Yeah. Hi everyone. My name is Cristiano Veloso. I am the Founder and CEO of Verde AgriTech PLC. Thanks very much for attending our conference call to discuss the results for Q2 2022. If you're attending this event live, thank you very much for your interest in the company. If you're watching it on YouTube, thank you as well. If you want to support us, please, like the video, please share the video. This is how you can tell YouTube that other people like-minded, other people like yourself, other people might equally be interested with this content. Please help us growing awareness to what we're doing, to our purpose, to the reasons we're trying to grow the business. As usual, we will have a presentation which will be undertaken by our Chief Financial Officer, Felipe Paolucci, who is right by my side here.
At the end, we are gonna be addressing as many questions as we possibly can. We are in a bit of a busy schedule down here in Brazil, so, This call is gonna be lasting one hour. As soon as it's finished, I have another call I will have to jump to. I couldn't reschedule. It was something important for all of us co-owners of Verde. With no further ado, I will allow Felipe Paolucci to go over the presentation, and then I will be addressing. If you have any questions, please send it on the Q&A option as usual at the bottom of the screen. I can see a very exciting number of people attending this call live. Thank you again very much for your interest and all your support over this journey. Thank you, Felipe.
Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. Good evening. I'm gonna start now, saying again that like the old quarter, right quarter, that you have 5% off coupon discount for USA in our Super Greensand sold at Amazon. Unfortunately at this moment, we are sold out in Canada, but you can buy the product, you purchase it through Amazon US.
I guess you don't have many public companies where even the CFO is here helping you guys, you know, helping to sell the product. Well done, Felipe, for helping to sell Super Greensand to all our U.S. and Canadian resident shareholders, who I'm pretty sure right now logging on to Amazon and placing orders for the family and friends and neighbors, so everyone can try to experience the benefits of Super Greensand we're in North America as well.
Thanks. Moving forward to the presentation, the first chart, that's number five. This presentation will be also shared later on our website and also on YouTube. On summary here, we can see that Verde has concluded its redomiciliation to Singapore. Now we are a new Singaporean company under Verde AgriTech Ltd. We became the holding company of the UK company, Verde AgriTech Plc. Verde trading symbols did not change at the ASX, continue as NPK. The company's growth over Q2 2022 was mainly driven by an increase of productivity, markets growth, and also price increase. On Q3 and Q4 2022, Verde expects to meet the overall revised guidance for the year, which is 1 million tons.
On Q2 2022 highlights related to cash, we still have an ability to generate significant free cash flow in the long term. Although we can see an increase in our receivables, also this is something that we already expected, and for the year end, the beginning of Q1 next year, we expect to have a very relevant cash flow on hand. Cash utilized from investing activities increased over 2,000% in Q2 2022 to over $12 million compared to $577K last year. Trade and other receivables increased over 279% in Q2 2022 to $20.5 million compared to $5 million in Q2 2021. Total loans for CapEx and working capital in June was $8.9 million.
On profitability, revenue increased over 362% in Q2 2022 to $24.8 million compared to $5.4 million last year. In Brazilian reais, increased by 327% in Q2 2022 to close to BRL 100 million compared to BRL 23 million last year. Sales by volume increased by 112% in Q2 to 202,000 tons compared to 95,500 tons in Q2 2021. Gross margin side increased to 79% in Q2 this year compared to 72% in Q2 2021.
On EBITDA before non-cash events, there was an increase by 782% this year to $10.7 million compared to $1.2 million in 2021. On net profit, an increase by 2,426% in Q2 2022 versus up to $9.6 million compared to $273K last year. On operations side, Plant Two is expected to be commissioned by the end of August, which means like in 15 days from today, revising up an initial production capacity of 1.2 million tons per year. The full capacity of 2.4 million tons per year is expected to be reached in early Q4 2022, which is 4 x Verde's plant one current production capacity.
That's 600,000 tons. Now a bit of our financial statement, then the coming charts, we have some graphs and that's gonna be easier for everyone to understand. You can see here a comparison of Q2 2022 with the same quarter last year and also the year-to-date cumulative from January up to June. As I've mentioned on revenue side, you see an increase on the quarter of 362% and year-on-year close to 500% growth. On gross margin also, it's interesting to highlight here, you can see a delivery gross margin of 79% in Q2 2022 against 72% last year.
Comparatively, year-over-year, year-to-date, we also are 10% higher on DPS compared to last year, up to 78% compared to 68%. On EBITDA side, we can see $10.7 million at Q2 against $1.2 million last year and cumulative $14.4 million versus close to zero, $333,000 only last year. In the bottom line side, we can see also an increase, a huge increase. Last year we had a loss of $1.5 million on the cumulative side, and now we delivered over $12 million on net profit year-to-date 2022. On operation summary, this chart shows the tons sold per ton, revenue per ton.
We can see also on a relevant increase in the revenue per ton sold, over 100% from $56 last year to over $123 this year. Also on year-to-date, also the same trend with a growth of over 110% on sales per ton. On the production side, also we had an increase. This is basically driven by diesel cost and mix change as explained in the MD&A. We are selling much more on big bags than before, which also increases our cost. On the other hand, you can see a chart in the end of this presentation also that shows the increase on diesel, which is basically driven by the crude oil increase in the period.
If we exclude freight from the numbers, which is very relevant for us, every time that we sell CIF, of course Verde has to pay for the freight and this increase our revenue, and on the other side increase our expenses with freight. You can see here that the revenue sold per ton would decrease from $123 - $128 per ton, and gross margin would reduce from 79% - 70%. The key point here is to compare the same base, so you can see gross margin coming from 58% last year to 70% this year, compared to the same period of last year. Also year-to-date, currently we are over 15% higher year-on-year gross margin as well.
This chart you can see in the left side of the screen, the sales per ton development since Q1 2018. Actually the first period that we sold product with our factory was in Q3 2018 with 9,000 tons in the quarter. Now, we have only last quarter over 202,000 tons. The growth is really very big compared to prior periods. The gray bar here, we can see the difference that we had this year against 2021, 2020 and also 2019. In the right side, you can see an even higher growth. This was driven by the volume and also by price, since prices are much higher than last year.
We can see that in Q2 this year, we delivered close to $25 million on revenue, which is more than four times or plus four times what we had last year. That was $5.3 million. Now, another one we can see here projections just on annual basis. The company started in 2018 with less than 30,000 tons sold, then 120,000 tons in 2019, up to 243,000 in 2020, 400,000 last year. This year, we do expect to deliver close to 1 million tons of product.
In the revenue side also, it's a growth from $1.3 million to more than $100 million since 2018, which is like close to 100 x growth, it's a very big growth also. On sales, general and administrative expenses, you can see that was already expected, but you can see that we have additional expense in most of the lines, most of the items. Especially because they need to support and to hire people and prepare the company for this growth. We can see that sales and marketing expenses increased close to 100%. Fees paid to sales agents are also close to 500%. It's a big increase. I can.
We can see a chart here as well that shows that, sales through distributors, indirect sales are higher than the prior period. On freight is also a huge impact. You can see that, we have over $7 million expenses in freight in Q2 2022. Our general administrative expenses as well, we had an increase. As we have in IT, taxes, and total general expenses by the end of 55% growth year-on-year. Some other highlights here. We've chosen freight to explain engineering expenses. Freight, you can see in the left side FOB against CIF.
We can see that the total volume sold last year on FOB, for example, it was like 54,000 tons, and it increased only to 64,000 tons this year. On the other hand, we can see CIF that had a growth of over three times year-on-year from 41,000 tons to 137,000 tons. This is a trend also for the coming quarters. We've seen our mix between FOB and CIF maybe close to 70% now in Q3 on CIF against FOB. Last quarter it was at 68% also CIF. In the right side, the total expenses, you can see that we have general administrative expenses, an increase of 62%. Fees paid to sales agents, close to 500%.
In sales and marketing expenses, an increase of $700 ,000, from $347 ,000- $711,000 . This is the chart I've mentioned before. The sales channel comparison between the left side Q2 and the right side compared against year to date this year against last year. We can see that in Q2, the indirect sales increased from 37% of total products sold to 41% now in this quarter. The same trend you can see as well year to date. This means that we have an additional cost with sales agents and also price reduction to distributors that we have discounts applied in the products that they purchase to receive. On interest-bearing loans, we had some additional capital with the market bank.
The total at this current moment is $8.9 billion in 2030. We are doing our most for working capital and this kind of loans for working capital and for equipment purchase for factory two and also to support our growth. Most of these are over 24 months with a competitive interest rate. In Brazil currently, the government rate is close to between 13%-14%. The expectation is that by the end of the year, it has an increase. It will decrease most of our loans that are linked to the CDI, that we call, that's directly connected to the government interest rate paid to investors.
Related to our guidance, we can see here in Q2 2022 that we've achieved the sales target per ton. Our expectation now is to remain with the same guidance for 2022, which is 1 million tons with revenue of $109 million and an EPS, earnings per share of $0.87. Now, we start to have also a highlight here related to the guidance. One point that was also mentioned at MD&A that we had an increase in diesel price during Q2, an additional 23%. Year-on-year, we have over 78% increase on diesel price. Of course, it had an impact for us in Q2. However, we do see a trend now in Brazil since 30 days ago.
We have a reduction, which is not that big, of course, but it was maybe 5% reduction. We do expect a additional reduction from now to the end of the month to follow the crude oil price that internationally is dropping in the market. For 2023 guidance, also we expect to remain with 2 million MT tons to be sold next year. On Brazil economic scenario, you can see Brazilian real against the US dollars and also the Canadian dollars against Brazilian real. We can see here that the trend remains the same. We can see that by the end of on August, few days ago, they had BRL 5.07 per US dollars and close to BRL 4 to one Canadian dollar.
Comparing periods, we can see now that Brazilian real is stronger than before, and it's expected to remain as is according to the banks and the business analysts, at least for a few months. Potassium chloride price and also diesel and crude oil price. You can see in the first chart here that, as expected to be presented, the KCL CIF Minas Gerais price had a significant increase of close to 163%. The highest price, which is the right side of the table, you can see 128% growth on KCL price, which also had impacted our sales price per ton as well.
In the second chart, diesel and crude oil prices, you can see that the diesel here, that's the price the distributors where the gas stations and the company also purchase the diesel. It came from BRL 2.8 per liter to over BRL 5.2 here in August. You can see also the trend of the crude oil from $59 in Q1 2021, now to close to $100. Now had a decrease to $92 in August 2022. I saw yesterday, I think now it's $87 per crude oil barrel. That's what I have, Cristiano, for today. I'll pass it back to you, so you can ask the Q&A section from our shareholders.
Thank you very much, Felipe. We only have 47 questions here on the Q&A so far. Let's begin. First question. There's some speculation in the media about the location of the third plant. Yes, there is. As you might expect, there are several different places in Brazil we're interested in that. Some very strong candidates. We're very happy about what's being discussed, and we hope to be making a decision in the future about where the third plant will be located. The second part of the question is the reason why it would be far away from the mine. There are some advantages, some disadvantages. We are looking at all of that, but there isn't much to report at this stage.
Second question, how much of a discount do we offer in comparison to conventional potash prices? It depends. It's not. It depends on the situation, commercial reasons, context. So there isn't a set formula. A question here about our announced partnership with LAVORO, if they're gonna be able to sell Q1 2023 production. Yes, given where we are in the season right now, we expect that partnership to be more effective in terms of new sales from next year and the years after. Next question, does or could Verde research into a product application of single consumer potential due to the multinutrient potash need to be applied in the ground to reduce leaching and enhance availability? This could mean.
The question here is about the product having a greater agronomic efficiency in comparison to with conventional potash, given its benefits. Yes, we've seen that happening in some situations. We have, and it's public, over 85 testimonials or around 85 testimonials, I think, in our YouTube channel. There are reports there of better yields, but for now and the foreseeable future, we're focusing as a direct replacement against potash, and we are not really focusing on those added benefits in terms of monetizing it. The next question. I'm a foreign investor in the company.
Can you give any reassurance that given the difficult political climate in Brazil, long-term investment by me in Verde will be safe on terms of respect for my rights of ownership, especially in mind the concerns around the potential for threats to Brazil's democracy around the coming election? I cannot give you an assurance, but in Brazil's history, there has never been, to the best of my knowledge, any problem in terms of appropriation. When you look at the two candidates who will likely one of them win, one is the current president, in spite of the media trying to suggest something similar to what happened in the United States with Trump might happen in Brazil. I personally think the risk is not significant, and I think lots of the financial community agree to that.
The other president, again, it's someone who ruled Brazil for eight years, so there is already a track record. I think in terms of uncertainty, from an investor's perspective, there's no one new who might be elected as president in Brazil, aside from the current one being reelected or someone who was in power for eight years. There is a certain predictability in terms of what might happen, and the market seems to like it. At least we've seen a strong repricing of Brazilian equities. Whenever I talk to investors, institutional investors, there seem to be good expectations from them or a positive expectation regardless of who gets elected. What portion of your customers use K -Forte at standalone versus in conjunction with conventional potash?
I don't know. Yes, some customers, they will be using both products, both sources of potash. That often happens when the level of potash in the soil of a farm is very low, or it's a culture that has a very short cycle. There are some farmers that like to combine two different sources of potash. Can you confirm the trees being planted on the mine site or being watered and looked after until established? Yes, we look after them very well in terms of making sure they survive throughout the dry period. Next question. What percentage of sales this quarter was BAKS, and how much higher was the average sales price for BAKS? I don't know. From memory, what percentage... Was it BAKS?
12%.
12%. Well done, Felipe. 12% of our sales were BAKS, which is a product that has essentially been sold out for a long time and we have limited production capacity. Another question here, how farmers tend to buy fertilizers. Do they buy NPK separately, or they buy all three components directly from a blender? They do both. Usually smaller farmers, they will buy NPK blends. Larger, more technical corporate farmers, most of them will prefer to buy each nutrient separately, so they can apply it more precisely depending on the ratio of nutrients they need. In the U.S., for example, virtually all the market is single nutrient rather than applying NPK blends. What happened to the OTC listing?
We had some problems with OTC listing right after the reconciliation to Singapore, but I've been told this has been resolved. Several of the U.S. brokers I understand have already been able to trade, but there are some U.S. brokers who still need to go through their own internal process so they can resume trading. I would suggest just telling your broker that it has resumed and they need to go through it out. There was a change in ticker. The new ticker symbol is VNPKF, so it's no longer AMHPF, which was of the old ticker from when the company used to be called Amazon Mining. There's a different one. How much of the potash sold in Brazil is from the blender to the farmers?
The fact that your competitors are all owners of blends a problem? It is a problem, especially if you're a very small farmer and you want all nutrients. However, farmers are already used to buying different nutrients from different suppliers, different products from different suppliers. We don't see that as a major problem. We actually see that more as an opportunity for, at some point in the future, that we also start selling the other nutrients and benefit from that relationship we've been creating with our customers. Most of the competitors are very far from Brazil, but there you need to move six times more product than they do. Which is easier? Do high fuel prices hurt them, hurt you? It depends.
When you look at the fuel cost element, this is only part of the problem. To give you an idea, after your ship gets to a port in Brazil, at the moment it needs to wait anything from 45-60 days before you unload it. The logistical hurdle for you to bring imported fertilizers into Brazil. It's a nightmare. There's no doubt that being local has significant benefits. The price of ammonia is very high. All people looking for KCl bags because of N/P factor. We're not getting that as a driver for growth, even though the price for nitrogen is very high. The next question. Another question here about trading. I apologize. I know how frustrating it is. We've done and keeping everything we can, and we've done so.
It just seems to be each one of the brokers that needs to do something to allow trading to resume. If there's a broker that's raising anything or a bank, just please, and if there's anything we might be able to help, just let us know. Another question here. Verde costs have increased much more rapidly than increase in the potash price charged to farmers, and that's in a peak potash environment. This might imply that Verde is over earning. The truth about it, and a slight correction in potash price can make the company lose substantial money. Hard to reconcile the low price potash charge what the actual potash has been in the entire year. Please explain. Sure.
Just as a reminder, we've been making money since potash prices were $250. I think it's unlikely, and most of the market believes it's unlikely for the prices to come that low. When we look at the most respected analyst for potash, his long-term price is $400, which is already a phenomenal price for us. Even if you were gonna look at a doomsday scenario at $250, when most of the supply wouldn't even be economic for distributing product in Brazil, we always have the fallback plan to sell closer to the mine rather than the way we currently operate, where we sell across the whole of Brazil. We have that choice if the market completely crashes on potash, which seems to be very unlikely.
There's another question here. Hang on. Why are we selling at such low prices compared to Brazilian potash market price? When you see the results on the quarter, that's historical price, and a lot of it or some of the volume gets priced in previous quarters. Some of it gets priced in previous years when we do long-term sales. Of course, the problem or the big impact we had was because we were sold out for plant one for so long, there wasn't much opportunity to sell at spot. We hope that with Plant Two come into production and the fact we will be increasing our production capacity five-fold, this will get minimized going forward and especially next year. Another question here. Why is the CEO so promotional?
Why the need to pay for social media ads to the investor site? Why doing that together when the CEO is selling shares, especially before supposedly ramp up in revenues? I've seen long-term holders losing faith in the management team. Based on that, why I should still believe in this team, especially under a valuation that requires future execution? I think the fact I'm reading this question here, you know, when I could have just chose to ignore it and move on, probably speaks very loudly. I don't know if we're very promotional. I think when you look at our IR budget, it's significantly smaller than of most companies I've I know which are public companies, and even significantly lower from the early days. There's very little budget being allocated. You mentioned paying for social media.
We did some social media ads, and that is because in Brazil, we do a lot of that to sell the products. We have an in-house team, we have the expertise. We did make some investments to try the social media angle, and it did raise the awareness. We did have some institutional investors who came to us interested and weren't aware about the company, you know, they didn't complain about finding it via a social media ad. I'm still unsure whether there is a bit of a taboo from certain investors that a company shouldn't be doing social media to increase awareness or this is something we actually should be doing. Because I did get some pushback from some investors saying we shouldn't be doing that.
I paused that a few weeks ago or a couple of months ago, so there hasn't been any social media ad. It isn't an issue I am completely convinced that we should stop. I would like to hear from our co-owners. There are several here in this call. There will be several watching this on YouTube, we hope, especially because hopefully you guys click and share, sharing this video, liking this video. Please reach out and let us know your opinion. Should a public company be investing on social media to increase awareness or should not? Or should the company be relying on more conventional types of IR investment? The other question is about me selling shares.
I remember when I sold the first amount of shares, and it was kind of like rather painful, because I had held onto them for 17 years. I remember having this very weird conversation with the trader saying, "Look, you know, this is my older child you're gonna be selling a small chunk of it, so make sure you find good hands for that." It's still something that myself psychologically I personally struggle with that. However, it's something that I'm no longer in the early twenties or early thirties when I started the company. You know, I have a family now. There is a diversification issue going forward.
In all fairness, I have even had some investors who turn to me and say, "Well, you know, I think my opinion about you went higher. You know, I think higher of you now that you're selling some shares, because it just never made any sense for you to be so concentrated." that was, you know, so they were happy. There will be mixed opinions on that, and I respect either opinion. Next question. Thank you for your question and giving me the opportunity to talk about that with our fellow co-owners. Another question. The estimated production capacity for 2023 is 3 million tons, but the sales guidance is 2 million tons. Do you see guidance being reviewed upwards?
We would love to review this guidance upward. We will carry on working hard to make that a reality. We also need to be cognizant of the fact it's growing 100%, it's not easy like we've been doing. Hopefully we can share the burden of this growth or this new growth with more partners, like the ones we announced today. Okay, another question here about trading in the U.S. Again, I apologize for that. As you all know, we've been working on listing in a main stock exchange in the United States, and hopefully that will resolve it for forever. If there's anything we can talk to a broker or you can put us in the loop, put our lawyers in the loop, we're happy to help.
The other question here. Excellent presentation at the Canaccord Genuity Conference. The link for that conference presentation is available. If some of you haven't seen it's on our website or Twitter feed. NPV of $345 per share. What was the total timeframe, the discount rate used in the calculations? My guess is 40 years and discount rate, 4%-8%. Am I correct? Yes, you're correct. I think in the biggest scenario, it was a bit less than 40 years. More importantly, all of that information is available on our website. There is a 300 or 200-page-long independent report with all the assumptions behind that expansion feasibility study. Next question.
Why is the Q2 average selling price so low when compared to potash price for the same period for the one-sixth factor? I've answered part of this question by saying some of it gets sold ahead of time. We do offer discounts and commercial reasons to commercial potash, but we also need to be a bit careful about just making a direct calculation, because, for example, when you sell via distributor, a distributor will get 15%, and that also has an impact on the price you see there. It's very difficult. What I'm trying to say is you will never be able to reconcile the price you see as our average sales price in the quarter. Just multiply it by six and make a direct reference to KCL. Next question.
Will Verde shares continue to be listed on OTC, and with what symbol? We discussed that one. How Verde can benefit from the carbon credit market? What is the average size of the farms in hectares of Verde clients? This carbon credit market, the other day I heard something quite interesting. It's a phosphate company is claiming that they expect to be getting absolutely all the revenues from all the profit from carbon credit. So in other words, the farmer wouldn't need to be paying for it. Just the carbon credit, which this company is sharing with farmers, is gonna build it. It has been already started building their business plan. So it's something we probably should start focusing a little bit more of all attention towards. We're doing some stuff.
We do some studies, looking at it, but my time personally, and my focus personally hasn't been much on it. That was a little bit of an eye-opener and probably I should spend more time looking into it and because it does sound interesting. The average size of the farms and hectares of Verde clients is about 1,000 hectares. Nutrien recently announced that they purchased a Brazilian distributor. Did they sell any of Verde product? No, that distributor didn't sell any of Verde product. Could that sale to Nutrien jeopardize our sales? No, not at all. It's a very competitive market when it comes to distribution. I believe today's press release also is an interesting one. Another question, again, my apologies about the OTC trading.
Please put us in contact if we can help. The good news is that we can see trading happening in the U.S. on the new ticker. I think it's now more down to each one of the brokers figuring stuff out internally rather than anything too complicated having to be done. Another question here about the cost sensitivity regarding the changing price of fuel per ton of product sold. Fuel up 5%, production cost up X%. Fuel up 25%, production cost up Y%. I'll let Felipe have a look at this question, and then perhaps the next quarter we can look into doing a little sensitivity analysis on costs.
The good news is fuel prices have been going down, and today there was another price decrease announced in terms of diesel prices here in Brazil. Has Plant Two produced yet? No, it hasn't produced yet. We're all very anxious. It's going well. The team is doing an amazing job. Let's remember, when we started building this plant, it was to be 1.2 million tons. We've doubled it to 2.4 million tons. We had at some point over 600 people working on the construction, and we're doing everything and our team is doing everything we can to start production as soon as possible. We're still working with production to start next month. We might be 14 days.
We really hope from starting production and so we know our customers will equally really hope we will be able to do that. Next question. Looking at page 26 of the corporate presentation, price competitiveness versus other potash producers, Verde seems to be more geared to fuel costs. I understand that other components like international freight are also affected by inflation, but how has the big increase in Brazil fuel costs affected your relative competitive position versus international competitors? Verde just needs more trucks to transport the same amount of KCl content to farms. As you saw from our results, diesel price does bite in our net sales prices as we have to pay more expensive distribution costs.
In an extreme potash extreme high diesel price like the one we saw above $130, I would say we will be losing some of that competitiveness. However, in that extreme scenario, which isn't reflected in that table on the presentation, the international suppliers are equally impacted on freight costs, also on the local distribution costs. We would need to look into it in more detail, but because it's such an extreme and things have already reversed to the mean, or at least starting to, I think as a long-term situation, it seems not much different from what you saw there. What's the typical purchasing behavior for farmers in Brazil with regards to potash procurement?
Do they typically buy today for immediate use or using next quarter or for next year? Any insights you can share? Unfortunately, there isn't a typical behavior. It will vary a lot. We've had some farmers who in the past would be buying one year ahead, who for this year chose to buy just now for immediate delivery. I had a meeting with our sales guys yesterday, and they were reporting several farmers who hadn't bought any fertilizer yet and all kind of getting desperate to secure supply now. So it does vary.
Because our market share at this stage is still so small, it means that we can keep looking for each one of those customers or that sort of customer behavior, depending on where we are in terms of the season, the buying season. Could you please provide us with an idea of how far into the future you're already making pre-sales for newly added Plant Two capacity? We're already selling for next year. We don't have any sales for 2024. Do we have? No. So up to 2024, we already have sales for next year. Next question. The chief strategy guide is based on product CIF and FOB average costs for the full year, including all orders of CAD 109.
Can you say what the average price has been at the half year stage? I don't know. Wouldn't be very different to that, I would say. Can you please help us understand what has changed on the taxation side? There hasn't been any change on the taxation side at this point in time. Can you please provide an update on Bio Revolution? Are we already selling Bio Revolution? Last week did a big sale of it, about 5,000 tons of product with Bio Revolution. We sell it for BRL 40 per ton, and the cost is less than BRL 1 per ton. I can't conceive why would anyone buy the product without Bio Revolution. I think that will. It's just a matter of time until everyone appreciates that.
Another question in Portuguese. I would like to know how much percentage of the cost of freight diesel accounts for, and how you intend to reduce the cost of transportation. As we grow to bigger volumes, rail becomes a reality, and there is some scope to reduce from rail. As we become more consolidated and the location of the plant becomes more consolidated, we start seeing an even greater offer of freight. We start increasing our relationship with different transportation companies all over Brazil, different independent truck drivers. We improve the systems. All of that should help contribute towards that. What's the company's strategy to do with Bio Revolution? Has the technology been patented? Yes, we've applied for a patent.
There's a video on YouTube where I go through in detail what I call fertilizer 1.0 versus fertilizer 2.0. I believe before Bio Revolution, a fertilizer would only be providing nutrients, be it nitrogen, phosphate, whatever, potash, manganese, magnesium. With Bio Revolution, you can now start adding microbes. Those microbes, you have them for all sorts of different purposes. You have microbes that will be capable of storing nitrogen to the soil, microbes which will increase the availability of certain nutrients in the soil that will act, increasing plant protection, increasing the resilience of crops against drought, too much cold.
We see and hope Bio Revolution will turn our products into a platform, like a smartphone with different apps, with different developers, with different scientists, with different companies that come up with solutions, and we would be using Bio Revolution and our products to deploy those to the field. When will Verde announce buyback or distributing a dividend? We're very anxious about that as well, excited. We're talking, we're making our calculations, and we hope in the next months we will. Certainly this year we hope we're gonna be announced something along those lines, hopefully. Next question. How much of the 2023 volumes have already been sold? Not material. Why some trades in the U.S. do not recognize the new Verde share symbol? Again, I apologize. I think it's more to do with the broker taking some time.
Please let us know if there's anything we can help. Regarding the recent increase in sales and marketing costs, do you expect this trend to continue as the company ramps up sales? Our cost of sales and marketing is significantly lower than competitors. We're way more efficient than they are because we rely so much in digital sales. If it will carry on, yes, it should carry on increasing as we go after the very significant volumes we've been aiming. There's no doubt there should be and there should continue to be some significant gains of scales in that front. Realized price of the quarter $123. Realized price of the quarter was $123 x 6 is $738.
This is a far cry from the lowest price during the quarter. What prevents Verde achieving full price, and what can we expect going forward in the future? Again, we can't just multiply by six because that doesn't take into account the distribution, distributors 15%. That doesn't take into account the fact we were sold out for Q2 for a long time, volumes, and that we also offer discounts. I think the fact that 123 was already a significant greater multiple of what the previous quote had been, I think that is already a very encouraging. Another question. Are you aware that last week Petrobras has several land leases of sales of potash available? This is in the Amazon basin. Petrobras had some old concessions there, which it's trying to sell.
I was told recently by a geologist in Brazil who was commenting on the Amazon basin, where there's potash there, he was just saying how anyone can go and apply for as much land with potash occurrences in the Amazon basin as you can. Supposedly, there is no shortage of potash underneath the Amazon forest. The issues there seem to be of a completely different nature and nothing to do with the availability of land available for people to develop. We'll be interested to see if there will be any interest whatsoever on this attempt of Petrobras to sell the concessions they currently have. Are you aware? Some other question. That was another Petrobras. In the past, you told us about the various orders or contracted price or better.
When price goes up, there's a delay, but when it drops, it happens immediately. All the industry participants work in the same way. Good question. Contractually, you might have some fertilizer distributors that will say that if you buy it for future delivery and if the price goes down, you have to pay the agreed price. That might be contained in a contract. However, what we see happening in real life, talking to the other distributors and to the players, is that no fertilizer company in Brazil chooses to enforce that. At the end of the day, it just turns into a negotiation. The farmer gets the lowest price. The difference in terms of our approach is that we're fully transparent in terms of making sure we get passed through to the farmer.
Someone contributing here, the American symbol for Verde Agritech changed to VNPKF in my account this week. Another question, is it possible to increase bags production above 10%-12% over time? Yes, it is possible. As we start using Plant Two to produce K40 bulk, we will equally increase the production capacity of bags. I'm now officially gonna be a bit late for my next meeting, but there aren't many questions left here, and I wanna. You know, I will sleep better tonight if I know that I've actually answered all of the questions. Let me be a bit late for the next call. What has been on average your customer retention rate for the past year? That's a very good question. We've discussed that in several of the other calls. There's a pre-press release, we discussed that.
I would like to refer you to. It's the one we talk about the EGR, Earned Growth Rate. It was published earlier this year. Would there need to be a stock split to provide liquidity for more institutional and retail investors? I don't anticipate doing a stock split. How is the New York listing going? We're working on it. It's not new. We are focusing on Nasdaq. Any news on smart money taking larger blocks? Can you talk about BlackRock? No doubt BlackRock is a big fund, but I wouldn't. You know, I've been doing this thing for 17 years now. I've met hundreds, if not thousands, of retail investors, fund managers, you know, what you guys are calling smart money. I wouldn't make assumptions.
You know, I've come across a lot of private investors, a lot who, you know, I would rank very high and certainly much higher than a lot of institutional investors or what you call the smart money I've met over the years. Do not underestimate your capacity to do your due diligence, to talk, to dig, look at it and yeah. Next question. Another one about the Petrobras. Doesn't affect us whatsoever. The problem isn't lack of availability of potash mine rights. The problem there is another one or other ones. Is the company looking for a new listing? Yes. We hopefully will be on Nasdaq. If it was no capacity restraints on bags, how much higher bags door-to-door sales would be?
I think it's a matter of time and you know, letting the people who K-Forte so much understand the full benefits of BAKS. But when you start doing the calculations, myself as a farmer, it's backed by Bio Revolution, no doubt. It's a no-brainer. But you know, same thing with investments, same thing with stocks, sometimes it takes people to appreciate value. What was the average discount given on K-Forte? I don't know. It varies. And it's exactly because it varies, you're asking for. My apologies, I don't have an answer. With cost of transportation is 86% of total cost, does Verde have some way to reduce the transportation costs? Yes.
I think we've addressed a little bit about that as we consolidate the presence of the plant, the availability of transportation increases, you start having more business that getting developed surrounding the logistical issues. You tend to see this happening, yes. Current policy and buyback, we're still working on that. Potentially K-Forte bio Revolution in Asia in future, which Verde look for distribution partner. Yes, we already have a partner, and we're always open to new partners. Very interested. I K-Forte bio Revolution is to gain a lot of penetration into international markets as well. NPS ratio for customers, this is something else we track a lot. Our NPS is pretty high.
Again, Eloy, I suggest have a look at this EGR press release we put out because it's the same guy who came up with NPS. He created what he calls NPS 2.0, which is earned growth rate. Yeah, it's a good press release to be read. Can you comment on the listing? I've answered that. Capital purchase, we're not looking to sell and to raise any capital. We will expand the amount of shares outstanding. You have a share sale. We're not planning to raise money. Interesting question. When do you expect to have a granulation project? I think as part of Plant Three, we will have a granulation unit as well. When you do indirect sales, does 15% come out to pay distributor and then another fee for commission? No.
If you're a distributor, you get a 15% discount, and it is 15% because then the distributor also has to pay some taxes. It's a bit not very efficient from a tax perspective. If you're an independent agent, it's 5%, because in that way we sell directly to farmers. Of course, if a distributor, the distributor takes the credit risk by selling to the farmer as well. What are you most excited about? I'm very excited about Plant Two starting production. Very excited about Bio Revolution getting consolidated and new microbes being added to our products.
I'm very excited to see how our team has been evolving and how our strategy for hiring has worked to build a very strong team, which I've no doubt is just as important to our growth as the quality of our product and our technologies. Patent on Bio Revolution, how long is the patent? It hasn't been granted yet. How much of the sales of 2023, 2024 or Bio Revolution over K-Forte, we don't have a breakdown at this point. Why not build Plant Three on Cerrado Verde where grade is 10%? You might get some tax rebates somewhere else, but if grade drops, it isn't more of a disadvantage. It's a good point. This is being taken into account. When will Plant Two be commissioned?
Later, you know, it's later this month. Will you be able to meet the projected numbers? At this point, we believe we will be. It will be very busy September, but we're already lined up, you know, for the new plant being commissioned to be working the same way as Plant One, 24 hours per day, seven days per week, so we can supply all the orders we have on file. The 40 HAIs quoted, it's the additive, correct. It's the micro additive. That's what the 40 HAIs are. That completes all of our questions, which leaves me two minutes to be 10 minutes late for my next call. In those two minutes, I would like to thank you all for joining us live today.
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