Origin Enterprises plc (OIZ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Origin 2022 Capital Markets Day presentation. It's been 3 years since we had our last Capital Markets Day, obviously, because of COVID and the business has faced a number of challenges over the last 3 years. We've had Brexit, COVID-19, a very challenging weather year in 2020, which had a follow-on impact in 2021. And finally, then the war in Ukraine, which is obviously impacting our colleagues in Ukraine far more significantly than any of us in this room. Thankfully, our colleagues are safe as far as we're aware. A few of them have joined the frontline, but the business is coping reasonably well and 2022 is being, and has been a tremendous trading year. And the war, while it is unfortunate, in relation to our colleagues in Ukraine, is having some very significant impacts on the overall food supply chain and some positive benefits for the business, overall. So we'll start with the typical safe harbor statement, and we'll move on to a general update on how the business has coped I suppose, in those intervening 3 years. We've had to focus primarily, I suppose, on monitoring the things that were within our control. And first and foremost, that meant putting our people first, investing in our people and bringing them through the organization. And we've seen some managerial change at various levels right throughout the organization. We've been very focused on operational performance of the business, and you'll see evidence later on of an improvement in the business from a margin perspective. The financial team has been hugely focused on improvement of the balance sheet, and we've extracted a significant amount of capital from the balance sheet over that period of time. And finally, then, we've really put sustainability at the heart of the organization. And I suppose, today's presentation, really, is concentrating on the organization's strategy and how we are putting sustainability at the heart of the organization. Unfortunately, some of the Capital Markets Day challenges that we had set ourselves haven't been fulfilled and primarily, amongst those is our M&A strategy couldn't be fulfilled because of the balance sheet pressure that, that would have put us under. We did manage 1 reasonably small acquisition, important nonetheless, in Greentech, which was primarily financed through the disposal of our Pillaert business last year. So a very limited amount of M&A activity over the intervening 3 years, but it has brought us into a very interesting space from a natural capital perspective, and we're very happy with that. So you're going to see presentations from the presenters here on the slide. We'll move into some of the ways that we are challenging our business to change, and Peter and Clare will talk about some of the things that we're doing to change our business internally to adapt to the new world and particularly, the environmental challenges that are being thrown at us through various changing regulatory environment. And following that then, we have a number of video presentations and panel discussions with each of the business unit leads, shown on the slide here, we'll talk through their individual businesses and how they're coping with the changing environment. In addition to that, we have a number of other senior members of our management team present here today who are not speaking, but they are available in the fringes of the meeting, and hopefully, you'll get a chance to catch up with them or at the end of the presentation, we have some questions and answers. So you'll be able to catch up with them at that stage. And I'm also grateful for a couple of our nonexecutive directors showing up here today. So Gary Britton, our Senior Independent Director; and Chris Richards, who is our foremost expert on crop protection within the Board, has made themselves available and they've come along to join us today. So we're very happy with that. So a quick overview of today's agenda. TJ will touch on the progress against the metrics that we set ourselves in 2019 from a Capital Markets Day perspective. I will begin to unpick the strategy and some of the underpinnings of the strategy and the reason why we're moving in the direction that we are doing from an environmental and sustainability perspective. As I said, we're going to have a number of videos, presentations in the room, and also, panel discussions, which we'll touch on how each of the individual business units are coping with the changes that we're facing. TJ will then bring it all together in terms of the financial model for the next 5 years. And finally, then, I'll talk about some of the strategic priorities that we're setting ourselves over the next 12 to 18 months in particular. And finally, then, there's an opportunity for questions and answers at the end, and myself and TJ will try to moderate those questions, but if you want to ask questions of any member of the management team, who you've seen speaking or any of the other management team members in the room, feel free to ask those questions. So TJ, I'll hand over to you in relation to some of the things we've been working on over the last 3 years.

Thanks, Sean. So as Sean said, the last 3 years have presented significant volatility for the business, whether that be in the form of weather, COVID, more recently, the war in Ukraine and the supply challenges that has created for us. Across the business, the management team has been focused on a few key areas. Working capital has been a key focus and key priority for the group over the last 2, 2.5 years. We've taken out approximately EUR 50 million underlying from a working capital position, and that's resulted in the improvement in net debt, and also, will feed through to the improvement in return on capital metrics that we're seeing, and we will see for the remainder of this year. From a product mix and margin perspective, again, I would say it's a key theme and focus of management to focus on the profit profile of our product portfolio. So really, driving to focus on and enhance the more profitable elements of our portfolio, acknowledging that we are a commodity business as well. But within that mix, we have the opportunity to focus on the higher-margin proprietary, crop protection seed, micronutrient and fertilizer portfolios. And we do that through a combination of, as I said, in-house product development and also, leveraging supplier exclusive. So that has been a continued focus of the team and something that we will continue to drive out over the coming years of the plan, and we'll talk in a little bit more detail about that later. From an earnings concentration and volatility perspective, I suppose, one of the things that FY '20 has taught us, as a management team, is that the extent of exposure and volatility of earnings to both U.K., Ireland, ag and weather dynamics is something that ultimately, we need to try to diversify away from and improve the mix and concentration of our profits, over time, such that we have less exposure to those areas. And again, we give a little bit more color on that as we work through the afternoon. So just looking at 2019 -- to FY '19 to 2022 in total then, as we said, we've touched on some of the headwinds, whether that be the type of one in 35-year weather event that we had in late 2019, whether it be the impact of Brexit or the type of currency depreciation that we saw in the Brazil real to Europe, for example, all headwinds that we have had to manage over that period. But again, I would say our response has been very much focused on controlling the controllable areas of the business. And really, that has boiled down to, as I said, managing tightly the margin profile within the product portfolio, optimizing for cash extraction across the group and ultimately driving return on capital metrics across the business. And again, the challenges of FY '20 has certainly put that under pressure, but we are pleased to know what the recovery that we're seeing through FY '22. In tandem with that, and again, as the team will touch on to today is creating new footholds, both in our core markets and in new adjacent markets and whether that be through expansions such as our CRF capability in Brazil or the acquisition of Greentech, as Sean touched off of, our intent again is to improve the mix of profit and the profile of profit in the group such that we, over time, lessen the exposure to those weather and pure ag dynamics that we see in the U.K., Ireland context. Group capabilities, I think, is a theme that you will see come through throughout the afternoon as we listen to each of the speakers. But for us, that really is about leveraging the capability of the group assets, whether that be the group commercial team, the group R&D team, or those farm facility, for example, in the U.K., very much about bringing those together under the group asset umbrella and sharing best practices right across the organization. Team development over the last few years, there has been some natural attrition and retirement of people across the executive team. So that level of change and dynamic in the group exec team has been something that's been ongoing and has been managed over the past few years. In terms of delivery, I'll talk in a little bit more detail later about FY '22 and how we're seeing that unfold, and also, I'll just give a little bit of color in terms of the metrics that we gave at the Capital Markets Day in FY '19 and how we're progressing against those. Leadership in sustainability is a theme, I think, that you'll see come through right through the to the afternoon, very much see ourselves placed at the center of that in terms of how we run the business and how we manage the business and sustainability as a team is no longer a parallel piece to our business. It is very much core and center to how we think about the business. Though the afternoon, then what we'll hear from the various speakers is some insights in terms of some of the highlights across the business over the past few years. Fortgreen, as I touched off, very strong organic growth within that business. We'll hear from the team about the delivery from our new controlled release fertilizer plant and the further opportunities for organic growth that we see in the Brazilian market. Across both the Romanian business and more broadly, in our Continental Europe is we'll hear about, again, the progress that's been made in terms of the consolidation piece of the 2 legacy Romanian businesses, as well as some depth and color in terms of performance across the market in general, including an update on Ukraine. Origin Amenity has recently consolidated 3 of its key brands, and we'll hear from -- we'll hear from Chris Clark as he outlined how that is acting as an enabler for us to drive further growth in the core Amenity offering and the opportunities that present in that space out over the coming years. Across the portfolio then, as I mentioned, your focus and investment very much around leveraging those group assets. I think that will become evident as we hear from the various speakers today. Digital, as an enabler, both in terms of our on-farm agronomists, and also, our general on-farm advisory team is becoming -- has become an even more important key theme and focus of the business, as well as the inherent demand from a precision ag perspective that we're seeing across our customer base. So again, their teams, as we see our digital presentation later that will be evident and come through. That point, again, we're leveraging best practice and capabilities across our B2C Agrii business is very much enabled by the capabilities that we've built around a central commercial team, leveraging the assets such as our Throws Farm as an R&D center and also, as a training hub again, that allows a share of best practices right across the B2C organization. Standing back then and looking at the business and looking at how the group has evolved over the last few years. I mean, at our core, we're very much a people business. That theme carries right through to our engagement model right across the organization. We have signed up to the UN Global Compact very much enshrines the concepts around human rights, good labor, anticorruption practices, while operating in an environmentally-responsible way right across the business. And again, you will see that theme come through later. And as we look at our nurturing growth sustainability program, you'll see that it's very much embedded in our commitment to building road maps across of both our B2C and B2B businesses in delivering sustainable agriculture practices in those businesses, and also, in our Amenity businesses. Again, from that point of view, when we look at ESG, very much led by our Board, governance practices set in place right across the businesses. And in doing that, we are complying with the best practice frameworks, such as complying with sustainable SBT targets, TCFD reporting, and that's very much core to the operations of the business. Extending that theme across our portfolio growth, mindful as we talk about M&A later, that taxonomy is a key theme that we are very mindful of as we build out our capabilities across different parts of the business, whether that be across the Amenity business, the general natural capital space. Systems and capability has been an ongoing focus of the business, particularly digital, as I said. But equally, over the last year, we have been replacing our core ERP systems across the U.K. and Ireland businesses. That's a program of work that is due to conclude in 2023, and then, we look across the rest of our businesses to again, drive further enablement from an ERP perspective as we drive growth across our businesses. Digital, I touched off earlier, a continued focus, and again, an ever-evolving landscape in the area of precision ag and ultimately, about enablement of our on-farm agronomy and advisory teams. Touching off of FY 2022 then. I mean, as you will have seen, we upgraded earnings last week to a range of EUR 0.49 to EUR 0.57 EPS. That's coming off the back of an earlier upgrade in April of EUR 0.45 to EUR 0.49. And really, what we're seeing back to the start of the year, I suppose it started with very strong planting season across our geographies. Crops have been well established and are generally in good condition, albeit probably a need for some moisture in the U.K., certain parts of the U.K. right now. And all geographies, generally performing ahead of expectations with trading momentum overall, very, very strong. Soft commodities, again, as you will be aware, have been strong, and that has helped underpin demand. I mean, liquidity on-farm, we would say, generally, has been very, very strong as we came through the season. Farmers are benefiting earlier in the season from high commodity prices and the full impact of input costs haven't necessarily flown through. So we've seen that benefit and tailwind in terms of cash performance come through as a result of on-farm liquidity. I'll talk a little bit later about that, and we do expect some of that to unwind in due course. But overall, that has been a key feature of the business. And again, back to the Ukraine situation and even in advance of that, supply chains have been challenged through the year, but we have been successfully navigating that. And that is ultimately, overall, allowed us to increase the earnings guidance range to those levels of EUR 0.49 to EUR 0.57. The buyback program is well underway. At this stage, we launched out on the 8th of March. It's over 80% complete, and overall, very pleased with the progress of that program, and we expect that it should complete well ahead of schedule, which was the end of October this year. Briefly then, just touching back on a targets that we set in FY '19. The base year for those targets was FY '18 up to FY '23. So we're kind of coming to the tail end of that program. But overall, it was pleased to note that through this year, return on investment and free cash flow metrics have been very, very strong. And despite the headwinds of FY '20, some recovery in FY '21, we're seeing really the -- a further push through in terms of performance in FY '22. Across the segments, FY '20 did clearly challenge the U.K. and Ireland performance. Again, the base year for these metrics was FY '18, which was quite high and FY '20 clearly challenged the U.K. and Ireland business significantly. But that said, pleased with the progress and recovery that we're seeing coming through in FY '22. From a Continental Europe perspective, Poland and Romania are performing on target, excluding Ukraine, obviously, with the current situation there, the performance is heavily challenged this year. And overall, LATAM, the key headwind in LATAM was currency. So as we translate the reais back to euros, we're getting significant hits as that depreciation hit on the currency. So underlying a very strong performance in the LATAM business and seeing some relaxation in that currency headwind through this year. But underlying, very pleased with the LATAM performance. And again, that's a theme that we'll pick up later as we hear from the LATAM team. So with that, I'll hand it back to Sean on strategy.

Thanks, TJ. So I suppose the thinking about how we run the businesses for the future, the way we want to adjust the businesses course correct, I suppose, to a certain extent, within some of our existing businesses and how we think about M&A is very much underpinned by some of the challenges that we're facing from a regulatory perspective. A huge amount of regulatory change and challenge has taken place over the last 3 years. You've had change in agricultural regulation with the publication of the EU Farm to Fork policy, change in reimbursement with the U.K. agricultural build moving to our own schemes and the EU cap model being changed. And change in development land, where biodiversity net gain is now being mandated as a requirement for any development land. So all of that is feeding into a backdrop, which leads us to and we have been putting sustainability at the heart of the organization. And last year, we published our nurturing growth document, which spoke to the way in which we want to put sustainability at the heart of the organization. And that's comment on a number of different forms. In terms of our advisory businesses, our agronomy businesses have been very focused on the Green Horizons manifesto, and that document was published about 18 months ago now, in terms of how the agronomy businesses are focused on sustainability. Last year, our fertilizer business as published a Fertile Future manifesto. So we're changing our product set. We're changing the way in which we're interacting with our customers from a product capability perspective and reducing the nitrogen levels within fertilizer but giving the same yield with different combinations of products. So product innovation and continually reviewing our product set has been an important part of the mix of how we're coping with the new world. And finally, then, as TJ. said, M&A is now very much focused on sustainability and I suppose, the lens through which we're viewing any new potential M&A will have sustainability at the heart of it. So that would be important. We're doing lots of good stuff on the reporting side as well, and our ESG Committee, at a Board level, is hugely involved in the sustainability steering committee that we were on at an executive level. So at least, one member of our Board will sit in on the quarterly meetings that we have at an executive level with a sustainability steering committee at the heart of it, working on different projects in sustainability and innovation, our own carbon footprint and how we're impacting the business from the social perspective. And all of that, as TJ said, is leading to increased level of commitments from the business, and we will adopt at the end of this fiscal year science-based targets from a greenhouse gas perspective, and adopt an environmental management system in line with ISO 14001. So a huge amount of work and commitment is ongoing in the sustainability space. But from a strategic perspective, how we view a number of the crisis facing the globe, and how humans, as a whole, interact with the globe is hugely important. And you hear lots of noise and lots of comment and dialogue around the climate crisis and the impact of carbon emissions on the globe in general. So that's been the one that's been, I suppose, most loudly spoken about from a general public perspective. But what you hear less about, I guess, is the food and energy security crisis that the globe is facing as the population continues to grow towards 2050 and how the globe will feed itself. I suppose, the Ukraine war and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is really only bringing that home and into public consciousness now. So that's a crisis that the globe is facing. And then finally, the biodiversity crisis that the globe is facing in terms of the underpinning of all of the activity that goes on from a natural capital perspective, is also coming to the floor. So those 3 drivers, I suppose, are changing the way in which we view the historical uses of land. And traditionally, that would have been very much siloed with production and amenity, the 2 areas that Origin are most heavily involved in, but the consciousness around development and the development of infrastructure and urban development and commercial development, I guess, is now having to take on board ecosystems. And that model, I suppose, was very much focused on the provisioning services in the first instance, but it's changing over time now to include regulatory services, cultural services and underpinning services, which were very much in the background in the past but are very much coming forward now. And that changes how we think about the model for sustainable land use out into the future. So ecosystems will over pin all of the other uses of land from production to amenity and development. And we think that, that will then feed 3 macro growth drivers for our business, which are at the heart of how we're thinking about running the business out into the future. So coping with the challenges of feeding the globe, stabilizing the climate and also, restoring biodiversity, essentially will drive out new macro growth drivers of sustainable agronomy, because the world will need to be fed and doing it in a ecological way is hugely important. Coping with that food supply risk that exists on a global level and getting exposure to the emerging nature economy, which is in its infancy. The Environmental Act of 2021 was only published at the tail end of last year and is really only becoming a requirement on development and developers right now. And traditionally, the Origin portfolio would have almost been siloed in the same way as people thought about the uses of land, be it on a geographic basis or a product basis or indeed, across some of the services that we've provided in the advisory and services area. And the business units have historically been very much run in silos rather than interacting with each other. And following the Greentech acquisition, there's been a huge change in how we're thinking about the business. And we've moved from, I suppose, the established Origin presence in food production and amenity, historically now to developing areas in forestry and in development land and ecology at the heart of it, to cover off those areas, albeit Greentech is really only scratching the surface in those areas in the first instance, and there's a lot more to be done to develop in those areas. So our exposure to those macro growth drivers as a business is, of course, at its strongest in sustainable agronomy and the Origin businesses have historically always been hugely competent in the provision of sustainable products, but more importantly, sustainable agronomic advice. Clare and Peter, I think, will discuss that in a lot more detail and give you a lot more color from a technical perspective on why that is the case. But we think we're well covered in that area, and we continue to be leaders in that area, certainly, versus a lot of our competitors set across many of the geographies that we're operating in. The technical competency of our teams, the technical competency of our product set is much, much stronger than our competitor set. From a food responsiveness perspective, that varies very much by geography. The capacity of U.K. and Ireland, for example, to generate significant additional yield, I would say, is quite limited and yield gains are certainly tailing off in that area. But there is scope within Continental Europe and Latin America to drive further yield and production to meet the world's growing food demand. And from an emerging nature perspective, again, our Amenity business is well set in that regard, but it is a growing area, and we will need to be active in terms of pursuing new acquisitions in that space to continue to grow, but also, our U.K. agronomy businesses and our U.K. fertilizer businesses have a part to play in that nature economy, both in terms of the product set and capability we have, but also, in the implementation of [indiscernible] as they get introduced from the U.K. government perspective. So our portfolio position, we think, is relatively strong. As I said, Peter and Clare will talk in detail to the technical advice and solutions. And some of the panel discussions will also touch on the opportunity from a sustainable agronomy perspective. We see ourselves transitioning to newer product areas and newer product categories, and also, improving the product technologies that we use in order to continue to feed the world in a responsible way over the coming decades. And finally, then we need to accelerate our investment both from an organic and an inorganic perspective in terms of the emerging nature economy. So looking at the first of those in turn. As I said earlier, the approach to sustainable agronomy was set out in our nurturing growth document last year, primarily based on 4 pillars: balancing sustainability and output, soil [indiscernible] nutrition, innovated integrated plant protection and enhancing biodiversity and protection -- protecting natural capital. And overall, that are underpinning all of that then is our digital capability, which supports a lot of the change in this area. So we'll see a combination of videos and presentations, which will give you a deeper dive on this area later on. In relation to food security and the global food supply chain, this very much differs by geography because of the capability of each of the geographies really to respond with any significant growth in production. And the opportunity in U.K. and Ireland is very limited. The professionalism of the farming base there is strong and the opportunity to agronomize farms in a better way and continue to extract yield growth, I would say, is relatively limited. In fact, we'll be challenged enough to maintain yields in the face of what are changing regulatory demands, and also, product relocations over the coming years. So we're in a strong position there, and it's about defending that core base and continuing to extract the maximum from that core base by widening, perhaps, our product portfolio in those areas. Within Continental Europe, obviously, the opportunity is greater and probably, the production levels from some of our geographies, such as Poland or Romania, is maybe, 30% or 40% at an agronomic level, worse than it could potentially be if you compare it to, say, a geography like Germany, which is the same soil type. So the opportunity is there to increase yields to a fuller potential, but since we've acquired those businesses, it's been a relatively slow journey, and I think Alex and Monalisa will talk a little bit to the challenges in that area, but we are well set relative to our competition set. We are focused and fundamentally, our sales teams and sales organizations there are about educating themselves and driving good agronomic practice relative to our competitor set who are just more sales focused and not as focused on driving good agronomic practices. And we are planning on expanding our portfolio there. And Alex and Monalisa will talk to some of the things that we're doing to improve the product set and capability within that, but we also plan to invest on a new product plant within the Polish market over the course of FY '23, which will allow us to expand our footprint there. And finally, then, Eduardo and Leonardo will talk about the opportunity in Latin America. The yield capability there, again, can increase significantly. And we're very focused on an existing product set as a B2B supplier supplying many distributors within that market and indeed, some export markets of biosolutions, adjuvants and controlled release fertilizers. But we do see ourselves extending our product range organically into controlled release fertilizer plants growing those further, and also, a biologicals business in the coming years. The third key market driver then is the nature of economy. And I suppose, consumer and societal expectations are driving all of this regulatory change that you can see here. So the environmental land act has been, I suppose, a key driver of biodiversity net gain obligations for developers in the U.K. and will be a driver of this area. The challenge that we have in U.K. agriculture in terms of transitioning the payment mechanisms to quite ill-defined schemes, I would say, at this stage, Ronan, and maybe, Ronan will touch upon this in his Q&A session. But certainly, payments to farmers will now be centered more on environmentally-focused payments rather than the basic payment schemes. And then finally, a whole suite of corporate reporting legislation, which will drive companies to think about their impact on biodiversity and nature in different ways and which we'll drive continued growth across this whole sector, which we already have an exposure to, but which we would like to expose ourselves to more because we do see it is a very strong growing sector. So linking our businesses across production and agriculture, linking those environmental land management schemes to the obligations that are on developers, for example, and linking all of these things will be an important part to see and how we see sustainable land use out into the future. So a quick overview of the next few presenters. As we mentioned earlier on, we are going to have panel discussions, videos, and also, some direct presentations here in the room on a number of topics. So before the short break that we'll take, we're going to try and cover the Ireland, U.K. and the CE business, and we'll have videos in relation to balancing sustainability and outputs, Origin Digital, and some technical presentations from both Peter and Clare. We'll take a quick comfort break then for about 10 minutes. We'll come on to Latin America and Eduardo and Leonardo will give you a good overview of what we're doing within our Latin American business. And finally, then, Ruth and Chris will come up on stage and talk to you a little bit about the biodiversity sector from an Agrii perspective, but also, from an Amenity perspective and try and dovetail how those businesses will interact in future years. So the first section is sustainable agronomy. We're going to start doing deep dives on those growth areas now, and we'll kick off with our first video, which is about balancing sustainability and output. [Presentation]

Hopefully, you secret resides, and we want to put you a 2-second delay.

We have been asked to stand behind the lectern because of interference. So that's going against my natural presentation silo, unfortunately. But everybody, bear with me. Hopefully, the technology will work. Yes, I'm Peter Scott, and I'm heading up the soil resilience and plant nutrition strategy for the group that Sean alluded to. Sustainability is absolutely at the heart of everything that we do going forward. So it might seem slightly a logical given that the title of the presentation is soil resilience and plant nutrition to start by asking you to think about and focus on the air that we're breathing in this room. 4/5 of what we're taking into our lungs, we're breathing straight back out, nitrogen. The biggest challenge facing us in terms of sustainable agriculture over the next few years is poised by nitrogen. But it's an inert gas. The reason we breathe in 4/5 of the atmosphere is nitrogen, we breathe it in, we breathe it straight back out. It's just exactly that. At this stage, it is an inert gas. And that strikes me as something of a divine design flow, because nitrogen is just as important as the oxygen that we're breathing in. Nitrogen is a fundamental building block of all life, plants, animals, everything. It's intrinsic to our genetic footprint, our DNA, our reproduction. It's intrinsic to photosynthesis, plant production, crop production, and all protein on the planet, whether it's animal or plant, 16% of that protein is composed of nitrogen. So nitrogen is a fundamental building block of life that we cannot live without. But at this point, it's an inert gas that does none of those building block exercises. We have to convert it from an inert gas into reactive gas. Now this happens in nature. It's been happening in nature ever since the creation, the nitrogen cycle, we're all part of the nitrogen cycle. We want to be part of the nitrogen cycle for as long as possible. We'll eventually be part of the carbon cycle, we want to delay that process. In nature, plants like clover and legumes, beans pulses, they can convert inert nitrogen into reactive nitrogen. But as the global population increases, we've had to industrialize this process. So 2 very clever German scientists working for BASF 100 years ago, synthesized atmospheric nitrogen into reactive nitrogen using a process called the Haber-Bosch process. And like everything in development, that brings pros and cons. The positive is that by doing that, we're able to produce nitrogen fertilizer that enables us to grow the crops to sustain the increasing global population. The downside is that the Haber-Bosch process uses fossil fuel, so we have a high carbon footprint in nitrogen fertilizer production. Putting that to one side, the fundamental is that of 47% of total food consumption today is derived directly from the Haber-Bosch process and the synthesis of nitrogen fertilizer. So we are fundamentally linked to this process in terms of driving global population. However, in creating reactive nitrogen, we've let the genie out of the bottle. Because yes, it enables us to grow the fruit that we need for a growing population, but reactive nitrogen, it's a little bit like [indiscernible], it does exactly what it says on the tin. It is highly reactive. It forms into all sorts of different compounds, so nitrous oxide, 298x the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. It's a major impact on climate change. Ammonia, 87% which comes from agriculture, is a major atmospheric pollutant. And then, we have nitrates, which is -- has a detrimental impact on the quality of drinking water. So nitrogen, we can't live without it. The question is, how do we live with it. So hopefully, what I would explain is that nitrogen is absolutely, at the pivot point of that sustainability seesaw between producing enough food for that growing population and protecting the atmosphere, the water, the environments in which we live. And that's the importance of nitrogen. This is reflected globally in the United Nations sustainability development goals, in the European context or EU context in the Farm to Fork Strategy, which is specifically called for a 20% reduction in the use of nitrogen fertilizer. And we will probably see similar requirements in the environmental land management schemes that are being rolled out just now by Defra in the sustainable farming incentive. And just -- we've already seen an EU member state, the Irish government have taken the Farm to Fork Strategy, they've taken this before it becomes a directive and they've turned it into the -- a climatized document road map towards climate neutrality and the Irish government have mandated farmers in Ireland to reduce nitrogen fertilizer consumption by 20% by 2030. So for us, as fertilizer businesses, is this a threat or an opportunity? And actually, the way our business is structured and what we are doing as a business to counter these types of directives, it's actually an opportunity. I'll explain why I see it as an opportunity in a minute. It's 2 blunted instrument, just simply to say we're going to reduce nitrogen fertilizer by 20%. What happens if food production in Ireland concurrently collapses or significantly reduces. We, as a business, are working closely with government in the development of nitrogen use efficiency as a KPI of sustainable farming, because the farmers can use that nitrogen more efficiently, then that will actually give us a win-win situation. If farmer can recover more of the nitrogen that's applied it to his crop, then day factor, he's improved its financial return on the investment, and at the same time, has reduced the amount of reactive nitrogen that can be lost to the atmosphere or to water. So it's a win-win-win situation for the farmer and for the environment. So nitrogen use efficiency, fundamentally, as a measurement of measuring the amount of nitrogen that's taken off in crops, in milk, in meat and comparing that against the amount of nitrogen that's gone into the system. So the theoretical idea would be 100% or a 1:1 ratio. In practice, there's a lot of room for improvement. As you can see there, 25% nitrogen use efficiency typically in dairy, typically 60% and growing wheat and barley. So a lot of room for improvement. So this is focusing a lot of our attention across various business units within what can we do to increase nitrogen use efficiency. Bearing in mind that if we can, and we have demonstrated that we can. But if we can increase nitrogen use efficiency, we are improving our farmers' ability to grow crops in a sustainable manner. So 3 key areas, which I'll just run through. One is soil health and resilience, integrated nutrient management planning and enhanced efficiency fertilizers. You heard from [ Amy ] on the video that Agrii has just rolled out in January of this year, soil resilience strategy. 95% of global food production comes from the soil. The soil is the raw material of agriculture. So if we can build and improve healthy fertile soils, we're creating the building block for increasing nitrogen use efficiency, sequestering carbon, improving resilience, improving our ability to withstand the effects of drought or excess water. And it's a process of understanding the farmers objective, doing the investigations, the analytics, creating the data through analysis, using the skill of the agronomists to interpret that data and ultimately, to turn it into an output, an action for the farmer. That's a very, very brief overview of what is a very complex strategy that we're in the process of rolling out over the next few years. Secondly, integrated nutrient management planning. What is an integrated nutrient management plan, is where we take that data from things like the soil resilience strategy. We analyzed the nutrient content in soils, in a growing crop, in the crop that we harvest, in the organic manures and slurries and digestives that we apply, and we think of it holistically. And take it all together, run it through our digital tools that we're creating with our colleagues in Origin Digital, and the output is an integrated nutrient management plan that basically forms the blueprint for the farmer to work out how much product is nitrogen or phosphate or potash, whatever, does he actually need to apply to get the right balance to tick all these boxes in terms of increased nitrogen use efficiency to balance his productivity, reduce his nutrient losses, sequester carbon that we're hearing more and more about, and ultimately improve his resilience and his sustainability. And then finally, we are working and have been for a number of years, and I would say, without fee or favor, we are in the vanguard of developing enhanced efficiency fertilizers. The market in the U.K. and Ireland is not asking us for more fertilizer. But what it's asking us for is better fertilizer. And that's what we are focusing on as a business, is doing better fertilizer. So we are working, pulling together additives, enhancers so that we can produce exactly the right amount of fertilizer, the right amount of nutrient in relation to the analytics that we've created in the nutrient management plan. And this is one of our key points of difference. Where we stand today? I started in the fertilizer industry a few years ago -- 38 years ago, precisely, 6 years old at the time. And we had 4 nutrients and 20 products. And today, Origin fertilizers has 14 nutrients across 15,000 products, and that's how we'll increase nitrogen use efficiency, through broad spectrum, multi-nutrient prescription nutrition. And our blending model allows us to do that. Primary, fertilizer manufacturers can't actually play in that space, so we've got to make tracks that others can't follow, and that's what we're doing through our NUTRI-MATCH prescription fertilizer service. We're building state-of-the-art modern blending plants, [indiscernible] controls that allow us to select from these 14 [indiscernible] nutrients the soil analysis or whatever might say, well, in this particular case only 9 are needed. So we select those 9 in the relative proportions and we create a perfect match. And that means that we're able to produce fertilizers where there's no excess of nutrient and no deficiency or nutrient, no compromise in terms of farmer's choice. And we've built that out a series of brands -- enhanced efficiency brands over the last few years, and we're seeing growth in our enhanced efficiency product range, and that's across agriculture, across amenity. We've developed inhibitors to reduce those nitrogen losses I talked about, phosphate enhancers, micronutrient coatings. And also, we've been working, for a number of years, in the production of controlled release fertilizers. And continuing to do that with our colleagues in Brazil who have just recently, built a brand-new state-of-the-art controlled release fertilizer plant and we'll try and [indiscernible] that in Brazil. And controlled release fertilizers are, again, what they say in the tin, where we're actually able to manipulate the release period of each of the nutrients to tie in with the uptake requirement period of each of the nutrients and Fortgreen are building out these brands of controlled release fertilizer. So hopefully, that is a quick overview, very quick snapshot that gives you a flavor of what we're doing as a group of businesses working together, breaking down the silos, integrating our knowledge and expertise to put together a solid resilience and plant nutrition strategy for sustainable agriculture. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody. Nice to see everyone in person. We've missed seeing people like this, actually, physically. So it's fantastic. I'm going to talk a little bit about innovative ways to protect crops, but what I'm specifically going to focus on today is biosolutions. A little bit of background, I guess. We, as providers of leading-edge agronomy advice, play a really important role in helping our customers balance their sometimes, conflicting to names of food production, and also, protecting the environment. For decades, we have helped plug that knowledge gap between science and agronomy and delivering us important information to our customers. Now, many of you will be familiar with [ Rose Farm ], but for those of you who are not, this is a technological hub for all of the Origin businesses, and it was established back in the 1950s. We undertake about 400 trials every year on a whole range of crops, both covering horticulture, agriculture and amenity. And we're looking at testing products, varieties, nutrition and integrated ways to protect crops against pest suites and diseases. The key aim of these trials is to generate independent advice for our customers. And it's now a leaf innovation center and therefore, research into sustainable practices has really ramped up. Now really, for sustainable food production, most experts view maximizing yield as a really important component. We need to get the most we can from existing land so that those areas, which are not being used to grow food can maximize their biodiversity potential. It's important that we, therefore, look at plant protection products as part of our integrated approaches, and you can see there that at the moment, they are protecting between 20% and 40% of yield potential across a range of different crops. So they're absolutely vital to competitive food production, a competitive industry, and also, food security. And in addition, they actually -- the higher the yield of the crop, the lower the greenhouse gas emissions. So for every tonne per hectare of yield produced, that lowers the CO2 equivalent per tonne by about 34 kilograms. In addition, they actually only represent about 1% of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. But it is true to say that they are coming under pressure for all the reasons that I've listed up there. They are extremely safe, but the costs on new active ingredients to the market has escalated. In fact, it's now doubled in the last 20 years. It's around $300 million for a new active ingredient. And it's also taking a long time to bring these products to the market. So it's now around 11 years, for example, in the EU. In addition, we have things like resistance, which is a problem. So pest suites and diseases can overcome these products. And they are also being focused on very, very carefully, and we are losing some of the old active ingredients that we used to have on the market. So they're coming under pressure. We have always used them in integrated approaches. We don't rely on chemistry as the first line of defense, so we're always exploring things like resistance in varieties to see how well we can combat any economic challenges without necessarily having to use chemistry. These IPM approaches have been thoroughly researched and are promoted to agronomists and customers as the most sustainable approach to growing crops. But there are some really interesting emerging innovative technologies that are coming through. They have been assessed as having a positive, negative or neutral effect on these macro factors listed on the left-hand side, so things like a low diversity and climate change. And it is really important that these are looked at in the round for unintended consequences. So I have listed some of these technologies across the top there, and you will see there's quite a lot of red, for example, around mechanical practices. So things like electro weeders, which are talked about and are being developed, they have a very high energy cost. They quite often have fairly heavy batteries, so they can cause soil compaction. Laser weeders, which also being investigated, can have an impact on pollinators, for example. So while they're not chemistry, they do have unintended consequences which do need to be evaluated. Something like plant breeding techniques, however, are a win-win and techniques such as gene editing, which has now been recently approved in the U.K. for scientific development, will allow us to cut breeding cycles in half to about 6 years. So this means that we'll be able to incorporate things like pest and disease resistance, healthy food traits into crops in a far shorter space of time. And these are not GMOs, at least not according to the U.K. government who have ruled in their favor and allowed us, as I say, to start researching them. Today, however, I'm going to focus on biosolutions. And as you can see from the table, they are all judged to have a neutral or positive benefit on those macro factors I have outlined. So what are these biosolutions? Well, you can describe them in various different ways, but we simply put them into 2 categories. On the left-hand side, you can see bioprotectants, so these are essentially natural products, which can be used to control pest suites and diseases. They have to go through a similar registration process to chemistry in order to get a label to say that they are controlling those problems. Biostimulants, on the right-hand side there, do not yet have to be registered. And they will do, however, in the EU and Northern Ireland from the middle of this year, but certainly, in the U.K. at the moment, there are no plans to have to register those. But the focus of these is on stress mitigation, and also, as Peter said, he's mentioned nutrient or notch new sufficiency as being a really, really important target. And you can see the very positive compound annual growth rates, which are predicted for both of these sectors. So you'll see some examples of the bioprotectants, on the left-hand side. So you've got things like bacterial biopesticides, which can help with pest and disease control. You've got ilicitors, which basically turn on the plant's own resistance mechanisms to diseases, and we're exploring all of those. On the right-hand side, we've got some otherwise known as stress busters, biostimulants there. So things like seaweeds, which can help plant health and routing. Bacterial plant growth promoters, which can help fix nitrogen. Now, that's really important linking back to what Peter was saying, anything that we can do to help plants access the nutrients they need without necessarily having to apply them, it's going to minimize the amount of nitrogen fertilizer that we need to apply. So all of those have, again, got some very good and positive traits to them. In terms of the market, if you have a look at the EU, the market for biosolutions is predicted to grow rapidly, albeit from a fairly low base, and this is really driven by the EU's Farm to Fork Strategy and some other factors as well. Now at the moment, most of these are being used in high-value crops rather than broadacre arable. And it's quite a young and evolving industry. And we have many startups approaching us with the new kid on the block, the new biosolution that they've been exploring. And its current rate, I'd say we are approached probably once a week by businesses who clearly see us as a value-added route to the market. But we need to make sure that we are selecting the best. We need to make sure that they are as reliable as they can be, and that they are being used and coming to us at an acceptable cost for those positions in the market. We do view these as a very important component of food production and amenity protection going forward for the reasons I've listed up there. There could be alternatives to products which we have lost from the market due to increased regulation. They might assist us in a drive towards residue reduction, which is being demanded by supermarkets. Also, they can reduce stress caused by water logging or drought, which has come about as a result of climate change. And there is no doubt that registration costs are cheaper and they come to the market much, much faster, much more quickly. But, and there's always a but. Performance is more variable than conventional plant protection products. And applications quite often need to be more frequent because they don't have the same degree of persistency. So we have a rigorous evidence-based testing procedure in place that we follow. We will not take manufacturers' claims at face value, nor will our agronomists, nor should our customers. So to solve this performance conundrum, we are looking at a really strong science-based approach. We want positive field trials data, we want a good scientific basis toward -- behind some of these products, we want to be able to demonstrate some positive effect on the environment and who we work with really matters. We've been spotted for choice. We've been working with the likes of Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, big multinationals who do give us very, very good product support. So we look at these criteria, and we use that to judge whether or not we should be adopting 1 of these products for -- on behalf of our customers. The science behind it is really, really important because we want to really understand how these products work. If we understand how the products work, we are in a much better position to decide how we should use these in a variety of crops. So we do collaborate with scientific institutions. You will have heard, I guess, and it's already been mentioned this morning, about the EUR 70 million project, the CONSUS project that we have with the University College Dublin. They are now producing some exciting endophyte technology, which is -- basically, endophyte means within plants. They've been extracted from wild wheat relatives all over the world, categorized by UCD, tested in the glass house in the laboratory to see whether or not they can have some activity against plant diseases. And we're putting our first [ and default ] into field trials this year. So as I say, if we understand the science, we're actually in a much better position to be able to use these effectively. We're also very privileged to have Fortgreen as part of our Origin Enterprises, and they help us considerably in terms of delivery to the market. They have earmarked a 5-year investment plan, and no doubt you'll hear a little bit more about it later on, of BRL 20 million, so that's about USD 4 million, into their first AgBiotech project. And they're recognizing that this market is likely to grow exponentially. So they have invested, particularly into bioinsecticides and biofungicides, state-of-the-art development labs, growth chambers, glass houses, and they're using these to create their own technology and also support other businesses within Origin with testing facilities. So the biggest markets for these buyers at the moment are the EU and the U.S. But the greatest growth is likely from LATAM because, currently, there's fairly low adoption rates, and the reason for that is that the legislation was very tight around them. And as I understand it now, the legislation has been relaxed. And therefore that -- those opportunities in LATAM will certainly be there. And there's greater understanding of the benefits that BioSolutions can offer in that geography as well. So to conclude, whilst we got many promising emerging technologies, in the short to medium term, synthetic plant protection products are still going to play a vitally important role in food production. BioSolutions, in particular, we are using not necessarily a stand-alone but to complement our existing plant protection products. And we believe our approach -- our What Works approach is absolutely market-leading. And so too, with the Fortgreen expertise, we have a particular competitive advantage, we believe. We mustn't knock scientific collaborations. They are absolutely vital and fundamental to improving and enhancing our understanding. And I mentioned a lot of other new technologies at the beginning, which I haven't spent much time on due to my limit in time today, but we are looking at all of these new technologies and assessing them for as potential improvements and innovative ways to help protect crops in the future. Thank you very much, indeed.

Thank you. So what we saw there from [ Amy ] and from Peter and from Clare were all a treatment and a discussion, I suppose, of some portfolio-wide themes that are at play across the Origin group. What we're going to do now in a series of discussions is move to the actual application of those in divisional and business unit strategies. And I'm joined here by Ronan from the U.K. Agribusiness and Brendan from the B2B businesses across U.K. and Ireland. So Ronan, maybe to start us off, can you provide a brief overview of the markets in which Agri U.K. operates and the position of your business within those?

Yes, sure. So we operate exclusively in the U.K. We provide independent and innovative advice and strategic crop inputs to cereal and horticulture growers. We work with over 20,000 customers, where we provide total crop management advice and solutions. And we influence decisions taken on about 1/3 of the U.K. arable cropping area. We have over 250 BASIS-trained agronomists. And they sit at the very heart of our customer relationships. Their customer relationships are based on trust. They're often very long term and sometimes often multigenerational. Our agronomists and our customers rely very heavily and are supported by our trials and our research capability where we provide integrated agronomic solutions. And we work with all of the leading major manufacturers and breeders, providing both seeds, nutrition and crop protection products. And in terms of market shares, our crop protection market share in the U.K. is about 35%. Our seed market share is about 20%, and our fertilizer market share, about 12%. And we support all of that through a industry-leading logistics and storage capabilities.

So Brendan, moving to the B2B side, maybe can you give us an overview of the feed [indiscernible] similar, the market context and Origins business.

I suppose I'll just begin with our feed ingredient business. So we operate that business through a joint venture between R&H Hall and W&R Barnett. The business is involved in supplying grain and nongrain feed ingredients into the various compound feed mills, who in turn then produce rations for it's dairy, beef, sheep, pig farmer. The business itself, it's operated on an all-island basis in Ireland. So it's a significant business. It has a market share of in around 50%, which is supported by -- it has strong warehousing and infrastructure close to various deepwater ports in Ireland, which gives us an advantage given that most of the material that we supply is imported. So we've got a broad supply line across throughout the whole world, which is ever important given the constraints that we're faced with in Ukraine, et cetera. Turning to the fertilizer business. Again, it's a relatively simple business. We basically procure. We import shipments of granular fertilizer. We then blend that material, which is effectively, physically mixing the various raw materials to provide a specific analysis or a blended solution. We're not a manufacturer in terms of there's no chemical process involved. It's a physical blend. We then package and then distribute. That business also is a B2B type of business. We sell through the trade, the co-ops and merchants in Britain. Ronan's Agri U.K. business would be one of our customers. We have about 16 blending and bagging facilities across Ireland and the U.K. They're well-located, bought from a shipping perspective because, effectively, there's no manufacturing essentially. So everything has to be imported and also from a customer distribution perspective. In terms of our market position, in relation to the U.K. Agrii, we probably have about 25%. So we're the #1 player in that wholesale B2B position.

And everything we've heard already this afternoon, Ronan, has effectively described a very dynamic space in U.K. agriculture. Can you share with us your own perspective on the challenges and opportunity areas that Agrii is going to be addressing.

Yes, sure. I mean, there's a lot happening at the moment for sure, and it's a very interesting and exciting space. I'm going to touch on 2 areas in particular. Firstly, the kind of post-Brexit subsidy regime and the U.K. government strategy has been very clear. They're focused on greening and the environment. They don't want to support farmers with direct payments for production. They want to support the industry through the implementation of public money for public goods. So what that means is they're focused on improving the environment on reducing emissions and improving animal health and welfare. And they're doing that through the environmental land management schemes that have been released recently. It's a bit of a transition phase at the moment. We've seen the BPS payments starting to taper down from 2021. They will disappear at the end of 2027. And as I said, a bit of a transition phase. And I guess, our role at the moment is to support our customers through that with the best advice, services and product solutions. And the second area is the whole kind of environmental awareness. And at Agrii, I guess, the concept of sustainability and integrated pest management has been practiced for many, many years, but there's certainly a greater emphasis and focus on the environment now. So producing safe and healthy crops, minimizing the environmental footprint and impact while, at the same time, trying to narrow that gap between the biological and the physical yield is paramount and supporting our customers and our [indiscernible] through that with specialists' advice, and training is key. We -- as you've seen earlier on from the presentations, we have our BioSolution products and range that Clare presented on, and we have our enhanced efficiency fertilizer products that Peter presented on. In addition to that, we supply environmental schemes and products in that space. We provide -- we have an Agrii environmental list, which is focused on the sustainability ratings. We have our precision application of precision agronomy. So we're trying to cover all of the bases to support our customers in that environmental awareness.

And Brendan, I presume you're seeing some of the same dynamics at play?

Yes. I mean, it's certainly articulated in Peter Scott's presentation earlier. I support the environment and trying to manage the balance between optimize and yield and also the environment. Okay, that's nothing new to us. We've been developing and promoting our own range of enhanced efficiency fertilizers over the last maybe 10, 20 years. And essentially, what they do are is basically they're blends. Given our scale, we have access to a number of additives, which when we incorporate into the blends, effectively, it improves the efficacy of the product. It limits the losses of the nutrients to the sky, to the water and also improves the carbon footprint, which is only a bigger issue in the last number of years. And what we try to do is we underpin that with branding to kind of differentiate us from the competition. And also, we try and work with customers because we're dealing with customers who are competing with each other to give them their own individual brands. And the final part of that jigsaw is also the operation part. It's fine having the sales and marketing piece, which you have to deliver as well. So with these additives, you're dealing with liquids, you're dealing with micro granules, you're dealing with powders so it's how to manage that and incorporate into blends. And we've invested significantly over the past number of years at our operation level because we need to be able to have a continuous production of those bespoke recipes. So that's the key piece for us. We are a B2B product provider. We need to be seen ops to customer as a trusted partner and also from a supply line. I mean it's a very challenging position at the moment, but where we have scale and we have legacy and we've developed and fostered long relationships, they see us as a go-to to the customer channel. So it's a combination of those that keeps the business resilient.

And Brendan, maybe 2 questions. What proportion of the portfolio now would be in that enhanced efficiency space? And then how are you thinking about newer materials from a circular economy perspective?

We'll just answer the first question. I mean, the percentage is in around 20%. If I look back maybe 6, 7 years, it's probably about 11%. So it has improved. I mean, the opportunity to improve that is small margins because, obviously, there's competition. To answer the second piece, we are exploring. We're evaluating alternative sources of nutrient. I mean, a lot of people will have heard a lot of conversations around digested, whether it's plant origin or animal organic manure, we're just trying to develop that in kind of a uniformity in a form that we can incorporate into our blends, into our recipe and that deals with that whole circular economy piece, which again, I think Peter alluded to in terms of that, how nutrient use efficiency, it's trying to get that as close to that one mark as possible. So again, these are all evolving propositions. It takes time, but that's where we see the market orientating, particularly when price levels are so high and access to supply on chemical fertilizer is more constrained.

And Ronan, maybe from a U.K. Agrii point of view and your strategic priorities for the coming years?

Yes, we've just completed our strategy refresh and launched our go-to-market 2030 strategy, which focuses on 3 core areas. It focuses on getting closer to the customer, broadening our offer, and focused on operational and sales excellence. And I guess that's being delivered or will be delivered through our Green Horizons lens, which focuses on improving farm viability and efficiency on improving soil resilience, on improving the environment. And there's a couple of key areas within that. I think the whole digital and data space that we're in. So we have 800,000 hectares on our Contour platform. We provide satellite and radar imagery. We provide pest and disease modeling. We provide variable seed nutrition application services. So we're providing a broad range of digital solutions. And the other area, I think, that's really important and exciting is the whole innovation and technology space. So we're looking at things like remote sensing equipment. We're looking at drone use and the use of robotics.

So I think now following up on your reference there to the digital, we're going to move to a video on Origin's digital and data capabilities. [Presentation]

So moving eastward now. Alex, Ukraine is 1 of the 3 markets within Origin's Continental European operations. Before we move on to a broader discussion, could you give us an update of the latest developments there?

Thank you for asking. The safety and the well-being of our colleagues and their families in Ukraine has been the key focus for us for the last 6 or 7 weeks. To put that in some context, we've got 248 employees in Ukraine. We've been in daily contact with the management team over the past 6, 7 weeks. And I'm pleased to say, so far, everyone is safely accounted for. Many of the team are actually in the west of Ukraine in relatively safe areas now. We've also had a number of families and colleague members who have moved outside of Ukraine, into Poland and other countries. We've had fantastic support, I think, particularly from the Polish and Romanian teams in helping support the families as they move across the border. So I'm really pleased. In a way, it's brought out the best of, I think, the Origin family of businesses and how we've supported our colleagues in Ukraine.

And what is the latest on the ground there?

Yes. From an operational point of view, all of our warehouses are now open and operating. Our systems are all operating as well. The market is, of course, extremely challenging. There's challenges around liquidity and safety. And to give a feel in terms of the planted area, it's probably around 70% of the normal planted area so reasonably significantly reduced from normal. Now our focus really is on trying to support Ukrainian farmers as best we can. We're working closely with suppliers to do that. And at the same time, we're trying to manage our financial exposure as carefully as possible.

So Poland and Romania make up the majority of the Continental European division. Could you talk us through those markets and the place of the Origin businesses within those marketplaces?

Sure. So our business is in Continental Europe, so Poland, Romania and Ukraine. These are B2C businesses. So we're providing -- just like in Agrii U.K., providing agronomic advice and selling products and services to farmers in those countries. Those -- these markets that tend to be more fragmented maybe than the U.K. market or some of the other western markets like France and Germany and they're both fragmented at the farm level. So there's more diversity around the farm size, but they're also more fragmented at the distributor level. Now to give you a flavor there, if you look at -- take the average farm size, the average farm size in Poland and Romania is closer to about 10 hectares, which is lots more than the U.K., which, I don't know, 80, 100 hectares is sort of more like the average. But within that average, you've got a huge spread. So you've got big corporate farms. They can be tens or even hundreds of thousands of hectares at one end, all the way down to very small sort of family-run farms at the other end. Now our target customer base is in that 50-hectare to sort of 10,000-hectare range. And the reason for that is that's where we can bring the most value in terms of the agronomic expertise and knowledge that we have from across the group. The other piece I'd probably add is our value proposition here is all around adding value to the farm and to the customer. And if you look at the other players in these markets, you've got, let's say, other distributors at one end who are probably more traditional distribution businesses. So more, I would say, low value-add, sort of a box-shifting model, more centered around logistics and credit. Our model is very much more of a value-add model, trying to help farm profitability improve, customers derisk, touching on sustainability, some of these other topics. And then, of course, you've got suppliers the other sort of players, if you like, in the market. Our suppliers aren't generally selling direct to customers. But what they are doing is influencing, creating demand on farm for products. But again, that model -- the downside of that model is it has a more narrow portfolio, no one supplier can supply all of the products the customer needs. So it just puts us in a really nice position in terms of our ability to have a broad agnostic portfolio of products and really bring best advice with those products to customers.

Thanks, Alex. Monalisa, you lead the Romanian business. At the last Capital Markets Day, you spoke here about plans to bring the 2 businesses together there. Could you talk to us about how that has gone? What's been the -- what has the intervening period brought?

Thank you. Yes. In 2019, I had the opportunity to stay in the front of this audience talking about our plans and our ambition of integration of 2 very different companies but very successful in Romania. It was a huge challenge for us because, at that moment, I didn't imagine that the model of integration will be tested within the COVID period and in a very dry season of 2020. But I'm very glad that, today, I'm able to speak in my name -- in the name of Agrii Romanian team as one team. It's a team that shared the same vision, the same agenda, the same strategy. The vision -- our local vision is that in Romania, the culture will be professional, will be intelligent made by professional for professionals. So sharing the same values that we also brings with Agrii branding, communicating the values and applying these values in practice gave us more substance in this transition period to Agrii. I would like to emphasize something that Agrii brand in Romania help us also from market position. We created real differentiation between us as a distributor and others because Agrii, it's a different conversation with the farmer. It's a different -- has a different -- it's a business model with real value added. So what we've done differently? We have experience in distribution with logistic capacity. We have a product portfolio. We have availability of portfolio. But what we are doing different now is the fact that we test all our solutions in trial plots in demo center. We bring the digital capabilities. We transfer these digital capabilities at the level of sales force. And we have a very strong commercial discussion with our farmers, giving them the right solution for the farm. This is the difference between us and others and give us in a very short period of time because there are 2 years. In 2 years, we create a very strong awareness of Agrii in Romania.

So maybe to add some more color to that, could you give us an example maybe of a few initiatives that you've been able to put through that new business model that might not have been possible in the previous businesses?

For sure. We consolidate the biostimulant, amino acid and micronutrients in a separate business line, and we changed 100% to the proprietary products. It gives us -- in 2 years, we have the similar market share but additional gross margin. I'm very glad that having FoliQ in our portfolio and formulating based on the know-how and experience that we share with a Brazilian team, it's a huge success for us. On the same side, I will give you another example. We bring genetics from different suppliers and on exclusivity basis for Agrii Romania, and we create a brand [ Atlas ], and we share these products less for our farmers, including with tested entire plots in the more [indiscernible] things like this. Digital capabilities. It's a real, let's say, success because we realized, in Romania, in a very short period of time, to transfer information to farmer and also educate our sales force in using the digital capabilities, and we have today 200,000 hectares digitalized and also with a lot of services associated like soil sampling, leaf analysis that give them additional value added for the business. So they are a good example for us, and we'll continue to do the right things in this respect.

And Alex, as you look across the strategy for the region as a whole, building I'm sure on some of those initiatives, what are the strategic priorities? And how do you see them contributing to the business in the coming years?

Yes. I mean, the customer is the heart of everything we're trying to do, and particularly, I guess, the focus a lot of is on farm profitability and trying to help farmers maximize the profitability of the business. Sean mentioned earlier, some of the yield gaps as well between the biological potential in some of the CE countries and where the actual yields are. And that's, again, part of the opportunity here is to using the agronomic knowledge, expertise, portfolio we've got to close that gap. But it's more than just yield. It's that whole farm profitability. Now there's 2 main ways we're doing that. And none of this is new. We've been doing it for a number of years, but I think we're getting better at how we do it. And as Monalisa said, we're starting to see some of the benefits of this coming through now. So the 2 areas. The first is around portfolio. So it's, I'll call it, optimized portfolio. But principally, it's about more exclusive products and more proprietary products. And these are products which are then strong technically because we've qualified them into the portfolio. It allows us to have a different story to customers as well, and then how you use those products, again, to get the most out of them. So Fortgreen and [ FoliQ ] that Monalisa referenced is a core part of that. We're also doing more white labels in some of these other areas, really building out that proprietary portfolio. The second piece is the sales team, the agronomists and the sales teams in each of the countries. So absolutely fundamental that we've got a team that are able to position those products on market with farmers and explain how to get the most out of those products and why they should be using those. And it's -- that's a combination of training and agronomic training as well as sort of sales skills training in the teams. But it's the combination of those 2 things, which are really powerful, the proprietary portfolio with a technical team that are really able to have a strong relationship on farm. And when we bring those 2 things together, we're very successful.

Thank you very much. We are going to take a break now to respect to some of our viewers online. We're going to be quite disciplined in the 10 minutes piece. So we'll be delighted to see you back here in a little time. Thank you. [Break]

We're going to change Hemisphere. I'm joined up here by Eduardo and Leonardo from the Brazilian Fortgreen business. Eduardo, maybe to start, could you help set the scene on the broader Brazilian marketplace in agriculture?

For sure. Thanks, and nice to meet you all. Brazil, as -- just to recap the big numbers, Brazil is 1 of the 15 countries, biggest of the world at economy. He is the fifth largest area of surface and also the fifth largest population in the world. So it's a huge country. In the last decades there has been a very great transformation on agriculture, and we became one of the major suppliers of the world -- of food for the world. So that's saying the agriculture is a great piece of our economy. Today, if you took all these like service production, food production and the production of agriculture, we are -- agriculture is 30% of the GDP. So it's a big employee and a big part of our economy. One of the important things also in Brazil, is that we have a very diversified agriculture. So there's a lot of different kinds of plantations and different kinds of soil and regions. And that makes us the major supplier of corn, soybean, cotton, sugarcane and meat for the world. So it's a very representative aspect of our economy.

And within that market backdrop, tell us about Fortgreen and where it fits in?

So Fortgreen is different from some businesses that appear here. And we are a more B2B business. So we are on the production and the marketing of high-value products. And we also are doing -- dealing directly with the farmer. We're starting that. So we have a chain of distribution of over 400 channels and clients that we're marketing our product and they resell to the farmers. So if you look at the Brazilian farmers, they are looking for the yield, as shows here. We are looking for increase this yield and all the diversity of areas and regions that we have. And if we took like soybean, for example, soybean came from 40 bags for hectare on to a -- almost 60 bags per hectare the last 20 years. So it's a high improve on yield. And with Fortgreen very well on that because with our portfolio of products, we can help the producer to produce to have a better yield.

And the business has grown significantly in recent years. What have been the key drivers of that?

We are working in 3 major strategies that, first of all, was developing new products. So we launched for 3 years our new adjuvant, so drives a new adjuvant. We also are launching products for the plant nutrition business. The second strategy is going on an expansion. So as we have this huge proportion in Brazil, we are now planting more than 75 million hectares in Brazil that represents almost 9% of the whole Brazil surface. So our expansion to the Center West and also the Southeast of Brazil. So we are growing our participation in markets like Mato Grosso, that is the biggest corn and soybean producer in Brazil and also in regions like state of Minas Gerais that is one of the biggest coffee players in Brazil in the world also. So with this hire new people and making the expansion. And also, we launched our new plant of CRF last year. That is in Jul. That is a market [indiscernible]

And maybe we go into that product portfolio in more depth, Leonardo. Can you talk us through the categories that the portfolio comprises?

Okay. So today, we have 4 different platforms, but we are working strong with 3 different platforms. The first one is Plant Nutrition in [indiscernible]. So today, this part of the platform is different from like Peter Scott showed because we can split this platform so we can apply fertilizer by soil or by leaf. So in this special platform, we apply or product by leaf or seeds or in the food. So this is high special fertilizer, okay? And inside in this platform, we have a biostimulant product that enhance the performance of the plant. So this is a big platform today in Brazil in the world that we can improve the quality of the food. We can improve against stress that happens. So and the other platform, we are leading these platforms in the adjuvant platform. Today brazil, it's a huge country, and every growers try to remove better application, spray application in the field using adjuvant. So we are a leader today in Brazil with this platform. I try to explain better. Adjuvant helps the crop, the chemistry products, hence, this kind of product against the weather, for example. So the third platform that we are working very strong, it's a CRF, control release fertilizer. So I believe Peter Scott show it so different kinds of fertilizer. We are very strong in this platform. This platform is a different fertilizer that we can apply, for example, once during one season and apply again the next year. A good advantage about this kind of product is we can save money because sometimes we really need to apply 3 or 4x during the season of the crops. And with this kind of product, we can apply once. So this helps to save money, to save diesel, to enhance the performance of the fertilizer. And the fourth platform we are working very strong, it's a biologic platform.

And is that a focus for innovation in the -- smaller than the others today?

So the biologics platform, it's the most important focus today for us. Why we are trying to take a big part of the market for traditional chemistry. Today, we can see in Brazil, the traditional chemistry, it's around $12 billion per year. And part of the growers are replacing the chemistry biologic. Why? Residence, it is one of the things that the growers want to control. And the second one is the decrease the dependence from active ingredients from other markets. So today, Brazil, we have a huge market to explore with biologic platform. And this kind of platform, we can match plant nutrition together. So this is a big advantage for the future with this platform.

And Leonardo, as you spoke there, you referenced a number of problems that these products are solving for growers. Do you want to talk about, as a theme, what kind of problems you're trying to solve?

If you ask for algorithms in the world, I believe everybody it's word about water. Water management, arable land and input. So we are working in these 3 key problems today with Fortgreen. For water management, for example, we are focused, for example, in adjuvant. Adjuvant normally, the growers when go to the future spray 200 liters for water. If the growers changed the nozzles and apply some adjuvants with high efficiency, we can decrease the use of water for 50 liters per hectare, for example. This happened today in Brazil. This is an example for edible land. Today, we can see in Brazil that we have rich soils, but we have poor soil. And in this situation, the growers are adopting new technology. A good example is the CRF. It's an innovative product that the growers can apply and you avoid losses by fixation by the soil or leaching, something like this. And the third is about inputs. So if we ask -- if you ask for the growth today, what is the figure for the growers. It's the new season because nobody knows how can the supply chain will happen in the future. So biologic, it's a new approach with the growers to change the idea that I need to use crop protection chemistry, tensional chemistry crop protection for a new technology as biologic, for example. Today in Brazil, when you talk with the growers about it, you get the attention from them. So we are working these 3 different issues for the future with Fortgreen products.

And Eduardo, building on from that product aspect of the strategy, what are the other elements of focus for the next few years for the business?

By looking at all the technology that we have and the labs that we see on the video and the same as Alex told us, people was the first strategy of us. So hiring people, continues to hiring people and developing them. So we have a very strong training process and also an internal model that come with us on the technical part and then go to the field because knowing the right prescription, knowing how to teach the farmer, how to use these new products is very important in our strategy. So it continues that. And second thing is a new plant of CRF. So we just finished the plant last year. And the market -- the adoption of the market is doing very well. So on this side that Leonardo told us that the worry of the producer on the input side, and so the CRF is having a very good adoption on the usage. And the third thing is improve our capability of production and logistics as Brazil is a huge place. So with a better strategy on logistics, we can assist better our farmer, our clients. Sorry and whatever any other question that you have, I'll be happy to be with you. Thanks a lot.

Very good. And we're going to move on from there and I suppose maybe, Leonardo, on to some of the sustainability themes that you talked about there. The next video is in relation to Origin's position with biodiversity -- enhancing biodiversity actions and protecting natural... [Presentation]

So Chris, when we've been talking agronomy so far today, we've always been talking about it in the context of agriculture. Can you define for us what Amenity is?

Certainly. Amenity is the agronomy of leisure land, very simply. The 2 outputs that are sports turf professionals looking for an aesthetic appeal for the venue, but more importantly, a plain surface that performs. A lot of these venues are quite literally the well stage for these events and failure to provide can be severely career limiting for these guys, okay?

And so against that backdrop of it deeply mattering, can you talk to us about Origin's Amenity business, B2B and B2C?

Sure. The division split into 2. The B2B section first comprises 2 manufacturing businesses. The first is a specialty manufacturing in a fertilizer business that manufacturers fertilizers for specialist applications, Amenity being one of them. That is the original business that came into origin, okay, and the foundation, the true foundation block of Amenity today, everything else I will talk about has been acquired since. The second business, manufacturing business is Linemark, the Linemark Group, which principally manufactures Linemark in [indiscernible]. Again, it's white paint. It looks simple, but there's a lot of technology in there. We hold a Queens award for innovation and a Queens award for export. Over a decade ago, you would have been using 20 liters of paints to mark a pitch. Today, using the advanced paints, ready-to-use paints and the application machinery, you now need 1.2 liters to mark a football pitch, okay? But from a business point of view, that's opened up a whole export market, so we now export to 53 countries around the world. And of course, it's more sustainable, there's less water use and less water to -- for contractors to move around to facilitate the market.

And on the B2C side of the business, Chris?

On the B2C now, it's Origin Amenity Solutions farms during the Corvid lockdowns. That comes from 3 prior acquisitions, the first being Rigby Taylor, which was a broad-based offering for sports to have maintenance, anything first, seed, chemicals, construction materials, linemarking. Anything that sports type professional would need to maintain a venue Rigby Taylor could provide. The second acquisition in the sit really was. Headland. Headland was a narrower focus but with more technical depth. So that reinforced the depth of that offering across the board. And then the last acquisition there was Symbio, which is a market-leading biologicals company, and that really extended the breadth of the offering. So all market leaders in their own right, put together now as Origin Amenity Solutions. Typical customers would be anything from Wembley, okay, the National Football in [ George's ] Park through top golf venues, many of Premiership clubs, EFL, clubs, football clubs as well. Rugby, a rough spot, for horseracing for polar pictures, et cetera. So anything to do with sports turf, we can service with OES.

And what kind of market share would OES be?

We carry about a 30% market share. And again, 11 years ago, that was 0.

And Chris, maybe standing back to the market now, what are the key trends that you're seeing within the Amenity marketplace?

Okay. There are key trends there, obviously, during COVID, the business isn't far too well, lots of gold class closures, venue closures, a session of sports and recreation. So that was a difficult. Post-COVID, it looks a lot better now. And there's certainly a pent-up demand for recreation and sports. So you've seen, for example, in golf clubs participation increasing, membership waiting lists are backing up. I've not seen those in the last decade. So again, people want that outdoor space that interfacing with nature and the sports that Amenity provides.

And the sustainability aspect to the marketplace?

Okay. Sustainability in Amenity really is a push-pull dynamic. We've heard a lot about the revocation of chemicals. That pervades in amenity as well. So chemicals have been revoked for 2 reasons, really. Some of them are not very environmentally friendly, or frankly, to biodiversity. But some of them are okay, but actually in a small niche market like Amenity, they're just not economic to register. So they're not -- it's not all -- they don't go up because they're all dangerous or unfriendly, okay? So that's the push. Now the pull is that, again, there's a general interest, more of an interest in sustainability from also the sports professionals but as well as the membership or the governing bodies, sports bodies, the Premiership, EFL, et cetera, are all now focused on sustainability. So again, that's the pull that we see in there. So it really is a push and a pull. And that's working well. We're responding to that well with the biologicals business, although the evolution of the market at the moment, is more -- is best above, so it's conventional and biological is where the market is at, and that's where we've put in lots of our research in to develop those sorts of programs. Previously, the Symbio business would have been -- has been knocking on people's doors for 20 years. And as they would say to me, Chris, we're knocking on doors for 20 years. In the last 3 years, everybody's knocking on ours. So it's their time, and they really feel that. But they would have really been -- their view would have been, it's all or nothing, so it's biological or nothing. And what we're finding now is it's actually the best of both that's working well at the moment.

So it sounds like those are core elements of your strategy. How would you describe the Origin Amenity strategy at the moment in terms of priorities?

Okay. Well, focusing on the biological and the combined application and programs. During COVID lockdowns, we, in fact, the first day of Lockdown 1, the digger went into [ those ] farms, start construction and Amenity research facility. That was completed within the last 12 months, and trialing has started. So again, that allows us to develop both the conventional product approach in a sustainable way but also interfaced with the biological and develop the biologicals as well. That's a best-in-class facility. It's fully instrumented. It's digital. And just nobody else in the industry is doing that sort of research to that depth and that fast.

So Chris, what might be an example of the -- what are you bringing to market? What are you commercializing out of that activity?

Okay. A good example. We've commercialized 2 products from the early trials so far, which would have returned -- the 2 of those together would have returned the initial investment on that facility. The most interesting one, I guess, the best example is football pitches, EFL and Premiership would renovate their pitches every year. So they'll take the top off. They'll redress it. They'll reseed it and they'll grow it back in, okay? Now you have the time from the last much of the season to the first match of the new season, and you have to produce a pitch in that time. So establishment, routine, grass covers everything. We've developed a program used in conventional and biologicals again that will grow that in quicker and with more grass covers all, our research program in conjunction with the seed varieties as well, okay? So it's a whole holistic approach. That grew in with 43% more grass cover than a conventional program, okay? And that's down to the products, but also it's down to the timing and when they're applied. So there was many, many different scenarios in that, and we managed to isolate the one that worked the best. So that's now commercialized and is selling now, and it will, in fact, be growing right now.

So Chris, maybe moving on from the more established businesses within Amenity, Origin recently acquired Green-tech. Can you talk to us about what that business does? We saw some of it there on the video. So maybe what does the business do, and what is the general market that it is participating in?

Okay. The landscaping market is essentially adjacent to Amenity and already OES would trade into that market in facilities management, ground care, et cetera but not in the soft landscape in products, and soft landscape in products are tree planting sundries, ground stabilization, ecology, et cetera. It's not pavers and brick walls and the harder landscaping aspects. So we'd always wanted to get more into landscaping. We've had several forays and different methods and couldn't get there. So really, the only way to get into landscape and proper was to buy our way in. And that's where Green-tech came from. That was 4 years in the making, from start to finish. We had to shut that down in COVID and then reenergize it. And eventually, a year ago, we bought the business. It's a broad-based supplier and manufacturer to the landscaping industry. So much like Rigby Taylor was. In Amenity, this is now the foundation block to grow from again. So it's the same blueprint repeated. And we'll be -- they would supply to landscapers, forestry as well. And in a small way, ecologists, urban planting, which as you see walking here today, you'd see all the different sorts of urban plants in the green rooms that we've seen, the technology that goes beneath urban pavements and that to support the trees. They would do all of that, okay, to a greater or lesser extent.

So Sean and T.J. mentioned it has performed well since acquisition. What are your focuses for growth in the coming years with Green-tech?

Okay. Since acquisition, we've seen double-digit growth. That probably mirrors the market as well. So the whole market has seen a lift driven by all the sort of stuff we've seen on the videos, [ Northern Forest ], they're just two. I'm sorry, it's supposed to be infrastructure projects as well as private infrastructure projects, even house builders now see the value in landscaping housing estates. They were making investment in that landscaping more than they would have done in the past. Makes the houses more desirable. They sell faster. They sell for better prices, so they actually get an instant return on that investment. And okay, they may just view that from a business point of view, and they may view it from a more holistic approach, but it gets done. The drivers are fundamental. It's the low-carbon economy. It's sustainability. It's biodiversity. All those things are playing into the expansion of the landscaping market.

So Ruth, turning now to you. I think Chris's enthusiasm there for Amenity and biodiversity within that is very obvious. You've made another career switch from Amenity into agriculture. Could you share with us some of your perspective on the value that you see of these businesses, both agronomy-based businesses sitting beside each other in the portfolio?

Yes, absolutely. From my perspective, there's 3 main benefits of having the businesses across the different industries. The first of these is in plant protection development products of the products. So for any specialty chemical company, they will always develop their active ingredients for the larger arable market. And once those products have been researched and authorized, they will then look for further markets that they can increase their market share. And that means that the early experiences that we have, and I agree with those products, we can direct Origin Amenity in the ones that we -- will perform best within the Amenity arena. And we can also then look at that competitive advantage and the economies of scale within that. Secondly then and conversely to that, for the biosolutions, it's very rare that they start life within the arable industry. So from an Origin Amenity point of view where those biosolutions really are looking at how they can manage that surface where we're not looking for yield, but we're looking for perfection, we can -- Agrii can then gain from that benefit, and we can be directed by origin immunity as to where those products sit and how to fit into our integrated portfolio. And then the third element is in protecting the natural capital and enhancing biodiversity. If we try to do this as isolated businesses within isolated industries, we run the risk of creating isolated ecosystems. And it's well known that the productivity of an ecosystem is much greater than the sum of its fragmented parts. So by us being able to create integrated landscapes that could run from farmland through golf courses and into urban infrastructure, we can then create the wildlife corridors that will allow the movement of populations and species and ensure that we don't create any genetic bottlenecks. And in that way, Origin is able to give its customers the benefits of all of its industries, but also help to protect and enhance the environment.

And when Ronan was speaking here with us, he spoke to some of vision for the future of agriculture. You bring a perspective that there's a lot to be taken from the journey that the amenity industry has gone as we look at how that journey is going to go on the agri side. Would you share some of that with us?

Yes. So in reality, the sports turf industry has had to become much more sustainable. It's much more in the public eye, and therefore, it really has been the push-pull that Chris has talked about. And you can think about that sports turf as a perennial crop. So within that crop, there is a much greater ability to look at exactly when you manage pest weeds and diseases, and therefore, we can use the BioSolutions much more pedantically because we are not having to worry about growth stage-timed applications. We are looking at when it's exactly right for the pest weed or disease. And if we look at diseases as an example, there are 3 elements that will result in a disease. One is that the pathogen is present, and we can accept that the pathogen is just about always present. The other is the host crop is in the ground. We're going to put that host crop into the ground. And the third is the environmental conditions. So by using the digital approach that we have presented where we can look at the environmental aspects that are going to encourage that disease to develop, we can then start to look at moving away from these growth stage time sprays and actually really homing in on where BioSolutions can come into the agricultural market. Which might be a little bit disruptive, but will allow us, especially if we look towards the digital technologies, the drones and moving forward with robotics that we can actually create those timings and those sprays much more effectively.

Thank you very much, Ruth. So on that note, we're going to wrap up the discussions, and we're going to hand back to TJ.

Thanks, Muireann, and thanks to all the panelists for what hopefully you found was a fascinating insight into our businesses. Moving on to the financial piece and the look-forward piece, just to recap on some of those focus areas that I mentioned have been a theme for the business. As we look out, we will seek to continue to maintain the disciplines around working capital that we have achieved over the last number of years. As I mentioned earlier, there are inevitably some headwinds that we're facing in working capital as liquidity -- there's high levels of liquidity that we've seen in the agri sector we dissipate and unwind over the coming period. But nonetheless, the disciplines that we have put in place, we look to maintain and build on those over the coming years. From a product mix and margin perspective, really, again, about continuing to focus there. As I mentioned at the start, it is for us very much about looking to continually optimize that margin mix. And as you heard from the presentations earlier, we certainly have opportunity by virtue of the product spaces that we're playing in to continue to drive that margin profile. Earnings concentration is something we will talk about for the -- over the next short while. As we look at our opportunities from an organic CapEx and inorganic CapEx perspective, and the areas that are both near in and core to the business where we seek to invest further. Looking at the roll up then of our operating profit, given the challenges we have had with volatility in earnings, we are looking to present our operating profit on a cumulative basis over a 5-year period from FY '22 to FY '26. And that represents approximately a 25% uplift on the previous cumulative operating profit for the group from the period FY '17 to FY '21. Some callouts under FY '22 to FY '26 number. It does assume cumulative EBIT contributions from M&A of EUR 50 million. It also does reflect a volatile year of earnings. Given we've had volatility, significant volatility in FY '20 and FY '21, we have assumed another bad weather year event for all intents and purposes in that forward-looking FY '22 and FY '26 period because we do know and we have learned it isn't a straight line business in terms of earnings profile. So that's how we're looking at reflecting the performance of the group out over the next 5 years -- out over the next 5-year period, and that is the period from FY '22 to FY '26. As I mentioned, the volatility of the earnings on the left-hand side of this chart, as you can see, has been significant through FY '20 and FY '21, and our ambition really is to narrow that range of volatility over the upcoming period. As I said, it's an upweight in terms of overall earnings of about 25% over that 5-year period from FY '17 to '21 to '22 to '26. But as I said, the key for us really is to, as I mentioned earlier, try to reduce the concentration of earnings that are exposed to those volatile dynamics, whether they be weather or the dynamics of U.K., Ireland ag. From a capital allocation perspective, then just again, a brief recap in terms of the capital allocation approach that the business took between FY '17 and FY '21. We generated a total cash of EUR 285 million, of which free cash flow was $257 million, and then we benefited from disposal proceeds, partly property and partly driven by the Pillaert disposal in FY '21, so that gave us overall cumulative cash of EUR 285 million. And how we deployed that then? We deployed just under 40% of that as dividends to our shareholders, and that was a relatively strong rate of return despite the challenges that the business had in FY '20 and FY '21. Because this is FY '21, this doesn't include the buybacks. They are included in the FY '22 forward position, which I'll come to in a second. And then the reinvestment number of 61% really reflects some of the investments we made, for example, the acquisition of Fortgreen, the acquisition of Greentech is in there as well, and some earlier acquisitions that we would have done in the first phase such as the Bunn Fertilizer acquisition back in the earlier part of that 5-year window. So consistent with how we're talking about the profit profile on a go-forward basis, we're looking at free cash flow on a cumulative basis over the 5-year period from FY '22 to FY '26. Again, that's broadly consistent in terms of the profit generation drop into cash, so we're looking at a roughly 24% growth, as I said, on a cumulative basis on profit and similar on a cash generation basis over the life of the plan. Again, this assumes that working capital optimizations that we've been able to deliver to date, maintain. I think that is a variable piece. Clearly, working capital, by definition, does move around a bit. And again, but that feeds into the rationale and the logic of why we're talking about this on the cumulative 5-year roll-off basis. That translates into average cash conversion, so PAT to free cash flow conversion of over 80%, and that compares with over 100% actually in terms of the conversion ratio that we've delivered over the 5-year period from FY '21 to -- sorry, from FY '17 to FY '21. Again, how we think about capital allocation in the context of the forward-looking position. I mean, ultimately, our view is that we are best placed to optimize return to shareholders by reinvesting CapEx either back into the business or through acquisitions that fit the strategic plan of the group. And then balancing -- of course, balancing that with the shareholder needs, and I'll come back to that theme just a little bit later. This is the slide we used actually in FY '19 Capital Markets Day to outline our capital deployment approach. So at that point, M&A focused on European or LatAm specialty product businesses, bolt on Fert and Amenity opportunities, and in there, we had bolt-on distribution businesses also. And from a strategic CapEx perspective, investing in blending plants, investing in digital platform and product-based capabilities for organic growth. All in -- encaptured then in the disciplines of returning capital metrics in that range of 12% to 15%, being very disciplined around multiples that we pay for businesses. And I guess the bit that's not written here is being patient, and I think that is certainly a characteristic of how we will think of and are thinking about M&A opportunities as we look forward. So when we look at our FY '22 to FY '26 capital deployment approach, we're largely taking a similar approach with just a slight change of emphasis. And you'll see that we have flipped out the distribution businesses for more of an environmental and ecological products and services focus. So as I said, very much a consistent type of approach with just a slight change of emphasis. Overall, still seeking to deliver ROIC in the range of 12% to 15%. And I say discipline and patience are probably the key themes that I would call out in terms of metrics that we will look to comply with, such as the reasonable list of multiples that we pay for these businesses and being patient as a buyer. Overall, we are looking at capacity of about EUR 150 million. So when I talked earlier about the cumulative earnings profile that was delivering a cumulative EBIT of EUR 50 million in the plan, that relates to about approximately EUR 150 million of CapEx that we can deploy over the life of the plan. Our leverage metrics, we would look to maintain our half year leverage metrics sub 2.5x and at full year less than 1.5x. Clearly, over the recent past, our net debt-to-EBITDA metrics have been much stronger than that and benefiting from the recent strong cash performances that we've had in the businesses. But as we look at medium to longer term, we feel that a sub-2.5x and sub-1.5x are reasonable metrics, and they compare to bank covenants of 3.5x at the half year, which is really the peak of the cycle from a working capital perspective in the business. Also just to mention, we've got facilities of $400 million at the end of '24. That ramps down slightly into 2025 to EUR 366 million. Our interest rate position is currently well managed. We are mindful of that in the context of current interest rate volatility, but we are in a good position as we stand today in that context. But as I say, something that we are mindful of. Looking then at the piece around shareholder returns. Overall, we will continue to target a dividend payout ratio of 35% of PAT. And then we will consider shareholder returns beyond that then in the form of either share buybacks or special dividends, and that's very much driven. It's a function of timing. It's a function of the available M&A targets that we see, the opportunities that we see and plan to present themselves as to find on how we would deploy further capital back into shareholders' hands. I think I'd use FY '22 is an example of that where the opportunity with the car property proceeds presented itself and we took the opportunity to deploy that, plus another EUR 20 million back into shareholders' hands. So I think we'll do that on an opportunistic basis. As I say, our primary focus and our belief is that we can maximize returns for shareholders by reinvesting back into the core business and by being patient, prudent buyers through an M&A lens of businesses that are consistent with the strategy of the group. So with that, I will hand it over to Sean for some concluding remarks.

Thanks, TJ. So hopefully, what you've seen this afternoon gives you a good sense for some of the ways in which we intend to tackle the challenges that are being thrown at the business by changing regulation and a changing dynamic. Certainly from an agriculture perspective, the challenge, when we looked at some of the developing regulations 2 and 3 years ago in terms of reduced fertilizer application, reduced pesticide application, might have painted a very bleak picture for the businesses. But you can see that by continuing to invest in good people, continuing to invest in good technical capability and concentrating on what we're good at, the specialist agronomic advice and the specialist technical advice that we provide, we think that we can outperform the market. Our capabilities on the technical front from a product perspective are very strong, and we believe that the advice that we give is very strong. So the businesses will continue to be strong cash-generative businesses at their core with the opportunities for growth, perhaps more in the Continental European and LatAm segment of those businesses on the agriculture side, and very much so then on the emerging natural capital business on the Amenity side. So we see that opportunity developing for us overall. Hopefully, the presenters as well have given you a flavor for some of the talent in the organization, and people is at the core of the Origin business. And by continuing to attract the best talent in the industries that we're in, by continuing to recruit good people and promote good people within the organization, we think that the business will outgrow our competitor sets. So the presentations should have given you a flavor for how we intend to tackle some of what we think will be the key macro growth drivers over the coming years, and I think we've had a good deep dive around the technical advice and solutions that we can provide, some of the BioSolutions, and indeed, some of the areas that we might intend investing M&A capital over the coming years as well as returning a significant return to shareholders over that 5-year period. And just to touch on M&A for a second. I mean, we can see there that the opportunity around sustainable agronomy and the opportunity to continue to add technologies to enhance, I suppose, our capabilities in both the supply chain challenges that we have and the agronomic challenges that we have is strong. And we believe that by continuing to invest in product capability, both in terms of crop protection and biological products but also in the fertilizer space, we will deliver continued enhanced margin and grow our margin over time. And then on the environmental and ecological side of things, while it may be less pronounced in our agricultural businesses and the owned schemes are only beginning to be formulated at the U.K. level, and perhaps it will be confined to Western Europe in the first instance. I think the concerns at an environmental level are not as pronounced in Eastern Europe and certainly not as pronounced in a Brazilian context, but acquisitions in the environmental and ecological space, certainly from a Western European perspective, will be important not just in agriculture, but also in the emerging nature economy. And you've seen these slides before in terms of the areas for potential acquisitions, I suppose. Pulling it all together, the agronomic product technologies that we can potentially acquire in those areas around biologicals and micronutrients. Seed technologies. As we mentioned earlier on and as Clare mentioned earlier on, seed is hugely important in that space and plant nutrition and specialist plant nutrition are hugely important. And they are faster-growing markets than the general ag market. And on the environmental and ecological side, we have a ready pipeline of discussions ongoing. We've been using a third-party research agency to reach out to a significant number of players in the U.K. in particular around urban landscaping and environmental services. So we do have an active pipeline of discussions ongoing in the area of habitat creation, natural habitat services, tree protection and ecological services and products. So those discussions are ongoing. I suppose there is the opportunity to add those businesses to the portfolio over time. And ideally, what we'd like to see is deepening, as Chris mentioned earlier on, the penetration of our landscaping business, which we've added. So Greentech has roughly about 10% of the U.K. market, and we'd like to deepen our expertise in that area. But also broaden our services out into other areas on the ecological side, providing advisory services. And actual habitat construction, for example, may be an area that we'd like to enter into on the ecological side. So the priority actions over the next 12 to 18 months. Firstly, in terms of strengthening the foundations that we have, it's all about investing in people and making sure that our people are well equipped, well trained, have that access to technology, have the access to the tools that they need to do their jobs properly. And as T.J. mentioned, we're investing in an ERP system. There's work ongoing to invest in CRM systems. There's work ongoing to invest in online portals to allow our customers and our staff access all of the technical material that we prepare for the market. Continuing to maintain working capital discipline as we have done over the last few years, and continuing to drive product innovation and mix from an organic perspective as well as an inorganic perspective. And beyond that, then, we see ourselves investing in growth. So deepening that expertise in landscaping and the landscaping area, broadening our Amenity service offering, growing our biologicals business organically, if at all possible, but potentially also with some small acquisitions in that space, and also developing ecology services acquisition to round out the offering that we have across agriculture and also across the landscaping and ecology landscape. So I think you've seen incredible depth in some areas of the business. I think you've seen a good opportunity for Origin to present a complete picture in terms of sustainable land use over time, and we think that opportunity exists for us. And it's rooted in the R&D and technical capability that we have in the organization, and that's been there and has been around for a very long time. I'd like to thank a couple of people. I mean, the presentations today didn't come about by accident. So Muireann, who moderated the discussions, has actually been working with us for 12 months now in terms of developing a strategy, poking and prodding the executive management team in terms of defining what our strategy should be, but also at a business unit level, working with each of the business units' levels to make sure that that's being built from the foundation up in terms of each of the approaches there. And Brendan. In terms of the professionalism of today's presentation and the work that's gone into it, Brendan has done a huge amount of work. And it's not just involved in the investor relation aspects of things; Brendan is very important in terms of driving the sustainability engagement that we have with external third-party stakeholders and driving the sustainability agenda and ESG agenda internally within the company as well. So I'd very much like to thank Muireann and Brendan for all of the work that they put in, in those areas over the last 12 months. And I'd like to thank all the presenters who've been here today. So we'll move on to questions and answers. Perhaps, TJ, if you join me on stage, we'll try and take a combination of questions on the floor. And also, we may have some participants online who'd like to ask questions of us.

Can I just ask a couple of kind of large questions in relation to -- if you look at the R&D capabilities of the business and the product suite you have and you put that up against the kind of biodiversity challenge, especially around pollinators and the apparent deterioration in insect populations and so on. Like, have you got the tool kit to actually do some of them big here if agriculture embraces what you're proposing as solutions? Like, is that possible from what's coming out of all this? One. And then 2, related to that. In terms of water quality and managing runoff from agriculture land into waterways, like, how material can we make progress in reversing the damage that's been done say over the last 40 to 50 years?

If Peter is still here, perhaps we'll ask him to address the water quality issue. I don't know if you have any particular expertise in that area, Peter, but do you want to take that one first?

Not really? I'm not an expert. Well, the -- I touched on it earlier. Nitrates and drinking water is a human health issue, and it was addressed across the EU in 1991 with the introduction of the Nitrates Directive, and it was then further strengthened through the introduction of the Water Framework Directive. And those are directives that are still in place throughout Europe, well, across the EU, and post-Brexit have been homologated into U.K. law as well. So actually, water quality has significantly improved in the last 30 years. I think it's a key point that we don't make as an industry. I don't just mean us as Origin, I mean, agriculture PLC. We've been doing an awful lot over the last 30 years to improve our impact or mitigate our impact on the environment. And actually, the question about nitrates and water or water quality is a really, really good example of very, very good work that we've done as an industry. And it's demonstrable and measurable and the improvements are there. That's not to say that there's not more to do. There's always more to do, but we have done a lot in terms of water quality through the Nitrates Directive. I don't know if that answers the question, yes.

And just maybe Clare and just to [indiscernible].

Yes. Thank you for the question. You asked about toolkits and something to replace insecticides. None of us like using insecticides, let me make that very, very clear. We do so in a very targeted way. We are making more of pest thresholds. We are actively trying to bring varieties through which have got, for example, resistance to BYDV. So without getting too technical, insecticides are used in the autumn to control aphids which transmits a virus, but there is varietal resistance coming through and we are shouting very, very loudly about that and encouraging the breeders to bring through varieties with that sort of level of resistance. So use the pest thresholds forecasting systems. We're also looking at new technologies, and in fact, somebody came to me at the break time to talk about RNA interference. So RNAi, which is a very specific technology that's coming through, which basically disrupts the pests' ability to thrive and stops it from feeding on crops. Now that's hard to regulate, but we have absolutely put ourselves out there as a partner for any business that's looking to bring through RNA interference. We're looking at companion cropping, so things that can disrupt the way the pest can actually find the crop. So you might have heard of cabbage stem flea beetle. The new neonicotinoids were banned. Cabbage stem flea beetle is a massive pest. It's why the acreage of oilseed rape has come back by 50% just at the wrong time, just when we're looking for something to replace sunflower oil because of the tragedy in Ukraine. So we're looking at integrated ways to manage pests. And even things like leaving stubble long will reduce the effect of cabbage stem flea beetle's ability to land on oilseed rape and feed on it. So we've done probably about 70 trials, I kid you not, trying to combat flea beetle in its own right. And we are, with an integrated approach, we have an 8-point plan looking at various ways to mitigate problems. We're also looking at adjuvants. Some adjuvants have got properties which can reduce insect pests as well. So believe me, we are trying everything, and our toolkit is getting bigger and bigger by the day.

I think, Joel, maybe just to round out the question and probably your question related to -- is this an opportunity for us to explode the business and certainly grow very quickly? And you probably need to bear in mind, Agri has possibly 30% of the market from an agronomic perspective. Greentech has 10% of the market from a landscaping perspective on our Amenity business, as Chris said, is about 40% of the market. I think ideally, we'll deepen our expertise and broaden our market share in that landscaping sector first and foremost. But we're the only player who can bring those threads together, and there are very limited other offerings who are playing in all of those spaces. So I think is there scope for us to grow our overall market share as a result of that? Ideally, there would be. But first and foremost, we've got to build out the landscaping and ecology services side of the business first, and you would hope that more business will gravitate towards us then over time. If we can provide 2 corporates, for example, some kind of certified reality for the action that they would like to take as corporates and pin our colors to the mast in that respect. You would think that, that would be a good thing, but we're some way away from developing that.

Jason Molins from Goodbody. Just -- you mentioned oilseed rape there, and obviously, the issues there with Ukraine. Just how quickly do you think other markets can [ pivot ] into plugging that gap, and what potential that might give for Origin and for Agri? And then a lot of the threat today around sustainable agronomy, can you maybe just talk about the backdrop on regulation around products? How that's maybe shifting or potentially might shift given the growing need for food security and food demand that you've mentioned a number of times? And then sort of final question, just around the assumptions TJ made. Firstly on Ukraine, maybe just parse out what that expectation is in some of your numbers? And then finally, the cash conversion target, the 80% versus what you've delivered, is that because the differential with the working capital that you've, I guess, extracted. Is that maxed out as such? And that's maybe -- just parse up the differential, please?

Well, maybe I'll take the 2 cropping questions first and -- The likelihood is that this outcome will see probably a significant shift in some of our geographies in what gets planted. I mean, already, the U.K. market is talking about almost doubling the oilseed rape area that will be planted, and typically, that planting takes in July, August for harvest into next year. So we're at about 350,000, 360,000 hectares this year, and there's some talk of the market going to about 600,000 hectares or more in the upcoming planting season. Romania has always been a very strong market for oilseed rape as has Poland and, believe it or not, our early season sales in both of those markets for seed has been very strong. And what you would imagine is that the seed breeders who traditionally have sold into Ukraine or sold into Russia, which were large growing areas for sunflower and oilseed, will divert some of that seed capability into other markets. So I think the dynamic will change in terms of where those products will be grown. But in the short term, at least, certainly next winter and into March of next year, we are going to see food shortages and we are going to see crop shortages across all of the major crop areas, and there will be no doubt about that. The global stocks to use ratio had already declined to very low levels over the last 2 to 3 years. The U.S. use of bioethanol in fuel has increased quite substantially in the states in the U.S. who mandate the level of bioethanol used in fuel have been sharply increasing that level over the last kind of 2 years. So that drive and demand for crops for use in fueling cars and engines, I suppose, has increased. And I just hold out that gas and diesel prices will continue to play into that dynamic. So using crops for multiple uses, ultimately is leading to crop shortages, quite apart from the challenges that exist within the Ukrainian and Russian production systems. And there's plenty of grain in silos in Ukraine. But given what's happening around the southern coast and the lack of rail infrastructure and other infrastructure to be able to take grain out of Ukraine, the reality is that the market is becoming quite illiquid very fast and product is just -- last year's product is simply not moving out of the country fast enough. So the market is becoming very illiquid very quickly, and the infrastructure simply isn't there to get it out of the country. So the global situation, I think, is going to become even more heightened, and that will lead to good output prices for at least the next 12 to 18 months. And that's a key driver for our business as well. If the farmer is securing high output prices locally, they will spend on crop protection products, they will spend on fertilizers. So that is a key driver and key dynamic for the business over the next 12 to 18 months.

Question, Jason, on our assumptions around Ukraine. As we have said previously, the trading performance in Ukraine up to the point of the warned invasion had been challenged over the recent couple of years, so we are assuming a level of a loss this year, as you might expect. And then given the uncertainty and lack of clarity in terms of how the situation is going to evolve, we've assumed broadly a breakeven position over the remaining years of the plan. I mean, that's obviously all to unfold. But by virtue of doing that, that is a headwind in terms of that future 5-year profit pool in CE relative to the history because it was a profit contributor back in the early part of that 5-year window from FY '17 to FY '21. Albeit, as I said, the last years have been more challenging from a trading perspective. Obviously, the current situation aside. Yes, the free cash flow conversion, I think we have -- there's a lot of work being done across the businesses to extract working capital from the business. As I said, it is a variable thing. It is difficult to forecast even near in, not alone over a 5-year window. But that said, I think what we're seeing in that ratio just some headroom to allow for organic growth, which is what you would expect. So you'd expect our working capital to grow broadly in line with revenue in a normalized market. But again, back to the point of showing this on a cumulative basis, it is reflective of the fact that it is difficult and -- difficult and a variable piece to model. But yes, to your question, we are, I suppose, giving ourselves some space for growth in terms of that organic working capital position over the plan.

Yes. Just in terms of regulation, it's always a danger whenever I talk about BioSolutions. So I paint a kind of black picture of the future around Crop Protection. And actually, the truth is that there are many, many new active ingredients coming through. They're just not coming through at same pace that they were 20, 30 years ago. So the 2 big markets, probably cereal fungicides and cereal herbicides. We have a new cereal herbicide coming through from BASF, [ synefelin ], which is very good on our biggest grass weeds in the U.K. and also parts of Northern Europe, so that's coming through for autumn. In terms of cereal fungicides, and it's always difficult with diseases because they're very good at ducking and diving and getting around the latest chemistry that we're using to control them. But we have 3 or 4 new classes of fungicides that's coming through. So for those 2 big markets, we do have alternative solutions. I think the other thing to say is, yes, I've talked a bit about bios, and I have mentioned that they are less reliable. But the point is that many of these biological companies are being bought by the likes of BASF, Syngenta, and they're bringing their formulation expertise into some of these products, and they're finding ways to make them work more reliably and for longer. And like I say, they are a lot cheaper to bring to market and they're much faster to come to market. And that's before we even get to Fortgreen's expertise around that and the knowledge that they've got around that. So in terms of maintaining yields for the future, I think we are okay. The problem with losing chemistry, that came about because we moved from a risk-based system into a hazard-based system. And therefore, if you're a car, you're dangerous, you get banned from the road. Well, you don't -- in the old days, you had the highway code to keep you safe, and it changed with the EU. Under post-Brexit, there was a lot of promises made from CRD that there would be very much science-based approval system, not political-based approval system. Unfortunately, CRD are in a slight pickle at the moment because they've got some very young people that have come into the regulation and they're on the learning curve, so we've got a lull at the moment and products are coming through more slowly. But eventually, they will ramp up, and they have promised it would be very much science-based approval and not influenced by politics. So again, at some point, that should be very positive for the U.K. in particular. GB.

It's Roland French from Davy. Three questions, if I could. There was a reference earlier around digital capabilities and your ability to use data to benchmark around yields. I'm just wondering, does that give you some optionality around pricing and potentially on [ bond link that data ] -- that invoice as you speak with the customer? And second question then, I think in 2019, you gave a target for non-U.K. profit contribution. So maybe just slightly twisting that, by the end of '26, have you a target for non-U.K. [ arable profit bill ]? I guess that's including M&A and including organic growth in immunity. And then I had a third, which was actually just listening to the pre-recorded videos earlier, there was definitely a sense that food security is ranked junior to the broader environmental sustainability debate. And clearly, that's arisen in context of what we've seen. And the question is, how does that manifest itself in terms of subsidies, policy, regulation? Is there any semblance there, that there may be some reprieve around potential tapering toward the back end of [ ELM ], for example, or the government coming in and subsidizing certain elements? So any color there?

Yes. I'll try and remember all of the questions. So we'll deal with the last one first, because I can remember that one. So the subsidy situation, I think you're likely to see some moderating of the targets. I know from an Irish political perspective, for example, [indiscernible] was talking to his political party yesterday and talked about no farmer having to give up a cow or reduce his herd size or reduce the amount of land. So the political noise is certainly around perhaps moderating the targets to a certain extent. And all of the reaction that we've been getting to the fertilizer shortages that have existed and the supply chain challenges that we've existed have been quite positive about keeping the -- fueling the fire, certainly in an Irish context, to keep Irish agriculture operating effectively and operating well. So I would imagine that food security will very much be back on the agenda. I mean, the real food inflation hasn't hit yet. It's hitting, but it hasn't hit yet. So this going to be an even bigger political issue in 12 months' time. And if you look at what's happening in more marginal economies, the [indiscernible] and other areas where rolling rice is becoming a problem. There's going to be huge political upheaval as a result of the types of challenges that we're seeing at the moment. Do we have a target for non-U.K. agriculture businesses? I guess, certainly, what we do have is an ambition. Amenity probably, in a normalized year of trading, and accepting this year is not really a normalized year of trading, but Amenity probably represents about 10% of our OE Group operating profit. And I'd like to see that grow between ecology, environmental and Amenity to 20% over the 5 years of the plan. And we can't identify whether we're going to place M&A acquisitions in the bucket of sustainable biologicals acquisitions or product-based businesses or ecology based businesses, and we have to take each of those opportunities as they come, maintaining that financial discipline that we talked about earlier on. But I think investment in ecology-based businesses, environmental-based businesses and landscaping businesses can grow the overall portion of Amenity within the total profit pool to about 20% over time. And then you've got other organic growth and other product based growth within the other businesses. So we don't see ourselves -- we are reinvesting in people in the U.K. context. We're reinvesting in plant capacity and capability in the U.K. context, but we're not going to buy a significant number of U.K. agricultural businesses. And I don't think the CMA would allow us buy a lot more in the U.K. context anyway. So keeping our U.K. businesses running, taking over and operating well and efficient and generating significant cash is what they'll be about. So it's growth outside of U.K., arable and U.K. fertilizer, I would say, in the main. I probably missed the first question.

First, effectively using...

John or [ Derek ], do you want to comment just on the extent to which we leverage data within our digital capabilities?

Yes. So I suppose what we're really seeking to do through the use of -- maybe I'll stand up for some people to see -- through the use of data and benchmarking is to be able to, I suppose, answer empirically through data that question of, I've made all these interventions on pharma, I've taken all these agronomic insights. And what has that empirically made a difference? What is the percentage benefit that I have seen typically in yield? Our offer in terms of agri is really an integrated offer. We're leveraging all of the research and developments that we're doing. We're leveraging all of the products both across seed, crop protection and fertilizer and all of the -- some of the products that Peter would have talked through today. So really, what we're doing is using data and benchmarking and using technologies like remote sensing to be able to demonstrate to our farmers the value of that offer versus their peers and their locality growing the same sort of crops. So that's really why we're driving the use of data in benchmarking. It's to give that empirical evidence to our farmers behind the propositions that we've developed.

[indiscernible]

Yes. I'm not sure we'll unbundle the invoice on the back of it. But if we can prove that the advice that we're giving is yielding to better results for farmers, then we should be able to attract more customers. So it's something we're already doing manually through an aggregation of farmers' data in what we call the Map Data Collection System, comparing farms to their neighbors or the regional averages. And we're doing that in 1 or 2 of our regions manually where the agronomist is collecting the data. We're going to try and automate that through the digital technology and system that we have, and then we should be able to prove that the advice that we're giving is giving better results than the average farmer in your locality, in your region. So we'll give you a better result than your neighbor. And ideally then, more people will buy our services and buy that agronomic advice and buy that capability from us rather than buy it from the average competitor that we have. So we -- what we're going to try and do, I suppose, is prove that in practice and try and win market share on the back.

This is Anne Crow of Edison Group. Just one quite short question about fertilizer demand. Just earlier in 2022, Wynnstay Group was talking about fertilizer sales and demand. And it just flagged a potential risk that the price of fertilizer might get so high that farmers were actually discouraged from applying quite so much. I was wondering whether you're seeing any signs of that? Or whether actually the expected prices that farmers were getting for crops were such that they were carrying on with the usual volume of applications?

Yes. Anne. So the fertilizer application rates are typically linked to crop prices in a mathematical ratio. And if you take the current crop prices of about GBP 330, say, for wheat, fertilizer prices would need to be down at about GBP 600 per tonne in order to break even. And they're currently trading at about GBP 800 -- GBP 750 to GBP 800 per tonne. So it's slightly uneconomic at the moment for the farmer, but most arable farmers would have already bought the product that they would apply in this current spring season through the winter and in the early part of the spring. So it is impacting demand. Overall, our unit volume sales at the moment are down by about 15% to 20% across the U.K. and Irish marketplaces. So there are some farmers taking what they call a P&K holiday and applying nitrogen and not applying the other elements to an extent. But in general, fertilizer prices have been moving backwards towards a level which sees them continue to operate at a roughly breakeven level. So I would think the food supply shortages that we've talked about in relation to Ukraine and other global challenges may well see crop prices move up further, and there may be a little of softening coming into the new season pricing for fertilizer, which starts in the autumn period which will see that balance being rectified and ratified. So it's -- they're not too far apart from where they need to be.

Kevin Fogarty from Numis. A couple of questions, please. Just firstly, on the BioSolutions side. You've obviously got some capability within the group in terms of Fortgreen, et cetera. And you've talked about a number of parties coming to you with their solutions. I just -- if we think about going forward, how important is it for you to own those solutions within the group or not? That's the first question. Second, in terms of the yield gap in continental Europe. I mean, that's existed for quite some time. And I just wondered if you could sort of pick through why you're sort of confident of narrowing that gap as we go forward? Whether there's any kind of structural challenges you may need to overcome or anything more complex there? And just finally, in terms of M&A, when you think about environmental and ecological services, it feels like quite a sort of a nascent market. I just wondered about the availability of targets there, and perhaps sort of valuation multiples you think you might pay relative to the past?

Well, I will take the last one first, again, Kevin. There are, I would say, a significant number of businesses who are generating profit or EBITDA in the kind of $1 million to $5 million range in that ecological space. We certainly are looking at a number of them who are competent individuals or competent companies and look to have expertise in areas which, initially at least, we would like to have some exposure to the ag market and the agricultural sector. So that will be important. And on the supplies or product-based businesses, again, there are a number of players who wouldn't be quite as big as Greentech but might be reasonably close in size from a revenue perspective as Greentech. So there's certainly a reasonable list of targets out there. Alex, do you want to take the question about the yield gap? I know you differentiated already been our market and the general market, so.

Yes. I think in terms of the yield gap, if you look, you have a huge spread across different farmers and customers on yield. So averages always have to be taken with a sort of pinch of salt or sort of understand below that. Now if you look at our own customer base, then we've seen increases where we've got new customers. We've had to bring new agronomic practices in. We can see the yield improvements come through, so we know we can deliver that. So it's absolutely possible to do. It's just -- it's really being focused on the right target customers, that sort of 50 hectares to 20,000 hectare, where they're big enough that we can put the agronomic time in to help them lift yields. I think you're always going to have, in some of the European countries, a lot of small farms with very low yields, which probably drag down the average. Okay.

And Kevin, I forgotten your first question again.

What it was to, a related question in multiples..

I mean, multiples -- they're kind of fragmented, type of -- the market is heavily fragmented, as Sean said, and typified by those businesses in the kind of EUR 1 million to EUR 5 million, typically owner-managed type businesses that trade somewhere between 6.5x to 8x typically, so that's the type of range we're looking at. I mean, it is nascent, so I suppose it hasn't attracted the large PE monies as yet. So that's probably kept the lid maybe on multiples and expectations. And that's typically, I think, of what we're seeing in the discussions that we have with those types of businesses, that in that range is probably reasonable.

[Indiscernible]

Yes. I think we're agnostic really on what we loan and what we won't. I mean, we would like to develop organically in that space within Fortgreen. Typically, as Clare mentioned, you're getting more than a week coming towards us, they might have 1 or 2 products, so these are founders who don't necessarily have an extensive range of products. So we're agnostic really on whether we own or don't own those businesses as long as we're garnering a reasonable distribution margin, which is competitive with the plant protection margin that we're getting on traditional products in that space. So as long as there's a good pipeline coming through, I think we're agnostic on whether we need to own or we're just happy to distribute certain products.

Daan Arends from Kepler Cheuvreux. I was just wondering on the strategic CapEx that was mentioned on the slide on adding new plans. Is this mostly related to CRF in Brazil? Or are you also looking to adding new plants in the U.K. and Ireland? And how comfortable are you with the headwind that exists in the form of the 20% reduction in nitrogen usage in fertilizer in the EU and potentially, also U.K.? And maybe secondly, in the presentation about Amenity business, something that's caught my ear was there is a product that's already being exported to 65 countries. I was wondering, in general, maybe walk us through how exportable the Amenity business in general is, and what your thoughts are in that regard?

Okay. So on production plans, yes, it is very much within Latin America and Continental Europe. So there are certainly -- certain infill capabilities that we don't have within our Polish and Romanian business, for example. So we have an extremely good technical seed dressing plant within our Polish business, which we would like develop within our Romanian business. We have the FoliQ plant, obviously, in Poland, and we have a micronutrient element plant in our Romanian business. And we don't have fertilizer blending capability in either Poland or Romania, so we would see an opportunity to perhaps introduce technical fertilizer blending capability in both of those markets over time. We use third parties to develop the blended fertilizer in those markets at the moment. I wouldn't see us adding any more plants in Ireland and U.K. other than the Cork site where we have sold an existing plant for land use through a third party which is in the city center, and we intend to plant right outside the city center. So it's Brazilian plants and plants from a CRF perspective in that market and also infill of capability, which is for organic growth for existing markets that we already have, but use third parties to produce in seed and fertilizer in Romania and Poland. Sorry, export. Chris, how easy is it to export the broader range of Amenity products apart from Linemarks?

Yes, it can be done. Regulations are fairly low, so there's low barriers to export. And that we export all over Europe extensively now, and obviously, Linemark further afield. So we're looking at using those channels and harnessing those channels to take the other products to market.

Would you do -- already do it? You've got relationships with Scandinavian...

Yes, we are. We just do Italian, French.

Apart from Linemark, we already sell to other distributors.

Yes. We export the Amenity products and also fertilizer or PV cans specialist fertilizer manufacturer to other distributors in Scandinavia, Europe, et cetera.

[indiscernible] I'm just looking at time. There has been some questions come in online [indiscernible]

So obviously, many of these have been addressed already. So I'm just going to group them thematically, maybe 2 themes that haven't been so covered already. The one in relation, TJ, to capital allocation, and maybe particularly decisions as regards to share buyback versus special dividends. And another one then on if the -- assuming that the fertilizer supply situation was to remain constrained as it has been, especially geographically, what implications might that have for the business in future years?

Okay. I mean, on the capital allocation point. I mean, there's a number of factors that go into the decision around -- and as I said, repeat the point around any decision to distribute in excess of a 35% payout either through special or -- special or buybacks would be dependent on other alternate uses of capital. As I said, our preference is to reinvest for growth back into the business through either organic or inorganic capital deployment. But with that said, there's a decision around a buyback versus the special. A few different factors, obviously. The relative value of the share price is a factor relative to share price and associated value that we would see in the share price at any point in time. There's also a piece around just liquidity of the share and the impact that buybacks can have on that. So I think it's something we kind of keep under continuous assessment as to a decision point between a buyback or a dividend. And I think this year, we [ clearly solve] with the opportunity of the [ car ] property proceeds. We saw the opportunity in the value of the share. And also listening to our shareholders, frankly, so the other variable is the shareholder needs and desires in that context, which we are mindful of and do listen to. So to the extent that that's a part of that equation, obviously, it's something we would factor into any decision on that.

Great. Brendan, you might take the...

Yes. Sorry, just in relation to the fertilizer supply. To say it's a challenge is certainly an underestimation, all right. Obviously, this year, we've had to deal with a lot of challenges. I mean, we've had production on and off because of the cost of energy, particularly in Europe. We've had quite a number of geopolitical plays, so certainly, a lot of countries where there is domestic production, export restrictions have come into play, and we've had to then orientate towards other supply lines. The big challenge now is obviously as a consequence of Ukraine. Russian material, in particular, over the last number of years, it accounts for a significant proportion of a U.K. and Ireland supply, perhaps up to about 25%. From our perspective, we have a broad range of supply lines, right? And we've managed to maintain our supplies notwithstanding those issues. The challenge, and it's not just a challenge for ourselves, but we have to orientate to further geographs. So you're looking at material coming in from Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, et cetera, where we already have supply lines. But it's just challenging in terms of supply, in terms of lead times, the obvious stuff around working capital. And the other aspect is commodity price risk because instead of moving material from the Baltic or from Mainland Europe in small coasters, you probably have to commit to a larger vessel from those other jurisdictions. So I would say that, look, we have a strong market position. We have a long history, we have good supply lines and good supplier relationships, and we're a go-to for all those suppliers as well. But it is going to be a challenge because more and more of the industry is going to be chasing a much more reduced supply. But look, it's something we've worked through before, and we'll have to just continue. And as I said, relationships are the key piece to unraveling that.

Thanks, Brendan. Nothing else, Muireann?

No, I think we are [indiscernible].

Okay. Sorry, Tom.

Yes. Just 2 quick questions for me, Cathal Kenny from Davy. Firstly, just to roll a seed up 'til 2026? That has really touched on today just in terms of the opportunity set around that for Origin. And then the second question, just on as you transition the portfolio via solutions, a more specialized product. There's also an investment in, I guess, the environmental piece as well. Just a willingness for the team at the front end, the agronomists, your sales people to embrace it and then sell it? And by definition, is there a greater service overlay that need to come in as we transition away from the current subsidy regime to a new one?

Sure. Well, maybe we let you answer the question in relation to the agronomists. But firstly, on seed. I mean, Cathal, the seed is an important component part of the portfolio. It's -- it varies from a margin perspective considerably between some of the players that we might be dealing with. And one of the advantages that the Polish seed plant has allowed us to develop, I suppose, is by addressing the seed, we're gaining additional margin, adding value to the seed all of the time as we progress through the supply chain. So hence the reason and the desire to add that capability in the Romanian market. We've got seed plants already in the U.K. So seed is important. You're going to get a mix of -- because of higher grain prices over the next 12 months, perhaps moving more to what's called farm-safe seed and the seed being dressed using mobile seed units, which we have in the U.K. And again, different seed breeders, different seed manufacturers, for want of a better description, are offering varying margins. So we've tended to build strong relationships with secondary seed breeders to get better margin as a rule rather than rely on some of the primary seed breeders. So seed is important. There are a number of different dynamics, including higher grain prices feeding through to perhaps more farm-safe seed over time, but it will continue to grow. And maybe in your answer in relation to the agronomists, you can touch upon, I suppose, the importance of seed in that overall mix.

Yes. I mean, just in terms of the models, I would say, agronomists are fairly used to bringing through new technology. It's something that's happened quite regularly across the kind of crop protection portfolio. So this is -- as long as we have the data, as long as we have the -- have had that product in our trials, as long as it does what it says on the tin and the providence is right, I don't think there's going to be any real issue in adopting those new products. It's something that they do on a regular basis. Seed is very important. There's lots of new technology being wrapped around seed. We talked about varietal. We talked about gene editing earlier on. So I think I've certainly stood in front of my organization, telling them about the importance of seed for the last 10 years, and that is going to -- it's going to grow significantly. And I think we're at that point now where seed is a really important part of the agronomic risk management choice. And in particular, when we look at some of the challenges around the environment and sustainability. So I deck your comments, on those. The seed is a very important part of our future.

Okay. I think in the interest of time, I think that's the question.

Yes. Okay. Well, look, thanks very much, everybody, for attending today. It's great to be back in person. As Clare said earlier on in these sessions, we haven't had one for a couple of years. Hopefully, you've gained some insight into the dynamics within the business and how we intend to optimize the business over the coming years, both in terms of changing the organization internally for a more sustainable future but also aligning ourselves to more sustainable acquisitions from an M&A perspective. So thanks all for attending. I know it's a big time commitment and time chunk out of your day to come along here, but hopefully, you've gained some insights into the business. Thank you.