Croda International PLC

LSE:CRDA

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Croda full year results. My name is Jemma, and I'll be the call operator for today. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand you over to your host, Steve Foots, the Chief Executive Officer.

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Good morning, everyone. Many thanks for joining us. Hopefully, the time is fast approaching when we will be able to meet face-to-face again. But in the meantime, I'm joined with Jez and David as usual. Once we've run through the slide pack, very happy to take any of your questions, as always. In terms of the agenda, nothing unusual. I will run through some of the highlights before Jez goes through the financials, after which, I'll wrap up with an update on various aspects of the strategy before we come to Q&A. It's, of course, been a very challenging year for everyone, Croda included. Despite that, we've navigated a tough environment incredibly well, testament to our strong business model, clear strategy and, of course, all the people that work for Croda around the world. As a result, the impact of COVID-19 on Croda was relatively limited, with the core business only seeing a small dip in profits but with robust cash generation. The global lockdowns inevitably impacted consumer spending and industrial markets. We felt that at the premium end of our Personal Care business as well as across parts of the Performance Technologies business. Encouragingly, we've seen a steady improvement since the trough in quarter 2. We were back in growth in half 2 with growth accelerating in the final quarter, giving us confidence as we look to the year ahead. That confidence is reflected in a further increase to our dividend, our 29th successive year of consecutive dividend growth. This truly resilient financial performance has given us the opportunity to make strong strategic progress during the year. We announced our ambitious 2030 sustainability targets, being climate-, land- and people-positive, living up to our purpose. We accelerated organic investment to support growth in key areas such as drug delivery, and we also acquired 2 businesses, Avanti and Iberchem. Today, over 85% of Croda's profit is coming from life science and consumer markets. I've spoken before about the importance that we have placed on treating all stakeholders fairly and equally. Throughout the pandemic, we haven't furloughed any employees nor have we drawn on any government funding. We prioritize the health and safety of our people as well as the customers, suppliers and communities that we work so closely with. And equally, we've continued to fulfill our commitment to shareholders by paying dividends. And as I mentioned a moment ago, at a point when the market environment has been at its most challenging, we've taken the opportunity to invest in our future and make investments in sustainability, expanding Life Sciences, strengthening Personal Care and building our knowledge brain in China. I have lived through 6 recessions in my 30 years with Croda, and we make incredible progress in a recessionary year. We bucked the trend and invested around GBP 1 billion in those 4 key areas. So in terms of the financial highlights, core business saw sales grow by 2.3%, with an encouraging second half recovery and the contribution from the acquisitions that we made during the year. Our margin was relatively stable but was inevitably impacted by weakness at the top end of Personal Care as well as in Performance Technologies due to COVID. Profits declined 4% due to the mix effect. Cash flow remained robust, helping us to support increased investment in the business. Turning quickly to the sectors then. Life Sciences had an outstanding year, growing sales, profits and margin to record levels. This was primarily due to Health Care and seed treatment, but we also saw a good performance from our Crop Protection business, too. The highlight -- and the highlight of the year -- has been delivering components to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the critical role that we're playing to aid its continued rollout around the world. This is a big step forward for Croda and an even bigger step forward for our intentions in Health Care. As mentioned, Personal Care was impacted as a result of the lockdowns across all key geographies, with sales in our Beauty Actives business lower as a result of consumer spending far less on prestige and luxury items than they would normally. This had an adverse impact on margins. This is simply a business mix issue. Gross margins at the product level remain rock solid. Encouragingly, we've seen a steady improvement since May with underlying sales in quarter 4 returning to prior year levels. I will come back to Iberchem later, but needless to say, we see this as a very exciting acquisition, which will add a new growth dimension to our Consumer Care offer. It finished year strongly and has started 2021 strongly as well. Performance Technology sales were resilient, largely due to good demand in our Home Care and Packaging businesses. Whilst we saw an overall return to growth in quarter 4, adverse mix and operating leverage had a material impact on our profitability. Our strategy to refine to grow Performance Technologies remains unchanged, and we have continued to deploy capital into renewable technologies and further expansion in Asia. With that introduction, let me now hand over to Jez.

[Jeremy K. Maiden, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everybody. As Steve has said, 2020 saw a resilient financial performance. Sales were up 0.9% in reported currency at GBP 1.390 billion, an increase by 1.1% in constant currency. Adjusted operating profit reduced by 4% in constant currency to GBP 320 million. This reflected an adverse mix impact with lower-margin businesses in Personal Care and Performance Technologies, less impacted by COVID than the higher-margin businesses, as Steve has described. It also reflected an increased loss on the ECO plant in North America and a higher share-based payment charge, reflecting the strong share price performance. Net interest increased to GBP 19 million, reflecting higher net debt following the Avanti and Iberchem acquisitions. Adjusted profit before tax came in at GBP 301 million, almost 5% behind the prior year period in constant currency. With a weaker mix effect, return on sales declined 1.7 percentage points to 23%. With a slightly lower tax rate of 24% and more shares in issue following the Iberchem equity placing, adjusted earnings per share were 175.5p, 5% down on 2019. Having held the interim dividend flat in July, the final dividend is being increased making the full year proposed dividend of 91p per share, an increase of 1p over 2019. Finally, the free cash flow remained robust at GBP 177 million, despite funding significant organic capital investment. Adjusting profit items charged in the year totaled GBP 31 million. This was driven by the impact of acquisitions, with advisory costs of GBP 11.7 million and amortization of acquired intangibles of GBP 13.6 million. In addition, an exceptional charge of GBP 5.8 million related to unwinding of the discount on Avanti deferred consideration and completion of the 2019 cost savings program, which delivered nearly GBP 20 million of annual benefits, which we have reinvested in resource to grow the business. Profit before tax on an IFRS basis was just under GBP 270 million. This slide looks at the key bridging items for the change in sales. Core business sales increased by 2.3% in constant currency. This comprised a 3% reduction in price/mix. With raw material prices broadly flat, this primarily reflected the weaker product and business mix due to lower sales of higher value-add products in Personal Care and Performance Technologies and better relative sales of low value-add products used by consumers during the crisis. Volume was up 1.2% in the year, helped by growth in Life Sciences. The acquisitions of Avanti and Iberchem added 4.1% to sales. Industrial Chemicals contributed a 1.2% reduction in group sales and currency translation was broadly flat. Sales in all regions were impacted in the second quarter by government steps to tackle the COVID pandemic. It was therefore encouraging to see all regions, except Asia, improve performance in the second half year. North America and Latin America returned to growth, with underlying sales up 7% and 8%, respectively. Lockdowns were more extensive and impactful in Asia and Europe, but both regions saw flat underlying sales compared with 2019 in the second half year. Asia was mixed throughout the year. China rebounded following its first quarter lockdown, but the key manufacturing markets of Japan and Korea remain soft where they were driven by a reduction in foreign tourism. Overall, underlying sales in the core business, that is before the benefit of acquisitions, were down 6% in H1 but up 3% in H2. Turning now to look at the sector overview. Personal Care was significantly affected by lockdowns. First half sales were 9% lower, but from a near 20% year-on-year decline in May, underlying sales in Personal Care recovered month-on-month to leave the second half just 3% lower overall. The acquisition of Iberchem in November added 9% to the second half sales to give sector full year constant currency sales just 2% lower than prior year. The standout performer in 2020 was Life Sciences. With no discernible negative impact from COVID-19, sales grew by 15%. Against the strong comparator in the first half, which saw sales 2% lower year-on-year, all 3 businesses in Life Sciences grew in H2, with underlying sales up 16%. The acquisition of Avanti in July added a further 17% to second half sales. In Performance Technologies, sales were only 3% lower than the prior year. After a good start to 2020, sales progressively weakened through the second quarter alongside temporary closures of automotive and industrial customer plants to leave first half sales 6% down. The second half saw a steady recovery, with sales just 1% lower than the prior year. So for the core business overall, underlying sales improved from a drop of 6% in H1 to plus 3% in H2, supplemented by a further 8% increase in sales due to acquisitions. This slide shows how these sector sales fed through to profitability. In Personal Care, government COVID-19 measures reduced consumer demand for products associated with going out, while also interrupting prestige sales channels. As a result, sales were better for our at-home use Beauty Formulation products but with a greater reduction in sales of the higher-margin in Beauty Actives and Beauty Effects products. The resulting adverse mix impact saw adjusted operating profit reduced by 15% and return on sales just under 29%, which included a small dilution from the Iberchem acquisition. With continued growth in higher value-add niches, return on sales in Life Sciences increased by 160 basis points to 32.2% and adjusted operating profit was 25% higher, including the benefits of Avanti. In Performance Technologies, although sales were only slightly lower than prior year, profitability reduced significantly. Adjusted operating profit reduced by over 20%, return on sales was 13%. This reflected the sector's higher operating leverage, lower production at its European sites and adverse profit mix, with sales more resilient in lower-margin parts of the business. Now let's look at each of the core business sectors in more detail. As previously noted, Q2 was the weakest quarter for Personal Care with the near-closure of the French cosmetic industry and luxury shopping channels. A steady recovery saw underlying sales back in line with prior year in the fourth quarter. The full year constant currency sales reduction of 2% was driven by a decline in sales price/mix of 5%, reflecting the weaker business mix, while volume was just 1% lower and the Iberchem acquisition added 4%. The adverse mix effect was driven by a double-digit percentage sales decline in each of Beauty Actives and Beauty Effects, the higher-margin segments of Personal Care. Beauty Effects was impacted through its exposure to social and travel categories, such as sun protection and color cosmetics while Beauty Actives was impacted by the disruption to sales of prestige products. This performance was consistent with published consumer sales data for Personal Care and beauty, which reported declines of 3% in the U.S. and 8% in Europe across 2020. It's also consistent with what our customers have been reporting, as shown here in this extract from L'Oreal. Regionally, Europe and Asia were hardest-hit outside of China, where sales rebounded quickly. By contrast, sales in North America remained robust throughout the year, and Latin America improved in the second half. We've not seen any signs of change in the longer-term drivers to growth. We expect Personal Care profitability to improve when lockdowns lift, luxury channels reopen and with the significant cross-selling opportunities provided by Iberchem. This is underpinned by our strengthened to-grow strategy, which Steve will take you through in more detail shortly. 2020 saw continued growth in all 3 Life Science businesses. Crop Protection increased sales net of planned product withdrawals. Seed Enhancement delivered double-digit revenue growth, delivering its anticipated recovery from a weaker 2019. Underlying Health Care sales rose 11% with continued growth in our established specialty excipients and vaccine adjuvant businesses. This was complemented by the acquisition of Avanti, which saw over 50% sales growth year-on-year, including the preacquisition period. 2020 also marked the first sales from supply of Pfizer and BioNTech with components for their COVID-19 vaccine. Overall, sector sales growth of 15% in constant currency was driven by volume growth of 7%, unchanged price/mix and 8% from Avanti. Steve will set out more detail on our expanded growth strategy shortly. Sales in Performance Technologies were resilient in what were challenging industrial markets. Encouragingly, fourth quarter sales were 5% up on prior year. There was a marked variation in the performance of the different businesses, which adversely impacted profit margin. Smart Materials was resilient with sales actually slightly up on prior year driven by strong demand in packaging and hygiene markets. Similarly, within Home, Fabric and Water, hygiene and household care applications saw strong demand, reflecting both COVID-19 and the increased sales from our ECO sustainable solutions. By contrast, the Energy Technologies business saw sales down over 15%, impacted by sharply lower lubricant demand in automotive and reduced flow control additive sales for oil and gas production. By Q4, demand was returning with Energy Technology sales back to 2019 levels and Smart Materials remaining in growth. But the last 2 years have shown that the sector remains exposed to the industrial cycle. The Refine to Grow strategy will see capital redeployed selectively within the sector, reducing exposure to older cyclical technologies and focusing more on technology-rich markets. We're also developing the sector's geographic footprint beyond its traditional European and U.S. markets in Asia and particularly in China. Performance Technologies also has strong sustainability credentials, which we can leverage to meet customers' product needs and help them deliver their green targets. Now from 2021, the group will report under 4 sectors: Consumer Care, Life Sciences, Performance Technologies and Industrial Chemicals. The new Consumer Care sector offers the opportunity to selectively deploy more capital with stronger and more consistent organic growth, geographic expansion and bolt-on acquisition. It will comprise our market-leading Personal Care business, recently acquired Iberchem fragrance and flavors business and the high-growth potential of our Home Care business. In 2021, the 2020 results will be restated for these changes, and this table sets out, first of all, how the results were reported in 2020 and then how they will look under the new structure when we restate. In addition, I've shown what the 2020 outcome would have been had Iberchem and Avanti been owned for the full year. This is the pro forma results. The group's capital allocation policy remains to invest for growth through organic capital expenditure, to provide regular returns to shareholders through an increasing dividend, to acquire disruptive technologies with a focus on consumer and life science markets and to maintain an appropriate balance sheet, typically within a 1 to 2x leverage target, returning excess capital when we see fit. In 2020, at a time when other companies were cutting back on investment, Croda has continued to execute this policy. We invested GBP 870 million in acquisitions through Avanti and Iberchem, funded 70% through the U.K.'s largest M&A equity placing of 2020 and 30% from cash and debt raise. We invested over GBP 120 million in organic capital expenditure. This comprised our regular capital program, together with an extra GBP 30 million to accelerate capture of opportunities in Health Care, scaling drug delivery, doubling our U.S. specialty excipient capacity and reprioritizing GBP 10 million to deliver COVID-19 solutions for our customers. We expect our ongoing annual capital program to continue at around GBP 90 million or 6% of sales but with 2021 seeing an extra GBP 40 million deployed to accelerate delivery of the exciting Life Sciences pipeline. With our prudent leverage and dividend distribution policy, the Board was able to pay the final 2019 ordinary dividend and maintain the 2020 interim and is recommending an increase to the 2020 final dividend. The dividend cash cost increases by over 10% following the recent equity placing. I'll now hand you back to Steve to update you on our strategic priorities.

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Thanks, Jez. Turning to strategy then. The framework of our strategy will be familiar to many of you. But at its core, we believe that sustainability, together with innovation, will drive our growth going forward. Post-COVID, sustainability trends will increase rapidly, I have no doubt. Markets are changing more rapidly than I've seen in my 30 years in the industry. This is creating many opportunities. Increasingly, we will all spend more money prioritizing health and well-being. Sustainability is touching every part of our business with consumers wanting natural clean ingredients. And with the increased focus on climate and emissions, demand for renewable technologies in industrial markets has never been greater. We're fully aligned to these trends and our sector strategies remain unchanged. I'm going to spend the next few minutes talking to you about how we're expanding in Life Sciences and strengthening our newly created Consumer Care sector, particularly given the amount of activity that we've seen in those areas and the acquisitions that we've made recently. You are seeing our strategy play out in a number of different ways, notably in the increased exposure that we have to growth markets. We expect Life Sciences to grow mid- to high-single digits, Consumer Care to grow mid-single digits and Performance Technologies to grow at industry GDP rates. Our strategy naturally moves us towards the right-hand side of the graph. When you add Avanti and Iberchem, 86% of our profits are coming from fast-growth niches in Life Sciences and Consumer care, up from 75% 2 years ago. We have also significantly enhanced our presence in emerging markets. Sales in China have roughly doubled in the last year, reflecting both organic investment and the acquisition of Iberchem. With the number of customers and employees also significantly greater, we are well-positioned in this important market going forward. With 1/3 of Iberchem employees focused on R&D and 2/3 of Avanti employees in scientific roles, we've significantly increased our innovation resource through the acquisitions we've made, and we're also investing in new laboratories and more scientists, particularly in emerging markets such as China. Turning to expanding Life Sciences then. The top half of this slide will be familiar to some of you. It illustrates the journey that we're on in the life science sector and our ambition to move further away from consumer health towards patient health, where we have 3 world-class technology platforms, each of which enhance the performance of the drug active in use. That evolution is supported by a number of key trends. With a growing elderly population, the spend on health care is increasing, particularly in emerging markets. And at the same time, there is much stricter regulation around drug safety and ingredient integrity, and customers want ingredient transparency and traceability as well. Quality and performance will also be critical going forward. The pharma market is increasingly focused on biological-active-based injectable drugs that needs speciality excipients to increase stability, shelf life, efficacy and minimize patient discomfort. We're leading the way in this area, and the COVID pandemic has shortened R&D cycles and created significant opportunities for treatments as well as vaccines. These trends are reflected in the way that we've been driving forward our Health Care business. Speciality excipients continues to deliver strong sales growth. Despite us being capacity constrained in 2020, we continue to build on our leading position in this niche market and are the first multisite excipient providers to achieve global accreditation. Following the acquisition of Biosector in 2018, we're also a leading supplier of vaccine adjuvants, which help trigger the body's immune response to vaccines. We are coded into many COVID vaccines, as you would expect. We've seen good growth here with sales up 30%, benefiting from synergies with the Croda selling network. Through the acquisition of Avanti, we added new drug and vaccine delivery technology, through its industry leadership in lipid-based systems. Furthermore, Avanti's lipid nanoparticle systems are increasingly attractive for use in complex therapeutic drugs and next-generation mRNA vaccines expected to become a fast-growing part of the market. Overall, the underlying Health Care business grew double-digit percentage with Avanti's strong growth on top. And as we expanded the number of technology platforms in drug and vaccine delivery systems, we're expanding our technical capability, too, globally, helping to further increase customer intimacy. To support all of this growth, we're making significant investments in several areas. This investment is targeted in moving from drug discovery and research to operational scale-up in-house. In simple terms, we're moving from kilogram quantities on the left to low single-digit thousands of kilos on the right, capturing the additional growth rather than giving it away to other producers. In addition to the GBP 10 million that we reprioritized last year, we will invest a further GBP 40 million in 2021 to support commercialization and scale-up of our lipids business. This is complex work, but we have the required expertise and know-how to do it. We're also investing in Biosector to manage increased demand for their technologies in vaccines. And the significant investments that we have been making in speciality excipients in the U.K., U.S. and Japan will benefit us going forward. This has doubled capacity in the U.S. and is expected to come onstream shortly. These are some of the highest-returning projects we've seen for many years in Croda. All of this investment and expansion is helping us to capture a wealth of near-term opportunities. Most significantly, it has enabled us to play a critical role in the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine where we are supplying the lipid technology. Building on our previous guidance for sales in 2021 of approximately $100 million, we now expect a minimum of $125 million of sales into this vaccine this year. We're scaling up production and strengthening our partnership with them and other vaccine customers as well. Whilst Pfizer is the big one, we are, in fact, involved in 60 other projects focused on COVID-19 for vaccine and therapeutic treatments across all 3 patient health technologies. These include a considerable number of projects utilizing our LNP and speciality excipients technologies and a bigger number of projects utilizing our adjuvant chemistry from our Danish acquisition, Biosector. Croda is playing a really important role to support the rollout of multiple vaccines and treatments across the world. We're fast becoming a vaccine adjuvant powerhouse, supporting many customers from many countries with their rollout plans. But the opportunities are by no means exclusively COVID-19 related. mRNA is a pivotal new drug class to solve some of the biggest medical challenges through gene therapy. There's a lot of investment underway from pharmaceutical companies, and I'm confident that there will be more opportunities coming as this drug class expands into oncology and other infectious diseases. And finally, we're targeting new product registrations in China, a country where we have traditionally been underweight in Health Care. Japan, Korea and India are also important Health Care markets in Asia and will increasingly be a focus for us moving forward. So very exciting times ahead for our Life Science sector, as we transition away from consumer health to patient health. Turning to Consumer Care then. As we trailed in conjunction with our acquisition of Iberchem, Personal Care became Consumer Care at the start of this year, with 5 growth businesses all driven by sustainability and innovation. Each of these businesses has dedicated management and R&D teams, and there is plenty of crossover between them in terms of innovation. Fragrances -- which is, of course, the Iberchem business -- and Home Care will sit alongside the 3 Personal Care businesses. And the rationale for this is further supported by the correlation in terms of trends driving growth in each of these subdivisions, which are set out on the left-hand side of the slide. Furthermore, ingredients such as biosurfactants used in Personal Care products can also be used for Home Care. So we see scope for lots of collaboration on innovation, and this will ensure a more efficient, productive, higher-growth business overall. When we announced our acquisition of Iberchem, we talked extensively about the rationale. Adding fragrances to Croda's business creates a full formulation service for our customers. And combined, we will have more to offer our customers across all the geographies in which we operate. So the immediate priority is to capture those revenue opportunities, and I'm pleased to say that things are off to a very good start. The geographical fit of our 2 businesses is also highly complementary. We are more overweight in Europe and the Americas, where they have a greater presence in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, emerging markets where we want to be stronger. There is also the opportunity to combine on-trend fragrances with Croda's special ingredients, creating a one-stop shop for our customers and ensuring we are agile and responsive to market needs. We've identified the top 10 countries for synergy capture and are targeting around EUR 50 million of opportunities by 2025. Con Care is a very exciting business, too, for Croda, and we're optimistic about its future growth trajectory, given increased consumer sensitivity around hygiene. The business is more than just about sustainable cleaning. Our active ingredients for fabric care provide performance, sustainability and strong sensory benefits for consumers, very similar to Personal Care. There is also a big move to biotechnology, like we are seeing in Personal Care as well. These similarities will drive opportunities in the future. The case study on the bottom right shows how an active ingredient at small inclusion levels, like in Personal Care, can deliver significant benefits. Our product is going into one of Unilever's leading global brands to drive future growth, another great example where a big sustainability trend, coupled with our great innovation, is creating strong growth. Innovation will continue to sit right at the heart of our Consumer Care business, and it is our lifeblood. It always has been and it always will be. And here are a few examples that bring that to life in Personal Care. Silverfree, a novel lipid peptide from Sederma, fights hair graying. It can deliver a 30% reduction in gray hair, which I'm sure will be of interest to a number of you on the call, including the Chief Executive. It will be included in shampoos and is coming on to the market soon. Feminage, a plant-based extract, helps to combat loss of skin elasticity and is manufactured from ethically sourced active ingredients. We have recently acquired a French natural actives business called Alban Muller as part of the continued transformation of the skin actives portfolio into a 100% natural footprint, very complementary and adds growth potential to Sederma and Croda.You've heard us talk a lot about sustainability. And the reason being that over the next 10 years, sustainability will be the single-biggest megatrend that will transform our business. I have no doubt about that. Innovation has to go alongside that, though, if we're going to be truly successful. We are being inundated with requests about ingredient integrity. Consumers and customers alike, like never before, want ingredients to be bio-based, free from impurities and ethically sourced. They also want the ingredients to be made with lower carbon emissions, and they want increasing transparency about what is in the product whilst delivering a strong performance benefit. These priorities all play to Croda's strengths and direction of travel. For example, take L'Oreal as the case study here. L'Oreal is targeting 95% of their sourced ingredients to be biobased by 2030. Big statements. All suppliers need to make a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030. We have seen an 80% increase in requests from L'Oreal for detailed information regarding our ingredients. What L'Oreal is saying to people is if you can't deliver that, you won't supply them. But if you do deliver and meet their needs, then there's a lot more business available. So we are well-positioned and fully aligned with L'Oreal to help them deliver their targets. It is no surprise that with our excellent alignment with them, that they're one of our fastest-growing customers. Croda has made strong progress with its own sustainability agenda over the years. But in 2020, we launched ambitious new targets, really deep and meaningful new targets, to take us through to 2030. It is a restorative strategy, giving more back than we are taking away. We have clearly defined interim milestones embedded in remuneration, and we've decarbonization road maps in place for our biggest sites. This is helping to drive positive results. 67% of our raw materials are now biobased compared with 63% in the prior year. So overall, it's been a strong year of progress for Croda. We have delivered for all our stakeholders throughout a very challenging period. We have made excellent strategic progress with around GBP 1 billion of investment in inorganic and organic growth. Our Life Sciences business had an outstanding year, and we have created a market-leading Consumer Care platform. In terms of outlook, the near-term is hard to predict given continued lockdowns in many countries around the world. We are, however, encouraged by 2020 exit rates. Profitable growth will be supported by end-market recovery, the recent acquisitions that we've made and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine contract. Overall, we are well-positioned for the year ahead and expect to make good progress. Jez and I are now very happy to take your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have a question in from Gunther Zechmann from Bernstein.

[Gunther Zechmann, Research Analyst]

Two questions, if I can kick us off. On the outlook, you mentioned the growth under the new reporting structure, Life Science, mid- to high single; Consumer Care mid-single-digit and PT at industry growth rates. Can I just clarify whether that's a midterm growth guidance or also for 2021? And if it's different for 2021, if you could share us -- with us what your expectations are for the year.And then specifically for '21, can you quantify any temporary cost savings that you had from COVID in 2020? You said there was a limited impact from COVID. Is that just on the revenue line? I'd assume there would be quite reduced fares and travel. So if you could give us your best estimate for that as well that would be very helpful.

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Thanks, Gunther. Yes, so on your first question then Gunther, I mean, the way we're looking at it is difficult to see that the 3 businesses won't all improve this year. We expect them all to improve again for different reasons. Life Sciences has had a very strong year, but it will have a better year in 2021 given the Pfizer contract, but also the pent-up demand in vaccines, generally. We've got 60 projects or so likely to roll out '21, '22, probably mainly in '22. But Life Sciences has got a potentially transformational year this year. We expect it to go from strength to strength. So good news there. And we'll update along the way with the Pfizer project as that develops through the year. I think on the other 2 businesses, we're in recovery mode aren't we? In Personal Care -- Personal Care was impacted by luxury. Effectively, it's all about luxury in Croda. Luxury is down 14% to 16%, it depends on which stats you want to look at. We're expecting that to come back. How quickly that comes back is something we don't really -- we can't really predict, but it's a function of moderation of lockdown. And as it does come back, we'll see obviously a turnover improvement, and we'll see the margin benefit coming back there as well. And I think in the industrial markets, you're going to see gradual recovery as well. And our recovery there will mirror most of the people's industrial businesses, it's more GDP-led there. So -- but I think it's fair to say we're very encouraged with where we finished the year. We've had a very strong finish, stronger than we thought. So we're looking ahead with cautious optimism, I think, for 2021, but difficult to predict the extent of the recoveries in Personal Care and in the industrial markets because of these lockdown moderations still to come. And Jez, on the second part?

[Jeremy K. Maiden, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

Yes, Gunther. In terms of the cost savings, yes, you're right, there would be savings in travel, exhibitions, that sort of area, but pretty modest really, a few million pounds and I think probably lost in the roundings in terms of impact. If you think about 2021, we would expect some small additional costs associated with Brexit. Clearly, we're seeing higher freight costs. We're seeing the impact of just the frictional costs, although it was good to avoid the tariff effect. In 2020, there was that balance charge because profit was down year-on-year, but there was quite a high share-based payment charge. So I think you've got quite a mixture of different costs, and I wouldn't call anything out specifically as having a big advantage to 2020 or 2021. Probably the one that I'd just point you towards the back of the pack that we've included a memoir on the impact of FX. So FX is the one that we will be watching on translation because obviously that will be what it will be. Clearly, at the moment, sterling is a fair bit stronger. And at today's rates, we're probably about -- if today's rates run until the end of the year, we'd be about GBP 15 million, 1-5 million sterling, negative impact on sterling translation of overseas earnings this year. So there's a handy memoir at the back of the pack. But overall on costs, no, I think in the rounding, there's some plus and minuses.

[Operator]

We have a question in from Matthew Yates of Bank of America.

[Matthew John Peter Yates]

A couple of questions, please. The first one, hopefully straightforward, is can you just remind me the sensitivity of the group tax rate if the press are right and there's any change in the U.K. corporate rate going forward? And then the second question is, I wanted to ask about Croda's exposure to soft commodity prices both in terms of using things like vegetable oils as feedstock for your Personal Care business. So should we be worried here about any cost inflation leading to a margin squeeze? And then also in terms of an end market for your ag business within Life Science and whether that -- your sales will actually benefit from the higher crop price environment.

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Yes. I mean -- hang on, Matthew. Yes, let me answer the second question, and I'll get Jez to do the tax. Yes, I mean we are seeing raw material inflation, which we haven't seen for best part of about 8 to 10 years. So we're very pleased with that. We like raw material inflation in Croda. We -- effectively, it's a function of pricing power in your business. Can you get your prices up? So we've initiated quite significant, extensive, far-reaching price increases. And there's no lag in Croda. It's the point on raw material increases. So we've put significant increases up across a lot of our -- all 3 businesses. And we expect no margin deterioration as a consequence of that. And the good thing with that is everybody is aligned in the industry. And when your suppliers and your customers are seeing demand increase coming through at the rate that we're seeing at the moment, then it's a good -- there's an excellent chance that you get your price increases through because your customers, the priority is allocation of demand and getting products rather than the actual cost of the materials. So we've been waiting for this for about 10 years. So we think the raw material prices will continue to increase through the year. We are exposed to some softer oils. I think the best way of looking at it is rape, palm and soy oil, we don't buy them. They're the proxies for our raw material index really effectively for the Consumer Care business and quite a large part of our industrial portfolio. So we don't buy them directly, but we buy derivatives of them. But our raw material pricing follows the pricing of those products. So yes, we're watching that with interest, and we're pleased that we're applying increases across the board there. On crop, I think we don't see any big difference to crop to what we've seen in the last 12 to 18 months. Crops had another good year for Croda. Underlying, the Crop Protection business is up 3%, Seed Treatment up 10%. And so we're expecting a continuation of that going forward. So we don't think that's going to have an impact -- significant impact on demand. Jez, tax?

[Jeremy K. Maiden, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

Yes, Matthew. So tax, we came down about 1 percentage point overall in 2020 to 24% for the effective tax rate. And you can see some lower profitability in areas like France, which have relatively high tax rates, therefore, sort of benefiting that tax charge. In terms of the U.K. impact, I would say it could account for up to about 1/4 of the profit, given that we've got a big manufacturing engine based in the U.K. So potentially if you saw a 4-percentage-point change in the U.K. rate, maybe you'd start to see something of the order of 1% on the group effective tax rate. So 4% to 5% would probably play through to about 1% to the group.

[Operator]

We have a question in from Nicola Tang from Exane BNP.

[Nicola Tang, Analyst]

I wanted to ask about the ECO plant, first of all. I think you mentioned in the slides, you are offline since September but expect to be back online at some point in H1. Can you give us a little bit of detail on what the issue is and what you need to -- or what needs to happen to get it started back up and sort of financial impact for 2021? And then the second question was around the Pfizer contract. And Steve, you kind of mentioned it in response to Gunther's question in terms of outlook beyond 2021, being quite positive on how things can shape up for 2022-plus as well. Based on the terms of -- I think the Pfizer thing was a 3-year contract, so based on the terms of that specific contract and the fact that you're making these big capacity investments, can you talk a little bit about revenue contribution, either specifically from this contract or from sort of lipid delivery in general, basically beyond 2021?

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Yes. Okay. Quite a few questions around that. Let me do the Pfizer sort of vaccine question and then hand back to Jez for ECO. Yes. On the Pfizer one, I mean, the best way of looking at this is, we'll guide you on Pfizer through the year and into next year. That partnership is just going from strength to strength. I mean one of the big things that they're filing at the moment to the FDA is that they've run the data and they've done some brilliant work in both Pfizer and BioNTech, supported by some brilliant work by Croda R&D chemists as well in looking to stall this vaccine at refrigerant temperatures, minus 15 to minus 25, as opposed to cold storage temperatures of minus 60 to minus 80. That's a big news in so much as -- in terms of their expansion into emerging markets as we inoculate the world. That gives them a lot more flexibility to target other countries as they expand their rollout plan. So -- but Croda's played their part there because a lot of that is a function of lipid purity, and we're deliberately vague with that, by the way. And there's some really clever science to upgrade the lipid purity at pace and at scale to deliver to Pfizer-BioNTech's requirement. So that partnership is going from strength to strength, which is great news. And the wider -- I mean, taking a wider view, we're beholden to Pfizer to better understand their rollout demand for '22, '23. Looks positive at the moment, but there's a lot of variables, as they would say. So that's difficult to predict. But it's likely to be, as we see it now, likely to be positive from where we are today. So that's good news. The expansion program is to deliver -- clearly to deliver for the future growth in the Pfizer-BioNTech relationship, but it's also to deliver to other things. It's -- we've got 60 other vaccine projects around the business at the moment and a lot of those are exciting. Most of those are classic Croda, though, they're in that GBP 1 million to GBP 3 million worth of sales. But a lot of those are sort of here for the next few years, we can -- we see. So yes, we call it a vaccine boom in sales potential. We're at the early stages of that. Difficult to predict on size of this '22, '23. But nonetheless, we're very excited about all of that. And I think the most important thing behind all of that is to make sure that we're not just focused on the Pfizer-BioNTech partnership in management of capacity. It's looking beyond this at the whole gene therapy market as well. Gene therapy is a big area of opportunity well beyond COVID-19. There's lots of discussions that we're having around cancer drugs, oncology drugs, infectious disease treatments. So I think this is going to be a new drug class that many R&D scientists and pharmaceutical industry has felt for years, but it looks like it's upon us. So we have to obviously build and think strategically about the longer-term opportunities rather than just the shorter ones as well. So all in all, hopefully, that's answered a few of those subquestions there. Let me pass to Jez on ECO.

[Jeremy K. Maiden, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

Yes, Nicola. So first of all, the plant ran well from the first quarter through until September. So we know that the operation of the plant was good, and we've got no problems producing the biobased surfactants, so the chemistry and the technology works. What we ran into was an issue where the local regulator raised issues about the level of emissions coming from the plant. So we shut it down at the end of September and have done some work to rectify that and indeed have got permission now to restart the plant this week. So that will be going ahead this week. We'll then continue to make some improvements to the plant to continue to further remove emissions from the plant. In terms of impact, again, last year, we had 2 key impacts. We had -- in fact, the plant was not running from September, but we had clearly a full set of costs, including depreciation for the year, which we carried through in the first quarter. So that's a couple of factors. The second area was the increase in cost of the raw material, the bioethanol, where we've been using the same grade sanitizer material, and clearly, that's been in strong demand, and therefore, prices have been higher for that grade. And again, we've been doing technology work to allow us to use a lower grade of bioethanol and clean it up on the site, which takes us away from that sort of food-grade dependency. So I'd expect in '21, after a poor first quarter obviously, to then see progressive improvement in the raw material cost base, in the recovery of fixed costs of running the site, and of course, we can continue to expand in the white space sales in terms of the biosurfactants. And we're absolutely clear from looking at the policies of people like L'Oreal and Unilever and others that this drive towards sustainable materials is with us and will continue. So the sort of the strategic justification for the plant remains very firmly in place. So I think in 2021, we will make a smaller loss than the GBP 11 million that we included in the release. But I think we'd probably still be a loss in '21 and then looking to be profitable from 2022.

[Operator]

We have a question from Mubasher Chaudhry of Citibank.

[Mubasher Ahmed Chaudhry, Vice President]

Just 2 focused on around 2021, please. The Personal Care division saw a sharp decline in margins in 2020. Could you give us your thoughts on the trajectory looking into 2021, especially given the Iberchem acquisition being brought in? And then more so on the organic side of things, how do you think the organic sales growth is linked to the duty-free business coming up, i.e., airline travel opening up versus just lockdowns coming off and face-to-face interactions coming back? Just some thoughts around your product exposure there would be helpful.And just secondly, on Avanti. You've raised the sales guidance. Just some thoughts around the earn-out that's potentially required. How much would we be baking in for that from a cash flow perspective?

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Okay. Yes, good questions. Yes, on the Personal Care margins, let me try and explain that, the half 2, half 1 effect as well as the overall effect. I mean quite unusual for Croda in Personal Care and quite a few one-offs in there. The major issue is it's a business mix rather than a product mix issue. So if you look at the product -- if you look at the gross margins at the product level, and I'm talking about the 3 Personal Care businesses -- Actives, Effects, Formulations -- the margins are rock solid. There isn't any deterioration there. What we have seen is a function of the luxury and premium market at the moment. It's down 14%. So our Actives and Effects businesses are down more than the Formulation business. So what you're finding is, from a maths point of view, there are higher margins and there are lower sales. So you've got that double effect on margins. And that's carried through the second half. But there's another couple of more one-offs in the second half than anything else. Firstly, we had -- Jez talked about the biosurfactant plant was loss-making, particularly in the second half. That's charged to P&L, of course, for each of the businesses, and Personal Care takes a big weighting on that. So that's had a temporary drag on margins in that business. And thirdly, we don't normally talk about it, but there's been a very strong share movement in the last few months of last year. And we have to charge -- have a share-based payment charge, which has to be -- we charge to sectors as well. So Personal Care has had that in the second half, particularly in the latter few months as the share price strengthens. So both of those are sort of not really to do with underlying trading. Fundamentally, the important thing in this business is the margins are rock solid. And overall, we should see growth coming back strongly once we get this moderation of lockdown. So the luxury -- what we're looking at, what you should look at for us is the luxury premium end of the market, call it what you want, once that starts to come back, then Croda's business will be firing on all cylinders in Personal Care. And it's -- that is a function of going out, socializing, shopping, travel, going on holiday. And all of that means that Croda's business will come back. And my sense of it --I'm very similar to the L'Oreal chief exec -- we see pent-up demand in Personal Care that we haven't seen for many decades. I think people are joyously desperate to put lipstick on, makeup, go to -- put any hair care treatment on they can, apply whatever lotions and creams they can when they go on holiday. People just want to get out. And the -- we're cautiously optimistic, but we remain cautious because we're still in lockdowns, just thinking near-term, first few months in Europe and in Asia. But once we get to full lockdown moderation, we're planning on a fairly significant rebound in Beauty Care because I think you've got this significant pent-up demand, I call it, and we've got to be ready for that. Jez, do you want to take the Avanti earnout?

[Jeremy K. Maiden, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

Yes, absolutely, Steve. So Mubasher, so the overall -- the potential earnout of $75 million, the majority of that has been provided as part of the acquisition accounting. So although you have a different accounting charge according to whether it's owners who have left the business or owners who are still in the business -- so we still have some of the owners in the business -- their charge for the earnout will go through the P&L. But the majority is provided upon acquisition, so there isn't a future P&L effect from that. From a cash flow point of view, yes, the proportion that is earned would flow through over the next 3 years for the performance in 2021 and '22 on the anniversary of the acquisition. So yes, there'll be a cash flow associated with that, which could be up to $75 million. The thing that we always stress, of course, is that if the earnout wasn't in part or in full, the benefit to Croda is much bigger than that earnout. So the profit generation and the cash generation from those incremental projects would be much bigger than we would be paying away as the earnout. And the earnout only runs to the end of '22. So -- where we expect to get Croda benefit for a number of years to come. So I think we'd be very happy to see the earnout paid and -- because the profit benefits to Croda and cash flows would be much stronger.

[Operator]

We have a question from Charlie Webb of Morgan Stanley.

[Charles L. Webb, Equity Analyst]

Just a couple of questions from me. Just first off on Health Care. When you look at the Avanti business, Steve, I think you said breakout year potentially in 2021 for the Life Science business. I mean how do you see that Avanti business developing over the next 3 years? Clearly, there are a lot of -- talking about opportunities in mRNA for vaccines but also oncology and therapeutics, as you noted. How big could that business be in 3 years' time? Are we talking hundreds or mid-hundreds of millions of -- in sales type of business? Just trying to understand the opportunity in front of you. Clearly, with accelerated investment you're making, it seems like you're pretty confident on the pipeline. So just trying to gauge the scale of that potential breakout for Avanti and the biolipids piece.And then just secondly, as we think of personal care, just touching on the kind of growth rates when you think about the comparatives, if we just take the run rate of the first quarter, which I think you're alluding to similar to the fourth quarter, in Personal Care and then run that through obviously the easy comps in Q2, Q3, what type of growth rate are we looking at kind of pre any significant reopening? That would be helpful.

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Yes. Good questions, Charlie. I'm not sure if we've got specific answers for you, but I'll try and give you the tour. I mean Avanti, at the point at which we acquired it, you could probably feel the excitement in the group because we -- if you're a -- remind everybody, we've been working with them for a couple of years, so we could see some of the opportunities before we acquired them. Post acquisition, we can only see more opportunity, so we're thrilled with it. Shared with Sederma but it's probably potentially even bigger than Sederma through the next few years, given the pipeline that we're not talking to you about at the moment. But a lot of that is still the pipeline. So we've still got to commercialize them, and we've got to ensure that we can scale up from an operational point of view as well. So I think it's still too early to try and quote you significant numbers. But we will do our best to try and guide you over the next 12 months, 18 months, as new projects come to market. But potentially, I suppose one of the big questions is how quickly will this gene therapy sort of drug class explode onto the market over the next 2 to 5 years. Because a lot of that technology is pointed towards that. But they have got other technologies as well, which is in other areas, too. So very excited, but we remain excited rather than convert that to numbers for you at this stage. But -- and it's also quite lumpy, as you know, Health Care, you can get big opportunities. And sometimes you're surprised when they come. So we'll -- as we said, we'll update you as we go along. In terms of Personal Care growth rates, I mean, you're right. We've started the year as we finished quarter 4, demand is strong. We are seeing the benefit already of sustainability -- increased sustainability trends coming our way. And we can see some -- even some of the renaissance products in Croda are gathering growth potential. But fundamentally, we're not -- I don't think we should be quoting figures for this year given the lockdowns are still in place, although, fair to say our tone is positive in Personal Care, you can see it from May through to the end of the year, and we're not firing on all cylinders yet. We need the luxury market to start to improve further so our Actives and Effects businesses can gather pace. And I think it quite simply is a function of freedom of lockdowns. If we get people in Europe and Asia increasingly allowed to travel outside of their houses, they'll start spending money. There's no doubt about it: shops, hairdressers, going on holidays -- all of that's great for Croda -- travel, and people will spend as well when they do that, I have no doubt. And so I think we -- we're watching that closely and our business will respond very quickly as a consequence of that.

[Charles L. Webb, Equity Analyst]

Maybe just one follow-up on Health Care -- on Life Sciences, perhaps, sorry. You've obviously given that kind of -- you stuck to the midterm guidance of mid- to high-single-digit, but given, I guess, more of the portfolio increasingly today is now geared towards health care, as you say, the pipeline opportunities are exciting in terms of what you see. Is that not a little bit conservative not to upgrade that kind of midterm guidance? I mean could this not be a double-digit growth business for a few years ahead? Just trying to understand how these things have changed.

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Yes. I mean it's a good question, Charlie. You keep asking the good questions. But I mean it's a function of timing for us. I mean we don't want you to get ahead of yourself or Croda. But we think the pipeline is outstanding. But we're feet on the ground in Croda, and we have to demonstrate that we can commercialize that pipeline. So we will do that in our own way. And once we've got firm evidence that that's translating to future extra growth, then of course, we'll keep you posted, loud and clear. But at the moment, we're not changing any targets. And given the volatility out there in the market still today, it's -- I think it would be unwise to do that anyway. So we're cautiously optimistic, but certainly, the pipeline is looking great.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Sebastian Bray from Berenberg.

[Sebastian Christian Bray, Analyst]

I would have 3, please. The first is on CapEx. I -- given the rate of growth in Life Sciences, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of the capacity being added were filled quite quickly. Is it still realistic to think of GBP 90 million as base CapEx for the group? Or are we going to see recurring growth projects in Life Sciences? My second question is on the acquired Alban Muller. This company sells its own products direct to market. Is this something Croda intends to do as well? And thirdly, just a technical question on the new Consumer Care segment. My understanding was that what was moving into this segment is about GBP 40 million of water treatment solutions from Performance Tech, but the number is a bit bigger than this. And there is a small number of sales, I think, about GBP 10 million that has moved from Life Sciences. What has moved into this segment?

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Yes. I'll let Jez answer that, but I can guarantee you that there's nothing water treatment in the Consumer Care sector. I mean I can't think of a market that's completely -- that's polarized in its outlook and facets than water treatment in Consumer Care. Anyway, I'll let Jez answer that. But I mean CapEx -- I mean, just work on -- GBP 90 million is the base CapEx for the year. That's fine. We tend to screen for about 5% to 6% of CapEx as a proportion of sales, that's around 6%. So we're fine with that. I mean the incremental spend in Life Sciences is fine and adequate. We may do more than that through 2022, '23, but they will be as a consequence of rapid expansion in drug delivery primarily. So core business, we're fine with. And we'll keep you updated on the, what I call, the Health Care CapEx because that will be a function of growth anyway. And they are some of the highest-returning CapEx as it as well, they are the highest-returning CapEx in the group in that area. Alban Muller is a great little acquisition for Croda. It's driving Sederma effectively and Croda on into the whole sustainability agenda. Lots of opportunities, both at the offensive and defensive end. But it's more the tone that it sets for us for the industry. They do have a small business itself directly to the market. And there'll be no surprise, but we won't be selling directly to the market. It's very tiny. It's a very tiny part of that. The big win for Croda is it boosts Actives. We can just look at the next-generation Actives in 100% sustainable ingredients. And it gives us another edge in botanicals as well. And there's a big opportunity, not just in Europe and America, but a growing opportunity in China as well. So all in the round, we think it's a great acquisition. And our French team, who might be on the call, are really excited with this. So that's good. When our French team are excited about things in Sederma, then we get excited so we're really pleased with that. And you can ask me about Silverfree, if you want as well because that's a great product, by the way.

[Jeremy K. Maiden, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

Good. Should I take the...

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Yes, Jez.

[Jeremy K. Maiden, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

The -- so yes, I think -- so we traditionally have 3 business units within Performance Technologies: Smart Materials, Energy Technologies and Home Care and water treatment, which is a slightly odd combination, given that Steve indicated there's a quite different market in water treatment. It's actually primarily an oil and gas product area is mostly for water treatment for shale gas and so forth rather than much municipal water treatment in there. So what we've done is, we've taken that Home Care and water treatment, we've moved the Home Care component into consumer, and we'll move the water treatment component into Energy Technologies because that's where the rest of what's sort of in the lubricants and the oil and gas product area sits. So that's how we're breaking it up. So yes, GBP 43 million of sales last year in Home Care, which is moving to consumer and that's average Performance Tech margins. We do think the margins can be much stronger in that business. If you look at where the product opportunities are, they're in the ECO product range, and they're also in the fabric range that Steve was talking about in his presentation. So we think that, that margin can be much better, but initially, it's dilutive to the Personal Care combination. And then as you highlight, we've got about a GBP 9 million product category swapping from the Life Sciences to consumer. And that's really because it's an area of sort of -- it's a logical product, which is really better-suited in the consumer market where the customers operate rather than treating it as a Life Science business, where clearly, we've been moving progressively away from consumer health much more into patient health. So that's the other piece that's due for us moving.

[Operator]

We have a question from Sam Perry of Credit Suisse.

[Samuel Perry, Research Analyst]

Two for me, please. Firstly, on speciality excipients, at the Capital Markets Day in 2019, you mentioned that you're on 30 biologic platforms and were targeting getting to 100. How has that progressed? And has Avanti accelerated that largely? And then secondly, on Performance Tech, you spoke a bit about reducing cyclicality and improving the geographic footprint. Are there any divestment candidates in there that would sort of increase your 80% -- 86%, sorry, exposure to consumer markets even higher?

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Yes. Good questions. I mean on specialty excipients, we're moving very well between 30 and 100. I don't know exactly where we are, but we launched about 6 to 8 in the last 12 months, even with the headwinds of lockdown. I mean there is targeting existing markets as well as new markets, for example, China is a good example there where there's lots of opportunities there as regulations open up, and it allows us to then start to sell products. So we're well on track. It's -- and we've got our new capacity coming onstream as well imminently that'll be in the next few weeks in Mill Hall. And we've also got our Japanese expansion as well. So we're well set with speciality excipients. The speciality excipients are different to the Avanti lipid nanoparticle technologies. We've got 3 different technologies now in this drug delivery area. Avanti, you should read lipid nanoparticles and other things. Speciality excipients separate to that. And then we've got these vaccine adjuvants from our Denmark facility when we acquired Biosector. All 3 of those have got -- they're actually finding their way into COVID vaccines at the moment in different vaccines. So we've got 3 technologies that we're supplying there. But yes, speciality excipients is obviously still a big growth area for the group, and it was growing about 9% in 2021. And it grows typically 10% to 20% is sort of where we look to see that. So yes, very pleased with that, and the product range is expanding, is the point there. In terms of PT -- I mean in terms of PT, we look at all the businesses in the same way, through the sustainability lens for the next few years. And that's going to create a lot of opportunities for us. But there's -- also, we've got to make sure we're on the right side of markets rather than the wrong side of market. So the team there are looking at in the usual way is how do we utilize -- big strength in that business -- one of the big strengths is the renewability of the products. We've got a huge percent of our ingredients in renewable natural products. So how do we harness that and utilize that into some of these markets, these niche markets? So the job there is to reduce the cyclicality because we don't want cyclicality. We expect to grow our business year-on-year whatever the market environment is. And whilst we do that, we're looking to try and reposition products into faster-growth markets there as well.

[Operator]

We have a question from Chetan Udeshi from JPMorgan.

[Chetan Udeshi, Research Analyst]

First, Steve, you referred to L'Oreal and what we talked about a few times on the call. And I was looking at their numbers from second half, and they had very strong growth in their Active Cosmetics business, 20%, 30% in growth year-on-year. How do we tie that with what you said about Croda's growth in your Actives business? That was the first question. Second was more clarification. I mean when we talk about $125 million revenue from the Pfizer contract in 2021, is that all incremental in 2021? Or is there some which was already supplied last year, so it's more of a continuation of that and not all incremental? And last question associated with that, BioNTech is talking about launching a PEG-free vaccine, essentially polyethylene glycol, for COVID-19. Is that a product that Croda, at the moment, supplies as far as the 4-component system for COVID-19 vaccine?

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Yes. Let me do L'Oreal and the PEG-free vaccine, and I'll pass to Jez on Pfizer. And -- yes, I mean, L'Oreal if you look at -- if you get behind all of the figures, there's a lot of moving parts, but what they would state is through the year, minus 14% in luxury and minus 5% in mass. If you look at luxury for Croda is mainly Actives and Effects and mass, reasonable amount of Formulation business. We correlate pretty well with that. Our Formulation business is better than that. So it's a lower negative than that, as is the Actives and Effects. So we actually -- our performance is a little better than the L'Oreal stats. And the second half is very similar to them as well when you get them underneath it for their growth rate. So we're in a good position. We just need the luxury end of the market to come back. But the sales issue and the margins are intertwined. Once sales come back at the top end then margins will as well. So we feel much more confident about Personal Care today than we did 5, 6 months ago. But as I said, repeatedly now that a lot of it depends on this lockdown moderating further. So before we really get back to working on all of our cylinders. So we're in good shape, though, in Personal Care. And actually, I think the big thing on L'Oreal, if you really look at one of the slides that we presented there on the big move in sustainability, I mean, this is real. And L'Oreal will not take supply of ingredients from companies that don't meet their requirements. And they're starting to do that already. So we see that as a great opportunity for L'Oreal near term as well, capturing extra growth. But also L'Oreal are market leaders as well. So there's plenty of companies that will follow them into this. So I think the L'Oreal point is a really important point, not just burying yourself in the stats, it's thinking about the big sustainability trends that are going to lead the industry. No doubt, we're well-positioned for that. Yes, in vaccines, I mean, we don't talk too much about projects, but we're working on a number of projects with Pfizer-BioNTech and others, including the one you mentioned. And we've got -- there's obviously -- there's different opportunities to offer different things there. But there's also things like -- there's a potentially powdered vaccine coming out that they've talked about as well for just different vehicle to administer that. And again, Croda's R&D is heavily involved in a lot of these projects. So it's great. The partnership is improving, as we said. Jez, just on the Pfizer comparator in the quarter 4?

[Jeremy K. Maiden, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

Yes, sure. Chetan, the -- so the $125 million, let's call it GBP 90 million, in 2021, we did about GBP 20 million in 2020 of sales. So the incremental sales benefit, we expect to be GBP 70 million, 7-0 million sterling.

[Operator]

We have a question from Isha Sharma from Stifel.

[Isha Sharma, Analyst]

I have 3, if I may, please? You have earlier talked about being on a price discovery journey in your Health Care business, especially at the speciality excipients. Life Sciences grew volumes by 7% this year but was flat in terms of price and mix. It would be nice to get some flavor on that, please.Second one would be how easy is it for you to expand capacities? As I understand it, and I might be wrong, is that you can easily convert your capacity also for Life Sciences. Just trying to understand that given the promising pipeline, trying to gauge if you are in any way restricted just by availability and not so much by expanding demand? And the last one, the underlying growth in Personal Care, you've guided earlier for 3% to 5%. Does that guidance still hold true for your legacy business and the rest coming from Iberchem? Or how should we think about the mid-single-digit growth in midterm?

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Yes. Okay. Let's do 2 and 3, and I'll get Jez back to you on the price/mix. Yes, I mean, in terms of expanding capacity, hopefully, you probably heard already, but trying to summarize again for everybody. There's 3 -- the big capacity growth in Life Sciences is these 3 technologies for drug delivery. And taking each one in turn, speciality excipients, which is something you all know about, high-purity excipients, so we put capacity, yes, we future-proof capacity with our American and Japanese expansion. So they're both onstream imminently. So we're fine with near-term growth, medium-term growth there. Vaccine adjuvants, we approved capital investment in our Biosector Danish company quite a few months ago. So that comes onstream in the middle of the year. So again, we're future-proofing capacity there. So we're fine there. And then LNP, we're scaling up as we speak, and we're delivering to capacity to the needs of the vaccine world. But obviously, we're trying to get ahead of ourselves as well. So just to give you some flavor on that. In our U.K. facility, by the -- from the start of this year to the end of quarter 1, we'll have quadruple capacity of one of our lipid technology. So the pace at which we're moving is significant. And these are not easy things to manufacture. You've seen that in the press with the vaccine manufacturers themselves, the scale-up is tricky, you can get a lot of yield issues. There's quite a lot of single dependencies in the supply chain. And there's multiple ways of these things falling over in the short term. But as months go by, the supply chain becomes more secure for everybody and the same for Croda. So we're in a good position there. So we feel comfortable with capacity for the near term but continue to invest as we've shown, putting another GBP 40 million into further investments to allow us to future-proof the growth there. Jez, do you want to just pick up -- well, just on the medium-term view, I mean, again, it's -- the mid-single-digit sales growth, we feel more confident with now with Iberchem onboard. Routinely, can we generate year-on-year midterm mid-single-digits? Yes, we can. And the Home Care business, we shouldn't forget about as well. But that's not because we don't believe -- we haven't got confidence in Personal Care. Personal Care will come back, and I think it will come back strongly once lockdowns are moderated. But you should see those as medium-term targets. I think we won't -- we're assuming when everything is back to normal, whatever that normal looks like and when we're free from any lockdowns because Personal Care is sensitive to lockdowns, as you know, that's the issue. So we've still got that. But Jez, just on the price/mix, Life Sciences?

[Jeremy K. Maiden, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

Yes, sure. Isha, I don't think there's anything in particular that I would pull out of the fact that price/mix was flat in the year. The -- it's more of the volume growth story separate from the Avanti acquisition, which obviously we show separately for the moment. The -- so I would say that what we probably started to do by the end of the year was to become a bit more capacity constrained in speciality excipients as the new plant comes onstream, as Steve said, in the next few weeks. So what you saw was strong growth across the Health Care piece and solid growth in both seed and crop. So I think it's just the noise of the mix effect going on there. But we would generally expect price/mix to improve over time as we capture more value as well as driving volume growth. So I don't think there's anything particularly unusual that I would put out 2020 to indicate a change of view for the future years. We should see both price/mix and volume improve.

[Operator]

We currently have no further questions on the line. I will now hand back over to you, David.

[David Bishop, Director of Investor Relations]

Thank you, Jemma. And there are no questions coming through on the webcast. So I'll just hand back to Steve to wrap up.

[Stephen Edward Foots, Group Chief Executive & Executive Director]

Yes. Well, hopefully, we've answered all your questions and you've got the good tone from Croda as usual. It will be nice to see you all face-to-face next time and really hope we can. And I hope for the men, they can rush out and buy their Silverfree product as well because might work wonders for all of us. Anyway, let's stop there, and we'll see you again in the summer. Thank you.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.