Once you have a federal approval, you go through all each of the states and gain their approval as well, which, like I said, build the moat around things. But we’ll also create long lead times for our further development here, which, like I said, is very much underway. We’re excited about the benefit, and we’re excited about the initial returns we’re getting on the item.
Leslie Garber: Thanks, Chris. Okay. Question comes from Ethan Star, and he asks, is Amlin making progress towards getting one or more significant orders from large producers of paddle poultry or swine. And Wade, can you please answer that?
Wade Robey: Yes. Thanks, Leslie. And again, thank you, Ethan. The simple answer is, yes. If you look at the market in North America, we’re already selling to several of the largest integrators in the North American market. That is continuing to grow with recent penetration, again, in a number of the key accounts here in North America. So great progress there as we continue to launch our portfolio here in the United States. As you look around the world, we have been in those markets a little bit longer, and so they’re a little bit more established for us. But we continue to see expanded growth of our sales into alternative species to poultry. So in the aluminum market, specifically in dairy, some of our largest customers in Asia are actually in the dairy sector.
And we’re seeing that being replicated now in Latin America, in the cattle market and the beef cattle market, so another ruminant species, but we’re seeing new testing and moving towards adoption of some of the largest cattle operations in Latin America, specifically in Brazil. So we’re excited about that, continue to see the broad multi-species applicability of our products and the application of them in solutions that are really allowing us to grow our participation in these markets. So yes, absolutely, and we expect to see continued progress in this way in the coming year.
Leslie Garber: Right. Thank you. Next question comes from John Bear, and he says, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal headlines ocean freight rate pressures, which highlight a significant drop in East Coast to China shipping costs among other routes. So are you seeing or beginning to see any benefit in your shipping costs? I’m going to turn it over to Aaron to answer.
Aaron Christiansen: Yeah, John. I’m happy to answer the question. You heard me earlier talk about where we’re still struggling with inflating cost inputs, this definitely is an area where we’re seeing cost relief. Freight, both domestic and export has come down and stabilized. We are seeing that and have been able to take advantage of it. That was the place, however, where it became the most extreme and most inflated during the supply chain challenges and pre-pandemic. Those costs are not back to historical levels, but we have definitely seen relief. As important, if not more so to us has been the improvement in reduction in lead times, Dan alluded earlier to our great service. We’re thankful to be back to a place where international freight is more predictable and lead time to allow us to meet our customers’ on-time needs.
Leslie Garber: Perfect. Great. Thank you. So I am going to see — Susan, is your line working now? Okay. So the next question, I’m going to have Dan Jaffee answers from Robert Smith. Please remind me about the seasonality and the quarterly numbers. Dan, do you want to take that?
Dan Jaffee: Yeah. Good question. I think what you see is that generally, there’s not a lot of seasonality in our business when you take into account our diversified portfolio of products. Obviously, there is some seasonality within the individual products. You’ve got the Pro’s Choice, which is reliant on ball field usage, so while we do an early sell in the winter months, really the predominant use is in the spring the summer and the fall. You’ve then got our fluids purification business, which is very much tied to when they harvest the crop, so their fourth quarter could be our biggest of the year. But net, net, net, net, net, when you put it all together, we’re relatively flat, which is nice, which again further validates our diverse portfolio, and that’s what we’ve always tried to do.
We’ve always tried to supply markets and deliver value across a wide range of applications. So that over the course of a year, some are up, some are down. We just happened to get very fortunate that last year, they pretty much were all up, which was very, it was a great time to be in our calcium bentonite business last year, and we see a lot of momentum heading in new. So thank you for your question. But not — there’s really not enough seasonality across the consolidated business that you would have to take that into your model. I see a question just came in about Clorox. I’m happy to take that one. Aaron, obviously, you could take it too, but I’ve got the mic, and I’m not giving it up. And Chris, actually, you could talk to — but you guys have educated me on this.
For those of you who are wondering where this question is coming from, they’ve put up — they, meaning Clorox have put out a lot of news releases around the fact that they’ve had some cyber problem — cyber security problems with their ERP system. And it is [indiscernible] them. There’s no doubt that their supply chains then got shrunk their inventories were sold through and the shelves were getting pretty bare. Happy to say that they seem to fix their problems. The orders are back and they seem to be even playing catch-up mode. So what do I think the impact will be on us. They’re our second largest customer. So obviously, they’re very important to us. But I think in the first quarter, which is August, September and October, by the time we hit the peaks and the valleys, they’ll generally be — it will be an immaterial difference.
That’s what I’m hoping for. It might be slightly material but it’s not going to derail our quarter. So good question, and we do certainly support and wish Clorox the best as they dig themselves out of this. Leslie, are there any other questions you want to cover before I head out?
Leslie Garber: We’re going to take this one last question from John Bear and his question is, do you see any significant increase or need to increase capital expenditures for upgrades or replacements of plant operations over the next three years. And I know Aaron you talked about…
Dan Jaffee: Yeah. We do it, but the answer is a resounding yes, but Aaron talked about it.
