Good afternoon here in the Scheepvaartmuseum, the Marine Museum here in Amsterdam. Also the audience in the webcast, a very warm welcome. We believe we have prepared some very interesting presentations. Most of you will have seen the press release already this morning where we announced to be active, focusing on automation. Before I move into the presentation, I'd like to point out the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements. Hope that you can read this very quickly and take it also seriously. We are proud with what we have developed as TKH Group. Next generation technologies that make the world more efficient and more sustainable. That has not been an easy job to create that. I hope we can make that more clear during the presentation that we have.
We will have presenters from the business responsibility in the group so that you also get to know more people than just the Executive Board. We also have a few videos. In these videos, you will also see some people coming from the operations to explain and clarify activities, what we are doing. I believe they can do it even much better than that we can do that as the Executive Board. What you can see is they really do that by heart. This is the agenda that we have on the screen. It was already in the pre-announcement. I will take the first part. Then Harm, Jeroen, and Mark will take over for the second part. We have a short break. Then we move into the electrification. Last but not least, Elling will conclude with the execute and 2028 and disciplined capital allocation.
I believe especially that is also really, really important in the next phase for the TKH Group. The key messages. I already pointed out TKH's future is in automation. I believe that was somewhat unexpected. On the other side, we already have been working on this for quite a while to prepare this, to prepare that we can split up, that we have very strong potentially standalone activities that can build further on the potentials that they have. That is, of course, the electrification and for the future, the automation business. Capitalize on automation and electrification.
Very important that after all the investments that we did in the past, I would say a few years and not a decade, but especially the past few years in R&D, in Smart Vision, in Smart Manufacturing, in R&D also within electrification, in market positioning to be able to grow our market, to create an additional addressable market, which is really, yeah, a nice opportunity within the TKH Group how we can go beyond. I believe especially in the presentation of Mark Radford, you will see a few slides pointing out to what we are doing and have done with the additional addressable market in the past few years. It's also really organizing the return on investment on all the investments that we did, R&D, but also especially the capital investments in the additional production capacity within electrification. Disciplined capital allocation, really, really key.
It should turn and have focus on cash conversion and as much cash generation that we can achieve. Not by disturbing our business, but again also be flexible with the capital investments that you need to do, that if a certain market is coming down, that you immediately also reduce your capital investments. I believe that is not what we did in the past. Elling has a really key role in that. I believe the commitment from all the MDs in the group is at a very high pace and level to support this. All the noses are in the right direction to make this happen. Last but not least, we have the continuation of the non-core divestments. In the press release, you can see that it's accounting for about EUR 250 million. The majority of that is the digitalization business.
We have added a few other activities to create further focus as that is the real key for the future of TKH that we need to be and have to be focused to get, yeah, better returns than that we had than that we even had in the past. I go to the next slide. We have had two programs in the past seven years. The first program was the simplified program. I will come back in the next slide. I believe a very good program to get more focused already. On the other side, you could say, yeah, you have been quite slow because you are still in this transformation. I can tell you it is also intense to find the right owners, structure, at the same time, have the right pace in all the investments and the future where you want to invest.
That has led to the second phase, the accelerate phase that we started in the end of 2021. There's a very high focus on creating the right building stones, as I already mentioned, a larger addressable market, the right R&D technology propositions, the investment, the CapEx investments in electrification to get there to a next level, to go beyond there in a much larger market that we can address after the investment in all these activities. To point out here is, I believe, also important to the return on sales target. We have not been able to realize that. The potential of realizing the target is still there. In that respect, we have really, really sound business in the electrification and especially in the automation business where we see also that the margins are at the highest level.
Especially the gross margin, the added value is way higher in that segment. I will come back in the next slide related to the development of the added value in the past four years, which is, I believe, quite amazing. It's also giving you already the flavor that if you translate the added value in the right way with the right cost conversion, the potential for a much higher return on sales is there. Of course, we are disappointed that we have not reached that. We are going to do our best in the next phase to show substantial increases in the return on sales. Here again, a quick overview of everything that happened with the transitioning into smart technologies. I like to point out here again also to the smart part. This morning, we were in the Mondrian Tower.
There we have a great department with many intelligent AI people. We are very proud of them. It is not the only department where we have AI people. We have more AI people in the group. It's really key to make the difference when we want to go further and develop in the right way within automation. Especially Harm will come back there with also the great opportunity that we have for autonomous production. There you will also see coming back the synergy, the big synergy that we have between the vision technology and the automated production under which we also see VMI. We are also going beyond in that respect with the production of systems to automate the world. The next slide, we see that we still had a quite nice organic growth. We are not satisfied with that.
We have had really a lot of headwinds, destocking the fiber optic business, supply chain shortages after a nice peak in demand in 2021, big supply chain shortage in 2022. Had to win a race. Some of you might know I'm a racing driver and love many cylinders. Even if you are driving a 12-cylinder and one cylinder is missing, you cannot be in the top three. That is a big driver for us also to see that we get TKH running on really all the 12 cylinders and preferably less cylinders, but still at the maximum of the number of cylinders. Here we also point out the added value coming up from 47% to 51%. That's really substantial, 4% points in such a short period. It also is happening because of the movement into more automation.
You can see that in the graphs here also on the slide that the automation part is today around 60% compared to 2021, where it was around 50%. The next phase is capitalize and execute. Not too nice stories, not too much optimism. See that we can really get the returns out of what we have. That is not for the coming five years. It is for a relatively short period of three years to have that focus and to deliver in that respect the returns that I believe and unlock value that our shareholders also are greatly looking forward to. Again, here on the left side, you can see in the graphs the development from the automation business that it has become now the majority in our activities. We are moving into a new segmentation. I will not deep dive in that. Elling will do that.
We transform the Smart Connectivity into Electrification. We show in this Electrification the digitalization, which is on the divestment list. Of course, the Electrification will, in not too long from now, consist of only pure Electrification activities, which should make it also a very valuable activity for which a lot of interest can be generated in respect of interest and also potential valuation. A very important slide where we have the segmentation already in the new segments, as I just discussed, is the middle chart. We have changed the Smart Manufacturing into Automated Machinery. I believe that is the right pronunciation, clarification of what we are doing. Yes, we are strong in tire building. We can really go beyond in the Automated Machinery. What we see already is in Smart Vision that we are moving up the chain from components to systems to solutions.
We believe, and Mark Radford will come back more in detail there, how important it is and what we already have achieved to move in the solution direction. With the solution direction, we also increase the opportunity of delivering a wider scope. A wider scope means also more turnover and more profitability that we can generate from the same customer. There's an explanation. I'm not going to walk through that in detail. We know that the automation business is an asset-light business. We want to keep it also that way.
That also means from a value creation perspective, by focusing that and also reinvesting the money that we generate from the divestments in this activity into a buy-and-build strategy gives the highest potential, I believe, in valuation, but also in performance towards our customers and I would even say supplier, and to go beyond and to meet the targets that we have set. We have decided for an alternative future ownership for the electrification. We have not mentioned directly already what the route to go is. We see more options. We want to evaluate in the coming one or two quarters what the best option is. What is very good is that the electrification activities are already moving into the right direction with respect to profitability, meeting being close to the target that we set in Q4.
That makes also the gap towards 2026 much smaller than if you look at the first half of this year. It's not that we need to wait a very long time. Of course, you can optimize and see that you get the maximum result in three years or in five years. We have decided that we will already make such a big step in 2026 that we should not wait till 2028. You also never know what will happen. I believe it is also important that we generate the cash as quick as possible to stimulate everyone in the automation group who are really ready for the next phase and are excited to get access to the funds.
Although Elling is protecting that in a very strong way with the capital allocation, share buybacks, dividends, and perhaps we have not put share buybacks as the highest priority because it's the number four on the list. Again, Elling will explain that. That is also, especially with the current valuation, a very good potential investment for TKH. The last few slides, and then I will close my presentation. That is, of course, the automation, what have we built in the automation activities. Again, it is about superior developed technology. That makes life a lot easier if you have really differentiating power from your technology point of view. I believe we can guide you much more in what we have in our hands during the afternoon. That makes life so easy to be able to gain market share and not only be depending on just the market growth.
Although we have in the Automation segment very good drivers, which we see here on the left side, that stimulate higher productivity and high investments in automation. In Electrification, it is very good. Walter here will come back to that. The big success that we have with the offshore wind generating more than 80% market share at the moment is not a guarantee that it will stay at that level. In the presentation of Walter, we will see that the sales funnel has increased from mid-August, the half-year presentation, from 11,500 km to now even above 14,000 km. Walter will also inform you where that is coming from. Although there is a lot of negative news about the offshore wind, today we see some shift. That will also be in that presentation of Walter, of investments to a later stage in this decade, more to the end of this decade.
That does not mean that there is no demand starting from the coming year up to 2028. To utilize that, it is very important that from that we get our cost ratio in line with what it should be. We don't have to add any cost anymore in the Electrification business. We are going to utilize the capacity that we have. We have a full order book in the onshore medium voltage, low voltage business that's going up to the end of 2026. We still have capacity now for high voltage, which is mainly in our Lochem plant. The destocking is very good. We already could announce that at the half-year result, that that has disappeared. The investment level is at a much higher pace than it was even before the destocking period.
Our focus is to generate as quick as possible a substantial value for this activity and to be able to support the buy-and-build strategy within Automation. Here we have the targets and execution. I already mentioned most of the parts in this sheet, so I'm not going in detail here. Elling will address this slide. I move to the next slide of the disciplined capital allocation. No major CapEx programs, very important. We don't need them. We can build on what we have for at least two, three years. That means a huge change in, of course, the cash generation. Buy-and-build strategy in Automation and not very large acquisitions. First of all, we don't have the excess cash at this moment. We also believe that bolt-on acquisitions can be a very good strategy. You can increase the number of bolt-ons and reduce the risk by having a very big acquisition.
A big acquisition is not today on our list. The payout ratio to our shareholders will continue to be at 40% - 70%. We have put a kind of mix there related to the dividend yield. If the dividend yield, and that means if the dividend yield is very high, you could say your share price is very low. It's not always the case, but I believe in the majority of cases that will be the case. We have put a limit of the dividend yield at 3%. Excess will then go, will not be distributed in dividend, but will go then into a share buyback. Of course, we don't want to do share buybacks if our leverage is close to 3x. We go to the targets. Two targets or for the two activities, specific targets. Elling will come back also more in detail.
You have noticed it already in the press release. Organic growth in the automation perhaps looks low. We have incorporated there that within the manufacturing area the order intake is not running at a very high pace. We still see that the Tier 1 customers in the tire building industry are hardly investing. That is already going on for more than two years. We have not put a very optimistic return of the Tier 1 in the coming three years. That depresses somewhat the organic growth that we see in Smart Vision, which will be at a higher level. We also will disclose that in that way that it will be higher than 5% - 7%. In the manufacturing business, it will be lower than the 5% - 7%. Again, if the Tier 1 comes back, it could look much more positive.
I'm not pointing to the return on capital employed, but of course, that is really key. Organic growth is important to achieve that and be organized for that. Again, that focus on the return on capital employed. We will have a slide where we show what developed, how the return on capital employed developed in the past seven years. The outlook is, I believe, much better starting from today what we can achieve in the coming one, two, three years. Organic growth within electrification is quite good. Even at a higher level at automation, again, mainly related to a very good order book that we have there already and the capacity that we have available. I come back to my first slide. I'm not going to repeat everything here. It is clear that this has our focus. We will not be, let's say, distracted from this.
We keep really close track on, I would say, even a daily basis, a weekly basis, and show the right execution and capitalization on what we today have in our building stones. Thank you for your attention for my part of the presentation. I like to hand over to Harm, who will move further, deep dive further in the automation business. Thank you very much.
Okay, a very good morning also from my side. Thank you, Alexander. We will now shed some more light on our exciting view on automation. We would like to start with a short video.
The world demands more. Better output, less waste. Fewer hands, faster results. Today, industries don't just need to be faster. They need to be smarter. This is the era of autonomous production. For decades, TKH has been ahead of the curve. From the roots of cable manufacturing and tire machine production to global leadership with machine vision. From Smart Vision Systems to high-end manufacturing. From automation to autonomy. We built global leaders. We revolutionized tire building. We shaped machine vision. Our vision systems see every detail. Our artificial intelligence gives our systems the brains and allows our solutions to act. Now we connect it all. We combine eyes, brains, and hands. One ecosystem. Autonomous, scalable, sustainable, with consistent output, less waste, global scalability. We're not just automating production. We are revolutionizing it. Driven by entrepreneurship, powered by purpose. We don't just build solutions.
We build champions with our people and our technology, artificial intelligence, and our vision. The next era of autonomous production, TKH takes the lead.
In our view, automation will remain extremely important in the industry and in the world around us. If you look at the key drivers for automation, I think a lot of you are familiar with that. You see that on the right side, some numbers. Clearly, it has to do with scarcity of skilled personnel. That will certainly become even worse if you look further ahead at the demographic figures. That means that with scarcity, obviously, your costs go up. Also, the scalability of your production is at risk. There are more drivers for automation. One is mentioned here on the left side that has to do with the materials change. There's a lot of pressure on raw materials, scarce materials that will be more and more replaced with more sustainable materials.
The scarcity and this change means that it would be very helpful if your production becomes more precise, more predicted, and that waste levels go down. That all can be achieved with a higher level of automation. This leads to what we have seen already. You see here, for instance, the number of installed robots in the industry already for quite some automation. In our view, it doesn't stop at automation. We have seen manual labor from the past moving into what we now see as automation. You have operators working with highly automated equipment. The real next step is autonomous production, the dream of the dark factory, where machines can work, can do the actual work, where the machines can also take decisions and act and make this whole production facility not dependent anymore on no influence anymore on quality and output of people.
If you achieve that, you see that on the right side, you can get a higher quality at higher speeds at lower cost. As the system can also learn from the past, it will become better and better over time. It is scalable. If you're very successful, it's easier to scale this than with more people. What is needed for real autonomous production in the end? In fact, three key elements, you see them mentioned here. One is replacing the eyes of the operator with vision. The second is the hands. Of course, you need machinery, you need robots, you need systems to do the actual work. You need the brains, the smart software that can analyze the images, can come to conclusions, take decisions, and steer machines to act. As you all know, all these three elements are already quite successful in TKH.
That is where we really would like to bring these together in now what is called automation. We are already quite successful. Alexander mentioned, for instance, the highly automated systems in the rubber and tire industry. We are also quite successful now in moving up with our vision systems in bringing solutions to the market, to customers, to help them based on, obviously, our strong global network of sales, but definitely because we understand, have a deep, in-depth knowledge of the applications in the market. If we combine this with what you see on the right side with our smart software and AI capabilities and the engineering skills that have been proven in machinery, highly automated machinery, you can really bring the next level of automation to the market and support customers getting to this autonomous level of production.
To dive a little bit further into AI, because a lot of companies are talking about artificial intelligence and bringing that to the market, I'm really convinced that in TKH . we have organized this in a very special and different way than other companies have. What we have set up is a group of software specialists. In total, we're talking about 130+ engineers based here in Amsterdam and in Poland who are deeply embedded as a team in, you see that on the left side of the picture, deeply embedded in the universities and the academic world where work students and professors are doing either in the hub or with their research teams at the university working on real-life applications and ideas.
At the same time, this team is also deeply embedded in the outside world of the software community where open source, for instance, is created at lightning speeds. That makes that with combining this, they can do real fast development of AI-powered software and machine learning principles. On the other hand, this team is also deeply embedded in the R&D departments of the TKH companies who have the in-depth knowledge and the direct market access to apply this. In this way, we can bring at very high speeds real help and support for customers in the market. To underline this statement, I would like to introduce you to Aleide Hoeijmakers , who is leading our applied AI team here in Amsterdam. We will start a short video.
Our AI hub serves as the brain, with our operating companies functioning as the nervous system. Together, they form a responsive network that detects opportunities, processes information, and executes coordinated actions across our entire organization. Rather than each company developing their own AI solutions, we've built centralized expertise that benefits our entire organization. We develop proprietary algorithms once, then adapt and deploy them across diverse applications. We take that research all the way through to practical implementations, ensuring our innovation creates measurable value in real manufacturing. A perfect example is our proprietary machine vision algorithm, versatile across different applications. It powers quality inspections in one division while enabling intelligent predictive maintenance in another.
She mentioned also another great example that we had the algorithms that are developed for one can be easily then connected also to other applications. That really helps in creating this very fast-to-market approach of smart software. Here you see the overview of what we now see as Automation in TKH , a revenue of a little bit over EUR 1 billion when you look at the last 12 months up to now. On the left side, you see the division over the various activities. I'm sure that Elling will dive a little bit deeper in the exact configurations, et cetera. You see that for the coming two, three years, we predict an overall annual growth of, say, 5%- 7% as a bandwidth, where in the past, we have grown much faster.
That has to do with, like Alexander already explained, there's something going on in the industry right now with some reluctance. Nevertheless, we predict growth already in the coming two, three years. After that, we're sure that we are very well positioned for future growth. More detail on addressable markets, et cetera, will come from the next two presentations. I will now introduce first Jeroen Slobbe, who is the COO of VMI, who is in the previous known as Smart Manufacturing Group. Jeroen?
Yeah, thanks, Harm. My name is Jeroen Slobbe, COO, responsible in tire building for R&D, engineering, and operations. I would like to start with the portion tire building represents in the Smart Manufacturing Systems because a lot of things have happened over the last four or five years. You see, I would say, spectacular growth in our year-on-year organic turnover growth of over 10%. Also, we were able in this segment to recover on the return of sales levels up to the 19%, which we were anticipating in this pillar. On the right-hand upper side, you see, of course, that the tire building is more or less dominating this Smart Manufacturing Systems pillar. That's also the reason why I was invited to share a little bit our outlook and view on the tire building part. I think it's good to start with a small video.
What are you actually looking at if you think about tire building? I think the best representation you can see here on this slide, you look at the enormous passion our company has to create state-of-the-art technologies and constantly focus on creating value for our customers. You're looking at decades-long growth with multiple figures and multiple-digit figures. What is also clear is that VMI or tire building in TKH found itself in a sweet spot where technology can really lift, let's say, a market. Initially started in 2009, introducing the MAXX technology, picked up by the Tier 2s . Later introduced the Hands-off, Eyes-off philosophy around the MAXX automation, also picked up by the Tier 1s, supported and a little bit affected, of course, by COVID outbreak in 2019. Clearly, we see a very strong bounce back after this period of COVID.
One of the reasons we would like to share our, let's say, growth perspective is that we believe that we can still maintain outperforming our market. The focus of the customer, the focus on outperforming the market starts, of course, with a better understanding of the global tire industry. I simply took some examples of how this current market looks like. On the left side, you see the global tire sales. I took a period of 20 years, and then you see a gradual shift to a dominant or less dominant position for our Tier 1s. The Tier 2 picked up. Tier 1s were overwhelmed by the quality of tires able to produce by Tier 2. Of course, that created the loss of market share for the Tier 1s. You can also see that in the middle piece, it's a geographical distribution.
Multiple factors like transport cost, COVID, geopolitical pressure basically forced the Tier 1s to focus on local for local, a better spread of their geographical production capacity. Terms like nearshoring, factory closures are all related to what happened over the last couple of years to them. On the other hand, the Tier 2s are still focusing on growth, still focusing on capacity increases. I will come back on that later a bit in more detail. The Tier 2s are definitely still a strong part of our growth perspective now, but also in the future. It is recognized in our order intake, already referred to by Harm and Alexander. You can see it. 2021 domination by Tier 1s. 2024, you see now a dominant figure for the Tier 2s due to the slow order intake. On the right side, there's something important for the whole presentation about TBM.
If you look at the outsourced TBM market, we basically talk about the capital people are willing to spend every year on tire building machines. On the right side, we basically try to recognize that the Tier 3s and the majority of the Tier 2s allocate all their outsourced TBM capacity already to VMI. On the Tier 1s, 50% of the CapEx is used for their in-house production and 50% is used for outsourcing TBM to predominantly VMI. Having said, if you look at the current market, including the lower order intake of the Tier 1s, we recognize a potential outsourced TBM market for EUR 600 million-EUR 800 million at this moment. We expect that in the next five years, this will grow with another EUR 200 million-EUR 300 million. The biggest opportunity for VMI is that within this growing outsourced market, we will also grow our relative market growth.
That's what I try to explain in the remaining part of this presentation. This results in extra TBM sales. This is basically how you should see it. I will try to explain some of those drivers. It all starts with the market itself. If you look at the passenger tire market specifically, there's 1.6 billion tires produced every year. Of course, driven by more tire sales due to either vehicle sales increasing or replacement market. This is not a very big growth, but it is at least a very resilient market. It comes back year on year. It comes with extra capacity. What is happening in that market is important for VMI because many companies are focusing more and more of their production to ultra-high-performance tires. An ultra-high-performance tire can develop in all kinds of directions.
It could be the size of the tire, the composition of the tire, et cetera, et cetera. This ultra-high-performance tire results in the need for higher technology, higher capacity. This whole product mix dynamic in our market is extremely important for VMI to be the preferred partner for outsourced capacity. A second driver in this growing and developing market is what we consider what is happening to the Tier 1s right now. I just introduced that the geographical spread has improved, fair, but at the same time, they still have to update their existing factory footprints. For us, that outsourced potential we expect them to invest in the future is, of course, our biggest challenge to further grow our position with them. The second part is, and you might follow this a little bit, there are still many capacity increases announced by Tier 2 customers.
Plans introduced in India, in Morocco, Algeria, Middle of America, South of America. On the backbone of these investments, we still believe that there is a growing potential for VMI to also grab that portion of the growing market. There is quite a solid midterm growth perspective for VMI, especially in and also the Tier 1s pickup. On the right side, probably important for you also to know is that one out of the three, four tires is made on TKH equipment. There is some space still to go. On the other hand, another important driver is of this installed capacity, which is not linked to TKH, the age is more than 20 years. 40% of the installed non-TKH capacity is aged, is longer already or older than already 20 years. Also, massive potential for us to further grow.
Another driver in this aim for and this ambition to outperform the market is driven by the growing tire complexity. Just to give you an example, on the left side, multiple factors. It's electronic of the electric vehicles, of course, drives the new product characteristics, use of sustainable materials, the rim sizes already shared. On the other hand, customers are also developing all kinds of tire specifications to be able to deal with all weathers or all kinds of winter circumstances. What is happening is that if you look at how our customers need to deal with this changing and increasing product mix, is that basically the amount of passenger tire articles is constantly increasing. I took this number for one of the Tier 1 s. They basically presented that they now have to deal with 12,000 individual passenger tire articles, and they still believe it will grow.
The impact it has on supply chains, the impact it has on changeover time, the impact it has on flexibility, this is for us an extremely important driver that helps us to convince our customers that with an advanced technology position, we might be able to grab that outsource portion as well. The technology gap between what they are capable to do in-house and what VMI TKH Tire is capable to do is basically going to become wider and wider and therefore more beneficial for TKH Tire. Finally, our breed, the passion and the capabilities we have evolved over time is also changed into how can we create value for our customers and how can we also create this value in higher revenues per tire building machine. I took some examples of what happened in 2009 when we introduced the first MAXX technology.
We were able to sell it at an average price of EUR 2 million. It grew gradually by introducing the hands of the technology of MAXX. Today, we sell these machines between EUR 2 million-EUR 4 million, depending on the amount of features we add. We are basically able to convert our technology advanced position also in higher pricing. We believe that this autonomous drive and the need for more autonomous machines is going to help us to put, let's say, these added features also in price increases to our customer. To give you some examples on what we think autonomous production can be, I put some examples here. FOD is one for an object detection. How can we prevent using wrong materials in the tire in an early phase? Self-adjusting breaker service means basically without operator intervention, control the machine, helping to do autonomous production.
We believe that that operator independency will help to understand, let's say, the complexity and deal with it in the future. Also beneficial for VMI. All in all, knowing that the market, the outsourced addressable market, will grow in the next coming years, we believe that we are ideally positioned to grab that outsourced portion in a bigger percentage for TKH Tire, driven by well positioned to anticipate these business drivers, knowing that the truck tire market currently is quite weak, but it will come back anyway. We also believe that if the Tier 1s step up again, we are ideally positioned to help them to overcome this technology gap they might have with their own in-house production. Another basket for future and further growth is what we call recurrent service business.
With an installed and growing installed base of our own TKH equipment, there is also a constant need to activate and keep, let's say, our existing installed base rejuvenated. We have developed a complete portfolio of offering in that part, but we also invested already in our global footprint with service centers in, for instance, Mexico in preparation, Japan in preparation, and currently we grow also our service center in a fast-growing market in India. This combination of portfolio, organization structure, but also our 24/7 call-out services towards our customers is basically something we believe that we can further grow quite significantly year on year from a recurrent service business. On UNIXX, often explained also in updates to you, where are we currently with UNIXX ? Basically, the UNIXX technology merged two production stages in the tire building process. It's the component prep combined with tire building.
It combines strip winding technology with the capability to build a tire. It is, in our opinion, the answer for the mega trend when it comes to reduce batch sizes, increase flexibility, but also keep control over the quality of the tire from the beginning up to the end. Where are we now with UNIXX as such? We are offering it, of course, as a cell, but we also are quite successful nowadays with what we call the derived technologies coming from this UNIXX platform. I wanted to share two examples of where we currently are. We introduced the UNIXX Belt Maker some years ago. It is currently quite successful in the market. Just to give you some impression is that it has shown how to optimize the manufacturing process. We see repeat orders coming from those customers who currently have installed the UNIXX Belt Maker.
One of the biggest advantages is what we already claimed to our customers, and it is now also proven in the field that it significantly reduced the amount of use of materials. That immediately fits nicely, let's say, this whole dynamic and development of technology advanced and product mix development, et cetera. UNIXX Belt Maker is what we consider the answer of all these trends in sustainability, high-performance tires, things, et cetera. I'm also happy to announce in this call that we use the UNIXX technology to enter a new market for VMI. We, together with a launching customer, will soon, in the next years to come, introduce a UNIXX motor alternative based on strip winding technology with tire building and completely enter into a fast-growing, ultra-high-performance tire market for the motorcycle industry. With this launching customer, we also believe that we have a nice entrance to this market potential.
With that, we believe that UNIXX platform is partly potentially here and there eating some of the MAXX TBM existing market. On top of that, we really believe that this merging of stages component and tire building is going to offer us a unique new entrance into a new addressable market. Finally, in order to maintain that nice return on sales level, we have a quite aggressive and ambitious operations excellence program. It's basically spreading our capabilities among the globe with finding sometimes best cost alternatives, sometimes simply trying to find the best way to allocate and source our materials. All in all, we also believe that there is a strong focus in our operations to excel and make our customers, yeah, happy by always constantly delivering the best performance and best quality. At the same time, of course, also give them access to the latest and best technologies.
Having said, introduced already with the low order intake of the current market in the Tier 1, the very mild and soft market in truck tire, we do believe that there are still possibilities to grow. Driven by this outsourced market, driven by this relative position, we still have to grow. We do believe that the updated product mix we have, the drivers behind, let's say, in this market will help us to give a growth a bit milder than expected. We are definitely ready for future growth into the 2030 to come back to the traditional double figure CAGR we were used to over a very long period. With that, I would like to conclude. Thank you for your attention. I would like to hand over to Mark Radford. Thank you.
All right. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. I'm excited to talk to you a little bit about Smart Vision Systems. Within Smart Vision Systems, there's really sort of, again, focus on vision technologies. Vision technologies overall from the turnover accounts for about 90% of the segment. Of that 90%, there's roughly an equal split between machine vision as well as security vision technologies. Over the past four or so years, we've seen most of the acquisitions within the group fall within this space as we really look to focus on key technologies that we believe are enablers. We've definitely had some pressure in the overall market conditions that have come from semiconductor spikes and then declines. Overall, we've achieved overall organic turnover growth of 3.2% despite those challenging market conditions. I do also want to highlight that the business is really a global one.
About 50% of the turnover within the vision segment comes from Europe, and the other 50% is roughly equally split between North America and the rest of the world. I'm from the machine vision side. I'm going to spend most of today talking about machine vision, but I do want to just briefly update what's happening within the security vision space. Security vision is really a combination of pieces for mission-critical monitoring, mission-critical communication, as well as parking guidance and intelligent traffic systems. TKH is really positioned at the high end of the segment with sort of high-value offerings, but is well positioned to grow, particularly when we look forward. There's a lot of geographic opportunity for the expansion of this group.
In addition, the current environment is one where there's really a lot of opportunities being driven by a rising security awareness, but also the need to combine automation with the vision technologies. This is really where this intersection between the market needs for greater awareness combined with the technology enablement through software, AI, and other technologies are now creating increased automation possibilities within this space. We're seeing automatic enforcement and monitoring, particularly in places like traffic monitoring, tolling, things like that, but also from a security perspective, really having systems that are observing what's happening, making decisions, and automatically making the next thing happen. Overall, when we look forward to the next four or five years, we're expecting a total addressable market to grow at just over 9% CAGR. Now switching to machine vision, again, I'm going to spend most of my time focused on machine vision today.
I want to highlight where this group is at in terms of the overall presence. Once again, really a global presence with a combination of manufacturing and R&D sites across Europe and North America, but more importantly, a very strong direct presence in terms of sales in all of the major markets. A big aspect of the strength of this group is the ability to connect with customers, those key customers, have a customer intimate relation with them, and drive business from that perspective. As we look across the world, you can see we're well positioned in all of those major markets. In terms of our go-to-market strategy, we have a good mix of customer types. In particular, I want to highlight the OEMs and system integrators together accounting for about 50% of the business within machine vision.
What's really important to recognize is with these two customer types, their business is directly tied to our business. As they grow their business, our business grows. As opposed to end-user business where you can go through a lot of cycles depending on the investment, user companies that are very focused on making sure that they're continuing to sell systems and finding new markets. We get great growth from that perspective. In addition, we have a great distribution channel of partners accounting for about 39% of the business. This is really there to serve either a combination of the smaller geographic markets or simply smaller customers where it wouldn't be efficient for TKH to go direct to these customer profiles. They fit that section of the overall engagement.
Finally, looking at the verticals in which we serve, there's a good mix of activities, but really with a strong focus on manufacturing and production systems. From a categorization, general factory automation is by far the largest share. You can see we've also got very strong presences in specific markets such as automotive and battery, consumer electronics, wood processing, solar, et cetera. Some of you might not be very familiar with exactly what machine vision is. I'm going to try and talk a little bit about that just to introduce sort of my view on how to categorize the different ways in which machine vision is used. First up, probably most traditionally, machine vision has often been associated with inspection in the factory. Look at an object, make a pass-fail or a quality control decision, but also used for grading or sorting or other simple applications like that.
More and more, we move into the automation bucket, the second column. Harm's talked a lot about this. Why is vision important in this section? Vision is there to help manage the complexity that can come when parts vary or conditions vary or placements vary. There needs to be some sort of closed-loop control in terms of the overall system. Vision creates those eyes for the machines to do their jobs. In reality, that's expanding from simple machines now into robots, collaborative robots, vehicles, all types of automated systems that exist in this environment. The next category is in the area of optimization. You sort of think of this in terms of transformative manufacturing, taking one good and turning it into another, taking a raw material, producing some sort of value for it.
Here, machine vision is a key portion of that optimization process, really allowing the producer to make the best decisions automatically to optimize what value you can get out of an object. I'm from LMI. We started 40-something years ago in the lumber industry. How do you take a tree and how do you cut it up into the most valuable lumber? At the end of the day, that's what a sawmill cares about. That applies to all different types of industries. Particularly as we start getting into more of a focus on sustainability, monitoring yields, monitoring material usage and wastage, these are key areas where, again, optimization can play a key role. The final area is really digitalization and augmentation. This is a bit of a catch-all, but essentially, you can think of it in two ways.
One portion of it is digitizing the real world, capturing data, going out there and observing what's happening and creating records of it. Also, creating tools that augment humans' abilities to perceive things. How can we enhance human vision with machine vision? This can be creating systems that look at things that would be far too small to see with the naked eye or shifting the spectrum, right, using hyperspectral imaging or infrared technologies to see through fog or to see through the skin of a fruit or other things and allow humans to make decisions utilizing machine vision tools. Now that we know what machine vision is, what's sort of driving the growth in this market overall? I think Harm has talked a lot about the automation sections. I'm not going to repeat that.
To briefly recap, a lot of the challenges with wage growth, with labor shortages, with de-globalization, are creating a very, very strong business case for automation. In some cases, this is just simply adding vision to optimize machinery or a piece of equipment that's already there. In some cases, it's driving new equipment purchases. We're also seeing a big shift in terms of how complex production is. Jeroen just talked about how many different types of tires vendors have to manage. The same thing is happening in every industry, right? There are more variations in the colors of cars, the shapes of cars, the types of parts that have to be produced. This is creating complexity for those factories to manage. They have to understand what's happening on the line, how to manage all the different parts, how to manage their supply chain.
They want to be able to do that automatically. Vision is an enabler there. The second sort of category of growth comes from the governance perspective. Some of this is based on regulations or safety initiatives where there's needs for traceability or other aspects. You can think about this through the context of lithium-ion batteries and making sure that it's understood what happens with batteries and how you control them due to the potential risks associated with them. At the same time, there's a big focus on sustainability now, right? How do you get higher value production out of the raw materials? How do you manage waste? How do you ensure that you've made or got close control on some of these systems? The final category is on the technology side.
Here, you see new developments that are creating a combination of conditions that allow for possibilities that weren't previously possible when it comes to machine vision and automation. Some of these come from machine vision itself, you know, new developments in sensor technologies or cameras. Some on more of the software algorithmic AI side, where now those systems have greater capabilities. They also come from adjacent technologies. Collaborative robots make automation possible in environments where it would have been size or cost prohibitive in the past. Wireless communication makes it easier to integrate these systems. Edge and cloud computing creates very scalable processing networks that can scale up and down based on the needs of the system. As you combine what's happening in vision with what's happening
Adjacent to vision, there's a possibility for basically new addressable markets that are being continually created. When we take this all together, we're coming out of a bit of a soft period or even a downturn in machine vision. Overall, the market this year is still, we've seen the first signs of rebound and growth. I think we reported on that in the half-year results, but we haven't necessarily seen that full turnaround that we expect to pick up. Overall, we're projecting about a 5.6% CAGR over the next few years here. We've talked about the market and how it's growing. Now I want to talk a little bit about what the building blocks are for TKH to capitalize basically on that growth. TKH has built up a very nice portfolio of machine vision technologies.
I highlighted a number of the acquisitions from a revenue perspective, but I also want to highlight them from a technology perspective where we've been finding companies that have complementary technologies to strengthen and build out the overall portfolio. When we look at our characterization of the overall machine vision market, we estimate it's valued at about EUR 4.8 billion, and when we go through the different segments right now, we're addressing about EUR 3.4 billion of that. In particular, we have really strong market share in a couple of key sections: area scanner 2D cameras, 3D cameras, line scan cameras, vision software, and frame grabbers. These are all areas where we're very active. When you put that all together overall, we are a top five global player in the machine vision space.
This has created a strong base in technology that allows us to go out and expand into these new addressable segments. Now I want to talk a little bit about what we've been working on internally that maybe isn't so visible outside, but creates another aspect of the growth. There's been a big effort overall for about the past three years now on focusing on organizational consolidation. There are different aspects to this that I want to briefly touch on, the first of which is simply commercial, right? Bringing our teams together to cooperate and have a clear strategy on how we can reach the market in a more well-controlled way, right? How do we increase cross-selling? How do we increase cross-promotion? Ultimately, how do we gain more from the sales organization and the partner networks that we have? The next is really from an operations perspective.
There's been a lot of combination of production sites and supply chains. This is really just important in terms of creating not just cost efficiencies, but also creating scalable efficiencies, creating more resilience in terms of the supply chain, and ultimately having something that our customers can be confident in. Finally, and probably again, this ties to the capital portion of it, there's been a big focus on R&D and how do we centrally coordinate our activities such that we can develop all of our products off common components or a centralized platform. This has been now centrally planned and starting to be implemented now in the latest set of products that are coming out. On that note, I think a perfect example about this is talking about our software ecosystem. At the core of this is a product we call GoPxL.
GoPxL is essentially the machine vision execution software for the industrial space. Starting at the bottom, we have all of the different hardware that exists within the TKH Group. We've now unified this connection interface such that all of this hardware can plug into the same platform. This platform manages the synchronization, the communication, external control, etcetera, with this, and it provides an engine basically for your software to run in. This is where the AI algorithms that come from our team at TKH AI and TKH Technology plug into, right? It gives them a home for those algorithms to actually make decisions based on the data. Once you've made that decision, you have to do something with it. You have to communicate it out into the factory.
You have to control a robot, talk to a PLC, archive data, as well as provide interfaces to the operators so they can see what's been happening on the machine, how things are trending over time, if adjustments need to be made. That all exists within one unified platform now, and this really, again, sort of sets us up for future growth. We've got our building blocks. Now let's talk a little bit about the addressable markets and where we're going. The first thing I want to talk about in order to sort of set the stage for why this software ecosystem is so important is talking about the machine vision value chain as I see it. Starting on the left, we have components, sort of the lowest level of what, you know, we would consider machine vision. These components by themselves aren't necessarily useful.
They must be combined with other components in order to get something that actually gets an image or, you know, creates your basic system. There's a large portion of the overall machine vision market. When you take those components and you plug them together, you kind of reach the middle category. Now we have what we call Vision systems. They're highly configurable systems based on a combination of lenses, cameras, lighting, software, that can be used by users and configured to solve a huge variety of applications. Finally, when you take that and you start making it more specific, when you add unique mechanics, but also specifically unique software, unique algorithms to the point where you get a turnkey vision system, this is sort of the highest layer in terms of the overall solution. Right now, TKH plays at all of these levels.
We have a unique advantage here where we can leverage the technology that exists in the layer beneath it to ultimately increase our value add, but also develop these solutions much faster and more efficiently. With that, we're now taking our new software ecosystem, adding some new hardware, and starting to go off to the rest of those product segments. Coming back to the previous addressable product segments I talked about, we're now taking GoPxL. We have some new hardware coming out, and we're launching into the smart camera market. This, combined with the ability for GoPxL to essentially run on any device, whether it's an edge device, an accelerator, or a PC, allows us to create configurable vision systems. When we go back to the EUR 1.4 billion of the overall machine vision market that we weren't addressing before, we're now able to start getting into that market.
It's a very big market. I'm not going to say we've got one product covering the whole market, but we're making that step, and we're going to keep refining and building into that overall. We're coming in at the very top end with basically the highest performance smart camera that exists on the market right now. It'll be able to run the most advanced AI networks, and it's able to train those networks on the edge with the camera itself. There's no need to install software. There's no need for cloud computing. This is basically a very high-performance self-contained device. I think this, combined with the fact for GoPxL to easily scale between those different processing architectures, is really an industry first.
A different perspective on how we can take this technology platform and leverage it into solutions and new markets is what we're doing right now in the growth and security sections. A little bit different than the pure security vision, but more from what the component companies have been selling. They're now able to start transitioning and move into basically selling systems and solutions to partners in this space. In these areas, there's some pretty strict requirements for these companies to have, whether it's from simply the fact that they're looking for an entirely Western supply chain to the fact that they want a large amount of edge processing to happen on device. They want ruggedization to happen. They want customization of these devices.
With our platform of components and software, we can now start building these customized solutions for key partners in that space, at a time when this industry is seeing great growth. Now for the last section, I really want to tie it back into essentially the whole message around autonomous production. Harm talked about the yesterday, today, tomorrow message in terms of the transition from sort of these semi-automated systems into these fully automated systems. From my perspective, where TKH is going from a vision perspective is as we move forward, we're going to focus our efforts essentially on the systems and the solution aspects to help create machine vision solutions that enable these fully autonomous solutions to happen. A couple examples of this: TKH is right now active in selling 3D vision-guided robotics.
These are systems that are basically using 3D data to provide real-time feedback and control of robots to handle variations in part size, part shape, part configuration, and is addressing different applications in certain markets. Right now, most of the business is in the automotive space, but we're starting to expand out into other cases, automated palletization and depalletization for mixed case pallets. It was a great example of common technology, but in a different industry or different application. Overall, when we look at what we're doing in this space, this is really representing growth opportunities from a number of dimensions. We're growing in terms of the value chain. We're moving up to the solution level. We're growing into new markets, you know, warehousing, logistics, distribution where we haven't done it. We also have huge opportunities to grow from a geographic perspective.
Right now, the majority of our business in this space is in North America, and we're now starting to leverage the broader TKH vision, commercial network to expand solutions onto the other continents. The next sort of industry I want to highlight is automated welding. Now you might say automated welding's not new, and that's true. There's a lot of robots that weld parts right now, but those systems essentially require for the parts to be essentially the same all the time and positioned in exactly the same spot. That works in a number of industries, but in the rest of the spaces, there's simply no solution for this. Parts are still welded by hand, or even if they are welded by a machine, they have to be manually inspected by an operator and then manually reworked when there are defects.
In the short term, what we're going to see is a big push towards more configurable, more flexible systems to handle higher variation in the parts that weld. We have all of the key vision blocks basically to enable this from a pre-weld perspective, as well as are investing in other developments to start handling weld monitoring. Of course, we're already doing inspection from a post-weld aspect. Also, to think about this from a future growth perspective, this is also where inspection starts to meet automation. What happens when you inspect weld and you find a defect? Ideally, you want to be able to take the same system, automatically program a rework path, and then have the robot perform that rework so at the end of the day, a good part comes off the line rather than a tag defective part.
That's really the future for where we see machine vision going. Wrapping it all up, looking at our Smart Vision outlook, we again sort of see these three different dimensions to our growth moving forward. On the one hand, we're going to see the market grow, so a combination of automation, technology developments. This is just where there's going to be this sort of underlying growth. From our consolidated positioning, we see more opportunities to develop both new products, but also just a better, more combined sales approach. Then finally, from the addressable markets, as we push more and more into solutions, this will provide the last portion of our growth as solutions become a more and more important part of our business.
When we put this all together, essentially, for the next three years, we're projecting that we're going to be above the 5% - 7% bandwidth, essentially offsetting the slightly lower projection from the Smart Manufacturing side of things.
All right. Thank you very much for your time. Break. Okay, we're at the break portion of the program. Please, get up and, I think we have some refreshments.
The Netherlands is, you can say, almost completely linked to the Netherlands. Abroad, you can see it here in the U.K. and Germany, Scandinavia, partly. They have the same challenge. They have exactly the same challenge, and there is net congestion as well. Having Vattenfall on board as one of our esteemed customers in the offshore wind industry, Vattenfall is also responsible for the high voltage network in Sweden for 40% and has a huge demand in medium voltage as well.
It goes without saying that we are talking to those as well. We have been invited to see whether we can help them as well. Slightly medium voltage, we will try to get, let's say, a position very, very niche and not all over Europe. That's not a possibility, but to get it being to an international market as well. When we come to talk about high voltage, think about TenneT. The figures even become more dazzling, I would say. If you look at the high voltage market and the expected CapEx to be invested till 2030 in Europe, that sums up to EUR 500 billion. That is not the overall addressable market of TKH, of course, but it again underlines the huge amount of money which is addressed to this market.
Looking at the customer challenges, more or less the same as we have in the medium voltage, lack of installation capacity as we speak. Also, here the political stability is necessary. You must say that also here challenges are there, but the market itself will keep on increasing to those kind of levels. A little bit different from our position in the medium voltage where we have a clear Dutch footprint. We here will aim for a much more European footprint. What you see over here is that the big players in the high voltage markets, competitors of ours, are focusing on the huge projects, the longer distances, the really high voltage cables, the extra high voltage mentioned in this presentation.
There is a secondary market which is not that big, but where there is much less, let's say, pricing pressure and there is a need for a total solution up to 200 kV- 222 kV. That is being developed by TKH over the last couple of years. I mentioned this one already. There's a clear position, let's say, in the Netherlands. We will remain at the position, reinforce it even, but we want to focus, let's say, a bit more on the international market as well for the medium voltage, but also for the high voltage markets. That gives us a geographical spread as well. I would say this is really a big fundament to accelerate the turnover in the electrification portfolio. My four last slide, if you look at, let's say, innovations, it is a technology-driven market.
You see five blocks, not touchable on all, but this is covering as well the high voltage developments. It is covering the medium voltage. You say, well, medium voltage, that's a well-established market, traditional product. Here we are aiming for smart installation processes as well, pre-connectorized, so we can do a much more efficient installation in that respect as well. On the right side, the 132 kV and the floating wind, those are completely linked to the offshore world. Currently, we are in the world of 66 kV that will increase to 132 kV because of the bigger turbines. The next stage, still a lot of challenges to overcome, will be floating wind. Not a bottom-fixed, let's say, turbine in the sea, but really a floating wind moored by systems onto the seabed.
There it is a matter of harbor capacity, mooring systems, floating systems to be developed, and a sustainable part in the middle that's, of course, applicable for the full picture when it comes to electrification. Not to be underestimated. If you then look at, let's say, where we were the last 12 months in terms of turnover in the electrification portfolio, and you look at, let's say, the expectations in the market when it comes to offshore wind, high voltage, medium voltage, an annual average organic growth of 7% - 9% can be expected. This was the last slide of my presentation. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you, Walter. Good afternoon, everyone. I see already some smiling faces looking forward to this section, some of the analysts at least. I have to apologize from the beginning because I don't have any film. I don't know if that's maybe a disclaimer to this, but I don't think it changes the message. If you look at, and let me just go to the first sheet, if you look at our last Capital Markets Day and some of the targets which we highlighted at those days towards 2025, basically when I look at the revenue level, you can see here how the growth of revenue was forecasted to be with a basket of EUR 100 million-EUR 150 million revenue to be acquired, a basket for divestments, EUR 150 million-EUR 250 million, and then, of course, a big chunk of organic growth.
We didn't succeed in the entire match of these three baskets. The divestments, yes, we basically got well into the middle of the basket. David is not yet in here, but that has already been communicated. That has been executed well. Some of the acquisitions which we planned to do, we have not done. We have shifted some of the required funds into the strategic investment program, which we have been running for the last few years. We didn't see the full benefit coming through when we talk about the organic growth. Not from this strategic investment program, at least not in the time which we estimated it to be, but also not fully from the innovations which we have carried in the last few years. I'll come back to that a little later.
What went very well, I think, is the further traction on what we call the added value, the gross margin. On the back of the change of the portfolio, we have been able to increase our added value to over 50% for the entire group. Of course, there is a split between the added value in Automation and the added value you can see in Electrification. Also, that I come back with. The next chapter going forward now is, of course, capitalize and execute. The foremost, the first, I would like to address the ESG agenda, sustainability, a key topic within the organization, not just because this is a kind of market issue, but also we want to take our role in the society and getting a right portfolio into the marketplace.
We find it very important that at least 70% of our revenue streams are coming from a portfolio which hits the strategic development goals of the United Nations. For the last couple of years, we have been reaching this target. Obviously, with all our efforts in the renewable energy markets, clearly, this has a clear fit to this particular target. In the meantime, we have also upgraded some of the KPIs on which we report, and I refer basically to our annual report. There's a huge section about sustainability with all kinds of KPIs and targets and our actions related to this. Also here, there are some items mentioned specifically, like we now have also committed ourselves to a net zero carbon by 2050. That's a new element, and some other KPIs have improved as well.
Essential for us, and a lot of innovations and developments, technological improvements are linked to the topic of sustainability. Diving further into the two segments, automation, I think by now you have become familiar with this terminology. When we talk about the capitalized part, the element of how we go from here on the automation part, you have seen already quite a few sheets referring to the growth opportunities which are ahead of us. If you look at this chart, your first impression might be that the best is behind us because the growth rate going forward is lower than what we had. That's not the case. It's probably more the time of 2028 where we look at, which gets us to this particular parameter.
If you look at the automation part, basically two segments, vision and the automated machinery, mostly the tire building machines, of course, two different categories, two different growth rates, as you have been explained by the speakers earlier this afternoon. Vision above the bandwidth and the automated machinery below. Especially the second part is a temporary issue. We have seen, and we have been discussing already the activities for 2025. We have seen already a delta, a negative delta compared to a peak year 2024 for the tire building activities. That effect is also to be seen into the next couple of quarters. If you look at the three-year horizon, it's towards 2028. We definitely have in the initial period of that still some headwind in our CAGR rate.
Of course, towards the second part of this three-year period, it's going to improve and it will be back to the prior levels. I think what we have seen in the last 25 years with a CAGR of just over 10% going forward. I don't think the industry has changed. The dynamics which have been explained confirm our position with a further growth in the addressable market up to EUR 1 billion for outsourced opportunities. From that point of view, towards the 2030 horizon, I think we are back to a substantially higher CAGR for that particular segment. On the other side, vision is already at the level, as Mark explained, above the CAGR mentioned here. From that point of view, I think when we talk about midterm or a little bit longer term, there's quite some difference if you look at the opportunities here. We have the portfolio for that.
That might also be obvious. With the innovations of the last couple of years, we have a perfect fit to the market trends which we see and which have been explained so far. This leads also then to a return on sales, so the EBITDA on revenue, which looks to be a little bit shy if you compare with the last couple of years. We're in the basket of 17%- 19%, but that's on the back of the development, as I just said, with the split between the two different segments. We see in general a higher gross margin within the vision systems than within the tire business. Still, with all the dynamics attached to the top line growth, we see a kind of stability on the return on sales for the next two to three years.
There is, of course, and you can see that here on the right side, but I'm trying to repeat some of the prior speakers, quite a lot of elements in here which have positive effects on further improvement. Again here, I think if you look longer term, definitely the upside is here to be above the 20% level, but that's beyond the time zone as we communicated here. On the electrification part, and here we are talking, and you can see from the revenue figures about, and I'll get to that in more detail when we talk about electrification, the segment, but we have excluded from this chart the already to be divested elements like the digitalization part. We're talking here more what we in the past, and it's not exactly one-on-one, but more the energy-related market. Of course, the growth rate is still substantial.
Also, in the last couple of years, the growth rate has been fairly high with a 10% growth on average. Also on the back of the investments which we have done, which of course have generated further growth, but not to the extent that we are fully capable to do, and that is then for the further period. More than 7% CAGR on top line, I think is here important to mention as well. This chart looks maybe a little strange, but of course, we had quite a lot of discussions with quite a few of you. If you look at the return on sales for this scope, it has been quite a reasonable double digit for quite a number of years. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, the strategic investment program has kicked in. We had to deal with, on one side, startup and ramp-up effects.
At the same time, we see that there is, as you have been shown in the video, good progress in getting back on its feet. From that point of view, the delta going forward is substantial. We predict here that this return on sales level for this segment is in the range of 12 %-1 5%. Essential here is the capacity utilization. You might recall that in the first half of this year, we meet the specification of our clients, which we can produce, so the technical capabilities are all there, but it had quite some effect on the resources we had to use in order to get that executed. That, of course, put pressure on the return on sales, despite the fact that the segment has been growing quite nicely.
Other elements on the execution side, more general for TKH , you have a few baskets here. The first one Alexander addressed already, the separation of electrification. I'll concentrate a little bit more on the second, third, and the fourth one. If you look at our divestments, we have done in the last about five to close six years, roughly EUR 450 million of revenue, which has been divested. You can see that here there is on the top part of the sheet, and most of the activities were in the previous connectivity segment. More commoditized portfolio, a portfolio where we didn't have a lot of competitive advantage in terms of technology, and also the growth opportunities, creating value going forward were simply not there.
In the more recent period, as you can see in the last two years, also some entities within the manufacturing segment have been added in the divestments. The acquisitions on the other side, relatively small, and mostly or basically all of them in the vision segment. We plan, of course, the divestments to go further up to the level of about EUR 250 million. I'll explain to you a little bit later where they are located. The next element is, of course, the focus on cash generation, essential. Alexander also highlighted this, a focus on cash, free cash flow, et cetera. What you can see here on this chart is, first of all, we have completed the strategic investment program. We are not planning and initiating any further programs of this magnitude.
From that point of view, the CapEx levels are going to be normalized, and I would rather say one step further, CapEx is going to be reduced. What you see here is two baskets. On one side, on the left, we have the CapEx related to R&D. Roughly 90% of R&D CapEx is within automation. On the right side, you see the box related to the plant, property, and equipment CapEx, and there roughly 90% is in electrification. You see two complete different CapEx groups here, each having their own dynamics. If you look at our target here on the R&D side, we roughly spent annually in the last two to three years close to EUR 80 million in expense on R&D. Roughly half of that is capitalized.
If you look at our ratio of the capitalized R&D compared with the amortization of R&D which you find back in our P&L, we want to close the gap. In other words, put it simple, the line here which says 1.4x has to go to 1x, and it roughly works out that in the next three years, the CapEx on R&D through the efficiency programs and all the other things are going to be reduced by close to 30%. That does not mean that our innovative power is reduced. I think we're on the back of some of the initiatives presented by Mark in the vision group, we can be much more efficient with our R&D.
At the same time, looking back at the prior periods, in some cases, we have had too many investments in R&D or in innovations at the same time, and they did not always materialize to the effects which we intended. The hurdle rate for CapEx spending is going to go up in order to have a better benefit coming out of the expense we have. When you talk about allocation issues, one is within the baskets, there's some change, but also at the basket as a whole. The same applies a little bit on the right side with the plant, property, and equipment. There also, we want to bring the overall CapEx in line with the depreciation level, and that also means that the 1.2x ratio has to go down to about 1x.
Overall CapEx, when you talk about towards the 2028 range, is going to be below EUR 100 million, that's for sure. If you want to talk about the split where CapEx is deployed, roughly, I would say 60% is within automation, driven by the IP, R&D related elements, and the remainder is within the electrification part. If you look at the other elements in relation to cash flow, it is of course the working capital. Working capital for the entire group is too high. We have always had a target of 12%- 15%, and we are not changing the target. The target is realistic, I think, for the entire group, but here also we need to look at the two different segments.
On the left, when you look at the working capital for automation in 2024, we use as a reference point here, we were at a range of about 12%. That is a good level, I think. If you look at the way how this works and why we are able to get to the 12%, despite the fact that in the two prior years, we had a substantially higher working capital in this particular segment, it had a lot to do with the supply chain issues. Electronic components were hardly available, so our vision systems were greatly affected by not having availability in the supply chain. That led to further stocking, and as a result, we carried quite some inventory into 2023 and in the beginning of 2024. That is gradually disappearing.
On the other part, within this segment, of course, we have the business model of our tire building machines where we have progress payments, advanced payments, and all these kinds of things, and that helps the working capital structure. The model on the electrification, also there, of course, with especially the subsidy projects, also works with advanced payments and progress payments and all these kinds of things, but there we have not come to the full functioning of the model, and that you can see here as well. Also not to be neglected here is, of course, the impact of digitalization, especially the fiber optic business. We have had quite some issues in the market there, a structural overcapacity.
We have been trying to deal with it with reducing our cost of the footprints which we had, which in the end led to establishing a new factory in Poland a few years ago, bringing capacity out of China to that facility, and also in the first half of this year, closing the activities from the Netherlands and bringing everything to that location as well. Of course, if you are transitioning equipment, et cetera, to new locations, you need to build up stock in order to have a service rate to your customers, and that's all part of here. The stock levels, working capital in digitalization has pushed up in the last two to three years, also the working capital in electrification. These things should be normalized, of course, when the divestment of the non-core assets is going to take place.
The last element of this whole cash flow element is related, of course, to the capital allocation. Also here, we highlighted already the four buckets, if I want to call it, and the kind of order which we try to bring in here. First of all, we want to make sure that our CapEx is something we have available in order to deploy, but within the conditions I just highlighted. At a lower level than that we had in the past, no major substantial material programs. From that point of view, this basket is already reduced compared to the last couple of years.
The build and buy, of course, we want to strengthen our position in automation organically, but also inorganically, bolt-on acquisitions, nothing in the sense of huge transformational M&A, but definitely also here we want to use the opportunity in the market and our technologies which we have by strengthening them through the bolt-on acquisitions. Already mentioned by Alexander , the dividend policy, a payout which we have currently of 40% - 70% assisted by a kind of ambition, if you want to call it. It's mentioned here as an aim to be at a 3% yield. Of course, remaining is then in the end, of course, the share buyback with a footnote there and an important one that we want to keep our leverage below two.
By the fact that if you look at our divestment program as well as the separation of electrification, we will run through these baskets. As I mentioned, the CapEx programs are going to be lower in size, the acquisitions are going to be more of the bolt-on character, and with the definition on how the dividend will be distributed, you can assume that some important part will also end up in the last bucket. I'm not going to give more detail at this point in time. There's still a lot of work ahead of us to get to these proceeds, but this is the kind of mechanism we would like to apply. The last target which we also have been guiding on already for many years is the return on capital employed.
You also see here the two different dynamics, and of course, ultimately, when the remaining part is the automation segment, then here the return on capital employed is between the 25% - 30%. The capital employed, which is in the chart, has been gradually increased, and that's on the back of also some smaller acquisitions, but also a little bit on the capitalization of some of the R&D. Also there, I repeat myself, we are much more strict going forward. On the electrification part, the capital employed, of course, has to do with the strategic investment program where much more capital has been deployed. There, on the back of a still difficult performance in the last 12 months, you can see that the return on capital employed is not looking good at all.
If you match the outlook which we have, the return on sales coming back in the timeframe highlighted, also here, the return on capital employed can go towards the 20% range, more or less. I'll try to help you a little bit with getting your models organized on how everything now fits in one basket to the other. In this chart on the left side, what we call the old system, you see the three segments: Smart Vision, Smart Manufacturing, and Smart Connectivity. That has been our reporting so far. Mind you, by the way, in 2018-2019, we had seven vertical markets. We went to three, we're going to two, with ultimately one remaining. When you talk about simplification, I think this is a clear path on which we are. I understand that it's difficult to follow this. Here, we want to make sure that you get this right.
From the old segmentation to the new one, basically, Smart Vision and Smart Manufacturing end up in Automation. There we have three segments: Vision, Automated Machinery, basically, it's the tire machines as the largest part of it, and then we have the category Other. The ball with the percentage is the share of total revenue in TKH based on the revenue of the first half, 2025. The last column on the right, what we call future, says basically what will happen with the respective segments. Within Automation, ultimately, Vision and Automated Machinery will be the remaining entity as being what we call Automation. The segment Other is categorized as non-core, and that is part of the divestment program. The same applies for within Electrification, Digitalization, already at the beginning of the year earmarked as to be divested, being non-core.
We have some additional non-core within that segment, which also falls in this basket. The non-core titles amount to the EUR 250 million, which we earmarked earlier as to be divested. Of course, the Electrification part is the one which will be within the separation agenda. I see a lot of people writing now, but also, and just to show it, not to go into detail with this, we will keep you, of course, informed about the underlying dynamics so that you can follow in your models what comes from where, and you can keep abreast of the various subsegments on how they are doing in terms of the revenue and the organic growth related to that. This is more for background information, but we'll make sure that you have the right information to make your analysis.
This is just as a kind of overview on how this would look like if you look at 2024 in the first half of this year. My last sheet has to do with the summarized targets, and I think we have been repeating them now a few times, so I think you know them by heart, at least I hope. With Automation, of course, having then the 5 %- 7% organic growth target up to as a CAGR for 2028, the EBITDA margin of 17 %- 19%, and the return on capital employed of 25 %- 30%. On Electrification, 7% CAGR on top line, the 12 %- 15% EBITDA, and the return on capital employed 18 %- 23%. What we have not included here for your model is what we call unallocated or the overhead/head office cost.
I've seen that some of you have been allocating them fully to one of the baskets. We have not yet given specific guidance on what that basket will be, but of course, that should be lower than what we currently have. That's all I can say at this point in time. If you summarize all this, I think looking back 2021 to 2025, quite some steps have been taken there. Not everything that has happened in the last three years, especially in the outside world, we were able to predict, but there are also elements from our own side where we have to learn in the sense that we are changing some of our policies, especially on the innovation part, being a little bit more strict and getting the time to market better so that we have a quicker and better return on the investments which we did.
At the same time, I think we are at a major milestone right now where we have made a clear choice on what is the dot on the horizon for TKH , and we will embark on this path, especially on the separation in the next 12 - 18 months. Of course, we keep you communicated and up to date on what the different progress elements are from that point of view. That concludes my part. We take a five-minute break, and then we'll be back for Q&A. Thank you very much.
I saw you fake on show, looking for the after party with the dough. Don't want to flow like a dough man. Baby, you know where the dough here.
Okay. Yeah, I hope you enjoyed the presentations and learned a lot, because therefore we spent a lot of time in preparing everything. I hope also you got a good impression of my colleagues in the MD positions in the group, that they are quite strong and have their shoulders under the business and know what they are talking about and also know how to develop the business in an entrepreneurial spirit. It's now time for Q&A, not only Qs, but also As. Who can I give the first question? Yeah?
Martijn den Drijver, I'll wait until it's operating. Yeah. Martijn den Drijver, ABN AMRO , or do indeed. Three questions, if I may, and I'll take them one by one. You mentioned, Alexander, that there were options for electrification. What type of options are you considering? An IPO, a full sale, a partial sale? Can you elaborate?
I already mentioned them.
Which one has your preference at this point in time?
I had an interview with the local newspaper in the east of the Netherlands, and I said I cannot express a preferred option because every option besides my preferred option is then, let's say, not regarded as a serious option. I believe we really need to look at the best options for all stakeholders.
Okay.
My colleagues can perhaps disclose their preferred option.
When we talk about capital allocation framework, will that also apply in that order? I mean, for the proceeds of electrification down the line? First organic growth or organic CapEx, and then, you know.
Yeah, I mentioned that already, that basically that follows the same kind of pattern. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, some of the buckets are smaller in size than what we have had so far.
Okay, because I do remember that from previous discussions, you were also thinking about reinvesting in production automation, a slightly larger acquisition. That seems to be more on the back burner now, as you said yourself, no large acquisitions. Okay, just wanted to confirm that. On the question for Mark, on the integration within vision and all the brands coming back to two, can you elaborate a little bit on the timeframe of when that consolidation and efficiency will be realized? If possible, perhaps also something about the savings that you're hoping to extract, so a bit of guidance on that part?
Sure, yeah. It's not nothing and then it all happens. It's already underway. Over the past couple of years, we've already seen a lot of consolidation happening within many of the companies that you've seen there. Nerion has been merged into LMI. We've seen that Allied Vision, SVS-Vistek have come together. We've recently also changed [any T] over to join that group. Now we're moving on to the next stage where we're starting to address Euresys and the others. The timeframe is roughly the next 12 months to complete those actions. It's in the process of being worked through one step at a time. I'd say we're over halfway through roughly in terms of the actions being taken. We're planning out the remaining actions. That was the first part of your question. Sorry, the second was?
Perhaps an indication as to the efficiency gains, particularly the cost savings, the tailwind for everyday margin from that action.
You probably know that better than I do.
I think it has a few effects. One is, of course, some direct OpEx saving. More important, I would say, is the further efficiency, which is being generated by having, for example, some of the R&D further integrated. Roadmap alignment and all these kinds of things mean the output with less input, and that's where the benefit is. I think also on the commercial side, by having a global footprint better coordinated in terms of sales offices and commercial staff, the benefit will much more come from the top line than through the cost savings.
Okay. Just to follow up on that statement that capitalization will match amortization, you said that it won't interfere with our innovation capacity. Mark, again for you, if most of those capitalized development costs, which will come down a little bit, are dedicated to your business, what more can we expect? What are you working on in terms of new products? You've explained already that you have a key new product out. You have the platform. What's the next phase for you?
Yeah, it's really putting the pieces together to create those solutions now. As a technology company, you need to be continually investing and moving your products forward. That's going to create a base of just simply ongoing developments. I think this is really where we've been very inefficient in the past. When we look at what we've done and the way that we used to develop products, we're now able to do that much more efficiently. Even from the perspective of looking at, for example, Allied Vision and LMI. We used to have entirely different product divisions. We would build LMI, would build our own camera boards. Allied Vision would build their own camera boards. The latest generation LMI sensors are using Allied Vision cameras inside of them.
We can remove that portion of the portfolio and basically not duplicate unnecessary efforts, even across the 2D, 3D boundary that we've previously sort of established in terms of the management of the business. It really now allows us to go after those solutions for the different markets, to work with customers, to customize, and again, really focus on adding value at the system and solution levels.
Okay, got it. Thank you. My final question, it's perhaps not even a question, but a suggestion, if I may. You actually outlined the new structure. Unfortunately, some of the elements that will remain within the reporting lines, because not everything will be excluded from the guidance. Your guidance already excludes certain elements, the other/non-core parts. While you're reporting, those will remain within the reported results. My suggestion would be automation, no split between the two, because it's now one business. Other non-core holding consolidated. Otherwise, if you keep those other non-core businesses within automation, we have no way of tracking the performance of electrification and automation. That would be my question/suggestion.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Good afternoon, David Kerstens from Jefferies. I was wondering, can you elaborate maybe about the decision to divest Electrification, the rationale for it? I understand it's only 40% of your turnover, lower return on invested capital, more asset intense, lower valuation multiples in the market. Having said that, it has the highest growth profile and the strongest potential for margin recovery. I think you also mentioned that you don't have to wait until 2028. You mentioned maybe 2026, 6- 18 months. How quick will you get to those targeted levels already by 2026?
Quite quick. We will see already a big step forward in Q4, so that the gap between the quarters in 2026 is already much smaller than it is compared to the first half few quarters. That has also led to the fact that we should not postpone it too long. You might get a higher multiple in 2026 or 2027 and a lower multiple in 2028 because the profitability is higher. I believe we have very good visibility that I believe we can come to a transaction in the coming 12 - 18 months already and get a very reasonable evaluation and accelerate then also the investment, the reinvestment into the core business of automation. If you have to postpone that by another two or three years, you might also miss opportunities. The heart is really in automation.
You could perhaps not believe I look more at the cable guys since the last few years, but I created the automation business. I believe it deserves really this priority. I believe we are not putting a discount on the value in the end for electrification. It has also a very good standalone perspective. There are more options. The option of an IPO is really there. We have consulted already 12 months ago with an investment banker, and they said, yes, that is a good option also. We have not a preference, and I'm not going to disclose now a preference. That has to do with the timing. Anyhow, it does not bring synergy to have these activities together. We all know that. We knew that longer ago. It was a big opportunity to do this strategic investment.
If we look at the valuation we think we have, it is a fantastic multiple we get on the investment. At that point of time when we did this investment, we didn't dare to go into the acquisition mode of the automation business because the multiples were so high. Then EUR 150 million investing was not a smart idea, we believed. If you look at what happened at TKH , and we can turn back the situation, it might have looked different, but we can't turn it back. We take the best out of it now in respect of this multiple that we can achieve on the investment that we created. The return is far above 25% per year.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, but a bit higher? No. Yeah, okay. So Ruben Devos from Kepler Cheuvreux. I just had one on electrification to start with. Just thinking about the fact that you, I was thinking about how do you, how were you willing to look forward with this asset, right? Because you've obviously had CapEx fully completed. It doesn't sound like you're going to be adding more capacity at this point. Also on the OpEx side, it doesn't sound like you will be having more incremental costs. From a customer point of view, you obviously had very high commercial successes, 80% tender wins, 30% market share. Is there sort of a risk that the order intake might dry up at this point? If you look at future customers, they maybe see an owner that is in transit. Yeah, just curious around your commercial strategy at this point for electrification.
We believe that we can handle this in the right way. The desire to work with us is extreme because of the unique position that we have. I believe the risk of, let's say, a kind of pause with customers is relatively low because of the unique position that we have. I believe also such a process should not take too long because then the uncertainty might get bigger and bigger. That's why we pointed to 12 - 18 months, and that will be the focus.
Okay. I think just to have some figures right, I think in the past you talked about 1,200 km of total capacity.
Capacity, yes.
I think one of the Operational Directors in the video talked about 60 km a month, so annualized 720 km. Was that like the full scope he was referencing?
No, it is referenced against the order book that we have created and will create further. For 2026, we are looking at around 600 km to be able to utilize. That will move up gradually to even, I believe, when we look to 2028, 2029, we are getting close to 1,200 km even. We always said the business case is based on 600 km. We have a sound margin at 600 km, and that is the first priority. That is what you see back in the guidance of the return on sales and return on capital employed. If we can go beyond, of course these figures look much better than they are presented at this moment.
Okay, thanks. I just had one for Mark actually on vision. I think you provided lots of detail here, and particularly the slides seven, I think, with the addressable markets was very interesting. Obviously, you play in all of these, or at least, you know, five to 10 and so on. Also, in terms of the verticals, it sounds like you're all over the place in the sense that the other bucket was still 40%. I was thinking like, what could be sort of the merits thinking at it? Like, okay, would it be possible to hyperspecialize going to one specific vertical that is very high growth? For instance, security vision, you have 9% CAGR, which is higher than the machine vision one. How do you think about, yeah, maybe more specializing in certain areas of the machine vision market?
Also, how do you think about actual software development in terms of doing it internally or acquiring it?
Yeah, I think the first portion to recognize with machine vision is that a lot of the products are very horizontal in nature. We can build one product and we can sell it into food scanning, into lumber production, into automotive. The same applies across these technologies. When we provide that segmentation, we're not developing necessarily a product for a segment, but rather a product that serves multiple segments. The last challenge, of course, with this is with the distribution channel. Sometimes we don't have good visibility on actually where the end users are. A large portion of that other probably does allocate back to some of the other verticals. We just don't necessarily have good visibility on the reporting for that. From a focus perspective, this is what we're trying to do in terms of as we approach that, really that solution layer.
This is where we're looking at high growth applications where we see a substantial demand. We really want to focus our resources on productizing specific solutions for those markets. As much as possible, we try to leverage the previous technology that we've got in the portfolio to make that as simple. Maybe a good example of that is when we look at something like pre-weld where you're analyzing parts and trying to work out how much material to add and the volumes and the path. We actually can leverage a lot of the work that we've done in consumer electronics for adaptive glue dispense, where you're analyzing grooves between parts, and then you're programming robots to move down paths, dispense liquid adhesives. They're very similar applications when it comes to technology staff.
They're in totally separate markets with different approaches and wouldn't be immediately obvious to the outside world, the technology overlap that exists with them. It's complex, right? It's a combination of horizontal-based products, taking your building blocks, looking at the key opportunities, and then prioritizing your resources towards them.
All right. You see lots of capabilities internally to be developing?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, because I think in the last two years, I think you showed this chart as well, like the last additions you did within software, vision software.
Correct. That was in the vision guided robotics. All right. We're bolting on key technologies where we need them or to give us a boost into certain markets and certain applications. We've really reached the point where we have a very, very strong technology base across all of the different product segments that we can leverage now to really try to dominate the market.
All right, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Maarten. Maarten Verbeek, the IDEA! . I'd like to get back to the capital allocation. If you know, look, what's going to happen in a couple of months or years, you have completed your strategic investment program that has harmed your free cash flow lately, but that will turn around. You mentioned yourself, your capital expenditure will go even below what was normal. You expect a recovery of the profitability. Even working capital doesn't require any cash proceeds because it's too high, and even money will flow from that part to your bank account. On top of that, you will have several divestments, which will bring also tens, if not hundreds of millions, excluding electrification.
Why don't you simply allocate those proceeds, particularly from those investments for share buybacks, instead of this new dividend policy of allocating 3% as cash dividend and on top of that, a share buyback since that is fairly meaning, not really meaningful?
I'm not sure if it's not meaningful. If you would take the last dividend payment, for example, you would apply the 3%, probably you were close to a dividend of about EUR 1 instead of the EUR 1.50. A further EUR 0.50 would fall down in the share buyback bucket, which is EUR 20 million, which is on this amount small. When you talk about the future proceeds, I mean, as I said, probably a larger chunk ends up at the lowest bucket. From that point of view, I think this is actually helping a little bit your statement that more ends up in the share buyback. It's a different statement than saying that proceeds will be used, let's say, completely or whatever statement you want to make for a share buyback. We still want to do the things which we have to do.
I think in the end, you might be right that it goes exactly as you say. Let's do the things first.
Assuming that the whole of Smart Connectivity Solutions, so including energy, including electrification, will be sold to a third party, and that would raise your asset base, how much cash is allocated to your assets? You talk about EUR 900 million. How will you handle that?
I think it's a little bit premature to get that specifically highlighted. Obviously, I go back to what we have mentioned on how we deal with these things.
Could it even include a share buyback of EUR 500 million, EUR 600 million?
Again, I mean, speculative now. We will deal with it and we'll come back to you with the proper, let's say, statements at that point in time.
Okay. One question regarding Smart Vision. You mentioned you are moving from components to systems to solutions. Could you give a breakdown what contribution those three have within your portfolio?
Estimating, we're probably sitting at about 50% components right now, probably in the 30%, 35% systems, and then the balance in solutions.
Gotcha.
Any other questions? Chase, sorry.
Yes, thank you. Chase Coughlan from Kempen . Just a few questions, maybe starting with Mark as well on the vision systems. I think it was touched on earlier that you expect the security vision market to grow almost at double the pace of the machine vision market. Could you provide a little bit of a breakdown in terms of the margin profile between those two businesses? Qualitative is okay, but how should we think about that progressing going forward, just given the differential in the market growth? Is it more product specific?
I'm sorry, I'm not that familiar with the security vision side of things. If you look at what we call the security vision part, margin-wise, slightly below what we see, of course, within the machine vision part, but healthy for sure.
Okay. Maybe moving to the cables business, I think I saw on a slideshow that you mentioned 132 kV cables as potentially an innovation going forward. I know obviously some peers are also offering this at the moment. How do you plan on innovating and still being competitive in that space if it's still a newer product for you? Do you have maybe the sustainability angle again, or is there a sort of a playbook there already?
If you look at the current portfolio, the sales funnel I was talking about, it's about 90%, it's 66 kV.
If we want the 132 kV, there we are. We are the only one today that can manufacture and deliver that type of cable because it needs to be a dry-design. No one in the industry has this dry-design for inter-array cable. There is a dry-design, but that's with lead. The market does not want to have lead. It's too expensive. This, of course, environmentally is not so good. We have the big advantage that with the current dry-design, we can easily move. There's no development at all. Only we need to get this, what is it, certification. All the components that we need in manufacturing are exactly the same. Also, the materials that we use are for 95% the same.
Okay. Yeah, that's helpful. My final question, just regarding the fiber optic divestments, could you provide any more color on either a timeline behind that, or will there be, let's say, a number of smaller divestments within that or one large chunk of divestment, just so I can get an idea of maybe when we should see some proceeds also with regard to leverage and such?
On the digitalization, we are working hard on two parts. One is, of course, the ultimate divestment, but secondly, we also have to make sure that we have the right condition. What I mean by that, we have, as I mentioned earlier, in the first half this year, transferred quite a lot of capacity.
and close down, actually, our operations in the Netherlands and move that into the facility in Poland. We want to make sure that the proof points of this strategic shift are also there and getting back in some kind of valuation. The horizon for that is not years, definitely not. It's quarters, but we need to have that first part. If there will be a, let's say, a kind of one, let's say, chunk for digitalization or some split, that's not our biggest concern at the moment. We want to make sure that the performance is right in taking the right steps towards the ultimate divestment.
Okay, perfect. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Cheers, Michael.
Michael Roeg, Degroof Petercam. I would like to challenge Mr. Slobbe on the growth profile of tire equipment. Because you explained that growth will be a bit more muted given the slow order intake from the Tier 1. Typically, I would say your growth profile is market growth. There's the potential for more outsourcing by the Tier 1s. Is that everything you've fitted into your long-term growth profile? Or is there also the third element that historically you only sold the assembly tools, and now you're broadening the base by also selling component tools, which basically doubles your addressable market? How much of that is in your projections, or is that something for beyond 2028 to quickly ramp?
To get it recognized in revenue, I would say beyond 2028, significantly. Right now, we are in the field of what you call the UNIXX platform. As they call the additional addressable market, I would say that it will become more substantial in the growth figures post 2028.
From previous sessions, we know that there is a launching customer for UNIXX as a complete integrated system, but you're also selling them as individual modules.
Yeah.
Could you tell us a bit more? Is that especially being adopted by the Tier 1 s or the Tier 2 s, or is it broad based?
It's broad-based, I would say.
Okay.
With repeating orders from those who have their first VMI build makers installed, for instance.
Okay. There you're basically gaining market share from the incumbents, and it's still modest compared to where you are with the assembly.
Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
Thanks, Michael. Any other questions?
Okay.
Okay.
Let's go from there.
I will move to my closing remarks. A big thank you for attending this meeting, also in the audience in the webcast. I believe the key message is clear. Focus on the automation and capitalize and execute. I keep it that short so we can discuss afterwards if there are any further questions or remarks. I believe that is, I believe, a good move forward. We are excited about it. We are completely passionate and focused to be driven to make it happen and what we disclose in targets. I hope to see you in our next meeting. Probably that is next year with the annual results where we will host, of course, in another webcast and also a physical meeting for the analysts. In the meantime, we will announce our quarterly result, I believe, on the 10th of November.
Of course, we will also then be in calls with many of you. Again, thank you for your attendance. I wish you also a lot of success in your business and making the right choices and advice, give the right advice where to invest. I hope that TKH has a special place. Thank you.