execute its reorganization plan, we will incur additional one-off restructuring expenses in terms of IPO-related expenses and other expenses, some of which has incurred and been in our 2021 account, some of which will come into our 2022 accounts. We are very closely monitoring the developments in the Black Sea between Russia and Ukraine and the conflict. Our first concern and priority is the safety and health of our people in these two countries. We have 127 employees in Ukraine, all Ukrainians, all local hires and citizens. We have been in constant touch with them. We have spoken to them yesterday as well.
Obviously, they're anxious and worried, but they're keeping up good spirits and they're all wanting to stay in Ukraine and don't want to move out into other neighboring countries, as there is at least 150,000 people who have moved out of Ukraine in the last two days. That is that. In Russia, we have 1,938 people. Obviously, there is anxiety in all of these places. These two are important markets for the world grain and oilseeds and dairy and agri business markets. These are two important markets. Between the two countries, they account for 19% of world's corn trade flow.
Out of 204 million tons of world corn trade, roughly 19%, which is about 38 million tons, comes from Ukraine, 34.5 million tons, and about 4.5 million tons from Russia. In terms of global wheat trade, which is about 207 million tons, about 29% comes from Russia and Ukraine, with Russia accounting for about 35 million tons to 38 million tons of exports and Ukraine accounting for about 25 million tons of exports. In terms of world edible oil trade, sunflower, et cetera, both countries contribute to 13% of world trade. Our own direct exposure in these markets is limited.
Russia and Ukraine put together account 1% of our sales volume, 0.8% of our sales revenues, and about 0.4% of our invested capital. What happens in Russia and Ukraine in the grains, wheats, and edible oil markets has global implications for the worldwide grains, oilseeds, and edible oil markets as a result of their saliency in global trade flows. Therefore, that will have a repercussion and ramification across the complex. Olam is well-positioned because of its diversified sourcing basis. For example, India, after many years has become a net exporter of wheat this year and will export substantial quantities of wheat, which didn't occur for many years in the past. Australia has had a very good wheat crop and is exporting. Canada, North America.
We are present in all the producing regions because of a diversified sourcing operation, supply chain operations. We are able to substitute some of our contracts which are based on Ukrainian wheat or corn or Russian wheat or corn with other competing origins and with similar quality or values. That way we can manage this and navigate this well. It is clearly something that we're watching with great concern and confident that our risk management capabilities during the 2014 Crimean War, we had these markets rally as soon as the episode occurred. Strangely, it occurred around the same time, exactly around the same time in 2014. Wheat and oilseed prices rallied 12% on the back of it, which was in February, March.
By May, everything came back to normal. I'm not predicting that will happen in this case. But what I'm saying is that these markets will heal. Eventually, that will be the case. Right now, there is all the ports in Ukraine are shut down by the government, so no shipments are being made out of Ukraine. In the case of Russia, all ports are open except the ports in the Azov Sea. The Azov Sea and the Azov Straits have been closed by the Russian government, and that will disrupt some of the exports of grains from there. That's it, and I will just complete my presentation with these three take-homes. One, record operational and reported PATMI with PAT having more than tripled from last year, from SGD 178 million to SGD 603 million.
Net operating profit after minority interest has also nearly tripled from SGD 246 million last year to SGD 686 million this year. Operational PATMI has grown 42% from SGD 676 million last year to SGD 961 million this year. The reorganization is really working. The focus is really helping us deliver the superior results. Second, we are on track despite COVID and all of the challenges in executing our reorganization plan. The resegmentation is done. The reorganization is done. The separation and carve-out is done. Now we are at the business end of completing this restructuring. That is great news.
Despite the current situation in Russia, Ukraine, the continuing COVID and new variants appearing, based on the first two months, we had a very strong finish to last year. We had a good start in the first two months of this year, so we are cautiously optimistic while we watch these developments with concern to be able to navigate and deliver a strong set of results in 2022. With that, I'll hand back to Hung Hoeng to take questions.
Thank you, Sunny. Thank you, Shekhar and Muthukumar for the detailed presentation. We'll now go to the question and answer time, and I'm sure you have questions. I would like to give the priority to those who are present in person right now. Any questions please? Yes, Thilan.
Hi. Thilan from Maybank. I've got a few questions, so I'll just go one by one. If you look at your volumes, they were up 2.3% at the group level and EBITDA was up 33%. How sustainable do you think the sort of current pricing levels are, and how should we really think about downside protection to margins, especially given the fact that you're becoming a lot more asset heavier than before, particularly at the OFI level? That's my first question.
There are two questions, one at the group level and one at the OFI level. I'll probably take the OFI part. As I mentioned, we are looking at in OFI a 13% volume growth and a roughly 17% EBIT growth. With a little bit of increased growth in global sourcing of roughly 24% EBIT growth compared to ingredients and solution, which is about 11% growth. If you look at that, I think some aspects of global sourcing was fairly, I would say it had a significantly better than anticipated performance, and we would see some trajectory slowing down there.
In ingredient and solution is where we see significant growth possibility both because of the annualization of the EBIT that will happen on the acquisition that happened sometime in the middle of the year. As well as the implications of costs, which are a very significant part in the ingredient and solution business, especially for the U.S. and the spice business, including Olde Thompson. That will also correct itself. We think to answer your question, the ingredient solutions will see a correction in its EBIT. It won't be as much as volume growth, but there will be volume growth, but it'll be a correction on the margin. Global sourcing will probably get back to normal or moderate growth, where also there is going to be growth. That's how I would characterize the OFI bit. Sunny might want to talk about it.
As far as Olam Agri is concerned, the volume growth, as you rightly pointed out, was only 1.7%, whereas the revenue growth was 40%. Margins grew very significantly. The first thing is, Olam Agri, relative to its peers, has the lowest overhead cost per ton. SG&A cost per ton is the lowest among the industry. That is because of the differentiated model in which we participate. Most of our competitors are heavily invested in origins in terms of inland elevator facilities, storage facilities, port terminals, and port storage facilities, which makes it difficult for them to flexibly shift sourcing operations to countries that are becoming more competitive.
There's a big shift in the countries that are becoming net exporters and fast-growing net exporters because they already got such large sunk investments in the traditional trade flows that occurred. The markets that are also growing are very different from the traditional markets that have grown in the past. There is a little bit of lack of degrees of freedom to shift their configuration of assets to be in the sweet spot of where the major exporters are now emerging from and where the new major sources of demand are also emerging from. The second is we are invested in terms of fixed assets, mainly in destination markets. We have wheat milling in Nigeria, we have wheat milling in Senegal, in Cameroon, in Ghana, and we're looking at other markets where we can do that. We have animal feed manufacturing facilities.
All of our fixed assets are not in the producing countries and origins, where we can source from the most competitive origin. We participate in the excess returns in tough, fast growth emerging markets where our fixed investments are concentrated. The third is a large part of our income. In fact, all our overheads, SG&A, depreciation, amortization, interest costs are recovered by four sources of fee income. One is our risk management solutions fee income. Second is our trade and structured finance fee income. Third is our shipping at risk commission. These sources of fee income cover all our overheads.
We have no compulsion to trade and take any directional position or any bets on these markets, because the sources of fee income that we generate in that business will help us recoup all our standing still, and all our key cost items. The last issue is that we have improved our trading capabilities and strengths, our risk management capabilities and strengths, our shipping and logistics capabilities and strengths, which is why this business over the last four years has consistently grown. It is not a one-year growth. We were in the past not organized in reporting OFI separately, OGA separately, etc .
When you now see the last four years of historical financials, you will see that the Olam Agri business has been very consistent and also fast-growing as a result of what I explained to you. This is not price-driven. Price-driven is actually price is negative for us because you saw that in Olam Agri invested capital has gone up by $1 billion. The CapEx itself was a very small part of it. Most of it was increase in working capital because of higher commodity prices. Otherwise, the margins for me are quite sticky and that is why we expect in our strategic plan until 2025 the basis of our margins are similar to what we have seen this year.
Thanks for that. Just two more questions, if I may. Just on OFI, now you're getting closer to the IPO, and when you're speaking to potential investors and bankers and so on, where is the positioning coming for OFI in terms of peer groups and things like that? Is there any sort of clarity that is emerging there? So that's one question. And I guess the final question is, you know, there's a lot of talk on food security. Sunny, you kinda mentioned that at the beginning of your presentation as well. How do you see the sort of increase in national interest towards food security? I mean, we saw Indonesia for CPO exports saying you need to keep some for the local market and things like that. So how do you compete on your supply chains for that?
Is it just diversification or is there anything else that can be done? Thank you.
Thilan, for your first question, obviously, the process of investor engagement, et cetera, is something that is ongoing and there's limited discussions we can have on that, and that process of IPO will go through. What I can say about the business and the way we are building the business, it's a fairly unique and differentiated business proposition in the focus on the integrated platforms that we have put together in OFI, which has been bespoke created over many years, but put together now, and the categories, end use categories that we are looking at.
There are players who are in one or the other integrated platforms and integrated, but the capacity to be integrated across these five platforms, which find a significant role in the end use categories that we have identified, which is again a very focused play between the bakery, confectionery. As you think about cocoa and nuts and spices and dairy, you can think about bakery, confectionery, snacking, beverages, et c. The focus of these platforms, the integrated nature of these platforms, the leading global positions in these platforms, as well as the end use categories, that is really the positioning that is there. There's not very many people with that primary focus. Capital markets will decide what they might see as peers.
At a business level, we'd like the business to speak for itself, and we think it's and the track record of the past and where we are headed forward. The rest of the investor engagement process, we'll let it emerge as it emerges. On the second part of your question, so first is the logic of this restructuring is that OFI will be compared to a very different peer set compared to Olam Agri, which will be compared to a different peer set. Our job as a management team, along with our advisors, would be to succeed in getting that new equity story and repositioning of these two businesses aligned to the underlying trends that serve the OFI business and then the Olam Agri business.
As far as the Olam Agri business, as you alluded to, some of the food security issues are front and center now for governments. In the Middle East, we saw many examples of governments getting involved in many ways. One is they are investing in food producers. Many sovereign wealth funds and governments have invested in farming in Russia, in Ukraine, in Africa, in Australia, in Brazil, and different parts of the world. One way they want to secure food long term for their strategic commodities is to invest in assets in the producing countries directly. The second is for them to take stakes and investments in companies that are integrated in this value chain. They could be originators, they could be farmers, they could be processors, they could be traders.
The second strategy they're following is really investing in companies that have leadership position and global market shares in the strategic commodities that they are, sort of interested in. The third is they are coming with a whole regime of regulations and incentives and support to encourage local production. They want to develop the food and agri sector in those countries, and they're looking at where they can actually gain some kind of competitive advantage and how do they, overcome some of the disadvantages they have of really producing that food locally. Many countries, including Singapore, have brought up 30 by 30 plan that 95% of Singapore's food is today imported, but by 2030 they want 30% of the food to be grown locally.
That is the third strategy that many countries are sort of investing in. We have seen examples of all of this, both from sovereign wealth funds and other local companies in these food deficit countries where food security issues are highlighted. The last strategy that they follow is really hold buffer stocks, and China is a big proponent of this. Across many of the commodities, China has some of the world's largest buffer stocks. As this crisis exploded in Ukraine, China has started releasing soybeans from its buffer stocks, for example, cotton from its buffer stocks, for example. Buffer stock management to control domestic prices.
Indonesia, as you rightly pointed out, has instituted a domestic regulation law which insists that 20% of all palm oil producers' production has to be sold in the domestic market at a fixed price, which is significantly lower than the global market price. Therefore, you saw palm prices ratchet up because the exporters in Indonesia have to make up for selling well below market price in the domestic market by increasing their export prices. There are various things that are happening in terms of export bans, export taxes. The Russian government has imposed export quota and an export tax on its wheat and corn exports, which is therefore not sending the price signal to the Russian farmer.
Because although wheat prices have gone up, corn prices have gone up, the Russian farmer is not seeing it because of these export taxes and export quotas that the Russian government has instituted. It's largely because Russia wants to first make sure that there's enough food for its local population before it can export. With all the sanctions and everything else. For example, Russia was a major importer of dairy products. They, over the last many years tried to become self-sufficient in dairy production, which is why we invested in OFI, in very large dairy farms in Russia, because the local dairy market in Russia is extremely profitable as a result of Russian government taking a strategic decision not to be dependent on European imports for the dairy products, and is one of the fastest growing dairy markets in the world.
These are all now front and center, in the minds of many governments and many players.
Hey, nice to meet you again, and congrats to the strong earning. Alfred from Bloomberg. Do you see the geopolitical tensions in Europe could potentially hurt risk appetite? Do you see that could potentially impacting the OFI IPO in London? Another question is about inflation. We are witnessing soaring food prices driven by transportation disruption and the political tension as well. Do you think it could prove transitory in this year and maybe in the short term? Where are we now in the inflation cycle?
Shekhar will take the first question. I'll take the second question.
Yeah. Alfred, frankly, IPO is an event. We are prepared for it. We have gone through the whole process of reorganization, as well as the separation and carve-out and really the transformation of the business. We think what we can control is about the business and creating that business which can last in the many years. That's what we'll stay focused on. The markets will be markets. They will figure out the balance. Obviously right now nobody really knows, and we'll see how that evolves. What I want to be very clear is that we will be prepared and then we will decide the right time.
It's not really about the point in time of the IPO. It is what the business does in the three, five , 10 years after the IPO, and that's what we're really focused on building.
On 2021 food price inflation has been significant globally. It has been more so in emerging markets. The global average annual food price inflation in 2021 was about 47%, according to the FAO Food Price Index. In emerging markets, the food price inflation has been between 70% and 80%. Those countries that are importing food because of their currency devaluation and the other issues that they have, food price inflation has been significantly higher. It is a very regressive issue because in the poor countries and the developing countries, the ratio of food expenditure to the total consumption basket is much higher than in the developed world. In Europe, food expenditure is 70% of the consumption basket.
In the U.S. also it is a similar number, 8%-9%. In Africa, for example, it is 70%. When you have 70% food price inflation on an item which is 70% of your consumption basket, then you have a real problem on your hands, and that is what we're facing. What are the drivers for this? First for me is weather. This year we were impacted by La Niña, and an aggressive La Niña at that, which is why between December 1 and today, we have dropped soybean production in Brazil by 30 million tons, right? La Niña is not done yet, and the crop is not made yet, so there could be further revisions, downward revision as a result of weather. Weather is one issue. The second has been the COVID-related disruptions.
COVID-related disruptions on the farm, it is about the lack of availability of farm labor and the wage price inflation for that farm labor, because when they come to work, they have to observe various precautions, and therefore it has become more expensive and they want a risk premium to operate under those environments. Many of you, many of us have operated from home. For workers in a farm, that is not an option. You have to be in the farm, right? That is an example of COVID-related disruption driving up prices. We also have seen port congestions and shipping-related disruptions on a massive scale, which has also driven up costs and driven up food price inflation. Freight is a very important component of food prices.
Given the trebling of freight values in many commodity markets and in many trade routes, you have seen a big inflationary push. The fourth is really the rise in the input prices. Fertilizer prices have gone up 75%, in some cases doubled in many countries, and it is still continuing to go up because it's related to crude oil prices, and crude oil prices have in the recent past touched $100. There is also, because of this disruption, a large part of the world's potash comes from Belarus and from Ukraine and Russia. Finding fertilizers and the price and cost of fertilizers is going to go through the roof as well. These are all drivers to food price inflation.
We have seen all of these things and drivers in the past, excepting the COVID thing, which was new. The pandemic of that nature was new. Everything else we have seen in the past. Typically that lasts for about a year. It is fair to say that these supply disruption-related drivers of price inflation will subside. Our expectation is that in the fourth quarter it will start subsiding, or even in the second half it will begin to subside. Palm, we expected production to revive in the first quarter of this year, but the Malaysians are finding it difficult to get any labor in, and because of the COVID restrictions, labor from across the border in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia are not able to come to Malaysia.
We now expect production to restore only post the second quarter and most likely between July and September. That is dramatically required, otherwise you see the forward curve in CPO is an inverse of $300. A 12-month forward curve is a $300 inverse per ton. That is extraordinary. We haven't seen that kind of backwardated structures in palm oil markets for a very long time, which just reflects near-term shortage and near-term availability issues, but forward everybody expects the crop to restore itself. I think inflation will subside, but it'll take a while longer as all of these factors ease over time.
Yes, the gentleman in Nikkei.
Thank you for taking my question. Kentaro from Nikkei. One question regarding the Ukraine-Russia crisis. The United States and European countries say they will remove Russian banks from the SWIFT network. How will this affect your operations in Russia?
Okay. The first thing is, we have to see whether the sanctions include food. So far in any sanction regime, in any crisis, food has always been exempt. Iran, for example, when the sanctions against Iran were imposed, one of the items that could go into Iran without any restrictions, even from U.S. companies, so people like Cargill, Bunge, Dreyfus, all of them could ship to Iran, food. Food has always been exempt from any sanction regime. There is nothing in the announcements of U.S. or NATO countries banning or including food under these sanctions. We expect because the provisions in the U.S. law is that if it hurts the common person, then that item cannot be sanctioned. We will see. This is an extraordinary circumstance. Nobody has announced any sanctions on food as yet.
Whether they're going to do that going forward is a separate story. On the SWIFT sanctions, it is targeted at the central bank in Russia and Russian banks. Not yet targeted for the foreign banks that are operating in Russia. Most of our banking relationships, et cetera, in Russia, Ukraine, are with our banks, our global relationship banks, who have branches and situations in Russia and Ukraine. At this point in time, they are not in this net of being prevented from using the SWIFT system. We will wait and see. All of this is an evolving situation. We have to carefully monitor this. We don't know when the ports will open back in Ukraine. We don't know if the Russian government will stop port operations in any other port apart from their Azov seaports. We will see all that.
In the past, food has always been exempted from any sanctions. Nobody likes to be accused of sanctioning something that is so essential to daily living.
Thank you for the question. Next question from the floor. Yes, sir, Wee Kuang.
Hi, this is Wee Kuang from CGS-CIMB. Just like to check on the scope of operations within Ukraine and Russia. I mean, I know it's restricted to just dairy, or like you mentioned, because of sourcing and origination.
Mm.
Of your edible oilseeds, other
Yeah
product. Yeah, whether it's affected as well.
In Ukraine, we export wheat, corn, and some edible oil, sunflower oil. We import cocoa and dairy products. Cocoa and dairy products are OFI business now. Export of wheat, corn, and sunflower oil, et cetera, are OGA products, Olam Agri products. In the case of Russia, we have dairy farming operations in Russia, and we have agri farming operations in Russia. All of this is part of the OFI business. It is also an important market. Not a big market, but an important market for some of our OFI products like cocoa, coffee, spices, edible nuts, and others in Russia. Both the operations combined together is about 1% of our 2021 sales volume, about 0.8% of our 2021 revenues, and about 0.4% of our 2021 invested capital.
That's roughly those numbers. We have 127 employees in Ukraine and 1,938 employees in Russia.
Understood. Can I just,
We can hear you.
I just wanted to check, because the fact that OFI is now building on an integrated platform across all the different product classes, will it spill over to the rest of the or is the main impact coming more downstream rather than upstream?
No, it depends what you mean by upstream and downstream. If you're exporting from Ukraine and Russia.
Mm
What it impacts is our exports out of Ukraine and Russia. For the products that we're importing into Ukraine and Russia, so I told you that we are importing cocoa and dairy products into Ukraine. We are importing cocoa, edible nuts, spices, dairy, etc . Not dairy, some products into Russia. The imports will be impacted, the exports will be impacted. The Russian dairy farming operations are not going to be impacted because everything is financed in rubles, everything is produced in Russia, everything is sold in Russia, nothing is exported. That is a big part of the OFI operation in Russia.
Understood. Generally, the export market will not be as impacted because
No, export market will be affected.
Oh.
Import market will be affected.
Mm.
Local, domestic market, domestic businesses will not be affected.
Understood.
In Russia, our biggest business is our domestic business. In Ukraine, our biggest business is our export business. That will be affected.
Can we have a sense on just in terms of the expenses that were incurred for reorganization? I think in 2021, I saw it was about SGD 100 million.
Yeah.
Is there any sensing-
In 2021, separation and restructuring expenses was SGD 100 million.
Mm.
There is, of course, some impairment expenses on exit of assets. That is not included in this SGD 100 million. The SGD 100 million is just on the reorganization, separation, and everything else. We expect that there will be another set of expenses that will come in 2022.
Will there be a, maybe like a guidance or-
It'll be lower than 2021. It'll be a material number.
Understood. Thank you. Can we have maybe a sense on how much Olde Thompson was contributing in 2021 contributing-
How much, sorry?
Uh-
Olde Thompson.
Olde Thompson.
Olde Thompson, yeah, was contributing. I mean, we can't see the annualized figure.
Sure.
Maybe just for what it had contributed.
The acquisitions last year contributed about $26 million in EBIT. That's US dollars, so roughly about SGD 31 million in Singapore dollars.
Okay. Thank you. Thanks.
Is there another question from the floor? If not, can I turn to the questions that have come online? There's some questions relating to the reorganization. The first question is, can you explain why there's a need for the formation of the Olam Group Limited in order for the reorganization to proceed? The second question is, why is there a change of plan for Olam Agri from the initial carve-out IPO only to the latest plan to introduce strategic minority partners?
In terms of Olam Group Limited, the requirement for Olam Group Limited, as in the earlier part of the presentation, what Sunny talked about, in evolution of the structure which is currently there, wherein Olam International Limited is the current listed entity and holds all subsidiaries of the Olam Group. That's the present structure. By necessitating the scheme of arrangement, we are now able to segregate OFI Group Limited, UK to be independently held by Olam Group Limited. Olam International Limited, which is a listed entity today, will become a private subsidiary of OFI Group Limited, UK. It enables by what we call as top-hatting through the scheme of arrangement. Olam Group Limited is able to enable the concurrent demerger and IPO of OFI, so it's very important.
Also allows the rest of the Olam Group to be held together under the Olam Group Limited. It provides flexibility for OFI to become separate and independent and have the ability to demerge concurrently at the time of IPO. At the same time, it allows the rest of the Olam Group to be cohesively held under one listed entity, which is Olam Group Limited.
On the second question, there are three objectives in evaluating the two major strategic options available to Olam Agri. Sorry, it's not necessarily an either/or option. Our objectives are, firstly, we want to unlock value of Olam Agri. Right? We don't believe the current valuation of Olam Group truly reflects the fair value of Olam Agri or OFI, which is why we are separating these businesses and developing strategic options to reflect that and illuminate that value. That's the first objective. The second objective is we want to see whether we can attract strategic partners that will allow us to catalyze the growth of Olam Agri. We talked about food security agenda, et cetera.
Are there strategic partners that we could align with, which will give us a significant leg up in catalyzing the future prospects and growth of Olam Agri, if they are very keen and focused on food security and managing food security and all that stuff? That is one of the other objectives. The most important objective is that we want to try and make sure that we can dramatically de-gear Olam Group Limited, because Olam Group has gestating assets, it has exit assets, it has incubating assets in terms of Engine 2. We don't think it will have cash flows for a while that can, if you have a lot of debts, service that debt.
Through doing potentially secondary sales in OFI or contemplating doing a secondary sale of stake that OG owns of Olam Agri, we will be able to release cash into Olam Group that will dramatically allow us to de-gear Olam Group's balance sheet and make it almost debt-free over the next year or two. These are the three things that we want to do to optimize between these two strategic options. We could do in phase one attract a substantial minority investor, and in phase two, do an IPO. Right? We could do both. First, a minority investor, second IPO. If we do not succeed in attracting minority investor, we can do straight an IPO because we're prepared to do an IPO. It can be and/or these two options.
Thank you, Sunny. This question I would like to request N. Muthukumar to take this on. On the performance metrics, is there a reason why Olam Agri focuses on EBIT per ton, while OFI focuses on EBIT margin? That's the first question. The second question is in relation to the bonds and perpetuals. Can we understand the rationale and plans behind separating the straight bonds and perps between the entities OFI and Olam Group, and whether there are plans to raise both bonds and perps from the individual entities or just bonds from OFI?
The first question is,
On the performance metrics.
What is appropriate for the businesses? For example, if you look at Olam Agri, Olam Agri has got two segments in food and feed, which is origination and merchandising and value-added processing. The second platform is F ibre, Agri-I ndustrials, and Ag Services. Most of which the nature of the businesses is more into trading and supply chain type nature of businesses. It better reflects if you are able to focus on EBIT per ton. That automatically signifies and relates to the margin expansion that one can track and monitor. In the case of OFI, because the nature of the business is more into ingredients and solutions, which is more about value-added processing, the expansion of margin is better reflected by tracking and monitoring EBIT margin.
It's slightly different in terms of the focus because in OFI it is not focused on volumes, but it is more on margins. It is better to actually track EBIT margin growth rather than EBIT per ton. Unlike in Olam Agri, where there is significant volumes that are traded and managed through supply chains. Hence an EBIT per ton will be a more appropriate metric to track and monitor to see that there is value addition that is happening. On the second question, in terms of the debt restructuring, yes, both OFI and Olam Agri. Currently Olam Agri is part of the Olam Group Limited, so we are technically looking at optimizing the debt portfolio for OFI and rest of the group. There, depending on the type of instruments that are currently being and already issued and currently in currency.
Let's say for example, the bonds, they are all linked to some underlying transaction, like whether it is a sustainability-linked initiative. Hence, predominantly in, if you look at the overall Olam Group footprint, OFI parts of the businesses had taken a lead on the sustainability front much earlier than what the rest of the group has been doing. Most of the bonds that we have issued had underlying linkage to some of these initiatives, and hence, they are automatically preferred to be under the OFI portfolio. Olam Agri, here again, if you look at the invested capital profile, the fixed capital intensity is lesser in Olam Agri as compared to the fixed capital intensity in OFI. The natural preference for Olam Agri would be to look at more short-term borrowings to support its working capital requirements.
While there will be definitely some bonds and perpetuals that can be raised to ensure that we are able to navigate through any short-term price increases or unrelated spikes on working capital, the natural tendency would be to have more long-term instruments in OFI relative to what will be in Olam Agri because of the nature of capital-invested capital structure that is there in these two operating groups.
Only just, if I can just add two quick points. Even in OFI, like I mentioned, we are looking at EBIT growth higher than volume growth as the basis for margin expansion. That could be EBIT per ton or EBIT margins. EBIT margins always have a price impact, and therefore at outlier price up or down, you could have EBIT margins being exaggerated. It is really about EBIT growth being the prime driver. As far as the bonds are concerned, I guess like Muthu mentioned, for each of the group, the capital structure and the balance sheet is quite different. Subsequent to the demerger, OFI might have a very different kind of debt portfolio, which will be something that we'll decide once that demerger is concluded.
At this point in time, what is very important is that we've got a transitory debt restructuring in place, which ensures that all operating groups are equipped to manage this whole transition in a very, compact and comfortable manner.
Thank you, Shekhar and Muthu. We're running out of time. Thank you for your patience. I would like to just jump into the teleconference line to see if there are anyone who would like to ask a question. Operator, can you open up the line, please?
Certainly. Just a reminder for those on the phone, to ask a question, it is star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We have no phone questions at this time. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Can I check if there's any questions from the floor? If not, I would like to bring this session to a close, and we'd like to thank you very much for coming in for this results briefing and for tuning into this results briefing. As much as we would like to interact with you, but, of course, be mindful of the restrictions that are currently in place for a big group gathering and briefing like this. So we'd like to thank you, and we'd like to just do a fist pump and say, let's meet again on a one-on-one basis.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.