I'd like to welcome you to the earnings conference of the JSW Group. We would like to present to you today the results generated by the group in Q4 2021, as well as for the full year 2021. I would now introduce the Management Board team, which been in place since September 1st, 2021. Edward Paździorko is responsible for production. For sales policy, Sebastian Bartos is responsible. I'm responsible for coordination of the overall work of the management team, and then Robert Ostrowski is responsible for finance. We also have Artur Wojtków, who's responsible for labor issues and social policy. He's representing us in Katowice today at a meeting where there's a government delegation, and there are representatives of all of the mining companies that have signed an agreement with the trade unions.
Now, I'd like to say a few words about our operations. As you can see, all of the key ratios are labeled in green, with the exception of coal production. This is something that we've been able to achieve despite the fact that production was lower. It was a difficult year. We had COVID. We also had difficult mining and geological conditions. These are things that should be emphasized. On top of the commitment of our employees, we've been supported by the market environment. We've had 13.7 million tonnes of production, so down by 4.4%. In my mining experience, the tolerance of ±5% compared to the plans in terms of working in the face of natural conditions, this is an acceptable tolerance. Of course, we'll talk about that.
We produced the same amount of coke. In terms of coking coal, we had 11 million tonnes, which is a similar quantity to the previous year. Coke production was up by 3.6 million tonnes, and this is a result of focusing on satisfying the market's needs. What's also important is corridor works and basically corridor works talk about the development of mines. Our mines are not dwindling or dying, they're developing, they're growing, so it's up by 6%. We had some 77.5 thousand driving meters. This is up from the previous years, I said. Total coal sales, we sold nearly 15 million tonnes of coal, which is a very good result. We're reducing the coal in the coal yards, which we had accumulated in various market periods.
The commercial or sales division is gradually selling down those inventories. We have enormous growth in sales. Revenues were up above PLN 10.5 billion. That's an increase of more than 53%. As I said at the beginning, the market environment, which was conducive to our operations, can be seen in the prices. The coal prices, coking coal prices, have moved up by nearly 42%. Coke prices, in turn, were up by nearly 63%. If we look at the economic side, our EBITDA, this is net of non-recurring events. It's PLN 2.9 billion. This is an extremely good result. We have the net result, which is nearly PLN 1 billion of profit, where we had a PLN 1.5 billion loss in the previous year. This is something.
This is a result of the hard work we've done, as well as the favorable market conditions. I'd like to reflect on one other thing, and this is something that we haven't had in our presentations up until now. JSW is well aware of what the market expects of us, what stakeholders expect of us. We're paying a lot of attention to ESG policy. For the first time this year or for a full year period, is what I'm trying to say, we're looking at the major factors in environment, society, and governance, and we're reporting on them. What I'd like to point out is that we're a company that is interested and focused not only on its customers, but we're also interested more broadly on our stakeholders. Sustainable development policy is very important here.
Corporate governance and social issues are also very important. I'll talk about this at greater length a little bit later in our conference. Right now, I'd like to draw your attention to a few things as I discuss this slide, and I'll just pick a few matters. If I look at the environment issue, we have that red arrow, which means that our carbon footprint is on the rise. We're one of the few companies that has been reporting its carbon footprint since 2017. Last year, it was 7.2 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. This is not something that we forget about. This is a result of our original position. We've been able to capture some 99 million cubic meters of methane, and that's a high percentage of the methane that we've been able to extract or drain from our mining conditions.
This is a way in which we can affect the CO₂ production by draining methane. Methane is 28 times worse in terms of greenhouse gas effect. As we convert that dangerous gas into heat, into electricity, well, first, we can ensure safety to our employees, and second, we gain benefits by utilizing this product. In terms of social issues, we're very keen on our relationships with the environment in which we operate. We understand the impact our operations have on our environment, our surroundings. We don't try to shirk that responsibility. We're trying to intensify our pro-environmental impact in society. In terms of governance, well, this has an impact on a wide variety of issues.
Up until now, maybe people thought, "Well, things will just sort of go the way they go." We're thinking now about ethics amongst the code of conduct amongst our suppliers. In our governance policy, what's also very important is to activate our compliance unit, which works not only in JSW, but across the corporate group. We can look at the operating results, and I'd like to ask our technical director to walk us through the operational results.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. In terms of production of coal and coke in 2021, well, the figures are as follows. In Q4 2021, we produced 3.57 million tonnes of coal. This production was up 7% versus Q3.
If we look at the quarters in 2021, we can say that in Q2 and Q3, those were difficult quarters in terms of performing our tasks, and they contributed to the biggest shortfall. In Q4, we can say that it was the best quarter in terms of production, and we saw progress in the mines as well as on the various longwall faces. If we look at the annual output, as the CEO mentioned, we had 13.75 million tonnes of production, with the breakdown into coking coal, which is 11.005 million tonnes. That was the coking coal, and then we had 2.748 million tonnes of steam coal. We can see that the total output was down by 4.4%.
As I mentioned, this was due to what happened in Q2 and Q3. The major difficulties in achieving our production targets were mining and geological conditions. Basically, they adjusted our plans. They were the reason for the slowdown in our production along the longwalls. We also had the downtime of some machinery, which was utilized in the longwalls. If we look at the geological mining conditions, this is something that appears in all mines, especially Borynia, Zofiówka, Pniówek, and Budryk. Regardless of that, if we look at the results year-on-year, we can say the percentage of coking coal is up, and it's 80%. In 2021, that percentage of the total output had grown by 3% versus 2020.
In Q4, on average, we had 24 active longwalls, so we had an increase of 3.4% from Q3 to Q4 in terms of the number of active longwalls. If we look at the annual activity, we can say, on average, we were operating 23.2 longwalls in 2021, which was slightly down from 2020. It was down by 4.9%. We had 24.4 longwalls. If we look at our quarterly works in Q4, we did 16,700 tonnes. This was down by 12.2% versus Q3 2021.
Nevertheless, the difference in running meters is a matter of normal activity, something that's under control, and there's no threats to our ongoing work in terms of moving equipment from one longwall to another longwall and starting the tunneling operations. If we look at the full year result, we can say that this result is one of the best results we've produced in the company in its entire history from the moment when it was formed. We did 77,487.5 meters. It's running meters. We did 68,680 meters using our own in-house resources, and 8,800 meters was done by third-party companies. We can say that in Q4, we had a large number of longwalls that we were in the process of moving equipment.
Generally can say that we have a result of an additional kilometer. This gives us pretty good proxy for the forecast for the future. If we look at our coke production, Jadwiga, Przeworsk, and Radlin. If we look at the quarterly production, we can say that we did 892,000 tonnes compared to Q3, when we produced 923,000 tonnes. This was down by 3.4% from quarter-on-quarter. However, on an annual basis, we produced 3.6 million tonnes of coal, so it's up by nearly 10% versus 2020. Our coking plants have maintained a high capacity utilization ratio of 98.8%. This was higher by nearly three percentage points in terms of utilization of capacity.
Precision had the highest amount of production, followed by Radlin and then Jadwiga. The products produced well. Of course, blast furnace was the top performer. Then we had industrial coke, and then we had two small fractions. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Now I'd like to ask our management board member responsible for sales to tell us about the market environment.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, let me say a few words about the market context. What we needed to do as a company with our products on the market environment and having in mind our customers in terms of supplying coke as well as coking coal. Last year, in 2021, was a demanding, challenging year.
As we presented to you, I think three quarters ago, at one of the results conferences, this was still a COVID year, which generated a large number of problems and difficulties. I mean, we did as well as our customers had to grapple with those things. We have had a high level of inventories, and we'll talk about those inventories in a moment. We had relatively low prices for steel as well as coking coal. This year, realistically speaking, was a year of dynamic changes, and you can see that being borne out by these ratios. These figures will basically tell us quite a bit. Let's look at the production of steel. We had an increase at the global world level of a little under 4%, 3.7% from 1.8 billion- 1.9 billion tonnes.
We can say that in the EU, steel production is up by more than 15%, from 132 million- 152 million tonnes. What we explained to you at previous conferences, the global economy from China and India were not affected by the COVID crisis to the greatest extent, to an equivalent extent. In Europe, this problem was more pronounced. That's why 2020 was more difficult, and that was partially because of what happened in 2019. The original base point was low, and so we saw problems arising also in the second half of 2021. We can say that the healthy relations between coal, coking coal, coke and steel, that's one of the differences.
We can say that Europe was much more sustained much bigger declines as opposed to the Asian market. This reflected or it was reflected by the steel prices. We can say that steel was the major driver. The steel is the major driver for other products. If we look at flat products, the price moved up from $537 to $1,162, which is an increase of 116%. This was record-breaking growth. We can say that we've not recorded such high levels in the past. If you look at long products or rods, there's an increase of the price by 66.5%. It's not as big of increase as opposed to the flat products.
This is construction industry production. Now if you look at the development of the steel market, we can say that other raw materials started to follow that same price. We can say that the coking coal spot prices were also moving up, and coking coal spot prices moved up from $124-$225. This is an increase of more than 82%. If we look at the semi-soft products, which are lower quality coal grades, we have an increase from $69-$155, which is an increase of almost 124%. Basically, the growth rate is different because of the shortage of those products. What we need to show you, there are also changes that took place in the calendar year.
This is not a reference period. Having in mind the overall nature of our commercial contracts, the ones that we negotiate with our customers in the market, the ones there where we use negotiated formulas, where we use the previous quarter, and then we have also contracts where we have the Nippon Steel methods, then the reference period is always shifted backwards. When we compare what's important to us in terms of obtaining the necessary price levels from the markets, for us, the period is from October 2020 to November 2021. If we look at that growth rate, it's around 48%. If we look at that kind of shifted year, we can say that the growth, the difference was from $129-$191. That's the difference which will be incorporated in our long-term contracts.
If we look at the coal prices, we have a similar state of circumstances. The calendar year is not the reference or the benchmark period. One thing that does jump out at us if we look at the differences in the coke. If we look at blast furnace coke, it grew at a faster pace than coking coal. It was a little bit smaller in Europe than in China. It's an increase of more than 99%. If we look at blast furnace coke and the overseas markets, it's $692-$480, and that's an increase of 64%. If we were to look at that reference period that we use in our contracts when doing negotiations, we can say that the coke market is a little bit different.
We have fewer price formulas. To a greater extent, these are market-based negotiations. If we look at these negotiations, we look at the, what's on the table in a given moment in time in the market. We can say that the reference, the benchmark for us is the increase of roughly 48%, which is quite similar to what happened in coking coal. What about the prices of JSW's products in this period of 2021? Well, we can give you the short commentary. If you look at our coking coal prices versus TSI Premium HCC prices. We have the graph here from Q4 2020 to Q4 2021. Generally, we can say this ranges from 85.6% to 92%. As you know, there's a discount because the quality of our coal is at a discount to the top quality Australian coal grades.
We can say that that percentage is more or less flat in Q4 2021. It's a little bit lower, but we have to remember the situation that we had in 2021 in terms of a level of production. Mr. Paździorko already presented that situation for the full year and Q4, which was a good production year. If we look at the annual period, we had some shortages, the shortfalls of production, and we had to talk with our suppliers. Some of the quantities we had to catch up because the long-term contracts we had with business partners that are most important for us, because with these business partners, we're working for not just a given year, but for many years.
We have contracts that build our stable position, and we have to take into consideration every market situation, not only the bad one we have and certain difficulties that we're always able to resolve. We have to look at the current set of circumstances. What's happening at the end of the year is also something we discuss with our business partners. If we look at TSI Premium HCC spot prices, I talked to you a little bit about this year and how it was so volatile. The reference period is shown here in the gray box, which is the last five months of the year from July through December. We can say that the coal prices were around $100, $100 plus. This graph that we show you is from July.
We can say that the first half of the year was quite soft, so we were around $110 per tonne during that period. That has an impact on the company's results in H1 2021, but we were able to offset that through our other operations, and this is the advantage that coking coal and coke group has. If you can look at the ratio of coking coal to coke prices, we can show you that the prices we've commanded and the growth we've been able to achieve outstrips the share or the prices that we can see on the international markets. We could have been more aggressive in our price negotiations. We can say that we're above these indices, and that's against the benchmark prices in the coke segment, and we'll talk about that.
Mr. Ostrowski will show this to us in detail. We can say that this built the results of the company in the first half of the year. If we look at steam coal prices, here the situation is quite stable. This market has its own conditions, its own sort of characteristics. We cooperate mainly with the national utility scale power plants. We have annual contracts, and so we can look at Q3 and Q4 for steam coal prices and across the year. We can see a couple of things. The prices agreed for 2021, this was done in mid-2020. This was a difficult period when the utility sector was not taking receipts or deliveries from coal companies. That's one of the reasons why we had the inventory upswing.
That's why there's a downturn in the price level from the previous year. Some of the coal we had available to us was offered to clients according to Q4 spot market prices. That's one of the reasons. That was the first thing that started to show what was happening in the power sector, in the utility sector. If we look at the sales of coal produced in the group, of course, Mr. Paździorko already talked about production, and Mr. Cudny also talked about some of the details about the figures we've produced and the financials we've generated. What I can say, if you look at the difference between Q4 and Q3, we increased our coal sales by more than 9%.
If we look at the full year of 2020 and 2021, we've been able to increase coal sales by 8%. That applies both to coking coal and steam coal. That's coal sales to external customers, so outside of the coking plants in the group. If we look at coal sales to internal customers, this shows you by how much we increased sales to our three integrated coking plants. Here, we don't have such major swings as we've seen in external customers. It's quite simple to explain. Having in mind what we said previously, the margin, the high margin we were able to generate, especially in the first half of the year. It's obvious that the production potential we have should be harnessed to the greatest extent possible. We should have a capacity utilization ratio as close to 100% as possible.
That's why the coal sales are being done on a regular basis. Now, if you look at revenues on sale of coal to external customers. We have a general, overall increase in sales, and that increase in sales meant that we also reduced our inventories that we had amassed in previous years. We were basically rolling down our inventories during a period in which we had much better financial conditions for the sales of coal. We had higher coal prices. In Q4, we were able to absorb them in our contracts, and that means our top line in Q3 and in Q4, we saw increase of more than 71%. If we look on an annual basis, the increase was almost 43% in coal.
If we look at the average selling price of coal to external customers comparing Q3 and Q4, we moved up from PLN 610 to PLN 1,081. That's an increase of 77%. If we look at the full- year price, we moved up from PLN 436 to PLN 619. That's an increase of 42%. We have a slight decline in coal sales from 2020 to 2021. This was because of the what I already mentioned, where we had the power companies not taking supplies, not taking receipt of supplies of coal. This is an example that I already discussed with you. Now, if you look at the sales of coke.
In Q3 and in Q4, we were up by 4%. If we look at the comparison between 2020 and 2021, we are down by 0.9%. This is the result, and the conclusions are as follows, that the coke segment is a stable segment. We utilize the capacity at the same level, at the maximum level. We try to utilize it to the greatest extent possible, and that's why the average coke sales price in Q3, Q4, it's an increase from PLN 1,328 to PLN 1,753, which is an increase of 32%. One word of commentary on that growth. Why is it lower than in the case of coal? Coke from the beginning of the year, from Q1, had a much higher price, and the negotiations could be run slightly more aggressively.
The prices that we had in Q3 were already high enough that moving into Q4, the prices only bumped up by another 32%. If you look at the full year prices from 2020 to 2021, that increase is some 63%, and that accounted for our result. We can say that the top line, the revenues and the sales of coke and hydrocarbons to external customers, this is a result of prices, and we have an increase from Q3 to Q4 of 35%. If we look at the increase from year-on-year, we can say that the increase is nearly 70%. Basically, this is quite similar to what we achieved on the average coke price.
Having a stable coke production, we can say that basically the top line depends on the prices, since we have 100% capacity utilization, nearly. If we look at inventory of coal and coke, after a difficult year, we started the year where we had a high level of volatility. We had nearly 2.2 million tonnes of coal in our coal yards. As you could see, after every quarter, we were able to reduce inventories from 2.2 million tonnes to 0.9 million tonnes. That's a difference of 1.3 million tonnes of coal that we were able to sell to our customers. Part of that was sold at high prices at the end of Q3 and Q4.
What we've done in terms of that rate of selling off inventories, well, this has certain limits in terms of transportation limits, so bottlenecks. We can say that it's not possible physically to ship more from the mines to the coking plants. We use the situation to the greatest extent possible, and we can say that the decline here is clear, and this has been reflected by the financial results as we've sold off. What we have in inventories, well, under 1 million tonnes, this is close to the operational level, the level of inventories we have. This is how we've ended up 2021. It's quite close to what we need to have in place. If we look at the inventory of coke, this is what we usually have in the three key ports.
This is from 150,000-200,000 tonnes. This is a level of inventories that we have to maintain in order to fulfill our overseas orders. We can say one word of commentary here, that in Q2, Q3 2021, we've had a very low level of inventories. This was because of a few orders by ship. This level of inventory is clearly too low. At the end of the year, you can say that we're a little under 240,000 tonnes. This is also a level of operating inventories. This is what we need to have. We had one shipment on January 1st, which was booked this year as opposed to the end of last year.
The level of inventory is maintained that we're able to fill the shipping orders on an ongoing basis, on a smooth basis. That's it. Thank you very much.
Now, I'd like to ask Edward Paździorko to tell us a little bit about what we've been doing in terms of our capital expenditures.
If we look at JSW Group's investments, the CapEx at the group level in JSW KOKS, we have this done on an accrual basis and on a cash basis. If we look at this CapEx. I'll show this without the consolidation exclusions or eliminations. In Q4, we spent nearly PLN 534 million, and this CapEx spending was up by 29.2%.
If we look at the annual comparison between 2020 and 2021, we had PLN 1.7 billion CapEx spending in 2021, and this was down by 10% compared to 2020. Generally speaking, if we look at the various segments of our capital expenditures, you can say that the coal segment is the biggest segment and attracts the most CapEx. In 2021, we had PLN 1.358 billion , which was a little bit down from 2020. This was because of the transfer of certain mines to the mine restructuring company, SRK. As a result of that, the CapEx was not recorded and also lease obligations.
If you look at the coke side of things, we can say that we have a higher level of execution of our key investments to build battery number four in the Przyszowice coking plant and also the power unit in the Radlin coking plant. We have the other segment, we can say it's smaller because we had a lower level of plant CapEx. If we look at the group incorporating on a cash basis, we can say this included also paybacks of principal. This was PLN 470 million, and this in Q4 and up 18% over Q3. If we look at capital expenditures in the JSW Group on a year-on-year basis, we can say it was PLN 1.8 billion, which was 20% down from 2020.
This decrease in CapEx by JSW, we have a decrease and also a lower planned level. In 2020, they were higher. In Q4 2019, we had bigger expenditures that were held back until 2020, and that increased in turn the difference on a year-on-year basis as we compare 2021 to 2020. If we look at capital expenditures in JSW in Q4, we spent nearly PLN 382 million, and this was up in Q4 versus Q3 by 11.6%. We can say that on an annual basis, we have nearly PLN 1.358 billion in CapEx spend in 2021. We were purchasing finished capital assets for PLN 108 million, and then we had investment construction, PLN 510 million expenditures and expendable mining, that's PLN 651 million.
We had lease expenditures of PLN 87 million. Generally speaking, if we compare year-over-year, our CapEx spend was down by 12.5%. The key investments link or linked to the future of every mine as we build new extraction layers or levels. This is something that will generate or lead to production in subsequent years. This is the level 1,200 in Borynia and 1,080 in Zofiówka and 1,050 in Knurów, and then Szczygłowice the same. Then 1,040 in the Pniówek and 1,290 in Budryk. As we access the same 450, and then also Jastrzębie-Zdrój and 1 and 2 Zachód. Of course, what's also a key investment is the economic utilization of methane in Budryk, Knurów, and Szczygłowice.
If we look at some of the more important purchases that the company made, we bought a roadheader, and then we also had some conveyor belts that we purchased and modernized sections, the mechanized sections. We modernized also longwall shearers as well as the roadway excavators. If we look at our investments in JSW, we can say that in Q4 that were up PLN 116 million in JSW KOKS. This is up by 144% over 47.7 million. If you look at the full year, for this segment at JSW KOKS, we spent PLN 227 million, which was up by 78% over the year 2020. The overall increase is more than PLN 100 million.
As I mentioned, this was capital expenditures in the group because we have a higher level of investment in key investments, this was building battery number four in the Przeworsk coking plant, we're at PLN 65.68 million. We had the power unit in Radlin coking plant, up by about PLN 3 million CapEx. We have the higher plan compared to 2020. Those were the drivers of the higher CapEx. Now I would say a few words about headcount. As I mentioned, our colleague from the Management Board, Wojciech Kałuża, to be at a different meeting. We can say that we have 30,593 people last year, and this year we have 31,916 this year. There...
We had JSW's headcount moving from 21,173 to 23,119. These numbers are slightly different, but I say that we have a stable headcount. When we turned over Zofiówka 3 to SRK, we enabled a large number of people to utilize the mining law. We had 914 people who left us, and we can say these were primarily underground employees, but we have a large number of service employees who had the opportunity to take advantage of non-recurring severance pay. The numbers that I gave you about the headcount, you should have to reduce that by 1,234 in place, and we can say that the headcount situation in the company is stable.
If we look at the average salary in JSW is PLN 11,056, and this is a result of the agreement with the trade union and our approach to their work commitment. This is good information. That would be it.
Thank you very much on that topic. Now, I'd like to ask Mr. Ostrowski to say a few words about the financial side, the economics of our business.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much, Mr. President. After my colleagues have presented the information, the operating data, the business data, and sales and production, I'd like to say a few more words about the financial results in the group. Perhaps at the beginning, I'll repeat or reiterate a couple of the data, starting with top line sales revenues in 2021.
As a group, we generated revenue of PLN 10.6 billion, and that's more than 53% higher than in 2020. This is PLN 3.6 billion more across the year. You can see that the contribution made by Q4 is very big, where we had PLN 3.872 billion in top line in Q4, which is 50% up over Q3. On the next slide, I'll talk about the drivers of that growth. If we look at the fact that we have pretty significant cost discipline, we've been able to generate financial results at a very high level. Starting with the EBITDA, after we incorporate one-offs, we have PLN 2.9 billion EBITDA. In 2020, our EBITDA was negative PLN 256 million after incorporating non-recurring events.
We have a difference of more than PLN 3.2 billion. You can see to how big of an extent what happened in Q4, how much that contributed to the annual EBITDA. Here we should mention that our EBITDA in Q4 was also positive in Q4 itself. We can say that the consolidated net result was nearly PLN 953 million. If we look at the loss in 2020 of PLN 1.5 billion, that means we have an improvement in the results by nearly PLN 2.5 billion. We can say that Q4 has contributed to the full year results. I'd like also to point out the fact that our net working capital has improved, and so we now have a positive level.
We have PLN 284 million of working capital. In 2020, we had PLN 98 million. As we reported previously in the interim periods, we had negative working capital in the various quarters of Q1, Q2, and Q3. We're gonna do this now in a slightly different form, but I wanna talk about the impact of the major drivers on the JSW Group's sales revenues in 2021. If we begin with the top line in 2020, where we had PLN 6.9 billion, and basically, we have fleshed out the major drivers which led to the sales revenues in 2021 of PLN 10.6 billion. There's several elements that had a negative impact. They're not very material.
We had semi-soft coal sales volume down by 41%, so that had a negative impact of almost PLN 145 million. We had the average steam coal sales price down by 9.8% over 2020, and that gave us a negative impact of almost PLN 52 million. We also had a decline in coke sales by 0.9%. Mr. Bartos mentioned that, and that contribution was negative at PLN 24.4 million. The other elements on this graph are in green, and the biggest impact was generated by the average coke sales price moving up. It shot up by nearly 63%, and that increased the revenues of the group by PLN 1.7 billion.
The second most important factor which contributed to the increase in sales revenues, we had the average hard coal sales price bumped up by nearly 39%. That generated an additional PLN 1.1 billion as well. We also had an increase of the volume of hard coal sales, which generated PLN 461 million. We had an increase in the price as well as in the volume of hard coal production. We had another increase, which was generated by higher revenues on the sales of hydrocarbons. That gave us other revenues up by PLN 427 million. Benzol and tar. We had an increase, the impact of semi-soft coal price change, PLN 110 million. We had steam coal sales volume being up by 4.3%.
Those are the main drivers of the higher revenue in 2021. After the analysis or after we've analyzed the top line, now we should look at the cost structure. If you look at 2021, we can say the total cost was. Well, in 2021, we had PLN 9.6 billion in costs. In 2020, we had PLN 9 billion. Of course, the biggest contributor are payroll and employee benefits, generally speaking. I'll say a few words about the other line items in a moment. If we look at this on a quarterly basis, we can say the costs increased by PLN 83 million. In Q4, we had lower employee benefit costs than in Q3. Now, for my commentary, basically, I want to show you a bridge, and we can show you the major drivers of our costs by type, by nature.
Our costs by nature grew by PLN 520 million. Here we have an increase of energy. Energy was quite high, so more than 22% higher than in 2020. We have the consumption of materials is up by nearly PLN 192 million. The consumption of energy is up by a PLN 140 milion , almost PLN 8 million . If we look at the higher consumption of materials, this was because of coal purchased from outside the group to produce coke. We always inform you that the coal grades we extract are the major input for our coking plants.
Because of quality parameters of coke defined in our contracts with the coke buyers, it's necessary for us to buy small quantities of coal from other countries in order to achieve the technical and chemical parameters that we need to achieve as defined in the contracts with our buyers. We also had a higher amount of expendable mining pits. We had an increase of the number of meters tunneled, so we had higher consumption of materials as a result of that. Like all companies in Poland, the unit price of electricity from power plants has moved up, and then also the CO₂ emission allowances. There's also capacity fee payment that's led to an increase in that line item. We have employee benefits up. Employee benefits are up by more than PLN 201 million.
That's an increase of 4.4%. Of course, JSW has the biggest impact because it has PLN 163 million. As we told you, as a result of the agreement signed in 2021 with the trade unions, having in mind the pay increase and the one-off payment, this is something that's in the full year expenses. Our depreciation and amortization is up PLN 115 million, and this is because of the capitalization of costs in our mining pits. External service costs are down by PLN 114 million. This is primarily in JSW. This is PLN 86 million because we have lower costs of services for eliminating mining damages as well as for drilling services. This is a comment on the changes, the change drivers of costs between 2020 and 2021.
On the subsequent slide, I would like to show you the cash side. The mining cash cost and the cash conversion cost, these are for the two major flagship products the group produces. If I begin with mining cash costs in 2021, this is referred to as MCC. Basically, the total mining cash cost was PLN 6.1 billion. It's a little less than 5% higher than in 2020, PLN 290 million. Because of higher energy costs and materials, this is PLN 188 million. I can add as a matter of detail, if we look at the megawatt-hour cost in 2021, the cost is up by 76 PLN per MWh, and the CO₂ costs are up. I also mentioned employee benefits.
This would increase to PLN 170 million, so less than 6% here in JSW as a result of the agreements that have been signed. On top of that, we have an increase in the cost coming from the number of Saturdays and Sundays worked. We also have the pays related components like Social Security services, and we also have external services. We spent less for them, for mining works done underground and on the surface by the SiG companies, so less than PLN 30 million. We spent less on drilling services, so PLN 25 million. In this manner, we can tell you that the mining cash cost on a unit base, so we spent PLN 447.12 .
It's a little less than PLN 40 more than we spent per tonne last year. I want to draw your attention to a portion of these graphs. There's an increase of more than PLN 20 on the impact of cost. The volume impact, this was an impact of PLN 18.68. That's why the overall cash impact leads to a situation in which we, the total cost, MCC is PLN 447.12. If we look at the cash conversion cost, it's down by 3%. It's PLN 173.10, it's lower than in 2020 when it was PLN 178.37.
Here, I think it's worth pointing out that the cost impact was negative and amounts to PLN 11, but the volume impact had a positive impact, so it lowered the cost by PLN 16.18. Now, if I can move on to the EBITDA drivers and their impact in 2021 versus 2020, and several main categories. As I mentioned, we had negative EBITDA in 2020 of PLN 675 million. Prior to corrections or adjustments for non-recurring factors, we had two negative drivers. One was the recognition of impairment loss allowances, impairment losses, PLN 252 million. We're talking about our Radlin coking plants. We're also talking here about Borynia and then the Jadwiga coking plant. We also had the reversal of an impairment loss at the Jasztąbiec mine. The overall impact is negative at PLN 252 million.
We have the impact of other operating income and expenses. The impact here is negative at PLN 190.9 million. Here, I would mention the positive impact of the sales of hydrocarbons. That's some PLN 270 million. We have the positive impacts. We had negative adjustments. The sales of materials were of some PLN 700 million. The EBITDA before adjustments is PLN 2.48 billion. After we look at the non-recurring events, there's several major items. The overall impact is PLN 418 million. There's a positive impact of the non-recurring events, but if we start with the biggest one, PLN 768.6 million . This is a matter as a result of the tests, impairment tests. In JSW and our mines and in JSW KOKS.
The second important line item here is the reversal of the impairment losses in two units, in the Knurów-Szczygłowice mine and in the Przeworsk coking plant. The overall impact is PLN 335 million. This is an adjustment with a negative sign. We have the COVID-19 pandemic. We had PLN 146 million. There are basically two major factors. We had a decision to forgive some of the loans we had obtained in 2020. A liquidating loan and a stabilization loan. Sorry, restructuring loan. The impact was around PLN 100 million at the group level. We also had the impact of calculating the interest on these loans. The interest rate was lower than the overall market. This was near the PLN 147 million correction.
We can say because of the COVID at the group level. This is a correction of PLN 28 million. We had the one-off reward of PLN 112 million because of the agreement signed with the trade unions. The EBITDA after correction, after the non-recurring events, is PLN 2.9 billion. I think that's it in terms of the EBITDA explanation by drivers. We can talk about the operating segments and how they contributed. The biggest impact on growing EBITDA came from the coal segment. It's PLN 2.27 billion. We already talked about the revenue side. We had 10% more tonnes than in the previous year. Also, we had additional sales of steam coal, 136,000 tonnes. The average sale price was up.
We also, in Q4, incorporated the impairment losses of PLN 232 million, and then the recognition or the reversal of impairment losses. In the coke segment made a positive contribution to EBITDA of PLN 1.3 billion. Here it's worth mentioning several major contributing factors. This is a bit of reiteration. Above all, we have higher revenue. We're up by PLN 2 billion in revenue, and this is a result of the average price moving up for coke by some 60%. We also took into consideration the impairment losses of PLN 421 million in Radlin and Jadwiga. At the same time, we reversed it of PLN 260 million at Przeworsk. The overall impact in the coke segment is PLN 1.3 billion improvement. We have consolidation eliminations.
There are two major components. We're talking about the changes versus 2020. This is not the absolute level, and we have changes, PLN 48 million of profits not generated in inventories. This is something that's repeated in every reporting period in terms of its impact. PLN 20 million is these consolidation eliminations in terms of dividends within the capital group. We have the EBITDA of PLN 2.48 billion. We can move on to the next slide. A few words about working capital. This is something that we also talk about in terms of our ability to finance investments. We have PLN 15.9 billion, almost PLN 16 billion in assets. We have current liabilities of PLN 3.6 billion. These are trade liabilities of PLN 2.3 billion.
We have other current liabilities of PLN 125 million. We have loans and borrowings of PLN 459 million. Gives us our fixed capital. This is equity and long-term liabilities of PLN 12.3 billion. This is covered with property, plant, and equipment in the value of PLN 9.3 billion. We have intangible assets of PLN 106 million, and then we have other non-current assets of PLN 2.5 billion. This gives us a surplus of net working capital at PLN 283.6 million. If you look at the same line item, but if you look at net working capital in the balance sheet, starting with the elements of our working capital. Trade and other receivables have the highest impact.
We have trade and other liabilities on the other side. We don't have any overdue items. We pay our suppliers and receive payment on timely basis. Basically, we have higher sales prices for coke and coal, and that had a direct impact on the line item. When we sum the various components of our working capital items, we have basically PLN 1.3 billion cash and cash equivalents, and then we have the various liabilities. This leads us to PLN 283.6 million in net working capital. You have financial highlights. We have 0.9% as fixed capital to non-current assets ratio. It had dropped down to 0.83, and then it was rebuilt at the end of the year.
At the end of both periods, we had positive net working capital. We had PLN 90 million moving up to PLN 283 million. In the middle of the year, after interim periods and the course of the year, it dropped down to negative levels. The lowest level was at the end of September when we had -PLN 727.9 million. This was linked to the market situation, but thanks to cost discipline and rebuilding the results, we were able to improve and are improving these ratios. At the end, I would say a few words about our cash flow. At the end of 2020, we had cash of PLN 1.597 billion, including the loan from PFR, so the restructuring and liquidity under the Anti-Crisis Shield.
We had the profit/loss before tax of PLN 1.16 billion. Depreciation and amortization, PLN 1.2 billion. Decrease in inventories. This is the sale of inventories that Mr. Bartos mentioned, where we were selling more than we actually produced in 2021. That gave us an impact of PLN 228 million in cash. We had an increase in trade and other receivables, PLN 104 million. This is not because of things being overdue, but just because of price differentials. We had a 94 million adjustment as a result of decrease in trade and other liabilities. We have PLN 1.6 billion of investment cash inflows. This has the immediate cash impact plus the ongoing impact for 2021.
We have loans and borrowings received of PLN 115 million. We paid down loans and borrowings of PLN 205 million. We have lease payments of PLN 193.5 million. We have other financing flows and FX differences of more than PLN 54 million. The cash at the end of the year was PLN 1.3 billion. That's it from my side.
Thank you very much in terms of the financial situation of the company and the group. As we continue our conference, which is being run online, I'd like to ask our IR department to present the questions that were asked during the conference. The first question about the company's assumptions about steel consumption in the world over the next few years.
Should we assume that there's the potential lack of iron ore exports from the east could be something that would reduce the ability to produce steel across the world and therefore could affect the demand for products from JSW. Thank you very much for this question. As a company, we don't produce steel, so we don't prepare such projections, nor do we prepare such forecasts. This goes a little bit beyond the framework of our conference, which is for a presentation of the results of 2020, 2021. That doesn't mean that we're not analyzing the current market context, which has been rather sudden and unexpected. I think for you and for investors and analysts, let's look at a few facts to build your own view of the situation.
As I understand it, this question talks about the risk of whether or not we can sell our products to our buyers because there's a fear that there could be a reduction in the production of steel and that iron ore could be less than available. Where are we today? During this presentation you saw that the production in steel is around 152 million tonnes per annum. What's happening right now in terms of the Green Deal, which is being discussed and remarked upon, I don't think anybody's going to deviate from that, regardless of the current situation modifying that. The direction has been chosen and it will be continued. This situation means that steel businesses will have to be active building infrastructure in terms of the Green Deal. I'm talking about the power side. All of the offshore farms, onshore farms that are being discussed.
Realistically, this means that more steel will be needed, thick steel products. On the 16th of February, if I remember correctly, there was a meeting of EU members of parliament, and they have a plan that they accepted, where they've quantified up until 2030, we should have 60 gigawatts of offshore capacity, wind capacity and 300 gigawatts by 2050. We have to know that the Polish government is also working on this, and there's a discussion on the 10H law, which will probably be adjusted and modified, which means that not only offshore wind products, projects, but also onshore. For 1 tonne or for 1 MW , you need 24 tonnes of steel. Onshore products is around 85 tonnes of steel per MW.
An onshore which will be built or offshore, we're gonna build, it will be built on the Baltic. We're talking about 200 tonnes, 225 tonnes of steel per MW. Every one of us has a calculator. This can tell us how, what this means in terms of the demand for steel. What we're tracking in terms of where we have access to the major raw materials for such investments. Some projections, forecasts are available. 152 million tonnes of steel consumed today in Europe. The forecast in 2023, this is the EUROFER official, they believe that the utilization of steel up until 2023 is 198 million because of Green Deal. We're part of that, and everything we're producing will be part of that investment.
The next thing, and this is something that we presented to you. Generally speaking, if we look at conventional blast furnace technique, and then we have other technologies like arc furnaces and hydrogen, it's easy to note, based on generally available figures, what happened in 2020 and what's happened in 2021. We can see that the demand for steel is growing very fast from blast furnace technologies to conventional technologies, and how the production has increased from 2020. We've had 90 million tonnes in Europe. That was the consumption in terms of blast furnace and moving up to 98 million tonnes at the end of this year. We can say that this is proof that this technology, traditional technology with using coke and coal, will be used for a very long time because this is a realistic. An economically viable way of melting or smelting steel.
That's one thing we know and can quantify. The European plans are being fleshed out. There's another element that surprised all market participants. Unfortunately, we have certain symbols on our suits. The situation in the east that's gonna affect commodity companies, we can see that in some budgetary laws of member states. If representatives of the German nation talk about spending money for armaments, an increase in expenditures in the general GDP from 1.4% to 2%, that also testifies to something. The Polish law talks about an increase to the armaments industry to 3% of GDP, and that will have an impact on us in terms of the products we produce, the flagship products we produce for the construction of steel. We can't forget about that. We talk about iron ore. This is a problem.
If we look at that with a cold calculation at figures, Russia and Ukraine do produce iron ore. Russia is the fifth largest iron ore producer in the world. Let's have in mind that the bulk of that production is used internally. Export is very small. We have a different situation in Ukraine. The production that is done there is 3% of the global production of iron ore. They export much different amounts. We import, as EU, from Ukraine. That's 44 million tonnes of iron ore to Central and Eastern European countries. We have coming in some 20 million tonnes, and so that's a pretty big figure. The supplies have not been interrupted. Of course, they're impeded. We have to know that this is delivered by rail through Poland, Slovakia, Romania and the southern ports, Black Sea, so on and so forth.
There are some logistics difficulties, but Ukraine is not the only producer along with Russia. There are other producers of iron ore, and the market doesn't like vacuums. Trying to respond to your question, generally speaking, we do not see a threat in terms of the sales of our products, coal, in terms of the current situation. Of course, it's an extraordinary situation and there are gonna be many outcomes or repercussions that can't be foreseen. If we look at the position of JSW, we as a management board don't see a threat in the medium long term in terms of our ability to sell our products because of the production of steel in Europe and the consumption of steel in Europe, nor because of the availability of other raw materials, at least in the current and short and medium term. Thank you.
The next question is about our estimates in terms of what are the inventories of iron ore, because steel plants have talked about having problems because of not having access to the iron ore. I don't think we need to add anything, that question's been responded to. Has the company been affected by the suspension of production by some of the European steel producers or the sales volumes may, as a result, be softer in 1Q 2022 as opposed to 2Q 2022? I'll ask you to respond to that. I think we can say clearly that today the company hasn't been impacted. We continue to be in contact with all of our buyers. We have regular meetings. We monitor the situation and the portfolio of our buyers is well known.
Our consumers, customers, we know their portfolio of products and we understand their structure of buying raw materials. This s-risk doesn't exist. There are certain difficulties. While the inventories in these steel plants don't lead to perturbations. If we look at all of the dependence between coke, coking coal and steel, one other thing comes to mind. Even if we would have these type of difficulties, the steel mills have integrated coking plants and they are the assets of these companies.
If in theory, if they produce less, then buy less from, less from us, that would be the last thing that they would do because of these, coking plants being part of their integrated steel mills. What we know right now, the difficulties that are out there in terms of sourcing iron ore and other raw materials from the east, so coal, coking coal, lower quality coking coal, which is used for PCI. Using coal dust, that's not available, and certainly not in the same quantities as up until now. That affords an additional market opportunity for JSW because the portfolio of coal grades we produce can be a natural substitute for what's missing in steel mills now. We're running those talks at present. I don't see that risk. The next question we received is as follows. The discount.
How is the discount against the benchmark prices for coking coal changed in February and early weeks of March, having in mind the acceleration in price growth on benchmarks, benchmark prices? Well, this question is about a period outside of the framework of our earnings conference for 2021, so we can't respond to that question straight out. I understand the intentions of the question. Certainly, there are gonna be doubts, having in mind with such high prices, will we be able to achieve those market prices? Well, JSW, for a long time, has been very consistent in terms of its policy of agreeing on contracts and setting prices, having mechanisms or market mechanisms.
I can remind you of a situation that took place three quarters ago, and there was a question posed by the analysts where there was a large disproportion between American coal prices as opposed to Australian coal prices, whether or not it would be worthwhile to utilize that and change our systems for contracting. Our response was clear. No, we don't want to do that, and it was easy to see what impact that would have had. We benefit from this market and we negotiate based on that market, and that's something we're going to stick steadfast to. The analysts covering the company and investors would like to understand what's happening with Russian steel and coking coal exports and what have the changes look like. It seems that all these questions are coming into you.
I think having in mind the current situation that we would receive such a question. Well, there are statements, announcements about total embargo, not only for power, but also for steel. Energy as well as steel. If you look at the administrative limits, well, this is something that's happening already now because the large European companies and international companies, well, on the second or third day of that conflict, they decided not to make certain purchases. Some products aren't available, and right now, alternatives are being sought. What would the potential impact be and outcome? I'm just showing you some facts that are happening. You have to draw your own conclusions. If certain steel products from the eastern countries aren't entering the European market, that generates additional demand among European companies.
This is demand that must be met either through production here on-site or by imports from other directions. Imports from other directions are facing certain limitations because once the eastern front is closed, the Baltic ports as well as the Mediterranean ports are gonna be fully utilized, or actually their capacity will be more than fully utilized because we'll have not only our raw materials, but we'll have steam coal, ag products, and other things that can't be delivered to Europe by rail. This will have an impact on the capabilities. This creates certain possibilities for the steel mills located in Europe, in the European Union. I think you can draw your own conclusions based on that information. Thank you. The next question is about a different sub-area of operations in the company.
The forecast of 14.5 million tonnes, should that run rate projection be considered conservative or optimistic? Well, I've been a miner and a rescue worker, so you have to have optimism. This industry should always have some optimism. This forecast is defined by the last few months of 2021, and basically every current year forecast should be defined by what's happening in Q4 of the previous year. We have the current level of access to deposits, how well the survey work has been done on the mining and geological conditions, and the utilization of equipment and humans, staff. We believe that this forecast is a realistic forecast. That's what I would say. Forgetting about the emotional side. The next question, which is of interest to our stakeholders, is about output in Q1 2022.
Will the company be able to achieve its planned level of 3.5 million tonnes of output? Go ahead and respond, sir. Well, this question applies to the full quarter. Well, this quarter is still underway, so it's very difficult to talk about a certain result. I can say that the plan we put in place for this year is being executed. We'll be able to talk about the results achieved after the end of the quarter. The next question is about our assumptions for the future. Our stakeholders are asking, how do we intend to ramp up the run rate to 16 million tonnes, having in mind the deterioration in geological conditions? I'd ask our technical director to respond. Geology and the survey of our deposits is something we always have to do.
In terms of investments and where the future is, all mines that do this have to access new levels based on what we understand from higher-lying seams. Basically we believe that this our forecast is realistic, and our surveys bear that out as we continue to do reconnaissance work on the deposits. The last quarter of 2021 gave confirmation of that in terms of our ability to increase the run rate from year to year. The next question is about threats. Are there any threats which could mean that we would not be able to achieve our production targets this year? At present, as I mentioned, we're on track with our targets. I don't see any threats for our plan for this year being realistic. Now, the next question is about the payment of a dividend.
Does the management intend to revisit its recommendation of paying dividends starting in 2022 for 2021? I'd like to ask our CFO to respond to that question.
In many conferences, we've advised you that we have a dividend policy where at least 30% of the profit can be paid out for a dividend. There are several factors which mean that for 2021, a different motion will be submitted to the shareholder meeting, basically to set aside all of that profit for formal reasons, the conditions of the loan agreements with PFR, the restructuring loan, as well as the liquidity loan. Well, the management won't recommend payment of a dividend as a result of the conditions and covenants within those loan contracts.
If we look at the economic side of things, 2020 had a major loss. The management also came to the conclusion that even though the formal conditions, maybe if they were fully matched, we need to build a financial buffer to be able to finance our future growth plans. Our equity needs to be shored up to follow those production plans. That's why the management is not going to recommend the payment of a dividend for 2021.
Does the company have a coking coal price hedging mechanism? And if so, what kind of mechanism? And also what sort of FX hedging do you do?
Many years ago, we had a financial risk committee set up in the company which analyzes and monitors exposures, so the FX risk as well as the coking coal price.
We're quite active to mitigate those risks. Because of the liquidity on the market, it's easier to do that on the FX market, and so we enter into FX forward contracts up to 18 months. If we look at coking coal, that market's quite shallow, but we do enter into commodity swaps on an 18-month period for no longer than that. I would add that the Financial Risk Committee meets regularly. It has its own rules and bylaws, it has to operate. If the market is stable, and that's not the case now, then we've had meetings once a quarter. Now, because of the great volatility in terms of euro and dollar exchange rates and coal prices, we have meetings every month, sometimes every two weeks. We check our transaction-related exposure. There are commodity swaps and FX forwards.
We also have natural hedging because we're buying imported coal or other materials that we need for the mines and the coke plants operate. We have natural hedging to a certain extent as well.
In connection with the record-breaking coal prices, does the company plan to pay additional benefits to employees in the form of bonuses or other benefits on top of what, the, you know, the pay increase for trade unions in 2022? At the beginning of this year, we signed with the trade unions an understanding, an agreement which clearly defines what's gonna happen in this area. It's all incorporated in that agreement. Does the company intend to spend money, cash, to buy mines from other Polish mining holding companies?
In our operating strategy, we have not contemplated, nor do we contemplate any type of mergers or acquisitions or purchases of organizational units from the mining industry. It's zero. We're not planning any such purchases. We have another question to the CFO. The EBITDA consolidation adjustments was PLN -590 million including PLN -245 million in Q4 of 2021. What is the reason for such a big adjustment? And what should we anticipate in the upcoming quarters?
In terms of forecasts about upcoming quarters, I won't speak on that because that's a matter of our plans, and we'll report things on an ongoing basis. During the presentation, I talked about the two line items or two items that drove that value in terms of consolidation eliminations.
It was PLN 428 million because of differences on unrealized profits on inventories. We also have, on top of that, a smaller amount of PLN 28 million because of consolidation elimination adjustments because of dividends paid within the group. Those are the two fundamental drivers of that.
We have another question. I think it's the last question. It's a question about the working capital in subsequent periods. Will it continue to be positive just like at the end of 2021? We can see that the trade receivables have moved up a lot. What is the reason for that?
If you allow me, I'll respond to that. We talked about the net working capital, and I talked to you about the drivers of that figure at the end of 2021.
As I said, we don't have any overdue trade receivables or payables. This is a result of our ongoing activities and the contracts that we've entered into. In terms of the future working capital, based on the knowledge you have in terms of the results for 2021 and all of the market predictions that are out there and your evaluation of the cost situation, it's gonna be easy for you to enter those assumptions into your own models, and then you can calculate that on a forward-looking basis.
Thank you. Right. Those are all the questions that were posed. The additional questions we received have already been discussed during the results conference. I think that we've dispelled all doubts.
Now we would invite people, if there are shareholders, stakeholders of the company who are interested in obtaining additional clarifications or information, then we have the IR department is open and you can always write to us. I'd like to say a few organizational things, housekeeping details. We'd like to invite all of you to join us for our conference about the strategy of JSW, having in mind the subsidiaries to the JSW Group. This is the strategy for 2022, 2030. This conference will be held on the 25th of March of 2022. At that conference, we'll respond to your questions that were posed today during the conference, but reflected on the strategy. That's one thing. We'll also field other questions in terms of the group strategy. I would like to thank all of you very warmly.
I'd like to thank our employees of the group. I'd like to thank all of the companies, third parties that are working with our group companies, for making your contribution in terms of generating these results. We're not sitting on our laurels. I believe that we're acting with commitment and making decisions at all levels in the group to be able to generate similar performance in the future. I'd like to thank all of the people who are here today and have participated in the preparation of this conference and for your technical and substantive input. I'd like to thank on behalf of the management. In terms of questions that will be posed and in the future, and if we haven't given answers to them, then the IR department will be responsible for responding to those questions. Thank you very much for your attention.