Dzień dobry państwu. W imieniu Biura Korporacyjnego Relacji Inwestorskich witam państwa na konferencji, na której omówione zostaną wyniki spółek Grupy Azoty za first quarter 2023. Chciałbym również powitać naszych dzisiejszych prelegentów, którymi są: pani Justyna Majsnerowicz, Wiceprezes Zarządu Grupy Azoty Puławy, pan Marek Wadowski, Wiceprezes Zarządu Grupy Azoty S.A., pan Michał Siewierski, Wiceprezes Zarządu Grupy Azoty Police oraz pan Grzegorz Kuberski, Dyrektor Kontrolingu Grupy Azoty. Chciałbym teraz oddać głos panu Prezesowi Markowi Wadowskiemu.
Witam serdecznie.
A warm welcome to all of you. I have a pleasure of presenting and discussing our performance in general, after the first quarter of 2023. It was an exceptional quarter, full of challenges faced by all the players operating in the chemicals or plastics or fertilizers markets and segments. It was a quarter when we saw a market decline in demand for a lot of products that are included in our portfolio, which was a consequence of, on the one hand, high inflation rates and figures in 2022, as well as high interest rates, as and on the other hand, a lower demand, especially in terms of sales of fertilizers.
As a recap of major events, I'd like to point out first that Grupa Azoty takes any action possible in order to rebound after this difficult and challenging period, as we are able to emerge as a stronger company, facing and adapting to market challenges. We are continuing our strategic flagship investment, Polimery Police, and we have started the startup of the installation and we started some sales processes. We will move on to more details later on. We are also developing our operations for biofertilizers. We have opened R&D center for biofertilizers at Grupa Azoty Fosfory. We launched the second line or plant of concentrated nitric acid in Tarnów, at Tarnów. We also received financial support for energy-intensive sectors of 24 million PLN. Results after the first quarter are not satisfactory for us.
As I said before, it was a quarter wrought with a lot of challenges in our market environment and our broader environment. As you can see on the slide, there was a major drop in terms of our production volumes, adjusted to the situation, or following the situation of market and supply, of demand and supply in the markets. As a result, our performance was much lower than the year before. As far as market is concerned, what it looked like in the first quarter of the year, there was a number of factors and drivers which influenced how we operated in the market. First of all, we were faced with lower demand from consumers, which was a consequence, as I said before, of high inflation rate and the resulting rise in interest rates.
A low level of global growth, which also impacted not only our operations, but a number of other players operating in the markets and segments in which we operate as well. We also saw a disruption of purchasing trends, mainly in terms of sales of fertilizers, where usually quarter one is a quarter characterized by high sales of fertilizers. We saw that the year before and for quite a number of years before. This year, those purchasing trends were disrupted in quarter one. What's important is the fact that we saw a economic revival and economic growth in China. We see a situation where we had COVID-19 related lockdowns, and as a result, Chinese producers are facing low demand and they are re-ranking their interest or focus their interest on European markets.
Economic growth, the economic growth in China is an opportunity for us which we can tap because we can expect lower competition from Chinese competitors due to the fact that the demand in China will be higher. A couple of words now on how gas trends or high gas price trends look like or what do they look like? On December 19, 2022, prime ministers of the European Union member states set the maximum or cap level for those prices at EUR 180 per megawatt hour. At that time, the market price was around EUR 100 per megawatt hour.
Right now, the price went down to lower than EUR 30 and since then we have observed a systematic decline in the prices of gas, which is not typical for a period like that, like this, because we still were in the winter period in quarter one. However, it is great news for the consumers. Grupa Azoty we changed our prices, fertilizers in quarter one to adjust those prices to market conditions. In terms of other macroeconomic factors, you can see them on this particular slide. What's important for us is the fact that we saw certain trends on electricity prices. They are lower than the electricity prices we saw at the end of 2022.
In terms of our cost and revenue or expenses, you can see quite clearly that due to the decline in volumes, we see or we have seen a drop in revenue in the quarter one. In terms of our costs, first of all, you have to focus on the lower gas prices, which result in a decline of the share of gas prices in our general costs or expenses from 55% in 2020 to much lower in 2023 in quarter one. On the other hand, the cost of energy feedstocks, that is electricity, heat and coal, went up and the share of those feedstocks in terms of their costs and our general cost structure went up in the first quarter of 2023 versus 2022. Moving on to our discussion by segment.
As I said, in the Agro Segment, quarter one was an exceptional period. We have never worked for quite a long time. We had not seen such a period before, especially in terms of grain prices, where we see a major drop practically since mid 2022. It translates into a lot of uncertainty and doubts on the grower's side and certain disruption of the market and the way agricultural farms operate. It translated into a major change in our, the purchasing behavior or trends. Traditionally, in quarter one, growers will buy a lot of fertilizer products, and this quarter was much worse in terms of that particular indicator. Other factors, drivers which also affected the Agro Segment's figures, included a drop in gas prices. As you can see, fertilizer prices went down as well across the board in Europe.
This applies particularly. This applies to virtually all fertilizer products. This situation causes great uncertainty on the grower's side. We want to take action in order to stabilize the situation, to stabilize this market. We want to function in the new fertilizer segment. We want to function based on a predictable price path for fertilizers in line or in keeping with the trends we observed in previous years. We would like to eliminate the element of uncertainty in terms of fertilizer prices so that it does not cause uncertainty among our growers. This is the policy we want to implement in the new fertilizer season. In terms of compound fertilizers, in this particular area, we see quite clearly that the prices of compound fertilizers also went down.
The demand for those fertilizers in quarter one went down as well, quite markedly. The volume of our sales declined, and we're keeping our fingers crossed that after this particular period, quarter one, 2023, in the long term, this market will rebound and the demand for fertilizers, compound fertilizers will rebound as well. Ladies and gentlemen, you have to take note of the fact that there is growing imports of urea to Poland. We wanted to show you. In an incremental way, comparing several quarters, in quarter one we saw a drop in import figures. You see on the left-hand side, looking at the chart, it is quite clear that the import figures were much lower than before. The reasons for that are, first of all, the price.
Urea is imported from countries that have significantly lower production costs, where there are no additional charges related to CO2 emissions. Obviously, it is imported from countries where gas prices are much lower, at different levels than in Poland. Urea is not a fertilizer that is a good solution for the first application in the, in our climate. you do not see the same trend for ammonium nitrate. The import figures for ammonium nitrate were not that high. As a summary for the agro segment, as I said before, it was an exceptional period in quarter one. A lot of uncertainty among our farmers. A major decline in the prices of agriculture products. An increase in urea imports from countries where production costs are lower.
Last but not least, continuing high prices of feedstocks, energy feedstocks. I'm not talking about gas only, but I'm talking about energy feedstocks in general, as well as feedstuffs and raw materials used for the production of compound fertilizers. Moving on to another segment, the chemicals segment. In this particular segment, we saw major challenges as well on the market side. The first quarter was a quarter that saw lower demand. We are showing you European market spreads for titanium white and TiO2. They're better than the year before or last year, but volumes play a major role, and those volumes were much lower than the year before. Prices of a lot of products went down. You should also take notice of the fact that in the chemicals segment we see a growing year-on-year competition from Asian producers.
As I said before, high inflation definitely affects demand on the consumer side. We do not see any clear signs of improvement in terms of global economy or economies. We have high competition from low-cost producers, from low-cost regions. The opportunity for improvement in the market situation are there. We see those opportunities and signs. We can assume that the situation will improve, albeit slightly, but in the next quarter. However, we need to take into account the fact that this market will continue to be very challenging for us. Moving on to the plastics segment. In this particular segment, the situation is quite similar as in the previous one, the chemicals segment. This particular quarter one, saw a major drop in demand year-on-year.
We adapted our production to the prevailing market situation, and we also need to remember about the competition from Asian producers. You can see the price trends for various products such as benzene, polyamide, and caprolactam. If you compare those prices, Europe versus Asia, you can see quite clearly that price levels, price trends are much lower in Asia. There is an opportunity in the plastic segment of sorts, and I'm talking about an revival or rebound in the automotive segment. This will affect or translate into an improvement in the plastic segment with a certain delay, obviously, but we will do our best to tap that opportunity when it arises. As a recap for the plastics segment, we need to remember about the continuing high prices of raw materials despite a drop in demand for finished goods.
I'm still talking about quarter one, obviously. We need to remember about lower margins across the board. We're not talking about Grupa Azoty only, I'm talking about all the producers in this area. Truth be told, apart from the automotive business, we do not see any signs of any economic revival in the market, in our markets. Moving on to part segment results in terms of our financial performance. All our segments reported a lower performance than the year before. EBITDA per segment was negative in total. We're not discussing this particular segment separately, and I'm talking about the energy segment. The negative performance and the negative figure in terms of EBITDA was due to lower production in the energy segment.
We, simply speaking, consumed less energy, which obviously translated into the fact that we had to sell the energy that we had previously purchased in the market, and it affected our performance to a large extent. We are discussing the situation, and we are negotiating the situation with our suppliers, energy suppliers, in order to modify the existing agreements. On a more positive note, in the Q1, we received financial support for energy-intensive segments, sectors, and the amount we received was 234 million PLN, and you can PLN. You can see a breakdown of this amount per segment. The more energy-intensive segment, the higher the amount, obviously. Moving on to the agro segment and our financial performance in the agro segment or performance in general, obviously the volumes were a major driver of our performance.
It was, as I said before, an exceptional quarter. A quarter which we did not see in the agro segment before, where we saw wide, quite lower demand than before in terms of the demand for fertilizers. Despite the fact that the prices of fertilizers went down, still the demand did not pick up, did not react to this trend. Growers, farmers would not buy fertilizers due to this uncertainty factor I mentioned before. Grupa Azoty will take action in order to stabilize the situation and to apply a stable and predictable price path in the new fertilizer season, as we saw before. In the chemical segment, the major driver of our performance were volumes again, and you can see those volumes in terms of sales volumes as well as revenue from sales, and they're much lower than a year before.
We should point out, we will discuss it later on in more detail, we should point out the situation in terms of melamine. The production of melamine in quarter one was put on hold. However, after the close of quarter one, we relaunched one line, we see certain signs of a slight improvement. It's not a breakthrough yet, however. There are some optimistic signs from the markets, we can be more optimistic as well, we can maintain this launch production, we hope that production will be profitable. In the plastic segment, again, volumes played a major role affecting our performance to the largest extent. As I've mentioned, an element which can or might improve the situation in the segment is the automotive business. We see an opportunity for improvement there. However, we still have to wait for that.
In terms of our purely financial situation and performance, in terms of our liquidity, we are on the safe side. We're good here. However, due to a major decline in performance in the first quarter, we see risks, and the net debt to EBITDA figure at the end of the first half of the year might exceed the acceptable levels set in our agreements, financing agreements. The maximum level is at 4.0. At the end of March, it's higher than that particular level. However, this level is not to be reported to the financial institutions. It will be reported only after the first half of the year. However, we see certain risks here, and we will do our best. We will work hard in cooperation with, in partnership with the financial institutions in order to arrive at certain agreements.
We are in the midst of major work in terms of analysis of this particular figure in the quarters to come in 2023 and in the years to come. Moving on to our investments. In the first quarter, our investment figures were lower than the year before. However. We need to stress that the level of our CapEx spending is related to two factors. First of all, the schedule for our investments, it went down in Polimery Police in terms of CapEx spending. The second factor of our CapEx spending is optimization, and this is obviously related to our results, our performance in general. However, as I said before, our investment at Polimery Police is in full swing, and it proceeds as planned in line with the schedule. A couple of words about this particular investment.
The stage of completion is more than 99% as we speak. We plan to launch commercial production, commercial operation for the second half of the year. What's important here is the fact that after the close of this investment, we will see a change in the revenue structure across the group. This will be one of the major elements which will strengthen our group and our performance after this very, very challenging and difficult period. We will be able to show you that we can cope with those problems and challenges in the market more effectively. A couple of photographs showing the investment, the current state of affairs. Practically speaking, we are talking about the stage of completion, which is nearing the operating, operational stage, and the production will be launched shortly.
Other investments, in addition to our flagship investment, include, first of all, the new energy concept. This is a concept rolled out at Kędzierzyn. We are talking about a package of seven projects, investment projects, and the idea here is to use process heat generated from, in ammonia plants to produce energy medium, energy carriers. The stage of completion is at 93% currently. Other investments include the construction of an energy block, a power generation unit, upgrade of existing nitric acid production units, and construction of new nitric acid production and neutralization units, and the units of production of new fertilizers based on nitric acids and the upgrade of steam generator to reduce NOx emissions. Moving on to group companies' financial highlights. It was a difficult period. Quarter one was.
Even for COMPO EXPERT, we've generated a positive EBITDA, but much lower than a year before. Despite the fact that COMPO EXPERT has a diversified sales in terms of its geographical structure, it still was affected by the challenging market situation. Moving on to the performance of Grupa Azoty Puławy, I'll now give the floor over to the Vice-President of Grupa Azoty Puławy. Thank you very much. I would like to, first of all, recap the quarter and the determinants for our production figures and our performance in quarter one. First of all, quarter one, despite the spring fertilizer application season, we saw, in this particular area, we saw lower demand and price fluctuations in the market, as well as different levels of stocks than years, than the year before.
The demand was weak and the same applied to our chemical products, especially caprolactam, melamine. We saw low demand, and if there was any interest from consumers, they would be looking for cheaper products, which were offered by Chinese producers, pushing our producers from the European markets. Those factors affected our decisions in terms of our operation of our plants and our financial decisions as well. We also had two one-off events in the first quarter. One was positive, the other one was negative. Let me start with the positive event. In March, we received a compensation under the aid program for energy-intensive segment, sectors at PLN 80 million. On the other hand, however, we had a negative factor which drove down our EBITDA, both for the company and our group.
We recognized write-downs for our inventories at around 90 million PLN for the company and at around 75 million PLN for the group. Driving down our performance in that area. Moving on to the figures, and the major highlights here for the company and the group. Let me first put it in a summary, and the way it changed versus the last year. First quarter 2023 was a quarter where some turbulence and disruption in terms of supply versus demand situation in Europe continued due to, obviously, the effect of military aggression of Russia against Ukraine, and also duty-free imports of fertilizers to Europe, as well as imports of chemical segments, products which are produced using cheaper feedstocks and raw materials, especially in terms of electricity and ammonia.
Also different regulations applying to certain producers in terms of climate protection. As a result, we saw a major global drop of demand for our products. We also saw weaker activity across all the segments, which were traditionally the segments of our customers, and a disruption of supply versus demand, as well as pressures on the reduction of our products, and we had to adjust our production levels to the market conditions. In terms of our revenue, we saw a major drop here at PLN 1.4 million year-on-year, mainly due to a drop in volumes. It's a major factor here. The other factor was a drop in our prices of our products, especially in our major segment, that is agro segment.
Production cuts, which we were forced to introduce in the 1st quarter of the year, translated into our costs, mainly our variable costs, especially in a major category that is raw material costs. In this category, we recognize our 5 major costs, that is gas, electricity, coal, benzene and sulfur. Those costs of consumption by value went down by around 30% and by, in terms of financials, we are talking about a drop here of about PLN 0.5 million. At the same time, we saw an increase in the prices of consumption and the cost of consumption of coal and electricity at around 30%, 40% due to a relatively low level of revenue. All our categories shown here, that is EBIT, EBITDA margin were much lower year-on-year.
Moving on to the composition of our performance by segment and the breakdown by segment, we must point out that they are determined, again, let me emphasize it, by the market, which affect all European producers across the board in the chemical segment ever since 2020, the start of 2023. That is, first of all, cheap competition from outside of EU and low activity on the consumer side and purchasing side, which puts pressures on our prices, the price of our products. The market factors translated into a total drop of our revenue across all our business lines, and as a consequence, we reported negative EBITDA levels again across the board, across all our segments.
In terms of our major segment, that is the agro segment, which reports a share in re-revenue at around 80%-90%, it is a big segment in terms of the technological advancement and complexity of our production lines. It includes fertilizers and also a portfolio of chemical fertilizers, for instance, urea, technical grade urea and melamine. In terms of our fertilizer products, in the first quarter, we saw a drop in sales of fertilizer products due to inactivity of our customers, consumers, and it affected also our flagship products. That is, for instance, ammonium nitrate or nitrate compounds in general, as well as urea products. Obviously the imports of non-EU products had an impact on our performance as well. We are talking about a major share in imports here.
Also, as a result of the decision of EU, suspending duties and taxes on those imports, especially for urea. It's affected the performance of all EU producers, including our performance. Moving on to non-fertilizer products. Again, due to low activity of our customers, we saw a major drop in sales volumes, especially in terms of melamine, and we see a drop in demand of 20% year-on-year. A similar drop applied to contracted prices. According to ICIS, we are talking about a drop of 20.3%. Those factors determined low utilization of our production capacities, not only our capacities, but also other producers in the European Union. In March, we decided to suspend the production of melamine production lines.
In the past several weeks, we have seen slight signs of improvement and slight rising trends, those signs are actually confirmed by the orders we are receiving from our customers. In the first quarter, they would buy their products for Chinese producers, they are turning to us now. We decided to relaunch Melamine III production line. Those symptoms or signs of improvement are not only observed by us, but also by our European competitors, such as Borealis, which decided to relaunch their production in Austria and in Germany. We also heard, this is not confirmed, but we believe that EuroChem relaunched their production in Russia and still their Romanian units are closed. We see that we can consider relaunching additional melamine production lines in the quarter, in the third quarter.
In terms of urea, the demand across Europe from all major sectors, that is automotive, construction and packaging sector, continued to be low in the first quarter. European producers continued to be under strong pressures of competitors. That is imports from the, from outside of the European Union. As a result, due to this difficult market situation, we reported again some negative effects in this particular segment, that is lower sales volumes and prices. In general, the drop quarter on quarter was at PLN 104 million. We see that the prices of major feedstock and raw material used in the production of caprolactam, that is benzene, went down by around 20%. High stock levels across or along the value chains make our clients or customers suspend their purchasing decisions.
Again, in March, we decided to temporarily suspend production of our caprolactam lines. We were not the only producer to take such decisions. BASF, for instance, suspended their caprolactam unit, production unit at Ludwigshafen in Germany. Fibrant , Spolana Dutch and Czech producers also decided to put their production on hold temporarily for the first quarter. In general, caprolactam units operated in, if they operated in Europe, they would be operating at a much lower rate, depending on which was due to the situation in the market. Moving on to our production volumes. Ever since February this year, we have informed you, we have been informing you, and we're reporting our production volumes broken down by segment and in the agro segment, broken down into products. In terms of urea, I'd like to point here that it includes melamine production urea.
Despite production cuts in the first quarter, we continued to deliver our contractual agreements based on our stock levels. We are looking very closely at the market situation. If we see any signs of improvement, we know that we will relaunch certain lines that were put on hold or to increase those lines which were slowed down. Circumstances which affected us in the first quarter. They were actually observed towards the end of last year. They are independent of Grupa Azoty Puławy and the actions that we have taken and we will be taking in terms of optimized situation will enable us to go back to our full utilization of capacities if market allows. Moving on to our investments. We are continuing our CapEx program.
You can see a number of our flagship investments on screen, especially the most important project that is construction of coal-fired power generation unit. In the first quarter, our spending was at around PLN 30 million, mainly in relation to the startup, because we are talking about this stage of completion, startup stage of completion. We also secured corporate decisions related to a change or changes in this project to increase the project's budget from PLN 1.2 billion-PLN 1.23 billion, and extension of the project deadline to June 20th. This was based on the claims of our partners, Polimex-Mostostal, which is a general contractor, and the claims were related to a change in the value of the project and the deadline. Those claims were based on the fact that this project was rolled out in this very exceptional period.
The force majeure events, that is the COVID-19 pandemic or Russia's military aggression against Ukraine, which resulted in an exceptional and unpredictable increase in the prices of both materials and raw materials and services. Tomorrow, May 24th, we will have a general annual meeting at Pulawy, and we will take those decisions. In general, our CapEx spending in Q1 was at PLN 72 million, mainly in terms of our agro segment and the projects that we are implementing include environmentally friendly projects to reduce our negative environmental impact. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you, and I'll now give the floor over to Mr. Michał Siewierski to comment on the performance of Grupa Azoty Police. Unfortunately, I cannot hear the speaker. I can hear the speaker now.
Welcome to all of you. I'd like to discuss, first of all, major events of quarter one. We signed an agreement with TiZir Tyssedal. This agreement was signed until the end of 2025 to secure the supply of ilmenite, which is a major feedstock used in the production of titanium white. On the 10th of March, the management board of Grupa Azoty Police received information on the decision taken by the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management in terms of support for on energy-intensive sectors. We received PLN 78.2 million under that decision.
At the end of March, Grupa Azoty Police, Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation, and West Pomeranian University of Technology signed an agreement on the development and construction of the nuclear energy unit with an ultrasafe MMR reactor. At stage 1, we are planning to build an MMR reactor with a capacity of 30 megawatts. That will be used as a training and test unit. It will be connected to our energy infrastructure at Grupa Azoty Police, which will enable us to test it and put it in practice and see what it looks like. We selected distributors of our product, polypropylene, Gryfilen®. In Poland, it will be distributed by Grupa Azoty Compounding. At the end of March, at the sea terminal at Police, we will see the first delivery of ethylene.
Our Polimery Police project is nearly at, is at more than 99% stage of completion. Moving on to our consolidated financial results, I'd like to point or draw your attention to our EBITDA at minus PLN 30 million and net result at minus PLN 51. Those results were much higher year-on-year. First quarter of 2023 was a period of lower activity of sectors that are traditionally our consumers, as well as high prices of energy feedstocks, as well as imports of products from outside of European Union with no customs duties. As a result, we saw a drop in demand for our products. Those disruptions in terms of supply versus demand in European markets, also caused by Russia's military aggression against Ukraine, translated into a drop in our price of our products and an increase in the cost of production.
The cost levels of our key feedstocks went up, apart from gas, which was cheaper. In terms of phosphates and potassium chloride, as well as coal, they all went up. As a result, we saw lower margins. Those factors, especially lower demand versus higher cost of production, translated into lower sales volumes year-on-year. On the other hand, certain positive factors included, first of all, financial aid to energy-intensive sectors on the back of rapid and major increases in natural gas prices. In terms of compound fertilizers, year-on-year, we saw an increase in major raw materials and energy carriers, which translated into higher prices year-on-year. Our margins were much lower. Our net result was impacted by put/call revaluation and had a negative impact of minus PLN 20 million.
Moving on to the analysis and recap of our situation and performance by segment, we should point to the fact that in our fertilizer segment, EBITDA came in at PLN 11 million, and the margin was at 1.9%. The positive EBITDA was reported for our fertilizers segment only, and it was also due to the fact that we received an aid from the state for energy intensive sectors. In the fertilizers segment, due to low activity of our fertilizers, we saw a drop in sales of both technical and other products, the fertilizer products. We, on the other hand, saw a major increase in phosphates and potassium chloride in terms of the prices. This did not apply, as I said before, to the natural gas prices. In pigments, our EBITDA went down and we reported a loss of -PLN 23 million.
The segment was impacted by a major increase in the prices of our raw materials and lower demand. Despite the fact that the average level of prices and the level of our sales, the margins went down. In terms of titanium white, the volumes went down by around 23% year-on-year. The 1st quarter of 2023, we saw low demand for titanium white and related products. Major drops in terms of demand, I'm talking about the drop of 30% year-on-year, we saw in the coatings and paints segment. The prices of titanium white in the European Union went down a 2nd year in a row, mainly due to the macroeconomic factors as well as competitive prices of titanium white imported from China.
In terms of other activities, the loss was mainly due to electricity as a factor and negative macro environment. Across the board, EBITDA was lower, much lower than a year before. In terms of margins, they reflected the limited demand for our products as well as unfavorable relations of price versus production costs. In terms of volumes, we need to point out that the limited demand and high cost of production resulted in lower sales volumes year-on-year, as well as reduction of our utilization, the utilization of our capacities in order to maintain reasonable stock levels. We adjusted our operations on an ongoing basis based on the European situation in European market in terms of supply and demand, just as other producers in Europe did.
The volumes, production volumes went down year-over-year, especially in terms of urea, technical urea, as well as ammonia, also our fertilizers. We reported a major drop in terms of production volumes. In order to adjust our operations to the situation, we decided to publish all the reports in terms of our volumes of production for you to know what the situation looks like. In terms of our CapEx projects, our priority project is obviously Polimery Police, as well as upgrade of the main transforming station in Police to connect and supply propane dehydrogenation and polypropylene units, which is currently at 99%. Another major investment is recycling of hydrogen originating from the propylene units to be used by the ammonia unit. The stage of completion here is also at 99%.
Another major CapEx project is the making of production of demineralized water independent of a variable salinity in the Odra River and increasing the ability to produce special waters in the water preparation unit. The budget here is at PLN 111 million, and it's the stage of completion is at 100%. It is currently being settled. The new major CapEx project is the second stage of the systems installed in the ammonia unit at the end of March. The stage of completion of this project is at 20%. In the first quarter of 2023, our CapEx spending is at PLN 19 million, of which around 26% were growth CapEx. In general, our CapEx spending was down 8% year-on-year. In the first quarter of 2023, the company rolled out 62 CapEx projects.
As part of our CapEx spending, we had environmentally friendly projects with the budget of around PLN 1.8 million and the growth projects at PLN 4.2 billion. As I said before, in the first quarter, we had CapEx spending at PLN 19 million. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you for your attention. Before we move on to the Q&A session, we'll have a short recap of the situation again. As we said time and again over the past almost hour, it was an exceptional quarter across the board for all the capital group companies and an exceptional, very challenging fertilizer season, especially in terms of how it affected the demand, which went down considerably across all our segments.
We adjusted our operations, our activity in terms of production to the ongoing supply versus demand situation, and the same can be said about other producers, we're not exception to this rule. We continued our strategic investments in CapEx projects in order to come out of this situation, emerge from this situation as a stronger group. We still see a very difficult and challenging situation in the terms of raw materials and feedstocks. We see certain signs of improvement of the certain promises around the corner. This is not a breakthrough yet, however, we see certain positive signs. Ladies and gentlemen, that will be all in terms of our presentation of our performance after the first quarter. Now, I believe we are now ready to move to the Q&A session.
Moving on to the Q&A session then, Question number one: Do you have any problems in terms of the transmission of gas to your plants? No, we do not have any such problems. We did not have them in Q1, and we do not have them right now. Next question: What was the increase in terms of costs of coal and electricity year-on-year in millions of PLN, in million PLN? I'll ask Mr. Grzegorz Kuberski to answer that question. An increase in terms of costs of our energy feedstocks in Q1 year-on-year versus Q1 2022 was at PLN 181 million for coal and PLN 240 million for electricity. Next question: Why your presentation for Q1 is not available at your website? Actually, the presentation is now available on our website.
Apologies for technical problems. Now you can download it and view it, please do. By all means. Thank you very much for your attention. We hope to see you at the next conference after the second quarter of the year. Thank you very much.