here's an app generated transcription of the main presentation(s); excluded the Chairman's Address & deleted most of the official business. hope others find this useful:
"So happy to take that question on notice and we'll pick that up in a moment. There being no further questions, I'll now put the resolutions to the meeting. Undirected proxies given to the chair will be voted in favour of the resolutions. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the business of the meeting. Heidi, company Secretary, is there any other business? No, there's no other business. Okay, that being the conclusion of the formal business of the meeting, I close the meeting and declare the poll closed. The results of the poll will be announced to the ASX and will be published on the company's website later today.
On behalf of the board, I'd like to thank you for your support. I now declare the meeting open.
So I'll get Danny, who is the CEO of Halo Food Co to provide an update on the group's activities. And we'll get Danny and I think Jordan to comment on Halo Food. And I think there are a couple of carry-forward questions that you had, Nick. Yes, we can do that now if you like. We've had two or three questions. The first question is from a shareholder, "Good afternoon, can you please confirm that all production plants are operating at standard production, or more, including the New Zealand plant." Okay, so that's the first one. The second question is, "What is the company actively doing to advance sales in China? Does the company have specific plans to extend into other Asian markets such as India?" And the third question is, "Just after the current status of China contracts, especially the 50 million one with Theland, and what does the future look like for current and new contracts?"
Okay, fine. Danny, have you got those questions? I've got a note of them. If you can mix those up in your presentation and also we'll circle back to the question on Halo Food. Danny, you're right to take over? Yes, I am. I'll answer the questions at the end, if that's okay? Okay, not a problem.
Thank you, Peter, and good afternoon everyone. Halo Food Co is a well established manufacturer, exporter and brand owner of dairy, health and wellness products. We have two key divisions to the business. Firstly, we have our manufacturing division with seven purpose built sites across Australia and New Zealand. At these sites we produce a diverse range of products including nutritional powders, longlife-UHT products and healthy snacks. We also have our branded division where we sell a range of health and wellness products, principally made in-house, through various distribution channels and retailers. The Halo business continues to grow rapidly, with our FY 22 revenue of 59.9 million increasing by 18% from FY 21, with a consolidated 2.1 million in normalized EBITDA for the year. When combined with our recent acquisition of The Healthy Mummy business, one of the world's leading health and wellness platforms for mothers, the combined group had 80 million of pro-forma revenue for FY 22, and continues to grow with strong demand for both our contract manufacturing services and our own suite of high margin proprietary products.
As we move to slide eleven: The business' sales growth over the last few financial years has been nothing short of significant, notwithstanding the headwinds posed by COVID, and global logistics challenges, which have been experienced throughout the world. Like many other businesses, the Halo Group has been impacted by significant inflationary pressures on inputs. However, through our quarterly rise-and-fall pricing mechanism with clients, we've been able to pass on these significant price increases to clients in order to maintain, and in some cases, grow business margins. At this stage demand has remained resilient despite the significant increase in our cost of goods, and we anticipate this demand to continue to grow as people have become more health conscious in light of the recent COVID pandemic, focusing on their own personal health and wellness journey, despite rising cost of living pressures.
As the business continues to grow, the group has also been able to diversify not only geographically, but through broadening our customer base, reducing customer concentration in our contract manufacturing division. At the same time, with Australia emerging from COVID lockdowns and consumer footfall through gyms and the convenience channel growing, we've seen encouraging growth in our higher margin proprietary brands, with the team securing additional ranging through a number of different wholesale and retail channels as brand awareness continues to grow.
Moving onto the next slide: In terms of our journey, late last year we successfully renamed the business to Halo Food Co to reflect the "House of Brands" strategy which the business is pursuing, and have continued to deliver on this strategy through the transformational acquisition of The Healthy Mummy business, which took place in April this year. The acquisition is important in fast tracking our branded growth ambitions, moving from having around 9% of our total sales being branded to around 35% following the completion of the transaction, while still honouring our important contract manufacturing routes, which is a key part of the combined group business. Into the next slide: In terms of our proprietary brands, we now have four key brands trading within the business, each having a different target market and occasion for use, often sold through similar distribution channels.
There's been a lot of excitement within the team in wholesale and retail channels on the acquisition of The Healthy Mummy, which I'll talk about shortly. Importantly, there's also been a significant amount of work that has been undertaken in the balance of our branding division to reset the business unit, which is now EBITDA profitable and growing strongly. For our Tonik brand in particular, we undertook a refresh earlier this year, as you can see on slides 15 and 16, and rationalised the number of products we had under the brand. With our new Tonik Bars and ranging secured at Coles and 7-Eleven and a host of other retailers, we are now achieving strong sales growth with repeat customer purchases.
In the lead up to summer we're about to launch a new marketing campaign commencing next week which we're confident will continue to drive sales growth and brand awareness as we move into the peak summer period. Moving ahead to slide 17: The Healthy Mummy business, which Halo acquired earlier this year, was founded in 2010 and has grown to become one of the world's leading health and wellness platforms for mothers. The Healthy Mummy business has a unique business model which has three key elements. Firstly, digital subscriptions through The Healthy Mummy app which provides meal plans, fitness plans and motivational coaching. Secondly, a product division where the business sells a number of consumable and non-consumable products such as skincare and books, and finally, community and content, where the business has a private Facebook group with over 600,000 members. The business' strong online community helps drive digital subscriptions and product sales, which creates a strong ecosystem for mothers looking to improve their health and wellbeing after having children and for those looking for general support on their health journey. Acquiring The Healthy Mummy business has allowed Halo to bring production of the majority of the business' products, which were previously produced by third party manufacturers, in-house, leading to some significant manufacturing and product development synergies. On slide 19, you can see a number of important growth initiatives which The Healthy Mummy business is pursuing in FY 23. One of the key initiatives underway is building on the Priceline partnership that commenced in September last year with other opportunities through retail channels. To that end, the Halo Group has already commenced the selling process of Healthy Mummy products into Halo's distribution channels which are complementary to Healthy Mummy. These channels include pharmacy, major grocery and the specialty channel. In addition to selling products through Halo's existing and complementary distribution channels, the business is continuing with other important growth initiatives which are already well underway. These include its Mummy Marketplace to monetise web traffic by the Healthy Mummy site, and the launch of the new Healthy Mummy Wellness app, which has been well received since launch in June. As a business, we're in a strong competitive position as a diversified health and wellness company with a growing range of proprietary products, working with a large number of well known, domestic and international clients. The business is growing rapidly in a sector that has a large total addressable market. And with the newly acquired Healthy Mummy business, together with strong growth in our Tonik brand, we're cementing our position as an innovative and popular brand owner, in addition to being Australasia's leading health and wellness contract manufacturer. I'll just pause there, and Peter, if it's okay with you, unless there's anything further, maybe I can attend to answering some of those questions from before? Thank you, Danny, and shareholders, I think you'll see the breadth and the depth of the business as it stands today, particularly with the acquisition of Healthy Mummy. But Danny, why don't you jump in with those? Not a problem.
So, in respect of the first question, are all plants operational? Yes, they are all operational. And we're producing record volumes of products at many of our plants as both the contract manufacturing and branded, and demand for our branded products continues to grow. So there were some small disruptions back in January on account of COVID, but other than that, the plants are all operational and have been running very well.
The second question I believe was, "What's the company doing to advance sales in China?" So we have a dedicated sales resource in New Zealand for our China customer base. This year we intend to travel to China to further strengthen relationships and attend trade shows as China starts to open up. At this stage we're focusing on driving sales in China through both our contract manufacturing and also our branded products, and looking to strengthen our foothold there before we look further afield to other Asian countries. We have started exporting to a number of Asian and Middle Eastern countries on a case by case basis. At this stage we haven't advanced in India for a number of reasons, one of which is the tariffs for dairy products in the country that we need to be conscious of in order to maintain competitive pricing. So China has largely been the focus. We are looking at a small number of other countries, but at this stage haven't progressed in terms of India on account of the tariff situation there.
And the third question was in relation to the China contracts and what the future looks like. The growth, or demand out of China remains, although it's been somewhat subdued over the last few months on account of high dairy pricing. But with dairy pricing now coming down at a number of the last GDP auctions, demand has picked up substantially particularly in the lead up to the 11.11 singles day, which will see strong sales into the back end of the calendar year. The team are working with existing and prospective clients on a number of new products, in addition to different pack formats for existing products. And we have a strong sales pipeline with lots of opportunities presenting through our strong network of established contacts there, and also industry contacts within China. I believe I've answered those three questions. Peter? You can comment or I might get Sue and Jordan to comment on The Healthy Mummy? Yeah. With Healthy. Yes, not a problem. Thank you, Peter and Danny.
Healthy Mummy, as shareholders would know, we officially completed that acquisition on the 1st of April and since that time we have been integrating Healthy Mummy into the operations of the broader Halo Group, both from a day-to-day perspective and manufacturing the majority of the powders in-house in our Melbourne facilities. The integration is going incredibly well. We are integrating the team and working very closely with the team down in the Manly based office and we are spending a significant amount of time down there and understanding that business in greater depth, and also starting to implement change for the longer term growth and success of the group, and just changing subtly some of the pricing strategies around the business. And elevating the brand, talking to new markets and actioning the growth initiatives which Danny touched on in the presentation. In terms of the integration of the manufacturing and the powders, that is going well. The majority of the powders have now been moved to our Melbourne based facilities. We are dispatching product on a regular basis in-line with demand, and we're looking forward to the long term success of that business as we continue to integrate it. As Sue touched on, we see a lot of promise within the group, and there's a huge addressable market. We are increasing the conversations with new markets to attract new customers while continuing to nurture the valuable and existing community which the business has in place. Thank you, Jordan. That was a great summary. I think what I've noticed and seen, and I think what we're doing there, particularly around the digital side of it, is understanding and then really leveraging the engaged user base... [incoherent]. Thank you. No further questions? Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time today and we look forward to updating you from time to time on progress with Halo Food. Thank you and good day."
(20min delay)