Good morning, everyone, and a very warm welcome over here in the room in New York. Thank you a lot for joining us and for making the effort in being here with us today. For the ones that are joining us online, a very good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. Great that you join us for our Capital Markets Day here from New York. We have an exciting program for you today, and I'll bring you through the program. I'll kick it off with the latest update on our strategy. Michiel Gilsing, our CFO, will detail out the financial elements of our strategy towards 2030. We'll have time for questions and answers to Michiel and myself. We have a break, and then after the break, we have Maarten Smeets, who's over here. Maarten is our globally responsible person for business development in Vopak.
He will take you through a little bit of a look under the hood of what business development capabilities we have and how we do that in practice. Then we have Jan Bert Schutrops, who is our global responsible for operations, and he will do the same and tell you a little bit about our secret sauce when it gets to global operations. Last but not least, Maria Ciliberti, and Maria is over here. She's the President of Vopak in North America, so that's Canada and the US, and she'll talk about performance and growth in North America. After that, we'll have some time for questions and answers to those three individuals.
For the ones that are over here, you're gladly invited to join us for lunch after the closing, and we'll have time to still have a discussion on a few things if you'd like to do that. With that, I can tell you the Vopak team is ready. We're excited to share our story today because we have an exciting story to tell, and let me get right into it. Shifting gears towards 2030, main messages I want to share with you this morning, three. First of all, the execution of our strategy so far. We launched it back in the middle of 2022, improve, grow, and accelerate, and we've been successful and strong in the progress so far of that execution of the strategy. That's one, and I'll take you through.
Second, if you take a look at what's happening in the world and some of the macroeconomic developments on a longer term, as well as specific market trends, there is a significant opportunity for growth in infrastructure, and specifically in the area where we are active, liquids and gas. We feel that with the way we are positioned on a global scale, that we can offer the best-in-class growth platform for that infrastructure, for liquids and gas going forward. Now, it's nice that we have a platform that is set up very well, that we are executing our strategy in the way we are, but we need to have that capability to win as well.
We will spend some time on that later today, but I can tell you that our capabilities, our network that we have today set us up very, very well to execute in a disciplined manner the strategy that we laid out for the company. We feel that there is a unique position, very positive momentum to actually be shifting gears towards 2030. I am happy to take you through in the coming roughly half an hour to explain to you why I think that that is the case. First, what does it mean? Good momentum towards shifting gears, how does it translate into, I would say, the updated version of our strategy?
First and foremost, improve, grow, accelerate is going to be with us for some time because we feel that those three pillars of our strategy, our strategic priorities, explain quite well the priorities and the direction of Vopak towards 2030. We are going to stick with improve, grow, accelerate. If we then move to the left and take a look in improve, when we announced to you back in 2022 our target for an operating cash return, we set it at that time to a little bit above 10%, not a little bit, but to above 10%. After a year and a half, we increased our target over there and said for the portfolio as a whole, we make it above 12%. Today, we announced that for our portfolio as a whole, we are striving for an operating cash return above 13%.
On the middle pillar, grow, that's the amount of capital that we allocate towards industrial terminals and gas, and that's gas, both LNG and LPGs. We've already committed more than EUR 1 billion in the past three years towards that grow pillar, and today we're adding another EUR 1 billion in the period between now and the end of this decade. That means EUR 2 billion in total. That's because we see that there's exciting opportunities in that field. If we then move to the accelerate part, and the accelerate part we renamed to basically say that's actually the infrastructure needed for the energy transition. That's what we are focusing on when we talk about accelerate.
We are reconfirming today the ambition and the opportunity that we see to, in a disciplined manner, execute projects over there to the tune of a total of EUR 1 billion between now and the end of this decade. That is the three main elements of our shifting gears towards 2030 strategy. Now, let's dive a little bit deeper into it and put it very briefly into context, in context of the period 2022 towards 2030 in three main blocks. The first one that we just left behind, which is 2022-2024, main focus in that period has been very much on refocusing the company and improving the performance. Portfolio management, a strong cash focus, and actually setting ourselves up for opportunities in the gas and ITL space, which we have, as I said just now, already delivered on for the EUR 1 billion.
At the same time, also using this time to lay the foundation on the infrastructure that is needed for that energy transition. I think that has been an important period over the last three years to actually learn, build the capabilities, and be ready for the next phase. That is the refocus and improve. If we look at the current phase that we're in as a company, the build and deliver the returns, we committed this EUR 1 billion in the grow bucket of our strategy, and now we are full execution phase and need to make sure that we deliver on the promises that we made when we announced and when we committed for those investments. Total portfolio return above 13%, and the time to also focus investments on the energy transition infrastructure.
If you then look at 2028 to 2030, deliver and accelerate, contribution from those major projects then needs to really kick in. We have continued investments in the growth and the accelerate part of our business. You can rest assured that also in that period of time, this improved part of our portfolio and of our strategy is going to be part and parcel and very crucial to how we look at our business. We need to continue to have that discipline to execute what we do on a day-to-day basis, to do that well, and to make sure we can deliver attractive returns for the entire portfolio. As I said, 13% as a target minimum. That is a little bit of the context around the three blocks.
Now let's dive a bit into the detail of how we have been executing our strategy over the last three years. Let's take a look at the left, the improved side. Our proportional EBITDA in this period went up with 17%, and that's basically a very strong contribution because we have been so focused on cash and the portfolio optimization over the past years that you see an increase of 46% in our proportional operating cash flow over this period. As a result, also because our capital employed was lowered because of some divestments, we increased our operating cash return, which was around 10% back in the middle of 2022 to above 15% at the end of 2024. Now let's look at grow in the middle. That's the amount of capital that we allocate towards industrial and gas terminals.
Now the number over here that I'm quoting is the proportional investment that we've committed over there. In total, EUR 1.4 billion has been committed in this growth area. Out of that EUR 1.4 billion, EUR 857 million is purely in gas. Now that's LNG in Europe, but that's also LPG exports in Western Canada, but EUR 857 million as a total of investments that we've allocated towards gas. Out of that EUR 1.4 billion, EUR 416 million has been allocated to big and important growth markets where we have a strong position, which is India and China. Now if you then take a look to the right, and I said it already at the beginning, the developments in real infrastructure investments for the energy transition have been slower than what we anticipated and hoped for back in 2022. You may say EUR 100 million is not a lot.
I'm actually happy that we use this time, first of all, to be and to continue to be very disciplined in the type of investments that we've allocated to this segment, but use it as well to learn, use it to build up our capabilities, and use it also to focus. I'll get to that in a second. What we've done is focus quite a bit on the repurposing of existing infrastructure that goes at attractive returns. That's an element where we've been successful over the past years with repurposing part of a capacity in five of our terminals globally. We've also used this time to secure strategic positions of land in large industrial ports like Brazil, like Belgium. That's in terms of looking back at the last few years on the accelerate part of our strategy.
Now I've talked about that active portfolio management and maybe a few things to highlight over here. This is a snapshot of what has happened since 2022 to where we are today. Below the big horizontal line, some of the divestments and above some of the investments that we've done in this period. I think the best way to describe it is the way we've looked at the divestments. Those are all assets where we, on the one hand side, said the vulnerability from a market perspective is quite high. More importantly, the cash conversion or the cash contribution of those assets has been low to extremely low and sometimes even negative. What we've done is divested assets in Canada, Eastern Canada, for instance, in the middle of 2022.
They were in a vulnerable market position, not a lot of growth opportunities, hardly any cash generation at the time, and also with the outlook of low cash generation. At the same time, we reinvested in the middle of 2022 and committed strongly for the joint venture in India. You know, since the middle of 2022 to where we are today in India, a large opportunity for growth, a big platform that we've developed over there. There you see how we actively managed that portfolio. Another example is the divestment of our assets in the U.S. and the Netherlands on the chemical distribution side. Savannah and the Botlek assets, they were both vulnerable in their market position, limited growth opportunities, and low to very low and sometimes even negative over a longer period of time in terms of their cash contribution to the company.
We sold them and we reinvested that and recommitted it in projects like REEF, Western Canada, in the acquisition of LNG assets in Europe, in Eemshaven. You see that that's the active way of how we've been looking at re-optimizing or basically optimizing the portfolio of our terminals. Last but not least, on how we look at the execution of our strategy and that safety. You know that's a priority for the company. The reason that's a priority is it's because it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do for us to ensure that everyone who works at the Vopak site returns home safely and healthy at the end of a working day.
It's the right thing to do for us as Vopak to ensure that in the communities in which we operate, we do not cause any harm as a result of the operations that we have. Hence the focus that we have when we talk about safety on personal safety and process safety. You see the numbers over here. Jan Bert will talk more about it and explain it in a bit more detail, but I guess the most important message here is this is important for us in our strategy. We need to make sure that we continuously do better. I'm pleased to say that over the past years, we have been able to improve our performance on both personal safety as well as process safety and can compare ourselves to best in class performance.
If you compare ourselves with our competitors, actually really the best in class, if we compare ourselves to our customers, we're getting in a really very strong and a good recommended performance over there. Now, safety is not isolated when we talk about our drive for sustainability. We have a sustainability roadmap, which we've updated, which I would classify as being ambitious, realistic, and consistent. That's how we look at it. Next to a topic of safety, greenhouse gas emission reduction is also an important part over there. Since the base year 2021, we've been able to reduce our emissions with 43% with Scope one and Scope two emissions. That's when I look at overall the execution of our strategy so far, the portfolio management, the actual figures on improve, grow, and accelerate in our safety performance.
That's how I would look back and qualify that we've delivered and made good and strong progress in the execution. Now let me move to the next topic, which is the best in class growth platform. Let's first take a look at what that platform actually is when we talk about growth. That platform is, as you know, 76 terminals, 50 ports, 23 different countries. We talk a lot about how diversified that portfolio is, and this is a way to actually put that in a bit of a specific contract duration. First, take a look at the left, geographical diversification. If we look at the world, probably or not probably, but these are the numbers, around 25% is actually of our EBITDA in 2024.
25% comes from the Americas, that's Canada all the way to Brazil, around 30% from Europe, Belgium, and mainly Netherlands, 5% less, 3% to be specific, South Africa, and then east of Suez, around 40%. That's the rough split in terms of our EBITDA contribution. East of Suez is anything from Middle East, India, Southeast Asia to China. If we look in the middle, the product diversification, you see a nice spread between oil, chemicals, gas, and new energy and industrial products or industrial terminals that we have over there. I would say the way to look at this is that all these products serve different end markets. It serves energy end market, it serves transportation, it serves manufacturing. All those different end markets in different geographies actually make up for this diversification in the portfolio.
Now then move to the right side, and that's the commercial side, the contract tenure. There it's good to note that around 70% of our contracts have a duration of three years or longer, 70%, around 50% have a duration of five years and longer. At the same time, we have around 12%, which is one year or less. It gives us a nice mix, first of all, with long-term predictable cash flows, while at the same time have the opportunity with the shorter-term contracts also to sometimes benefit from shorter-term upticks in the market that we find potentially attractive to benefit from. This is the way I look at how diversified our total portfolio is beyond the 76 terminals, 50 ports, and 23 countries. Now, what does it lead to? It leads to a very resilient portfolio.
That resilience is needed, especially if you look at it of where the world is today. A lot is changing, a lot is happening in the world. I'm sure it's too much for us to actually try to put that and to capture that in the slides. I'm sure there's going to be some questions later, maybe at the Q&A, which we're happy to engage in and shed a bit of a light on. The way I was planning to share it with you is to give you a bit of confidence of how we've dealt with major global disruptions over the past few years and how our portfolio, given that it's highly diversified and therefore very resilient, how our portfolio has actually been able to cope with it. Because let's face it, we've had COVID, major disruption to the global economy and also product flows.
We've had supply chain disruptions with interruptions in the Panama Canal, in the Red Sea that caused major disruptions for supply chains of a lot of our customers. We've seen geopolitical tensions and very specifically flows being diverted as a result of military conflict and sanctioned products. All of that, if you put that together, it all happened over the past three to five years. I think the best way to look at it and to see, and what does it then do to Vopak? Let's take a look at the global occupancy rate of that network that we had. In this period, our global occupancy rate was anywhere between 88% and 93%. Very healthy, very stable, still growing to the 93% we're currently in. Look at what the EBITDA development, the earnings development has been over that period.
I just showed it to you, but it has increased with around the 12% that I shared with you earlier and a healthy operating cash return. This is not to say that anything can happen in the world and nothing will ever happen to Vopak. That's not my message. My message is we have a resilient portfolio. We have an opportunity because of that diversification to compensate pressure in one location, in one market with upsides in other parts of our portfolio. I think the best way to look at it now, at least, is to take a look back at how the past period has been for us and our global portfolio. That is on the growth platform. Now, what are some of these key trends that I find relevant for the infrastructure industry in which we are operating and are active?
The first one, population growth and also with it the economic growth that comes with it. We all know population, global population continues to grow. It will grow between now and 2050, more or less with another India being added to the global population. That is mainly east of Suez. All these people, next to that, we have a population growth. We also have a massive growth of the middle class. Also, that is mainly happening east of Suez and in Africa. All these people, they want access to affordable energy. They want access to affordable goods and services. That is what needs to be taken care of. If you look at the right, there is a growth in manufacturing capacity that is required to serve that. There is a growth in energy demand that is required to take care of that.
The growth in energy demand is not only because of population growth. It also has a lot to do by the increase in energy for data and AI users. We all know that. If you add to that the political uncertainty, the global geopolitical uncertainty, security of supply and energy security is a key topic. A lot of what is coming back and what you see in the headlines is super relevant for our industry on a day-to-day basis, for our portfolio on a day-to-day basis. The last one is the ongoing energy transition. Yes, it may go slower. It will go slower, but it's still happening. We are changing our energy system and it's going in different levels of speed in different parts of the world with different type of solutions.
One thing is very clear, there is a lot of infrastructure needed and there is very limited space available where to build that infrastructure to actually cater for these new energy flows that are going to be built up. One thing is for sure as well, it is going to be costly. If it is costly and there is not enough space, you need to work together and you need to have specialized parties that basically can create economies of scale and can have the opportunity to rebuild and repurpose existing infrastructure in existing ports. I think if you look at it on what is happening on a macroeconomic perspective and how that translates into larger trends for infrastructure and specifically for an infrastructure platform that we as Vopak operate, I think it is some very clear indications on the increased demand for infrastructure.
Now, how does it then look specifically for gas and industrial? We already have on the gas side an existing portfolio of 18 terminals, one eight. You see that the demand growth expected for a product like LPG, yes, it's from 2010 to 2040, but there is a CAGR of 4% during that period that requires flows that are going around the world that need infrastructure in different parts of the world. The same goes for LNG. There is an enormous amount of additional LNG that is going to be shipped around the world in the coming period, an 8% CAGR. I think with the way we as Vopak are positioned from an origination point of view and the experience that we have with our current network, positions us extremely well to benefit from that.
Just to mind and to remind you on the gas side, we're not talking about export facilities from places like the US or the Middle East. We're talking about regasification import facilities. That is of our interest. That's on gas. Let's take a look at manufacturing. I already shared some of the headline percentages, but over here you see mainly the impressive expected growth on east of Suez, Middle East, Southeast Asia, China, and also on the industrial side. We already operate a network of 18 terminals. On the industrial side, although it's maybe less visible, there is, because of our existing footprint that we have, a lot of opportunities that come by. I would call it brownfield opportunities. We already have a presence in the location. Because of that presence, there's a small expansion being added to it.
There is a very natural flow of additional capacity and capital that we can put to work in some of those locations. Every now and then, we also have a bigger greenfield development, like the one we opened in 2024 in Qinzhou in China to serve our global customer Exxon. Let's also not forget when we talk about manufacturing about the U.S., because with everything that's going on at the moment, the drive to add more manufacturing capacity to the U.S. is very loud and clear. Also there is an expectation to grow, and we have a position over here to benefit in many of our locations. As a result, how do we look at our opportunities in that grow area? I already told you it's the additional EUR 1 billion. Why? Because we have that established footprint, because we have and we like the long-term contracts.
Why are the contracts long-term? Because the infrastructure is very dedicated. If somebody tells us, "Put this over here and it only serves my particular plant," then it's very hard for us to use it for someone else. That is a very natural discussion to say, "Customer, you also have to commit for a long term because it serves you and it serves us." That long-term contract is an important element. Last but not least, it's attractive cash or EBITDA multiples and an attractive cash return. That is on grow and the additional billion on growth. If I move to the focused investment in the energy transition infrastructure, I said it already at the start, we've used the period to build up capabilities, people, capabilities and knowledge.
We've used the opportunity also to learn, to learn a lot in different parts of the energy transition or the accelerate bucket through different initiatives that we've taken. We've also therefore had the opportunity now to say, "What is it after three years that we really want to focus on more specifically going forward?" That's low carbon fuels and feedstocks. That's ammonia as the hydrogen carrier. That's liquid CO2 and it's battery energy storage. I'll go into a little bit more detail in one of the next slides. That's the growth platform that we've defined with our allocation of EUR 2 billion in grow and our allocation and our reconfirmation of EUR 1 billion in the accelerate area. The question is, "Are you capable of actually winning and being able to deliver this?
Why are you convinced that you can do that? I'll take you through in the next slide on what it means per different segment, but on the overall side, and you'll hear more about that later in the presentations from Maarten and Jan Bert, but our capabilities to deliver all the way from origination to turning an idea into the commercial construct, into the stakeholder management to actually get it permitted, to do the design and the engineering for a new project, to execute a project on time within budget, to actually then, once it's in operation, be in all fairness, the best operator in the long term to actually operate these assets, I think gives us a fantastic capability to be confident in the ability to deliver.
Our network, our existing network with well-established positions in all these ports around the world is another testimony to our capability to deliver. Last but not least, we have the financial strength. We are in a healthy position at the moment. Michiel will take you through in a minute in more detail, but we have the capability to actually deliver this and to benefit from the significant growth opportunities that are being offered. Now, as I said, let's see. Here we go to the next one. That right to win in the development of gas and industry on the energy transition infrastructure. First, on the industrial side, we have that capability. We have the strategic locations. It is financially attractive and the investment multiple of between five and seven is proven and is what you see today in the delivery.
If you then look at low carbon fuels and feedstocks, that is the fuels and the feedstocks for sustainable aviation fuel, for renewable diesel. It is mainly at existing locations where we have brownfield additions or repurposing of existing infrastructure. We have the locations. It is financially attractive and it is roughly done at an investment multiple of between 4x-6x EBITDA. Ammonia as a hydrogen carrier. Ammonia is the one that we, when we talk to all our customers, is the product and is the supply chain and the value chain that is most likely to be delivered and to be developed in the coming years. Hence we focus now when we talk about hydrogen, not so much about liquid hydrogen, not about liquid organic hydrogen carrier, but mainly ammonia as a key carrier for hydrogen. We have the capabilities.
We already store it at six locations in our network. That's gray ammonia, but it's the same infrastructure. We have the strategic locations in places like Antwerp, in Houston, in Singapore, where we have physically the location. There's no reason to believe that we cannot construct an ammonia terminal for blue or green ammonia in the future that has a complete different financial attractiveness than the ones that we are constructing today when we did it for gray ammonia. Hence we are confident that this is attractive and that we can do it at attractive investment multiples. The same goes for liquid CO2. You read a lot about CCS. We are a believer that CCS is an effective way to decarbonize large industrial complexes. The storage is immediately adjacent to the area where you capture the CO2.
That's not necessarily where we as Vopak can play a big role. Where we do play a role is when the CO2 is captured at a location where you cannot immediately store it and it needs to be shipped from one location to the other location. Example, Singapore, beautiful island, a lot of industry needs to be decarbonized through carbon capture, but there's no way to store it immediately over there and to inject it long term. There needs to be other places in the vicinity to actually ship it to. When you need to ship it, you first need to liquefy it because it's not economic to ship. You need infrastructure for that. You need export infrastructure and you need import infrastructure at the location where you're finally going to receive it.
Therefore, in terms of focusing our effort in CCS, liquid CO2 is the element where we are focusing on when we talk CCS. Last but not least, battery energy storage with an increasing proportion of renewable energy as part of our global energy mix, wind and solar, and the intermittency and solving the intermittency challenge that you have with more renewable energy being brought to the grid, you need intermittent storage opportunities. That is something that is relatively new for us because we do not store today electricity. We have a first investment in Texas, but it is relatively new for us.
If you take a look at it, although we don't have the locations today because we don't expect this to happen at the major port locations, from a financial point of view, what we start to learn and understand better and better is that there is a role for an infrastructure player. There is a role for someone that actually puts the batteries, develops the project, gets the permit, and basically allows people that want to trade the electricity with the battery actually to pay for the fact that you are the asset owner in a very similar way as what we have in our molecules business, where we are the owner of the infrastructure and people that want to trade with the commodity basically use our tanks, pay us a decent return for it.
What we see now is on that battery energy storage that there is an opportunity if we structure that the right way to get long-term commitments to be able to attract debt financing for it. Hence, the financial attractiveness becomes actually quite interesting for us as a company. Also, the reason that we are therefore looking into opportunities, trying to learn, set up our teams and making sure that we can allocate more capital into the battery energy storage between now and 2030. Let's see, the multiple that we expect from a financial point of view to the ammonia, liquid CO2 and batteries is anywhere between this earlier quoted already 6x-8x EBITDA.
Now I want to reiterate, especially on this accelerate part and the EUR 1 billion, and you've seen that I think in the last three years, this is not a goal per se. It's not that we do everything to make sure that we just, against all odds, make sure that we invest the EUR 1 billion. In a lot of these projects, I think you have to realize that our role, we are not on the critical path, I always say in a lot of these projects. Supply chains get built, get set up in a way that it's not that somebody basically says, "You need to have your liquid CO2 terminal ready before there's any flow of liquid CO2 established." We are talking to a lot of parties.
We are developing these projects, but we're going in the flow of the development until the moment that we make the final investment decision. We have a good visibility on the financial attractiveness. We have a good visibility on how we can structure these projects. Hence, we make a very calculated and a very controlled and a disciplined investment decision. Hence, the reason that I'm confident these opportunities are there. If they are there, we will execute on them successfully. Vopak in 2030, EUR 3 billion of growth commitments, an operating cash return above 13%, a portfolio by then that will see an increase in gas industrial, but also new energy infrastructure. That energy transition support. Last but not least, shareholder returns that are progressive in terms of dividend and an annual evaluation of a share buyback.
In summary, 13, 2, and 1, those are the key numbers. Last but not least, if you ask me and where my emotion sits, I'm very proud of what we have been able to deliver so far in executing our strategy. I'm very excited for the growth opportunities that are out there, and I'm very confident that we have the capability to win this. Thank you very much for your attention. Michiel.
Thank you, Dick. Also, warm welcome from my side for those who are attending here live in New York and for those who are virtually connected to us today. The first good news of today is, if you remember Capital Markets Day 2022, we had to delay it because I fell off my bike. This year I stayed on my bike, so I'm able to timely deliver on the Capital Markets Day 2025.
Let me take you on the journey, which is very much focused on cash and how that links to our growth ambitions, but also how that links to our shareholder ambitions. First of all, if you look at the journey we have taken so far since 2022, we have a proven execution, a very strong track record in delivering our strategy, as Dick already explained, leading to very solid results also from a financial perspective. I will dive in a bit deeper later on. We have been able to position ourselves and to commit ourselves to significant growth, and that's why we are able to update our growth ambitions. We have shown a very strong shareholder focus, not only by our progressive dividend, but also by our share buyback programs in 2024 and 2025.
If you look at the strategy execution achievements in the three pillars, we work along, improve, grow, and accelerate. First of all, let's focus on the left-hand side, which is really on the improve side. 17% increase in EBITDA performance since 2021. More importantly, 46% increase in free cash flow generation by the company. At the same time, we have been able to reduce our leverage with half-time EBITDA in the last three years, which means we have more room to grow from a balance sheet point of view. If I then focus on the grow in the middle, that's a very well-diversified portfolio of growth opportunities. We have reached the EUR 1 billion we set ourselves as an ambition in 2022. Presently, we're constructing around cubic meters of gas and industrial capacity, which so far we have spent around EUR 250 million on.
Obviously, that will continue that journey in the coming years. Last but not least, on the accelerate side, we have allocated EUR 105 million of the EUR 1 billion ambition, so just over 10%. We have repurposed around cubic meters in our existing facilities. We have decided at the same time to strategically review our position in Vopak Ventures. The options we are looking at are to exit Vopak Ventures because it has not delivered what we thought it was going to deliver in 2022. That is a decision which has been taken, and we hope that we can give more clarity to the market on how we would like to exit the portfolio going forward. We have shown over the last years that we are also quite active in our portfolio management, looking at the portfolio we have.
We have been able to rationalize a large part of our portfolio and took in EUR 634 million as proceeds from divestments. I will show you what the free cash flow impact has been of those divestments in the next slide. The capital employed reduction has been EUR 520 million, so approximately half a billion euros. We have been able to reinvest that money into projects. Around EUR 445 million has been reinvested in multiple ranges between 4x-8x EBITDA, so relatively healthy multiples in terms of reinvesting. That has led altogether to optimizing, as I said, our free cash flow generation with a plus of 46% over what we achieved in 2021. At the same time, we have also been able to reduce our proportional operating CapEx because we have sold high maintenance terminals.
Effectively, that has led to a reduction of 25% in our operating CapEx, which then adds to our operating free cash flow. If you look at the impact of the portfolio transition, and let's focus first on the waterfall graph, you see that we generated EUR 553 million of free cash flow in 2021, and we have been able to increase that to EUR 806 million in 2024. Effectively, our existing assets generate approximately EUR 250 million more of cash per year. If you multiply that over the period 2022 to 2030, that's somewhere between EUR 1.5 billion and EUR 2 billion extra cash. The steps towards that higher cash flow for an exchange impact EUR 38 million. The divestment actually positively contributed to our cash flow. These were negatively cash operating assets effectively, which we sold.
We reinvested that into positively generating cash flow assets, EUR 75 million plus. Our existing assets generated EUR 125 million more, mainly driven by the higher occupancy level, but also with a strong focus on cost and with a strong focus on the operating CapEx. That has led to a much more healthy cash return on our capital. We started in 2021 with 10%. We were able in 2022 to increase it to just above 11%, in 2023 to 14%, and ultimately in 2024 to 15%. As Dick already explained, our ambition is to at least be above 13% in every year, in every circumstance. A healthy development as a result of our portfolio transition and also because of our performance. If you then look at the portfolio, we have the contract portfolio, which is underpinning our results.
On the left-hand side, you see the EBITDA margins, relatively stable, healthy EBITDA margins, slightly improving from 54% to 57% in 2024. If you look at the middle, you see the contract durations that effectively the durations are being extended. In 2021, we had 60% of our contracts, which was above three years and longer. Now we have 70%, which is three years and longer. It means our cash flows are more stable than what they were in 2021. On top of that, also on the right-hand side, you see our inflation protection. 50% of our contracts has 100% inflation coverage. We have indexation clauses in our commercial contracts. Between 20% of the contracts has between 50% and 100% inflation coverage, and 30% of our contracts has between 0% and 50% inflation coverage.
We're well protected, not fully protected for inflation, but well protected for any inflation development. Is there volatility in our business? That's what people ask a lot. How much volatility is there in your business? There is volatility, of course, because first of all, the occupancy level of our capacity is a very important factor. We're running at 93%. There is still some upward potential if we're able to push it to 94%-95%. Obviously, there is also downside risk because we also have been in historical years at around 90% or sometimes even below 90%. Definitely there is always volatility. You see very strong oil markets today, weaker chemical markets. Let's see what the world is going to bring going forward, but we still aim for a very high occupancy level. Every year we need to renew 20% of our revenues.
Although we have long-term contracts in place, if you look at the contract portfolio, approximately 20% of our revenues need to be renewed. If the market conditions are good, then obviously we have a pricing opportunity. If the market conditions are not that good, then obviously there is some downward risk on the pricing. If people decide to leave us for whatever reason, we need to find replacement volume. We're always busy with, let's say, renewing the portfolio from year by year and then looking at the pricing opportunities we have. As I already said, 30% of our contracts only have inflation correction indexation clauses between 0%-50%. The rest is more or less well protected. That has also been the basis, this volatility in combination with the growth opportunities to set a target above 13%. We're running at 15% today.
We obviously aim for very healthy growth projects, but on the other hand, we should not forget that there is volatility in our business going forward. If you look at the performance per share, which for us is a very important metric, and I also start here again on the left-hand side with the proportional operating free cash flow per share. In 2021, we were at EUR 4.41, and in the meantime, we have increased our free cash flow per share with 52% to EUR 6.69, which is a combination of a much higher free cash flow, but also the result because we bought back quite a few shares last year and we continue to do so. Our earnings per share increase of 40% to EUR 3.8 in 2021 and EUR 3.34 in 2024.
Also a very healthy development, and that has led to a dividend payout, which increased 28% between 2021 and 2024, increasing from EUR 1.25 to EUR 1.60, while at the same time the payout ratio has dropped from 50%-55% to 45%-50%. A healthy dividend development for our shareholders and also some room to effectively buy back some of the shares. We are well positioned for growth, as Dick already explained. There is an ability to win projects, but there is also an ability to execute in a proper manner. First of all, we have a very solid financial position. We are generating a lot more cash than we did in 2021. We have a very strong focus on upstreaming the dividends from our joint ventures because we have many joint ventures in our company. That is a very vital part of our strategy.
We have created quite a bit of optionality to fund growth. I will come back to the India example later on. A very strong financial foundation to grow our company going forward. At the same time, in the middle, we have a proven project execution. We are able to really execute the project delivery in a consistent manner, in schedule, on time, within budget, and with the highest safety standards. Obviously, this is very important because we spend a lot of money going forward, and we are also already spending a lot of money to basically grow our portfolio and grow our footprint in the world. This consistent delivery and strong project execution is going to help us going forward. We are still searching and looking for attractive opportunities. That does not go without any cost. I just also want to make that clear.
Before we come to FID, final investment decisions, we need to spend already quite a bit of money on the pre-FID investments just to make sure that we can take an FID decision. We have strong capabilities. Maarten is going to explain that a bit more on the commercial side and the business development side to identify those projects. That also comes with a cost. We have significant business development teams looking in the world. Where are the opportunities for us to really land our capital going forward? From the delivery and the position where we are as a company to how can we grow our base going forward? As Dick already said, we're doubling down on our base in industrial and gas terminals from EUR 1 billion to EUR 2 billion by 2030.
That's focused on gas terminals because there is a drive in the world for energy security, especially on the gas side. There is also a driver to use more gas. Effectively, there is also a lot of opportunities to convert coal to gas-fired power plants. Gas is really still a fast-growing market, and peak gas is much further away than peak oil, it looks like today. On the industrial expansions, we still see a lot of opportunities because we are present in many industrial clusters in the world to expand there as well, to facilitate our customers which are there, and to underpin that very much by long-term contracts because industrial terminals as well as gas terminals have both very long-term contracts.
You may expect by putting a lot more capital into this section that our portfolio will also, in terms of contract duration, shift more towards the longer-term part than to the shorter-term part. On the acceleration towards energy transition infrastructure, we are reconfirming the EUR 1 billion, and it has two major building blocks. First of all, we are repurposing existing capacity. We did an analysis of our oil hub capacity, and we expect that in the coming decade, up to 2035, around 30%-40% of our oil hub capacity needs to be repurposed into lower carbon fuels. Very good opportunities for us, attractive multiples, and we expect to allocate between 10%-20% up to 2030 of this EUR 1 billion. That is EUR 100 million-EUR 200 million out of the EUR 1 billion.
The rest, we will effectively invest in energy transition infrastructure, as Dick already explained, anything to do with CO2, with ammonia. We have good projects, hopefully some battery storage as well. We see that with good projects, with long-term contracts, and also with attractive multiples for our investors. Basically combining the growth portfolio and the ambitious into one overview with all the multiples. Let me start on the gas and industrial side. 5x-7x EBITDA, that's what we aim for, and that's what we also have seen already in the commitments we have made so far on the projects, the first EUR1 billion. We expect that trend is going to continue in the coming years. On the accelerate side, repurposing current assets, we have already proven that we can do that somewhere between 4x-6x .
Anything moving from existing capacity towards low carbon fuels can be done on a very attractive EBITDA multiple. New energy transition infrastructure will come in at around 6x-8x , potentially starting more at the 8x , and once the business is growing, will drop to 7x-6x . We see good prospects there as well. Overall, that will mean that we are able, with this total growth portfolio and the existing business, to lead to an operating cash return, which is above 13% in each and every year. Some guidance on the growth CapEx for this year.
We expect that it will be in the range of EUR 300 million-EUR 400 million on a consolidated basis, but on a proportional basis, it is going to be EUR 500 million-EUR 600 million, which is quite a large sum, which we're going to invest in this year. Combining the growth ambitions with the strong cash flow from our portfolio, I already explained on the left-hand side the growth in proportional operating cash flow from EUR 553 million to EUR 806 million. You see also the split between joint ventures and subsidiaries. At the moment, 45% of our cash flow is generated by subsidiaries, and 55% of our cash flow is generated by joint ventures. In the middle, you see the focus on the dividend upstreaming. The dividend upstreaming in 2021 was around 72%. We have reached 110% in 2024.
We aim for a minimum 90% upstreaming of dividends, but we want to make sure that the cash comes into the holding so that we can also finance activities from the holding into growth projects. On the right-hand side, this is important as well. As I said, we double down on gas and accelerate, sorry, on gas and industrial. That is EUR 2 billion plus EUR 1 billion makes EUR 3 billion, but this is consolidated CapEx. If you translate that into the proportional CapEx, it is EUR 4 billion. EUR 2.6 billion for gas and industrial and EUR 1.4 billion for new energy infrastructure. Why is that important? Because ultimately the proportional CapEx will be the value creator. The multiples we are providing to you on these separate investments will effectively need to be tied down to the EUR 4 billion investment.
That's where the value of the company will go. If you then look at the balance sheet of the company, which for us is a very important and first priority in our capital allocation policy, our balance sheet in 2021, we were running at 3.2x proportional leverage, so 3.2x proportional EBITDA to proportional debt, of which, and then you look at the blue part of that bar, of which 0.2 were assets under construction. Effectively assets which were not contributing any EBITDA at that moment. That means that at that time we had a portfolio of operating assets with a leverage of 3x EBITDA. If you look at 2024, that has improved because the existing assets are now running at 2.27x instead of 3x leverage. Our operating assets, which are under construction, effectively assets under construction have doubled from 0.2- 0.4.
The blue part is under construction, not contributing any EBITDA, but will contribute EBITDA over time. The target we have set ourselves in the long run is to run the company on a leverage level between 2.5x and 3x EBITDA. At the same time, we realize with this massive growth program in place that sometimes we will end up between 3x and 3.5x because it takes time to develop these projects. These are significant projects taken into account, for example, the REEF terminal we're building in the west of Canada, which is close to EUR 500 million. It takes three years to construct it. Effectively, that means that sometimes we will reach between 3x and 3.5x , but that's more temporarily and really linked to the construction period of our assets.
Maybe as a separate example, how can we also create value? One of the things to create value is to also list yourself into a market like India. What we're trying to do with the listing in India is to unlock the value of what we have achieved in India so far and how we can fund the growth going forward. To take you along in the journey in India, in 2022, we invested in India approximately EUR 200 million. Together with Aegis, we formed a joint venture, and we're earning a network now of 1.5million cubic meters in six ports, six vital ports in India. We still see a lot of growth opportunities, and we also see that the market valuations in India are quite high.
We have decided to effectively start an IPO process, which we hope to conclude in the first half year of 2025, to gain, let's say, from the momentum there is in India, to really position ourselves for growth, to attract funds to fund our growth going forward, and to make sure that we are not purely from a holding point of view funding this growth exercise, but that we have the optionality to always tap into the market in India. As I said, we invested EUR 200 million. We sold 3.4% of our 49% stake at EUR 88 million. That means if you do a quick calculation, you will come to EUR 1.3 billion as a value of the company now. That's obviously what we also hope to achieve in the IPO. Post money with the IPO, this company should be worth approximately EUR 3 billion.
That's a nice example of how we could also unlock value in our portfolio and to really prove that we are creating value with our assets in certain markets. Let me focus a bit on the disciplined capital allocation framework. We have not changed the order of it, but we have maybe fine-tuned it a bit. First of all, and most important for us, is to maintain a very robust balance sheet. That is the foundation for our growth. We want to make sure that we have a healthy proportional leverage ratio, and that's why we aim for in the longer run between 2.5x and 3x EBITDA. Second priority is we want to make sure that we distribute shareholder value to our investors by a progressive dividend policy. We have shown that we have increased it 28% over the last four years to EUR 1.60 per dividend.
That journey will continue. The third element of our capital allocation policy is to really invest in attractive and accretive growth. Anything we do, you may expect that it is going to be based on our ambition of minimum 30% cash return. Last but not least, and this is maybe a change to last time, we have added to our capital allocation framework the fact that we will always look at potential share buybacks and will annually evaluate that. We did that in 2024 when we announced a EUR 300 million share buyback. We also did it in the beginning of 2025 with a EUR 100 million share buyback, and we will continue to do that going forward based on this capital allocation framework. As I said, we have a very strong focus on creating value for our shareholders, and you can see the profile in the graph.
We have a track record of progressive dividends. Over the time, we have delivered from 2021 with EUR 151 million of dividends. We have almost gone to close to EUR 190 million dividends with less shares outstanding. We have also added the share buyback to the distribution to our shareholders. Overall, over the last four years, we have returned EUR 1 billion to our shareholders since 2021. We hope that that makes us also very attractive from an investor point of view because we really focus on what needs to be achieved there. Vopak in 2030, Dick already also explained this, but maybe good to repeat it. Growth commitments, EUR 3 billion, but please be aware that's EUR 4 billion in proportional CapEx. That's the real value creation in my mind. Operating cash return above 13%. We have a very well-diversified portfolio.
You see in the two bars that effectively of the capital employed, our oil assets will almost half in terms of percentage of capital employed, and the gas assets will continue to grow going forward. From 25% to 35-40% of our capital employed. You also see that the light blue and the dark blue, if you add it and then also add the green to it, that is most likely all long-term based contracts. It gives us a very stable profile going forward. Last but not least, repetitive, progressive dividends and annual evaluation of our share buyback program. Let me round it off also where I started. There is a strong driver in the company to focus on cash, a strong driver to invest our money, the cash we generate with our existing portfolio into growth projects.
There is a strong focus on making sure that we deliver attractive shareholder returns. What we can say today, at least in the first three years, we have a proven track record. We want to continue on that journey and want to make sure that we prove that we can execute the ambitions we have, that we can deliver on significant growth, and that we can deliver on your expectations as shareholders. That is the reason why you would like to invest in Vopak. Thanks very much for the attention, and we're ready for the Q&A, Dick.
Great. Thank you very much. For the Q&A, we have a microphone over here and a microphone on that side. If you have a question, please raise your hand. If you can state at least your name and where you're from, that helps us.
Please ask the question, and we'll try to answer them as best as we can. Who wants to go first?
Lampros. Hi, Lampros Smailis from Kempen. I guess my first question is around the commitment of the additional money on gas and industrials. Dick, you said it's not really a hard stop. You're not going to spend it no matter what. I guess my question is, why commit that number then and not just be open to what the market offers? I guess that's the one point. If I see your backlog or potential backlog in gas and industrials, thinking the recent Thailand, South Africa, Australia, then you're basically almost to that billion. If there are more opportunities, why have that cap?
Then when we look at the accelerate framework, what gives you the sort of confidence that you can achieve those returns? Because when I look at competitors or people that are in the space, they do not seem to be getting good enough returns. How are you able to achieve that, I guess? Thank you.
Thanks, Lamproos. Maybe the first one on the gas and industrial. The additional billion, we first need to make sure that we land those projects. South Africa, Australia, they are not there yet. They are opportunities where we are spending time and effort. It is by no means in the back or in the bank. Thailand, we have committed for. That is a project that will be started and will be executed in the coming period.
I think for us, it makes sense to drive the organization and give direction on how we see the split between industrial and gas on the one hand and accelerate on the other hand of how we look at spending our growth capital in the company. That's the reason that we want to give direction to the market to make sure that you have a clear line of sight of what we are spending our time and effort on and how we look at those significant growth opportunities and how we think we can convert them. As I said in the presentation, both on the growth side as well as on the accelerate side, it's not a target that we have to deliver at any cost, or especially if the projects are not attractive. We want to deliver them if and when the projects become attractive.
If in the very good situation that we are able to get to the EUR 2 billion for gas and industrial earlier than 2030, we will reevaluate and give an update to the market and see where we are then. If you look at the accelerate side, the confidence, I'm not going to stand over here and say the confidence is there and we will easily deliver the EUR 1 billion. That's not what we're saying. What we have discovered up until now is that especially in that repurposing, as Michiel said, that's more attractive than what we thought in the past. I think on the ammonia side, there is a lot less hype and there's more realism. Some of the ammonia infrastructure terminals, they will get built. We just want to make sure we get a fair portion of that.
The size of those projects, I think for all of the projects that we talk about, but especially on ammonia, liquid CO2, because of a lot of inflation on the CapEx side, the size of those projects become also bigger than what we thought they were going to be back in 2022. I think we are well positioned. We are confident we have the capabilities. That is why we also are confident to reconfirm to the market now that the EUR1 billion is something that we're going to strive for. If we won't get there, I mean, we're not going to invest in projects that we don't find attractive. Why do I think that we still will be able to get the returns? Because the opposite also doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Why would we invest in infrastructure for ammonia, let's say, and actually commit for ammonia? All of a sudden, because of the fact that the ammonia has a different color label, namely blue or green instead of gray, we all of a sudden wouldn't get a similar type of return that we get for the gray ammonia that we currently store in Houston, in Singapore, in Malaysia. It doesn't make a lot of sense why somebody would do that and why we would be forced to kind of like in the end then subsidize basically that new product coming in. I think where in reality where you will see, as Michiel already said, maybe the volume ramp up will take a little bit of time. That's why we're probably at the edge of that 8x EBITDA, maybe at the starting phase.
Slowly but surely, when there's more volume going through the infrastructure, I think that's where you will see that it will take a little bit of time to catch up, if that makes sense.
Good morning. Quirijn Mulder from ING. A couple of questions. Can you give me, Dick, some idea about the oil market? Because the EUR 250 million increase of cash flow, in my view, is mainly driven by the favorable circumstances for oil and helped you. That's my first question. With regard to the leverage, 2.5x-3x , what part do you take into account which is under construction? Because that can make also a difference there. Small question there. My final question is on the share buybacks.
How attractive is a share buyback when your price is 7.5x multiples, whereas you can build between 4x and 6x for gas terminals and other interesting projects?
Shall I maybe start with the oil side and then you take the other two? Maybe on the oil side, Quirijn, I think if you look at the occupancy rate on oil hub terminals has definitely gone up over the past few years. That is on the back of simply more flows moving into those big locations, Singapore Straits, Rotterdam, and Fujairah. Those are the big movers. We have definitely seen increased volumes, increased volatility as a result of what is going on in the world, and therefore a safe haven and security of supply in those big locations. As a result, we have been able to also have quite a bit of price leverage.
The rates have developed in a healthy manner. I think at the same time, oil is to the one side. I think we've also clearly explained the fact that we did our portfolio rationalization, the fact that we've, from a cash flow perspective, also looked very critically at our operating capital expenses, so sustaining CapEx. I think that has definitely been a big contributor at the same time as well. I think for the next phase, we will get the contribution from some of these bigger growth projects that we've invested in. I think it's the benefit, again, of having a diversified and a resilient portfolio that you can benefit from these market opportunities.
Yeah, maybe on the leverage side, what we have tried at least to make very clear is, let's say, what is the proportional leverage of the whole portfolio?
Taking into account all the joint ventures, because we got a lot of questions on how much debt do you have in the joint ventures and how does that actually work? You have seen that we now also identified how much is under construction. We have not set a target, but what you may expect over time is that once we reach two to three or go into the bracket of three to 3.5, that the 0.4 will be significantly higher than where we are today. We want to make that more transparent because with the increased CapEx program, we will see more assets under construction which are not delivering EBITDA yet. I think that is very important for people to understand to put also the leverage into the right perspective. That is one. Your last question, Quirijn, was on the share buyback.
On the share buyback. Yeah. Yeah, for us, it's a nice balance because we're trading historically quite low. If you look at that, we're trading at around 7x our proportional EBITDA. We have been in days somewhere around 9x-10x . Yes, we combine it with growth, although growth is more important for us, but then in the priority setting, then a share buyback. It's also an opportunity for us to buy our share at a relatively low multiple, we think. By the way, our major shareholder thinks the same because they're not selling. While in the past, they were selling, they haven't sold anything in 2024, and they're not going to sell anything in 2025.
For us, it is also a nice discipline to have in the company because if people come with projects which are far above 7x or come with projects of nine times, can we actually pursue those projects? For us, the choice is relatively easy and saying, why would we do this, guys, if we can buy back our own share at seven times? It is also setting a nice discipline in our mind of moving projects into the right direction.
Maybe just one coming back to the oil side, Jan Bert will talk about that later in his presentation. Uptime of our assets, so availability of capacity because of faster turnaround of our tanks, has definitely also helped over here. That obviously with large capacities that are dedicated to oil has definitely benefited the oil market.
Jan Bert will talk in more detail and has some numbers over there to share. Thijs.
Sorry. Thijs Berkelder, ABN AMRO Oddo BHF. A couple of questions. First, on your slide 20, at least in my package 20, but probably 19 on yours. You show a portfolio mix over the different categories, 2024 towards 2030. The total size of the capital employed shows flat. My question is, what kind of growth in capital employed should we expect from 2024 to 2030 given your CapEx plans?
Quite significant. It shows flat because the bar is percentage. Obviously, the percentages in 2030 are of a much higher capital employed than what they are in 2024. Effectively, if we take the proportional capital employed and we are going to invest EUR 4 billion, we have committed EUR 1.4 billion today, which we have not spent yet.
If you deduct from the EUR 1.4 billion effectively what we have spent already and then go back to the EUR 4 billion, then you can approximately assume what the capital employed is going to be in 2030. We have not disclosed that, but it is a significantly higher capital employed than where we are today.
Something like EUR 7 billion versus EUR 5.5 billion.
Yeah, I think even above EUR 7 billion.
Yeah. Clear. A logical question given your, let's say, lifting the floor on the operating cash returns from 12% to 13%. What can we expect for 2025? Lower than 2024, flat, roughly flat or higher than 2024. What is a logical, easy one for you?
We have not given any ambition. The ambition is to at least be above the 13%. We have not given any indication for 2025. We will not do that on the cash return.
We have done it on the EBITDA levels. We have done it on the operating sustaining CapEx level. If you make your assumption around capital employed, you could run the number yourself, but we haven't given that indication. What needs to happen to make it clearly lower than 24? Given your high market levels, inflation high. What we don't expect in 2025 is that we have a massive drop in our OCR. This is a long-term target. This is up to 2030. Anything may happen in the oil market, anything may happen in the chemical market. That may impact our cash flows if occupancies really drop. As a result, we have said, okay, let's at least increase it with 1%, the floor.
Let's also make sure that we are not providing a statement to the market that in any circumstances, any development in the world, we will always have a sustainable, strong cash flow. There is certainly some volatility in our portfolio.
You are looking for an exit from Vopak Ventures, probably zero EBITDA, so a divestment price 100x EBITDA or so, whatever. You are targeting reaching CapEx savings by listing the Indian joint venture at 40x EBITDA. Those savings and proceeds, will they be used for share buybacks, additional share buybacks? Is that an option or already discussed?
It's always an option because it's now part of our capital allocation framework and we will evaluate it at the year end. First of all, we still need to determine the exit possibilities for ventures. This is not a portfolio which you sell overnight.
It's like approximately 20 investments in smaller ventures. Obviously, a lot of companies are selling their venture portfolio at the moment. It is quite crowded in the market, I would say. That first has to be realized. Secondly, we need to realize the IPO, which has a benefit for us because ultimately we will be able to get back our shareholder loan, which sits into the joint venture. We no longer need to fund, let's say, the India venture going forward from a holding point of view. Once all this is being realized and looking at the growth progress we make this year and the cash we have available, by the year end, we will look at it again and say, well, is there for us sufficient room to buy back our share? Do we still think it's a very attractive thing to do?
That's how we look at it. That's why we said, let's annually evaluate because there's quite a few things which still have to be concluded, of course.
Yes. For now, final question. Is it logical to assume timing of peak leverage somewhere in 2026, given the range of projects then coming close to delivery?
Peak leverage. Yeah, it's a bit depending on how quickly we can commit the additional EUR 1 billion. If you would think of the existing commitments, yes, then peak leverage is somewhere in 2026 because a major chunk of the cash for the Western Canada project goes out this year. We're delivering on the fourth tank of Gate. If we're able to land new projects, then obviously, yeah, if we land a project like Australia, which will have a significant cash out, then maybe peak leverage is later than 2026.
Yeah.
Good morning. Jeremy Kincaid from Van Lanschot Kempen. I'll just start with the new energies portfolio. Obviously, there's a difference between repurposing and also brownfield developments. I was just wondering when it comes to repurposing existing terminals, the 4x-6x investment multiple, does that also include the lost earnings that you'd have from repurposing an oil terminal?
Yeah. Simple answer, yeah. It's basically the investment that we have to do and the additional EBITDA that we are generating over and above as a premium of what we take the tanks out of service for.
Okay, sure. What sort of return would those oil terminals be generating when you decide to take them offline or repurpose them, I should say?
You mean the overall return of the oil assets or you mean, let's say, that particular part we're going to repurpose?
That particular part.
I'm just wondering at what stage you think this return is not sufficient anymore and it's time to repurpose it.
It's more depending on what kind of opportunities we see, so what kind of low carbon fuels demand we see in the market. Take an example. In LA, we had a very good opportunity to bring in sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel. We had fuel oil in those tanks, which was a one-year contract. We could replace it by a seven-year contract. Then we look at the economics of the case, saying, okay, effectively, we need to invest a limited sum of money versus, let's say, building the whole infrastructure new. That is going to contribute additional EBITDA, and it's also leading to a longer contract duration because why would we convert capacity for a one-year contract? That's not what we're going to do.
You see these opportunities also in Rotterdam, in Vlaardingen, you see these opportunities in Singapore, you see the opportunities in Brazil. Step by step, you see all kinds of pockets of opportunities. Case by case, we will evaluate, is it a smart decision now to convert this capacity into a newer, lower carbon fuel, or should we wait for another one or two years? Obviously, you continuously need to look at what's the best timing and is it delivering the right return. We have seen already, and that's proven, that with these kinds of investments, we can make attractive returns.
Okay, clear. On lifting the floor of the proportional operating cash return, obviously, there's the EUR 250 million uplift and the proportional free cash flow, and you have that helpful table which decomposes the breakdown.
Obviously, there's the divestments and the investments, which is about EUR 90 million of uplift, and that's here to stay and probably permanent. Obviously, there's about EUR 40 million of FX impact, which could reverse potentially. Within the existing assets, there's EUR 125 million there, and you called out occupancy, operating cash, CapEx, and cost savings, which has driven the uplift. Occupancy, you're sort of at the top end of your target range you alluded to. The other components, operating CapEx and costs. Could you just talk to those dynamics and give us some color on how permanent you think those lower levels of costs and OpEx could be going forward?
Yeah, from my end, and Dick will add. What we're trying to do is at least be very critical on, let's say, the way we organize our company.
Do we have, let's say, the right setup of the company to be successful? In 2023, we decided effectively to take one layer out of the company. We had operating companies division and then global. We changed the company to global and business units. We will continuously critically look at, is this the right setup to be successful? Can we make sure that we are a lean and mean company? That's what you may expect from us, first of all. The similar thing we will continuously do on the sustaining CapEx to really look at, okay, is this the right investment to do? More importantly, are we still continuing to deliver on asset integrity? That is vital for our industry. We don't want to have any spills, any serious fires or whatsoever. That is what we stand for as a company.
We will continuously look at cost and sustaining CapEx to just make sure that we keep our margin also while we're running at high occupancy levels. Because we know that, let's say, there is still some upward maybe in this, but the upward is maybe more limited than we were three years ago when we were running at 88% of occupancy. That's a difference, and that's why we also need to focus very hard on OpEx and on sustaining CapEx.
Maybe the only other thing to add is on the top line, with the 93% occupancy, yeah, there's a bit of a potential downward risk. There's also upward opportunity if we price our services well.
Because if you're continuously high at 93%, we're also now, we've done that, but we're also putting more effort and organizing ourselves towards really making sure that we capture potential opportunities to value or to value base our pricing much more than we might have done in the past. I think that's definitely also an area where we expect quite some positives from.
Andrew Burd, Cohen and Steers, can you talk about what you're seeing with private market valuations in the context of you trading at 7x s? Based on that, any desire to do incremental investments to capture some of that ARB? Incremental divestments, sorry.
If you look at the private market transactions, it's quite different than what you see in the public market in terms of trading multiples. Very recently, MOL bought the LBC Tank Terminals network, which is a network of seven terminals.
It generates approximately EUR 140 million EBITDA. It was sold at an 18.5x EBITDA multiple. Of course, there is some growth in this business. Most likely, it will grow to somewhere around EUR 200 million. If you compare it to where we are trading at 7x , that is a big difference because we also have a nice growth trajectory ahead of us. It is sometimes hard to understand the difference between the private market transactions and the public market transactions. Obviously, there is one opportunity, as I showed in India, to also play the public market, which effectively, if you go to the Indian stock exchange, is cheaper than debt. That trades at a very attractive multiple. We will continuously look at our portfolio. Our ambition is not to get smaller. On the other hand, obviously, some of the multiples are quite attractive.
We have seen it, and you have seen it also in our divestments. Selling a negative free cash flow of EUR 15 million for close to EUR 500 million is quite interesting for us as well. These were also private investor type of transactions. Yeah, we continuously need to look at it. It makes acquisitions for us very hard. With trading at 7x , if we would buy something at 12x , people would ask us, why are you doing this? Because the synergies in the business are most of the time quite limited. If you buy another network, it's not like you can take away the fence or you can reduce, let's say, your CapEx significantly or you run completely at a different operating cost base. That's not happening most of the time.
Yeah, it's a very different market sometimes, the public market and the private market.
I think maybe the only thing to add here, Andrew, the individual transaction for an individual terminal has proven to be in the private market different and lower than a small network. The LBC one is a platform, Europe presence, US presence. That has definitely fetched even a bigger premium. We don't have, on your very specific, do we have active plans now to consider any of our assets like we stood here in 2022 when we had some plans already to critically look at it? That's not in the cards at the moment.
Now, we always have a critical look at the assets where we think that we have vulnerability from a market perspective or from a market position, as well as the ones that from a cash perspective are not performing in the right manner. From a performance element, we're looking at that and considering it. There's not a very active play that we have now because we also, as Michiel already said, want to make sure we maintain scale. With 76 terminals in the presence that we have, that gives us the opportunity to actually get a position potentially in South Africa, in Australia, in all these markets for the new, for the energy transition infrastructure. We're also quite attached to a minimum level of scale that allows us to play in those markets. Yeah.
Christoph. Good morning. Christoph Sommer, KBC Securities. Maybe first a question for Michiel.
I mean, your product mix in terms of terminal types is shifting more and more towards gas industrial terminals. You have your leverage targets, two and a half to three, maybe sometimes higher, depending on the stage of investment. Eventually, the share of terminals covered by long-term contracts will only grow. I mean, if you were in a situation where you only had gas terminals and industrial terminals, what kind of leverage would you feel comfortable with running the company? That's the first one. On REEF, with everything going on in terms of tariff war between Canada and the US, I recall that 70% of the costs were fixed of the investment. Any chance that these tariff situations can lead to a force majeure and cost overruns?
Then finally, looking at the political situation in Germany, the CDU was very vocal about adding additional gas-fired power plants. I believe it was up to 50 in Germany. Is there any substantial business development going on at Vopak for this particular market? Thank you.
Should I do REEF and maybe the Germany part?
Yeah, on the leverage side, yeah, it's an if question. If we would have that portfolio, we would look at the leverage. Maybe to give you a bit of insight, if you look at LNG type of projects, then normally you can stretch the leverage to like 80% of the total investment, so 20% equity, 80% of the debt. If you then assume that we do a gas investment of 5x-7x and then multiply that by the 80%, then you come to the debt level of these investments.
Would that then automatically, if we would only have gas and industrial terminals, would that also be automatically the leverage we would aim for? Yeah, I find that very hard to answer. We haven't sort of studied that. We have looked at our existing portfolio. What do we think is a reasonable leverage, which also still gives us some strategic flexibility because that's also what you would like to have. You don't want to stretch yourself to the limit. Yeah, I can't give you a specific answer on it. The only thing I can give you is a bit of guidance on what type of leverage these projects normally can hold.
Maybe on REEF, Christoph, execution of the project is going according to plan as we see it now. Towards the end of 2026, we expect to be ready with the expansion.
If your question is much related to once it's in operation, what are the cost levels? I'm not too concerned about what could happen over there. If it's related to the current CapEx that we are going through, the majority of it is already covered and committed for. The main elements of that CapEx is very much related to local labor and is very much related to some of the offsite fabrication of main infrastructure that's going to be shipped in from China. I don't expect anything in that area that would dramatically affect the CapEx for REEF. It's already being fabricated as we speak. I don't think there's exposure over there.
Actually, to the contrary, because you could imagine that with everything going on, REEF as being a facility on the west coast of Canada with only 10% utilization of the marine infrastructure that we're currently building and a lot of land that is still available. Maria will talk about that later. I'd rather see it also potentially in the current construct as an opportunity for further development in that particular area. To Germany, we've had quite a couple of journeys already in Germany to look at LNG import in the north of the country. Before the geopolitical crisis with the Russia-Ukraine war, we abandoned the project in the north of Germany because we didn't feel that it had any commercial legs to stand on.
There's continuous discussions on individual projects in the north of Germany with developers that have already advanced in their development and look potentially for someone to come in and to help in the operation and make the next step. Yeah, we are individually looking at those opportunities. If you would ask me, I think for now, I'm very happy with what we have in Gate. I'm very happy with what we have in Eemshaven and the opportunities to further grow from there. I think we have to look at it case by case on any opportunity in Germany. From a capacity point of view, pure capacity, there's already quite some capacity available. The question then becomes, how attractive is it for us to step into the development of someone else already? We'd rather do it ourselves then.
There's no active plan to do that in Germany at the moment. Hope that helps. Yeah.
John McKay, Goldman Sachs, thanks for your time. I wanted to go back to a question that I think Lombard has asked a couple of minutes ago. Just in terms of the forward growth plans, you're talking about a lot of projects, a lot of different geographies. Could you frame up just for us the competitive dynamic you're seeing out there? Are you seeing kind of more bids for these projects you're working on, fewer? When you're talking about the Vopak advantage, is it all about the brownfield? Is it your ability to work with maybe one customer in multiple geographies? Just frame that up for us.
It's probably a combination of a few.
I would say let's frame it up first from the grow part of our business, so the industrial and the gas side. I think there we have a pretty strong market position, especially on industrial. It's a specific skill set, and it's the confidence and the track record that allows companies like, for instance, ExxonMobil, that when they invest EUR 10 billion plus in a big cracker facility in China, they want to make sure that the industrial terminal is handled by someone that has the experience. I think never say never. There can always be competition, but I think we have a pretty good position on the industrial side.
If you look at it from a geographical point of view, I think, for instance, in India and in China, big growth markets, we have a very strong position from a competitive point of view because a lot of the, I would say, more global international competitors that we have, not with the network that we have, but smaller in size, they're not that active anymore in China and in India at the moment. We have a very strong position with local presence. I think what's the secret sauce to kind of like what makes us then so specific? For sure, Maarten and Jan Bert will talk about it and give you a bit of a sense over there. It is the fact that we have existing locations because that's where a lot of it will start.
It's the fact that we have long-term relations with a lot of the parties, and they know us over a long period of time. It's the fact that we then have hardcore capabilities on products, on origination, commercial elements of it. Let's take Thailand, the recent example. We've been in Thailand for 30 years. We've been working with our partners in Thailand for 30 years. We went together through a renewal of the concession a few years ago. We sat together and basically said, once we go through this, we're going for the next long phase of investments in Thailand. We are committed to it. They are committed to it. It is a very, I would almost say, a relatively natural step to then say, if there is a big growth opportunity, we do that together. Hence, we were able to secure that.
If you take a move to the accelerate part, that in a way is kind of like open again for everyone to claim their position. Everyone can say, we do liquid CO2. Everyone can say, we want to do ammonia. I think it's a bit more competitive over there. We're confident that with our experience, with the trust, with the locations that we have, with also the depth that we can work on a few of these projects in different parts of the world, again, you need skill over here. You cannot, I mean, it's difficult, as Michiel said, it's a big investment. It's a big organization that you need to get going to be able to do a project in Singapore, to do it in the Middle East, to do it in the U.S, to do it in Europe.
You need people, and you need to make choices. I think we have the breadth and therefore also the confidence that we can deliver that.
Hi, Dick. Hi, Michiel. Rajeev Saffar from Spruce Grove Investment. Just on the occupancy, if I look at your portfolio, it's moved to industrial and gas, which is dedicated infrastructure, long-term take or pay. Even on the oil and chemical, the big chunk of the portfolio is very strategic. It's not like really speculative what it was five, ten years ago. Theoretically, what would you say that what percentage of the overall portfolio is pretty solid in terms of occupancy? Like people, the customers don't have really an option to switch, would you say?
Good morning, Rajeev. Good that you're here.
I think the best way to position it is probably to go back to what Michiel shared on the volatility in the current portfolio and the brackets in which we operate in. Yes, there's still at these high levels, there's every year, there's certain elements of the portfolio that need to be renewed, that go through natural renewal. Now, we might be very confident that we are, that we can go through those renewals because it's people that have been there for a long time. The flows are there. It might be that sometimes the name changes from one company to the other. It's sometimes that we make a different choice, that we say we'd like to focus on a different type of product in this location.
By and large, if you look at it from a historic perspective, anywhere between that 88%-93%, we've been sometimes between 85%-88% I think definitely we're at a very healthy level at the moment. It could drop a few percentage points, but I don't expect it to drop with big numbers.
Given you have a pretty solid 85%-88% as the floor and you're right now at 93%, even if we assume in a normalized condition your occupancy does drop 1%-2%, do you have the levers in terms of pricing or other levers so that you can maintain that 13% target on the cash flow?
Yeah, I think if the occupancy level drops 1% or 2%, we should definitely be able to reach the 13% cash return. That is something we can state here.
If occupancy levels drop much more than that, obviously then there is more risk also on the pricing side because then it means that markets are probably going to be a bit more softer than what they are today, especially on the oil side. Yeah, that could have a bigger impact, but we're still confident that we are able to deliver above 13%. That is why we also said, in any circumstance, in any market, we are able to deliver, let's say, above the 13%. We know that we're running at 15%. We know also what we try to contribute with the growth because the multiples, if you convert that to the cash returns, you can also do that math. Then you see that some of these growth projects will deliver 12%, but others will deliver close to 20% return.
That in the mix has given us, like, this guidance to at least above 13%.
Good to know. Lastly, just on the Russia-Ukraine situation, in case the Russian gas starts to come back into Europe, do you see any risk in any of your gas LNG projects which you're executing? Can that have an impact?
It's an if and an if and an if. There are a lot of things that need to happen. From a maybe not so much from a company point of view, but it's hard to imagine as a European that you could see that happening very quickly and that the alternative to Russian gas would be abandoned.
As a result, I think that the current position that we have with the assets is, in my view, strongly protected because of the fact that Europe, no matter what, with or without Russian gas in the future, still wants to make sure there's a sufficient availability and alternative supply opportunities out there because of security of supply. I think that's one. I think the second one that is important to realize, if we talk about two specific projects that we're looking at, Australia and South Africa, with all due respect, but whatever happens with the Russian gas, that doesn't solve necessarily the issues that South Africa has today with load shedding and blackouts. It doesn't solve the issue that Southwest Australia has with the fact that they need LNG in the coming years to cater for the drop-off of gas production.
Those are so there, we do not play necessarily the global markets with the big flows, but there we really are basing the logic of a project very much on what is happening in those local markets. Those are different circumstances than what is being determined by global markets.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Last question.
Oh, last question. Okay. You get this.
I do the first and the last.
Okay.
Okay. Yeah, one kind of follow-up is kind of where and maybe which locations do you see as the most promising for repurposing the oil assets? Would that be for kind of biodiesel, biofuel that we have seen before, or do you see repurposing also for other products? Maybe that is the first part. The second in relation to the recent Thailand, if I am not wrong, I think it was on NGLs.
Maybe if you can give us an idea on how do you see the NGL market, especially in Asia, because we've seen recently some weakness, and maybe you can explain what's your exposure to pricing of propane and ethane and if that has any impact on your business, et cetera, the whole project. Thank you.
Maybe I'll start with the second one. In Thailand, it's an ethane deal. It's a long-term commitment from the local customer, our partner, PTTGC, to commit for imports from the U.S. I think it's much more of a play of local supply of feedstock that is running out, and they need an alternative to keep things going. This is in the long run. Mind you, these are long-term, 15-year-plus contracts. There's infrastructure that is being built in the U.S.. to export it.
are ships being built to transport it specifically, and then infrastructure for the imports. This is not necessarily playing what's happening in the market over this quarter, next quarter, and last quarter. This is really a long-term strategic decision that PTTGC has taken. We see that actually happening in some markets more. We've seen a smaller, much smaller investment, but also in China that people are also in Chongqing changing from a local feedstock to ethane. You see ethane flows actually moving from the U.S. to places in Asia. The spreads that you're talking about, that's much more for us in a market like Singapore, where we have an LPG tank and where our customers over there are playing much more on kind of how many cargoes do we bring a year, maybe a cargo more or less because it's attractive to bring it in.
They were a little bit more subject to above a certain level to market developments. For these large industrial deals, it's long-term take or pay, long-term strategic. I actually see it as these plays with depletion of local resources and therefore imports that are required for different products, ethane, but LNG in Australia is a similar play. What I said in China, I see that that's definitely a market that could develop. Maybe on the first.
Yeah, the repurposing of existing locations. Yeah, it happens for indeed bio-based products, but it also happens for other types of products. You see a lot of appetite for sustainable aviation fuels. You see some for renewable diesel, but you see also, for example, pyrolysis oil. Those are the opportunities as well. It's a bit of a mix.
How that will develop over time is hard to see, but we continuously follow the market and see where the opportunities are. It could be a wider mix than only biodiesel.
In terms of markets, where do you see the—
oh, where the markets are? We see it in most of the mature markets. We see it here in the U.S. We see it in Europe. We see it in Singapore. We have not seen it too much, for example, in South Africa or Indonesia or Australia, where we also have oil assets, but that will happen over time as well. Definitely, if we do jet fuel, for example, in Sydney, that will be, to a certain extent, sustainable aviation fuels at a certain moment in time. We follow it, and then we will repurpose locations once the opportunity is there.
With that, we conclude at least this first part. We break for coffee and any refreshments outside over here. We're going to be back 11:15, I would suggest. A little bit less than half an hour, 11:15 sharp, we start over here with the second batch of presentations. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, and welcome back all to our Capital Markets Day 2025 here in New York. Welcome, everyone, back in the room. Great that you all stayed for the second part of the presentations. That's always nice. Welcome to everyone back home to listen into this second part. My name is Maarten Smeets. I am responsible, as Dick said earlier this morning, for business development within Vopak.
What that actually entails is that myself, together with my team that is both located in Rotterdam and in Singapore, are supporting the nine business units in delivering upon the growth ambitions of the company, the two plus one that were just highlighted. I want to talk to you today about some of the questions that actually came up earlier, so hopefully we get a little bit more depth into those on the business development capabilities that we possess as a company, why we believe that we are capable of delivering on this two plus one. Actually, those are three critical capabilities that come to mind that we really want to focus on. First and foremost, our ability to originate strategic locations across the globe. We have a network of 77 terminals, 50 ports, 23 countries, and we are keen to do more.
Secondly, our customer base is highly diversified, actually from two angles, we believe. It's over 1,000 customers ranging from state-owned entities to large corporations to commodity traders and to small-scale chemical or biofuel distributors. Also, we store 250 products across the globe, ranging from crude oil to LNG, from biofuels to ammonia, and nowadays even we started small-scale though, but with electrons. Thirdly, our ability to make deals, to make attractive deals and attractive returns, whilst at the same time ensuring that we service our customers in a safe, efficient, and reliable manner. How are we finding these locations? What are we doing actually? Here you see a map of which we have many in our company, where we constantly look at trade flows and trade developments. Here you see the trade developments that we have seen over the last five years.
Actually, what we have seen is that trade continues to grow. It has been growing already in the past, and we foresee actually that it will continue to grow. The red line is indeed a trade flow that disappeared to a large extent due to some sanctions, but overall, that is being replaced by other flows, product coming from further requiring infrastructure to land again. If you then look at the outlook that was also presented by Dick this morning, you see that actually across the board, energy demand will grow by a few global trends, such as growing population and growing GDP. That will actually result in additional demand for energy, which will grow 2%. Oil will actually grow, even the crude oil, 1% we still foresee, plateauing maybe throughout the next decade. Gas, LPG, LNG will grow significantly. Biofuels will grow significantly, 6%.
If you then see that new products are also coming into the mix, all that requires infrastructure, and all that requires infrastructure in port locations, because if you want to ship liquids in large volumes, you do that via waterways, and you go via open sea connections, bringing it from one region to another one. Where are we finding then these new locations? These are new locations that we have, but also our existing locations are still quite well set up to capture further growth going forward. If we zoom in on the new locations that we have, we have been delivering throughout the last couple of years. We have delivered a new industrial terminal in China, marking our seventh terminal there and our 18th industrial terminal within our network. We have delivered in India. We are together with our partner, Aegis.
We now run 12 terminals across the country in six ports, like highlighted also by Michiel. With these two, in these two fast-growing markets still, because they are large and they are still growing, even China is still forecast to grow, and companies are still investing there, especially also due to the fact that China wants to be a bit more self-sufficient and wants to be less dependent on imports. We have a number one position, and we still see ample opportunities to do more in those locations. If you then look, where is the growth actually in gas and industrial terminals? Where do we foresee that? We are actively working on projects in Australia and South Africa, as highlighted by Dick earlier today, very much dependent on the depleting local reserves that are there. We see that in other countries coming up as well.
What we have also seen is massive investments in LNG export capacity, liquefaction capacity in the Middle East and the U.S. that we won't invest in. The capital there is too unbalanced. The liquefaction part versus the tank part is too uneven. If we then just want to invest in the storage part, people will say, well, you need to carry a bit of the risk of that liquefaction capacity. We can't carry that. That is why we not play a role there. With all that product coming to the market, that needs to land somewhere. Especially Southeast Asia seems to be quite a good destination where we expect that more of these projects will happen over the future. In our models, we forecast that in the next 10-20 years, 20-30 new LNG import terminals will arise in Southeast Asia.
If you then look at the industrial terminals, given the fact that the world still is growing, has a growing demand for manufacturing, you see that new industrial terminal complexes will probably arise in two locations or in two sort of can be segmented in two buckets. Those who arise actually in locations that have feedstock advantages, like the U.S. and the Middle East, where we have a footprint, but where we would like to do more, but also in the end markets that are still growing, depending on, and those are predominantly east of the US. In Asia, where still there's a growing population and a growing economy and growing demand for products. If you then look at the accelerate part, so the energy infrastructure to facilitate or the infrastructure to facilitate energy transition, we are actually focusing on three lines of businesses there at this stage in time.
The fourth one, the repurposing, we see a little bit more opportunity towards our existing facilities. For the new part, we are focusing, like Dick earlier said, on liquid CO2, where we have a project in Rotterdam, the CO2 next one that is now in the feed phase and which we hope to further develop in the upcoming period. We see more opportunities there, Northwest Europe, but also in the OECD countries in Asia, Singapore to Japan, the South Koreas, where people want to pay for this decarbonization. That is liquid CO2 that also then goes to somewhere to locations where there are sinks. Japan, South Korea do not have natural sinks, so they will look for locations in the region so there we could develop import facilities.
If you look at ammonia, it's following sort of more or less the same track. It's the regions that can pay for this decarbonization, like Northwestern Europe and the OECD countries in Asia, where there is demand for import facilities in that space. We are developing one in Antwerp. We have an open health and open season there. Later, a bit more about that. We are looking for other locations to do this. If you look for the export facilities, so where will that ammonia come from? You again look to feedstocks. Nowadays, for feedstocks, the ammonia is predominantly produced from natural gas, but in the future, that might be green. Nowadays, we see particular export projects happening in the US and in the Middle East.
Our Indian footprint is quite interesting in that sense because they are one of the most competitive producers of green ammonia going forward. We see actually in India, with that entrance that we made there, ample opportunity to in the future develop export projects that can then go to markets where we also are active on the import side. The last one are the batteries, where we are making our first steps. I will at the end of this presentation have a slide where we go a little bit deeper into that. We are focusing there on the markets where there is a large influx of renewables, but also where we are a little bit comfortable and settled. The Netherlands, Belgium, Texas, and California. Markets where there is a large renewable influx, 30% of the energy is a minimum from renewables.
I think Texas is today at 30, California at 40, the Netherlands at 50. Belgium is a little bit below that, but that large dependency on renewables, that volatility that comes from that is something that we deem to manage via these. If you then look at once we are in the right location, there is always still enough of things to do. Where did we deliver upon? We delivered upon LPG growth. Maria will talk later today a bit deeper, a bit more on REEF, on what we are doing there. Earlier today, what we mentioned was the ethane tank in Thailand. What we also have delivered is the fourth tank in Gate, building additional import capabilities to bring in more LNG. We are now, with that capability, also highlighted to the fact that someone asked a question on Germany.
With those two terminals, we actually can foresee the total gas demand of the Netherlands. Would we just be solely independent on imported LNG? These terminals fulfill a wider role actually within the network. Lots of the gas goes via our terminals into the German market. We have delivered on industrial expansions, both in the Middle East and in China. Jan Bert will tell later today that at this industrial location, we have over 500 pipeline connections with our customers. We keep on adding them on a continuous basis because once you are there and once you're integrated, it's easier to integrate more. We have done various investments in low carbon fuels and biofeedstocks, where we already have 25 terminals where we handle these products. Is there more to do at the existing locations? Yes, there is.
At this stage in time, on the LNG side, we're trying to further de-bottleneck our asset in Cartagena in Colombia, where we have a floating LNG terminal. By further de-bottlenecking that, we can sell extra capacity into the market. We are developing a Fourth Jetty at Gate in Rotterdam, building on the momentum, on the small-scale momentum that is developing, where markets are now bunkering largely oil products. In Rotterdam, we have a large position on LNG bunkering, and with this Fourth Jetty, we want to capture the growth in that market. Also in the industrial side, there are way more things to do. If you then look at accelerate, there is tons of stuff to do still on more low carbon fuels.
There are more and more products coming into the feedstock mix, and especially at our oil platforms, like highlighted earlier, because with those platforms, we offer services to customers that are predominantly in marine, aviation, and pet chem feedstocks. Those markets all need to decarbonize, pushed by regulations at different levels. Let's work that out in a further example, also tapping into what are the products that can be stored in the future there. If you look at our key marine locations that we have in our network, those are in Fujairah, Rotterdam, and Singapore. Here are the relative market shares that we have in those markets. We have a significant footprint there. If you look back in the days and for a very long time, the marine market was predominantly served by customers using high sulfur fuel oil.
That has been the fuel of choice for many, many years. Then regulations kicked in. With IMO 2020, low sulfur fuel oil came into the mix, and we invested in that at our existing platforms because there we had the capabilities to serve these bunker markets, to understand what these customers required. It made sense that at these locations, we started transforming those assets. A new product came into the mix, LNG. We developed it at our Gate facility, adding the third jetty, and now we are building the fourth jetty to capture the growing demand in that space. Fairly recently, we see biofuels entering the mix in that space. At all the locations that we have now, we are facilitating bioblending into the bunker mix. Even new products are coming into the mix, like methanol and ammonia.
Those are products that we are fairly well familiar with. Ammonia, we are storing at six locations around the globe already. Methanol, we have been storing for over decades at many locations around the world. It's a product that we are familiar with. It's an end market that we are supplying already. It makes sense for us that our customers, when they talk to us, that we say, hey, we have the structures, the contract structures in order to facilitate these markets. We understand the business. We know how to handle these products safely. That gives us the opportunity to keep on investing and keep on evolving at our existing sites while serving the same customer and the same end markets.
We see similar trends for the aviation sector, where the sustainable aviation fuel kicks in, and also for the petchem sector, where recycling kicks in. Pyrolysis oil brings in a low carbon feedstock there. With adding those products to the mix, there are blending capabilities necessary. There is new infrastructure necessary. That all allows us to repurpose and make our assets more resilient towards the future. Michiel, I think you highlighted that it is around 10-20% that we foresee of our capital landing there at attractive returns. Next to the locations that we all have, the second part of the capabilities that we believe are truly unique for us is our tremendous network of customers. Whilst we are around for over 400 years, we are in liquid storage for roughly over 100 years.
That means that we had 100 years of time to establish relationships and gain the trust of our customers working together with them. Nowadays, we are serving 1,000 customers globally, ranging from, as said before, from state-owned entities to large corporations and so forth. With a handful of them, two or three handful of them, we have really deep strategic relations because we know them. We know them very well. That means that we share earlier on market insights with them, that we share where we want to invest with them, and they share similar information with us. That enables us to often have a first mover advantage, knowing where these people want to go, because they often go to countries where they also do not have the experience because they want to enter markets where they might not have physical presence.
Based on their supply demand analysis, they have seen that it's quite attractive because there is a short, because there has a refinery closed or there is a growing demand, and the local industry is not picking up fast enough. We can then be a frontier for them. That deep relationship helps us actually to develop these new locations. In some cases, also as highlighted by the Thai tank example, we are actually ending up with our customer as a joint venture partner, highlighting the deep trust that is there. Second to that is also the network effect. Many of our customers are not storing only at a single location with us or with one product with us. You see that once they start working with us, we start to do more.
With these larger customers, those strategic customers, actually we store roughly around 13-15 locations around the world with them. That is really contributing to the fact that we're working together, understanding each other, appreciating each other, and driving the business forward. With this customer base, we feel quite well set up also to deliver on the future. The third part, the deal-making capabilities. In this country, we can say, right, we didn't write a book about it, but we know pretty well how to get it over the line over here. First and foremost, it's because we are long-term in the business. We have been serving many businesses. We have future-proofed our commercial capabilities. We understand the dynamics that are going on in the market.
We understand the risk-reward that we need to manage, but we also what our customer wants us to deliver on the operational side. Thereby, what we can do is learn from what we have learned in one market and apply that to a next market. If you see there, the LNG contracts that are now into play today form very much the basis for the discussions that we have with customers on ammonia and with hydrogen, because we will be integrated. It will be a long time. It will be long-term contracts. A lot of people from the LNG industry moved actually to the hydrogen side of the business. They have the familiarity with these templates. That actually allows us to recycle many of the things that we have been doing.
The second part is that we are fairly well capable of structuring the contracts in such a manner that they become bankable. Happy to have Monique here, with whom we are working closely together, who is heading our treasury department. With the treasury team and the legal team, we are continuously scrutinizing the contracts and developing them in such a manner that they become bankable, actually adding to the flexibility of our financial framework to go out for financing at attractive rates. The third part is the commercial foundation. Given the long-term relationships that we have with many customers, it also allows you to set up certain ways of doing business with each other. That makes that it's easy to multiply. Instead of that, a customer needs to go to a competitor of ours and says, hey, can you develop this framework for me with us?
There is an existing framework in place that we then can use and multiply. Those three things actually add the location, the customers, and the deal-making capability set up for success. We have now, now I want to talk to you about two cases where we have applied that so that you see a bit the journey that we are making in that respect. The first one is the VEPA site in Antwerp. In Antwerp, we were a long time already present. We had three locations there for a long time.
When the energy transition sort of started to get pace and when we sort of started to look at what will be required, how much infrastructure will be required, coming again out of this analysis, we saw that in Antwerp, we might be a bit short of storage space with the three locations that we had. We said, let's start looking for land. We scanned the port. We saw sort of how the waterways were, how the railways run, how the pipelines ran. We identified a land where one of our large customers, a global commodity trader, had a mud-bolt refinery that they did not intend to start up again. We approached them. In the end, we were able, with the support from many of the stakeholders, also from the port, to strike a deal there and buy over that asset.
What we have done since is we have removed the refinery. We have removed the tanks. We are cleaning the site as we speak. We have reached agreement with the local authorities on how to sort of sanitize the soil. Now, two years in it, I'm happy and proud to say that we are still within budget and everything is going as planned so far, on time and in budget. In the meantime, what we also are doing is developing new things. We launched an open season for ammonia tankers in Antwerp to fulfill the increasing need for the imports of low carbon product. We launched that last year, and we are now working through it in order to see if we can mature the project further.
Secondly, we have signed an agreement with Vioneo, which is an AP Moller venture, on producing low carbon fossil-free plastics, where they want to produce polypropylene from methanol, another chemical that we are pretty well familiar with. Those are just the things that have actually reached the public domain. Below the radar, we are working on a few more things. The fact that we have 100 hectares of land that is now cleaned, purpose for industrial use, gives us actually quite an advantageous position going forward in the port of Antwerp. We also am trying to get a sense of new markets, the electricity market, where we have made the first steps into the battery storage market. What we have seen is that there is ongoing electrification and increasing imbalances in these energy grids. For that, storage solutions are required.
We are dipping our toes in the water, making our first steps carefully. When looking at the markets, we see a lot of characteristics that we are seeing in our liquid markets. These storage assets are managing imbalances. The customers active in that space that want to sometimes benefit from that imbalance are the same commodity traders that we come across in other businesses. What we have seen actually is that location also matters there. You need to have the grid connectivity in order to connect the battery and to be there. Looking at a few of the fundamentals of the market, so far, from what we have seen and what we have studied, is that the returns are fairly much in line with what we have seen for other long-term businesses that are in that energy transition infrastructure space.
Those 6x-8x EBITDA multiples are achievable. Secondly, the investment sizes are sufficient for us. As a reference here, we set a project of EUR100 million, but that relates to, of course, the size of the battery. There you need to think of a 100 MW-150 MW battery for four hours. That is roughly around EUR100 million. That is a sizable project. The price of lithium-ion is, of course, fairly important there, and that has been going down over the last few years rapidly. Once we need to start buying this, I think timing will become of the essence. That is something that we need to pick up on. The funding part.
Overall, the contract structures are set up in such a manner that they are also long-term bankable, helping us again, feeding into the capability that we have already developed over many years and together with our colleagues that we will carry then forward. Also, there you see the business development journey on a new location, but also now on a new market that we are quite excited about. What I want to leave you behind with is the following. We are well set up to deliver on that two plus one. We have the strategic locations. We have the customer base. We have the deal-making capabilities to deliver on that two plus one ambition by 2030. Thank you very much. Now I am happy to introduce Jan Bert, who will focus on the performance part.
Thanks, Maarten. Good day, everyone here in the room and everybody online.
Pleasure to be here. I think super nice that all of you have taken the time to join us today. I'll talk a little bit about our track record in operating all these assets. In doing so, I will also zoom in on what we think are the unique capabilities that make it possible for us to perform as we do. With that, I also hope to explain that these capabilities are not only important for existing business, but actually make us very credible in being able to achieve our growth targets as been explained this morning. Before diving into the performance, just a few dimensions on the size of our organization.
You heard the number of terminals, 77, 35 million cubic meters of capacity in total, which is about 220 million barrels of storage capacity spread over 5,500 tanks, 500 industrial pipeline connections with our customers. On the back end of these pipelines, we have plants that are running with massive investments, so solid, solid relationships there, 400 berths and jetties across the globe. With these assets, we handle 4 million barrels a day. That is throughput approximately that we do as a company worldwide. I think we all know the total sort of like oil barrels a day that the world consumes. It gives you a bit of an idea of the size of our company. Obviously, we handle more than just oil, but to give you a bit of a perspective there, 750,000 trucks a year, 30,000 ships, close to 30,000 rail cars.
Impressive numbers, but how good are we at operating all of this? I'll zoom in on a few for us important performance areas, asset management, our commercial occupancy, and what customers think of us, our greenhouse gas emissions. I'll start with our safety performance. Dick touched upon it earlier. Key in our industry. First and foremost, key to ourselves. We want our people that work for us, including the contractors on our terminals, to go home safely every day. Strong intrinsic motivation within our company shared across all our employees to make sure that we operate safely, that we don't do harm. We fundamentally believe that every incident can be prevented. Safety is also good for business. Some of you know this has been a saying already for quite a few years. If you think safety is expensive, try and excellent.
We are handling enormous volumes of hazardous materials. We're not in the business of being 99% safe. We have to be an organization that's truly reliable, not only to make sure that people go home safely at the end of the day, but also to make sure that customers do trust us, that authorities trust us. Can you imagine storing ammonia? We all know that's a toxic material. You want to deal with companies that have a track record in doing that in a safe manner. I would say also towards our investors, your license to operate as a company is at stake if you don't perform at a very, very high safety performance level. If you look at our performance, and that's on the graphs, you see a trending down on personal safety, and you see a trending down on process safety.
are two indicators that are used to benchmark companies also, one by OSHA, one by API on personal safety. That is the Department of Labor in the United States. They have a way to actually compare companies in that sense by measuring it in what we call a total incident rate. That is every incident per 200,000 man-hours worked. Our performance in 2024 of 0.21 here is actually outperforming our competition and very much in line with our customer base. If you just have a sense of what this means, if our average terminal is about 100 people, it means one personal injury in five years. That is what 0.21 means. A personal injury that counts here is also a sprained ankle when somebody steps off his bike. Small incidents are part of this as well.
Having a one in five year on average for every terminal, that's sort of like the level that we're performing today. If you do that for process safety, it's even once every 12.5 years for a spill that could take place at a terminal. This is not 99% point safe. This is 99.9% and a few nines after that. That's a sort of like robustness that you need to have in place in order to be able to get to these numbers. The chart actually indicates how we perform to the outside world, something that motivates us intrinsically, but also something that we're proud of. It really sort of like shows us who we are. A few words on asset management performance. The significant cash out. We have a capital-intense business, so there's a huge cash out when we invest.
Over the years, to maintain these assets in a decent way, also to make sure we have excellent process safety performance, by the way. To maintain it over the years, that cash out is significant. What is on this chart is not only our sustaining CapEx, but also the operational cost and maintenance. Depending on how this is accounted for, the total amount actually here is set against the replacement asset value. That is a benchmark that you could use to compare how much we are spending compared to other companies that are of a similar nature. You see three lines in here based on McKinsey data that benchmarks that a little bit. Underperforming if you spend around 5%, well-run around 3.5%, and best in class somewhere around 2%. You see our performance has improved in recent years significantly. We were about 3%.
We are now at 2% of our replacement value. That compares well to the benchmark. Noteworthy here is that part of our sustaining or operating CapEx is also what we need to invest because of new regulatory requirements. That is not the same in the whole world. There are countries within our network where these regulatory requirements are relatively limited. There are also countries where that is not the case. One of the countries where the regulatory framework is amongst the strictest is the Netherlands. A second country where that is the case, surprised to some, is China. A lot of that has to do with emission control. The demands in some of these countries are significantly higher than other countries. For us to continue to operate, we have to invest in these emission control measures. There is no choice. It is part of our license to operate.
In a country like the Netherlands, this could be one percentage point of the total 3% that we're spending. Country like the United States, country like Singapore, that's almost close to zero. It also means that if you benchmark our performance in this area, for instance, with US midstream, you have to correct for this anomaly. What you do see, although on this chart, is that this license to operate, this regulatory sustaining CapEx that we have to spend actually has been trending down in recent years. A few very, very big investments have taken place, especially in the Netherlands. We're getting a little bit to the end of that because of the regulation that took into effect. It does not mean that no new regulation can come up again. That has to make us investing.
In the outlook right now, we will see a little bit of a downward trend in that area. Our performance with regard to rented capacity, you saw the 85-93 in our commercial occupancy level. That's obviously a good number to be at. I'd like to add to that also our own performance on reducing our out-of-service capacity. There you see an interesting line that drops the 5% out-of-service that we had in 2019 to below 2% in the year 2024. That basically means that in these years, we had 3% extra available to customers. You have to take a look at those numbers almost at the same time. If you only have 2% out-of-service capacity, you're able to rent out 98%, right? If you look at the years before, we only had 95%.
As a percentage uptick that we have in revenue possibilities, yeah, this is material. We are pretty convinced that we're going to be able to run around this 2% to max 3% out-of-service capacity in the years to come. That shows a little bit of upside that we have, right? Because all that revenue that comes from the extra capacity available almost goes straight to our bottom line. In the third graph, also something to be very proud of. By the way, I realize that I talk about all this good stuff, but I've been working for this company for so many years, and I really like it, right? If I'm maybe a bit over the top, then apologies. Something I'm proud of too is how customers actually value our services. We have an NPS score of 80 in the year 2024.
Some of you are familiar with NPS. Some of you are not. If I explain it in a simple manner, it is the question, are you recommending Vopak to a good friend? Would you recommend Vopak? People ask that question on a scale, answer that question on a scale from 1 - 10. If you score 9- 10, you're a sponsor, you're a promoter. If you score 1- 6, you don't really like it. If you're 7- 8, you're passive. You don't really care. It's like when you go to a restaurant, right? Was it really fantastic? It was a seven. Probably you won't go back next time, right? If somebody really forces you, you want to, but if it's your pick, you wouldn't go. Only the nines and the 10s are promoters.
The NPS score is calculated by the percentage promoters, 9% and 10%, subtracted by the percentage detractors, the 1%- 6%. If we score an NPS of 80%, it means that the biggest majority of our customers on that question actually give us a 9 %or a 10%. If you compare that to the benchmark for the logistics industry, that sits at 40%. We score 80%. We're on track to deliver our target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 43% since year 2021. That's the moment in the year 2022 we actually set that target to achieve 30% reduction by the end of this decade. We're already at 43%. That actually allows us also room for growth because this is not a relative target. We didn't come up with the greenhouse gas intensity target. We said we will, in absolute terms, reduce our target to 30%.
That is on top of the increased growth ambition that we have already said that actually means that in our existing business, we need to reduce by 60%. Energy efficiency, procuring green electricity, making sure that our growth projects from our greenhouse gas emissions are minimized. That is what we are going to have to do. On a number of dimensions, I have just been able to share with you that our track record has been pretty decent. Whenever we can benchmark it to the outside world, we look favorable. The question is, I think, how were we able to do so? What is the reason that we have been able to perform? In my opinion, that is because we built something unique in our company, something that is also sustainably competitive.
That's giving us an advantage not only in our existing business, but it's also a reason why partners want to work with us in new projects. We call that the Vopak way. I will briefly touch upon 10 interrelated ingredients, which I think together in their relationship actually give us this competitive advantage. We don't have patents, right? We don't have molecules, but we have a special source. The technical depth and technical width to run terminals is actually quite impressive. If you drive by a port and you see a tank, we need people that understand corrosion. We need people that understand how to work with minus 162 degrees LNG terminals. We need people that understand pumps. We need terminals that understand automation. We need people that understand coating. We need people that understand, and I can go in every engineering area, that understand all that.
At the same time, I gave you the example with safety performance. We have an average terminal on which we have 100 people. If you have 100 people, of which the majority is loading trucks and loading vessels, how do you organize for that technical depth and technical width, right? The network that we have in place, the experience that we have is actually providing us here with a competitive advantage. Because if you're a small player in this, how is it possible that you know this all? Let me talk you through the 10 ingredients. The first thing is we have a whole set of global standards, 80 standards. Standards on tank design, standards on static electricity, standard on our safety management system, all on the shelf for our existing business and a very good starting point for our new projects, for our partners also. Technical specs.
If we need to buy a valve, we need to buy a pump. If we need to buy an actuator, in the past, we were dependent on suppliers without having specs ourselves, getting delivered what they thought was necessary for us. In the meantime, that's all defined in our organization. In recent years, we upgraded our IT OT architecture. I like the analysis from a Bolognese type setup to a lasagna layered structure, which means that you can add applications, that you can get to your data in a decent manner. That's all in place right now. Our core processes have been blueprinted, whether this is maintenance, whether this is from the moment a truck arrives until it sends out, from the moment we receive an order till we send out the invoice. All these processes have been blueprinted.
On top, we build a digital layer with applications that, again, is readily accessible for any new terminal. If we were to build a new LNG terminal in South Africa, we would work with a local partner. It is very likely that these partners are not operating an LNG terminal today. Us having this ability with the applications on top makes us an attractive partner, right? A whole set of tools and programs to improve performance continuously, an onboarding and learning capability, which is strong again, this 100-people terminal. If we employ a new maintenance manager, an auto tool in Brazil, how do we get him or her to hit the ground running, right, in the specifics of our industry?
The thing that I think here is most important is actually the strength of our network, our collaborative culture, our 5,500-plus colleagues over the world that are able to work together, having communities of experts. If I'm a terminal manager in Ningbo in China and I come across a certain problem, it's very likely that for me, this is the first time. If we have 78 terminals, it is, however, very likely, very you can reasonably expect that it probably happened already somewhere else in the world. Learning at the speed of 78, a phrase I often use, 78 terminals, I don't have to make the mistakes myself, right? I don't have to invent the wheel every time. I can use the best practices from somewhere else.
The collaborative culture that we have as a company, in combination with the 78 terminals and the 5,500 colleagues, actually means that that strength of that network is actually quite unique. A clear set of KPIs on top to measure performance and a data analytics and AI layer on top, which is evolving in order to make sure that we continue this performance that we have shown in recent years. To close off at the end of my presentation, our business really requires a proven track record, and even more so in the future than it did in the past. Ammonia is a fantastic example. The ability in the track record to deal with ammonia is an entry ticket to develop a project that involves ammonia. The same for LNG. The same for LPG.
We know how to run that well from a safety, from a service, and from a financial perspective. As I said, I think it's a convincing argument why we can also be successful in landing these growth projects that we've talked to you earlier about. Thank you very much. I'd like to ask Maria to take over. Maria.
Thank you. It's nice to be able to speak with all of you who are here in New York, as well as all the folks who may be online in the webcast. I'm Maria Ciliberti, the President of Vopak USA and Canada. Many of us who see a gentleman on TV would always say, "America first," but in this case, it's "America last" as your last presenter today. Hopefully, maybe it's the best for last, but I leave that judgment to you. Let me share what's happening in the US and Canada business unit. The performance of the North America business unit has improved with solid operating cash returns of over 15%, as well as our occupancy rates. You've heard this from many presenters today. We're actually at 96% occupancy.
Strategic significant investments are already underway with almost EUR 500 million of capital committed to projects in both the gas, which we'll talk about, REEF, the industrial terminals business, but also in infrastructure for new energies. We are well positioned for growth at both our existing locations as well as new locations in North America. If we look at the network we have in the U.S. and Canada, it's really quite well diversified, going across the U.S. Gulf Coast to the U.S. West Coast and up to the Canadian Pacific Northwest. In the U.S. Gulf Coast, starting in the lower Mississippi River, we have terminals there that are serving a key petrochemical industry cluster, which then feeds it up into the Midwest.
In the US Gulf Coast, over in Texas, where we have many assets, we actually have two that are on the Houston Ship Channel, which is the busiest port with regards to tonnage out the door and in the door. We are in a very strategic location. Continuing on the West Coast, yes.
It's really like.
I'm not sure what it is. Would you mind using that one?
Super. That's even.
Okay. Great. I do not have to worry about taking this off. Perfect. Is this okay for everybody? Thank you. Because it was, I also heard it. I do not know if it was. Anyway, thank you for your patience on that. Let me continue, though, with the West Coast, which is actually a fantastic place to be. We have two terminals on the West Coast, one in Los Angeles and one in Long Beach, which serves the key markets at a very key location. Of course, you have heard a little bit about it, but in the Pacific Northwest of Canada, we have one terminal already today existing, and we have one being developed, which I will speak more to. These terminals are serving the Asian markets. The US and Canada business unit is already delivering on the corporate strategy of improve, grow, and accelerate.
Let me take it step by step. On the improve side, over the last three years, we have improved our EBITDA 29% to EUR 184 million last year. We have also improved our operating cash return over five percentage basis points. As I mentioned at the beginning, our occupancy has gone from 93% four years ago to now 96%. Major investments are underway on the growth category with our REEF and the LPG infrastructure, which I will speak more to, but also in the industrial terminal space where we have pipeline connectivity to customers. Particularly, I want to highlight later in Freeport, Texas. We have our first major proof points in new energies and infrastructure there with the rebuilding of our, I am sorry, repurposing of our assets in Los Angeles and also underway in Deer Park, which I will talk to a little bit here as well.
The United States actually is the company's first investment in our storage of electricity with our battery energy storage systems also in Texas. Actually, there are two systems we've invested in with a joint venture partner. The portfolio of the U.S. and Canada has been actively managed, and actually some of our improvement is a reflection of that, the improvement I spoke of earlier, the 29% on EBITDA and the OCR 5 percentage points. Specifically, we have divested in the oil distribution terminals in Canada, and you can see that here on the chart in the orange at the bottom. We also divested a chemical distribution terminal in Savannah, Georgia. Those proceeds are what is funding the investments in growth, whether that's the gas and industrial terminals, but also new energy infrastructure.
I would like to just share with you the recent repurposing that's going on now in Deer Park. I think you've heard about Los Angeles and the sustainable aviation fuel and the renewable feedstocks, but let me talk a little bit about what's going on in Deer Park. We are repurposing assets there as well for vegetable oils. We've already repurposed some of the tanks. It's in total cubic meters of storage. cubic meters are already been commissioned, and this year we will complete that with another cubic meters being in commission. Total between these two projects, between Los Angeles as well as our Deer Park repurposing in the growth space, it's EUR 58 million. This is contributing to our improved results, as I mentioned at the beginning.
Looking at a large-scale project, which is a very exciting project, our LPG project in Western Canada, this is a real proof point, the Ridley Island Energy Export Facility. The ability for Vopak to manage this process from start to finish, this is a very long process and very involved, all the way from originating the location, deciding we want to be there based on product insights, but then working with authorities, whether it's the port authorities or it's the Department of Fisheries, and then working also with our partner and our, in this case, a joint venture partner and clients to take the product in the Asian markets. Not to be forgotten is all the stakeholders, the communities, right, the local community in the Port of Prince Rupert, along with the First Nations, working with them to get their endorsement that we could proceed with the project.
All of that has been done over many, many years with consistency by Vopak. Now we are in the execution phase. REEF, the Ridley Island Energy Export Facility, will be in commission by the end of 2026. I want to share with you, this is just the beginning. This is just the initial phase. We see expansion opportunities, and we're already in discussion on that. I'd like to now also segue, still in growth, around the industrial terminals. We are pipeline connected to many, many customers across the US and Canada business, and in particular, our Vopak IIA joint venture, where we have three terminals, one in Texas and two in Louisiana. Here, we are sitting inside existing industrial manufacturing facility, which is quite different because it was already there and it was a carve-out, as you may recall.
We are already investing in multiple small projects, reactivating tanks that were not in service from the prior owner, adding modalities as well as pipeline connections to processes of our clients inside that industrial parks. However, we have a significant investment underway as we speak, and it is in Freeport. That represents approximately EUR 37 million of CapEx. Here we are connecting with a process that exists already for years. I want to share with you, and I loved how Jan Bert was talking about our capabilities. Being inside an existing industrial facility, which I used to spend my life as a producer, it is a lot of skills that have been learned that are not the same as operating outside the fence line, even if you have a pipeline between. When you are inside the fence line, there are new challenges.
I'm very happy and proud to say that the Vopak organization has gained new skills and know-how and bringing that as an advantage for other clients, whether they're in that industrial park or future parks that are already existing, that makes Vopak the partner of choice in such settings. There is a number of momentum, a lot of momentum in the United States, particularly in the Gulf Coast, with regards to the pet chems, should we all look at more carve-outs. That unique skill set is very valuable. Yes, it's brought challenges, but our learning is tremendous. I want to say, even though you may be thinking these assets are at 96% utilization or capacity, we have more land, particularly in this case with Vopak IIA terminals. We have 40 acres of extra land, and we have some tanks still to put into service.
More growth to come in this space. Of course, we all want it to go faster, but it's on its way. I want to just switch over to the accelerate pillar and the new energies. Capturing new energy opportunities is paramount. We've completed the huge project over in Los Angeles, of which we've repurposed. We've repurposed cubic meters of capacity and switched it over to sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel. Hopefully you see we are evolving with the markets. Now we are entering into new space, as Maarten had mentioned, in the storage of electricity. We've taken steps now with an investment in Houston with two battery energy storage systems. This is short-term storage, four hours lithium-ion technology.
Now, this is relatively speaking small in scale, but it's a phenomenal opportunity for us to develop our capabilities, understand the lifetime of a number of assets tied with battery energy storage systems, all meanwhile while employing similar contracts, long-term contracts with clients under the conditions you would see in our normal business with gas and industrial. The good thing here is we are in the grid, and that learning was not something I would take for granted. Being in the grid, in the case of Texas ERCOT, it's very important to be able to have that access. It's similar to our business at Marine. It's location, location, location. I would like to just close by saying the performance of the North America business has improved with solid operating cash returns and increased occupancy rates.
Several significant investments are underway for growth as well as in our gas and industrial terminal business, but also infrastructure for new energies. We are well positioned for future growth, whether it's at existing locations or new locations in North America. I want to thank you.
Great. Oh, I'm sorry. This one.
Q&A.
Q&A. It's going to be busy up here because we are the five of us. Please come on over here, guys, so we can organize ourselves. We have a few questions that came earlier also from the webcast. I'm sure you're going to give that to us in a second, Fatjona. Before we do that, we probably first go and ask for any questions that you might have given the presentations from Maarten, Jan Bert, and Maria just now. Please, who can I give the mic? Can we give the mic to Kostas again?
Let's not break tradition here. When I look at slide 64, where I see the locations of North America, I guess one question around kind of the Texas part, with so much LNG that is coming on stream on the re-gas side, around 27, do you see more opportunities that you can capture on the storage side? Do you see more runway for growth there? On REEF, I think first phase is LPG. We know that Canada now is pushing for LNG exports on the country. Do you see the second phase possible for LNG, I guess, any opportunities there? If I go to the last slide, you show that battery energy storage in Texas. Can you give us a bit more color on how that works? Is it directly with a renewable operator? How does that contract work?
Just a bit of to understand how a business case you're underwriting, I guess, or how do you think about that? Thank you.
Maybe just to make sure that we get the right people answering it. Although it is a question on Texas, the first one on LNG, Maarten, maybe you can say a few words on LNG export. Maria, you can take the REEF one and say a few words on the batteries, also complemented by Maarten. Yeah? First the LNG.
On the LNG export part, right? Indeed, there is tremendous liquefaction coming on stream in the Gulf Coast. What we see is that those projects are often developed by a developer where the liquefaction and the terminal are servicing one another. They wrap that then with the project financing around it. If people wrap that, that means that you need to start giving cross guarantees if you sort of unravel that part. If you look at sort of the CapEx that goes into the liquefaction part versus the CapEx that goes into the terminal, that is a factor 10-20. We can't carry that weight. That is why there is, at this stage in time, limited opportunities for us to invest in export facilities for LNG.
At this stage in time, we are not part of those investments, neither in the Gulf Coast, neither in the Middle East.
Just speaking here w`ith the discussion on the Ridley Island Energy Facility and is there an opportunity with LNG, I think a lot of what you just answered fits as well in Canada, in Western Canada. I would also say in Western Canada, with the infrastructure being put in place, the opportunity to leverage that infrastructure also is our intent and basically common infrastructure. I would expect we're going to do more expansion in regards to more LPG potentially, but also other chemicals that are in the area. That is really the intent with the expansions, foresight, the future with regards to the Ridley Island Energy Facility location. Your question with regards to BESS, the battery energy storage, we are right now in those discussions with some off-takers. Yes, renewable energies is in the mix for sure.
Getting through the permitting process and the certification by the utility agency has taken quite some time, but we have not closed all those deals, but they look very similar in that setup as a long-term arrangement.
Quirijn Mulder from ING. For Bert, Jan, a question about.
Jan Bert.
Jan Bert, sorry.
This isn't the first time.
Sorry.
No, no, sorry. With regard to the productivity, one of the most interesting productivity gains you can make is, let me say, to have the ships in and out very fast. That is very attractive. I thought we would discuss that in your presentation, but I have not heard anything about it. That is my first question. My second question is maybe somewhat more difficult. We have new management since 2000, senior management since 2022. Can you give me or describe some differences there?
Oh, Kiran. Shall we leave the room? Kiran and I will leave the room then later. Okay, you can ask him two or three things.
I guess on the first question, on the ship turnarounds, we had to make a selection given time. There is a whole set of key performance indicators, which we look at to see how, whether we're managing our business as well. Indeed, towards our customers, having good ship turnaround times, having low demurrage as a result is an important indicator. Also there, I think we are driving performance in the right direction. It just did not make it to the presentation because of time. On the new senior management, that is a very good question. That is a very, very good question. I think with senior manager, you mean the executive board, because I do believe that also us and some of our other colleagues are part of senior management. That collaborative spirit between our executive board and the rest of the organization is super strong.
It is one team. I think, yeah, performance here speaks for itself. I think we've had a few very, very good years, and that was only possible, I think, because of the leadership of our organization. What did you expect me to say on this question in the first place, Kiran?
Thanks.
Thijs Berkelder, ABN AMRO oddo BHF . First question for Jan Bert. On your slides, what was it? 58, your net promoter score going up, going up, going up. As an economist, I tend to judge your prices are too low because your clients are so happy. You have huge upside potential in your pricing. What can we expect there to happen? The hot potato in the room, of course, the Trump government and what can be expected from a Vopak perspective there to happen in the U.S.? What are you preparing for in terms of scenarios? Third question also relates to geopolitical stress in Europe. Do you see increased activity in terms of cyber attacks on your facilities and/or maybe physical attempts to disturb your operations?
Let me, the first one is for Jan Bert. The Trump one, I will say a few things. Michiel can probably say a few things also on cyber and what we see in that particular area. Jan Bert.
Upside of the MPS, I think first and foremost, our MPS is a super good score to land new projects. I think that's where this is indeed excellent. If you dissect our MPS and we look at the different stakeholder groups, those with whom we negotiate the rates actually score us the lowest. They actually pull it down. Those with whom we work with in our day-to-day operations, they score us even above 80 because obviously we know to whom we send out the MPS survey. Whether our rates have upside potential, I think that's also on the back of alternatives. Having high utilization is important here. Having a high MPS is important. Being in the right place is important. I think if markets are favorable, yeah, there is this upside. This was discussed, I think, earlier today.
Without that high MPS, you would not have that chance. Yeah, it's a good starting point. Maybe that has an answer.
We have to earn it every year. You start with zeros. It's not that you can carry the 80 of last year into the new year. You have to basically earn the loyalty of your customer every single day that you start performing in the new year. Maybe on the Trump side, there's a lot that we can discuss on it. I think a few things to put it into perspective. First, we are in the long-term business. Our investments, our contracts, our assets on the ground have a long-term view on the markets that we want to play and the logic that is behind it from us to invest. I think that's one to keep in mind.
Anything that would happen in the shorter term might have an impact, but in terms of our longer-term trajectory or where we see things trending towards is not very subject to what happens in the shorter term. I think the second thing to put into perspective is the potential impact that it has on your existing portfolio, the way you run it today, and then separate that from the growth ambitions that we have. Uncertainty, if you look at the existing portfolio, uncertainty is never a very positive element in terms of making business decisions going forward. That is what you hear in the business community loud and clear, that the level of unpredictability in the current administration is what puts people off. I think if you translate that into what that means for demand for storage, generally speaking, uncertainty leads to quite a bit of volatility.
It leads to stocking up at locations where you have trust. You might at a high level even think that might be potentially good news for demand for storage in certain locations. Your question is, do you see that already? It's way too early. We don't see, if we see any changes in flows, that will take time before they actually settle in. I think the other element to keep in mind and put the U.S. as an entity into perspective, we have seven terminals in the U.S. that we operate out of the 77 that we have in total. Now it's an important part of our business, but that's more or less the main capacity that we have.
By and large, if you look at VIA and if you look at Corpus Christi and if you look at VEH, long-term contracts, no matter whether that's import or exports, that's going to more or less continue in a very natural way. If you take a place like Deer Park, I think it's very important to realize that the level of inbound material that is coming into Deer Park, 90% is domestic. 90% is domestic production in the U.S. that is being shipped inbound into Deer Park. Yes, there's going to be 40%-45% that's being exported outside of the country that goes to Brazil, that goes to Mexico, goes to other places that might be subject to retaliation if you go for the tariff war. That still remains to be seen how that's going to play out.
Maybe the only last portion of the way to look at it that's towards the future growth. Yeah, I think if you listen to the story that we've said this morning that we shared with you, industrial capacity east of Suez, gas, LNG, LPG east of Suez, yeah, it's easy to say, and I gave it as an answer earlier as well when I got the question about Russian gas potentially flowing back. Even the tariffs, it doesn't solve an even hesitation, I would say, in big investment decisions that people or companies are making at this moment simply because of the fact that you don't know exactly where the world is trending to. That doesn't solve the LNG import problem that South Africa has because of blackouts.
That does not solve the lack of gas that is coming from the shelf outside of the coast of Melbourne that is the main driver for potential LNG terminal in Melbourne. It is not all doom and gloom for us, but obviously we are carefully watching. We are trying to see how that develops over time. Yeah, if it has an economic impact for a global economy and puts GDP numbers under serious pressure and as a result, inflation and interest is subject to a lot of pressure, yeah, then we come into a different territory, which we also should monitor at that time. By and large, the way we look at it now, monitoring gives opportunities and we need to stay very close to it. The question is yours.
Cybersecurity, well, definitely for ourselves, it's important to focus hard on the cybersecurity because it is an ongoing threat and effectively increasing threat in the world for our customers, but also from a government point of view, in many locations, we are considered critical infrastructure. We have doubled the team effectively last year to focus on cybersecurity, put extra money at work to make sure that we are doing the right things. We do dry runs in many locations where it's really vital to keep both the IT, but also the OT infrastructure up and running. Yeah, these are important steps. We have also decided last year to do an external check. We have had all the terminals being externally checked now by a reputable party who gives us effectively a different source of data.
Are we assessing the cybersecurity risks properly ourselves or do we see any weakness areas? We have identified a few areas where we still need to improve. We're working hard on that. We have prepared an action plan for that, making sure that in the coming years, we also close that gap. This is a continuous journey. This is not over and it's not going to be over because with AI, the number of security attacks or cybersecurity attacks, cyber attacks, is increasing quite rapidly.
Christoph.
I was just wondering, in Antwerp, are you still interested in potentially being involved in cracking the ammonia or would it be only storage? Is cracking ammonia something you can make a difference or you can be competitive? Regarding the IMO strategy on greenhouse gas emissions, what's your expectation of the outcome of the MEPC meetings this year? Do you think they will come up with ambitious targets or will they water down ambitions? When do you think the shipping industry will be ready to use ammonia properly as a propulsion fuel?
Maybe on cracking, you want to say a few words, Maarten, and then also give it a start on greenhouse gas and bunkering.
Yeah. No, on the ammonia part, we are solely interested in the storage part of it. We won't enter into cracking. We don't have that IP. We don't have that capability today. Will we work together with people who have that? Very much so. We will stick to our core as we are today in developing that terminal infrastructure, ensuring that that ammonia can land safely in the port of Antwerp and then at a certain battery limit, transfers a flange and then goes to the cracking facility. We are in close contact with all the developers of those facilities, trying to understand what they need, trying to understand what their reliability is, because there will be dependency on one another. At this stage in time, we don't see the necessity to invest in that.
Bunkering?
Bunkering, yeah. That is a bit looking in a crystal ball, unfortunately. You will not get a very clear answer from me, but what I can say and what I tried to say with the story that we just had is that whatever fuel comes, in the end, bunkering will happen in ports. We are at locations where that bunkering will take place. Whatever fuel product goes into the mix, infrastructure will be required for that. What I think is fairly important to also understand is that the energy density of the new products being used in that energy mix as of shipping fuel are way lower. You will need more volume to go that same kilometer than based on the products that are being used today.
Even if there are coming new products into the mix, probably we even need to build more infrastructure to facilitate those markets.
I think maybe to add a few things on ammonia because that's where a lot of discussions on ammonia, ammonia for bunkering is talked about and remains to be seen later when IMO this year starts to give their directions on it. Our view is that it's going to be for a long period of time a mix of a lot of different fuels that are going to be used. If you look at it from an ammonia perspective, it's important to realize that the ports that Maarten just spoke about, so let's say Fujairah, Singapore, Singapore Straits, Rotterdam, currently bunkering is taking place simply by small little vessels, barges, picking up product at a terminal like ours, and then physically going around in a port, hooking up with a hose to big vessels to actually start bunkering that.
People sometimes forget about the manual and the labor-intensive nature of that. It's not that you have large container vessels that sit at a dock and that basically get supplied by hard-piped product connections to actually do the bunkering, which basically means, can you imagine in the port of Singapore, 40, well, what is it, hundreds of vessels that are going to be bunkered with ammonia with small little barges that go through the port of Singapore, hooking up hoses, going back and forth. I think that's a serious safety concern that will exist in a lot of those locations. Therefore, it's being talked about much more when you talk about point-to-point type of connections. It's a ship from Australia that goes back and forth to the same port in China, and it's like 100x a year.
There you could potentially think, but that is in the total mix of bunker fuels. That is a different proportion, I think, of what the... You have to also look at the practical impact of what can be done and what cannot be done in terms of physical bunkering of ships.
Hey, John Mackay, Goldman Sachs, thanks again. This might be a quick one, but I just wanted to touch on it. US and Canada right now, 15% of EBITDA. Do you have a target or a general framework of where that could go from here? Then maybe specifically, we kind of know what REEF looks like. You touched on batteries, but it sounds at least from an EBITDA perspective, good return, but smaller right now. What would those bigger items be to kind of change that mix?
Do you want to say something on the first one?
Sure. I think, I don't know if this is on. I don't know that we have a percentage of the mix total for the company by 2030. I will tell you we have a very aggressive growth plan going on at the division or the business unit, I should say, better English. There is a number of what we call mega projects in the list, but I don't think we are at a state that we have some sort of goal that the US and Canada represents from 15% to some other percent. There are aggressive goals as well as a lot of opportunity, particularly in this part of the country where this part of the world, I should say. Without getting into too much detail, unless you would like me to, I'd be happy to, but I'm not sure.
I just would say we have a very aggressive program underway in the business unit for growth.
I think, John, it's probably... Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, maybe a few words on that because if you look at what we have committed so far, a large chunk goes into the U.S. and Canada. That's well above the 15% capital employed we have. It's hard to exactly tell where the rest is going to land depending on the funnel, but you may expect, at least, it's going to be 15% going forward because already close to 30%-35% of our existing commitment sits in the U.S. and Canada. If we continue on the journey, which could happen, could also not happen depending on where we land the projects, yeah, then obviously the capital employed sitting in the U.S. and Canada will grow beyond the 15% we have today.
Maybe just one more specific on that. I understand there might be commercial sensitivity as I'm not talking about the next projects, but maybe just frame up the products, right? Is it LPG side, chems, anything?
I mean, I'd be happy to say. We have actually a plan behind, and it really fits in the grow and accelerate, let me say. It's gases and industrial terminals heavy, which is obviously primarily in the state side, I would call it pet chems. On the new energies infrastructure, there's the pillars of which I think Dick and others have shared, right? Of course, electric battery storage is one of those, but also low carbon ammonia is in the mix. At this point, we don't have as much opportunity for holding intermittent storage of liquefied CO2, but that is even being explored in the US because there are certain locations where even though we have many places where it could go into CCS as a region, that's not all aggregated.
There is some exploration going on even in that space, what I would call the new energies. Heavy, I would say there's the low carbon ammonia activities along with battery energy storage. More so, if I had to put numbers to it, I'd say there's more two-thirds on the growth, one-third on the accelerate, which exactly fits the two plus one. Very much aligned.
Thank you.
Yeah.
We can go with the webcast?
Maybe, John. Jeremy, sorry. And Quirijn Mulder has a question, and then we go for the questions that came from the web. Yeah.
Jeremy Kincaid, Van Lanschot Kempen . Maarten, you talked about 20-30, I think, LNG and port terminals potentially in Southeast Asia. I was just wondering if you could provide some context around who might be the biggest competition in developing out those potential assets in that region. The second question just on these LNG projects in South Australia and, sorry, Victoria, Australia, and South Africa. You've told a good story around how those markets that need this product, there's depleting resources and load shedding, etc. What would be the biggest hurdles to get those projects to FID?
Yeah. Shall I do it in reverse order? In the end, the countries need it, but the countries also can decide to postpone it and to wait for it. In the end, someone will need to sign up for it and need to commit capital to enable for us to build that infrastructure. If you look in South Africa, for example, today, we can build a terminal, but where is the gas then going to go? There is no power plant yet connected to it. The connectivity to the hinterland gas grid where the gas is being consumed in the end in the industrial cluster that is a little bit around Secunda and Sasolburg. Sasol is a large industrial user of gas. Those connections are not in place. That all needs to fall in place, plus the regulatory environment, before we really can take the FID there.
Similar hurdles are sort of in Australia coming along. The regulatory environment needs also to shape up because many of these countries had these resources for many years themselves. They need to change also their legislation and their regulations in order to facilitate new energy sources into the mix. That is something that we coming more into the gas space are also getting more confronted with, the political elements of it all. Does that answer your question to that extent? The other one was on...
Competition.
Oh, energy infrastructure. Yeah. If you look at LNG competition around the world, we are sort of the largest independent operator of LNG assets. Competition is often very much from local developers that develop projects because you need again to have knowledge of the local lay of the land. You have a group of companies that provides infrastructure solution, the FSRU providers, but they are often being chartered in. We do not deem that real competition because we at locations where we are are chartering also these vessels. We have at this stage in time a handful of floating locations around the world. We are mainly competing there with local developers.
Quirijn.
If I may, two additional questions.
On management again or?
No, no, no. Speaking correctly, Jan Bert, maybe you gave your in on page 58, you gave the out of service as minus 2%. Can you give an idea what happens when the utilization rate goes down? Is there any connection between them and between the utilization or occupancy, as you call it, and the, let me say, out of services? A question for Maria on the use and chip channel and the ambitions with regard to the ammonia plants there because I think that was, if we speak about the mega project, I think that's one of them. Maybe you can update us on that situation.
There is some correlation between occupancy rate and out of service. Obviously, if a terminal is, if market demand is low, you want to optimize for cost on your out of service capacity. If the market demand is high, you probably want to optimize for revenue. We want to be smart about it. There is an element in out of service capacity also that is sometimes regulatory driven. You need to take things out of service in order to be able to operate it in the first, to be allowed to operate it in the first place. Yes, there is some correlation. You want to optimize for cost or you want to optimize for revenue. There is also an element here that certain tanks by a certain time have to be taken out of service.
That could be because of the fact that you have a risk-based inspection scheme that tells you you need to take it out of service. It could be that in a certain country, there's just clear regulation that you can only have the tank in service for so many years. Some correlation, but not 100%.
Maria, you want to say something on the ammonia?
Yes, very happy. We're very engaged and actually there's a number of projects in discussion. Some, of course, in the Houston Ship Channel, one in particular I'll speak to. I would say that first of all, the cost economics versus other countries, there are very favorable advantages producing and taking it export-wise. With respect to the one we've been public about, which is a collaboration with actually four legal entities, that program is very much moving forward. We are actually together with these different partners looking at value engineering that program. We are under letters of intent that are extended to continue that process. This is still progressing, but there are others as well. I think very confidently there will be exported low carbon ammonia out of the US Gulf Coast in the future.
I think maybe to add to that, probably Quirijn, in the end, it's maybe not so much the question of whether it will happen, it's much more of when it will happen and what type of supply chains are being connected. Is it a US export play to Europe? Is it a US export play to Japan mainly? There's slowly but surely getting sufficient funds in on the receiving end or drivers on the receiving end to make those supply chains work. I think, as Maria rightfully says, we're very confident that we have a good location because we actually store already the ammonia on the site in Houston next door, which is the joint venture that we have at Exolum. That's a site where we are developing. Again, it's more a matter of when than whether. Fatjona? .
Three questions from Maria.
Great that you're here, by the way.
Thank you. With the business profile getting towards more long-term contracts, should the leverage capability of the company not be higher than just 2.5x-3x? Are the covenants restriction of that? If so, what are the opportunities to renegotiate those covenants? Looking at your EUR 1.4 billion proportional CapEx committed, what is the percentage of contingencies, so covering for the potential cost increase that you have included in that? The third and the last question, you have already spent a lot of growth CapEx in the last years with not much terminal capacity growth. How do you envision the terminal capacity growth in 2025-2030 timeframe, especially in the light of very large CapEx ambitions?
Do you want to go for the covenants and look at the other?
I think that's the question for me indeed on the leverage and the long-term contracts. Yeah, we looked at the leverage in such a manner that we would like to have on one hand sufficient room to grow the company. On the other hand, you don't want to stretch yourself too much because you still want to have certain flexibility if certain opportunities come along. We have given ourselves a bit of an opportunity to reach to the 3.5x while assets are under construction because of this massive growth ambition. Is there a risk that we reach the covenants? No, there is no risk that we reach the covenants because if you look at our covenant, it is at 4x , which is then the consolidated leverage. While we're running at 2.2x effectively if you exclude the subordinated debt, which doesn't count for covenant purposes.
We have an internal management target, so we always want to make sure that we have sufficient room in case anything happens to protect ourselves. We don't want to be in the hands of banks and noteholders. We want to make sure that we have sufficient liquidity and sufficient room under our covenants. That's how we looked at the leverage, and that's what we also would like to maintain because that is the strong foundation for us as a company.
On the contingency for the EUR 1.4 billion, roughly, I mean, it depends. We have different contingency levels for all the investments based on what we think is at the right time, the right risk-adjusted level of contingency. If you want to take an average, it's roughly around 10% of what we put in our budgets as a contingency level at the moment that we take an FID, which is part of that EUR 1.4 billion. Last, the growth capacity. I don't expect, so if you look at it the way we are developing the portfolio now, the capacity versus the CapEx that we're doing looks a little bit off from what we've historically done. Look at cubic meters in Canada for the amounts that we are investing over there. We're not that much focused on the amount of capacity that we put to work.
Also, if you look at LNG, but some of these bigger gas projects, but much more at the setup, the CapEx that we have to allocate versus the commercial construct and hence the returns that we can make for it. It is hard to say, and it is also not, to be honest, not very relevant for us to put a capacity target out there in 2030. It is much more how much capital do we want to have allocated with exposure to certain markets, with stickiness in terms of long-term contracts, and more importantly, the return that we make with it. Yeah? With that, the last question. Of course, you can. Thank you, Rajeev.
I think this is a question maybe for Maria or Dick. On the Dow terminal, the VIIA, obviously it was done before you guys were there on the senior management side. Has that been, would you say, has that really performed as per expectation? Because when the last, when the deal was done, there was a lot of talk about you can expand it beyond Dow, but the expansion has been slower. Is it a kind of probably some hindrance from the BlackRock side or from the Dow side? Just how can you basically expedite that growth which you're talking about?
Maybe I'll give you the first part of the answer here, Rajeev. I think the expectations when we did it was definitely that we thought we could copy and paste the model of carve-outs to different entities in especially the US, but also in other parts. It's not for the lack of trying. We went to a lot of different entities to pitch the idea. The idea makes a lot of sense. It resonates, but there's all kinds of practical sometimes reasons why it doesn't work. One thing is for sure, you need a certain trigger on the one who's currently owning the assets. You need either a big growth CapEx that the plant is going to do, and therefore you want to optimize and reutilize space. There may be a lot of, or maybe a strategic reason. We haven't found.
There's also not other deals that have been done that we missed. We keep on following and tracking that. It's not for the fact that BlackRock has been not supportive. I would say to the contrary, they actually really want to see how we can grow this vehicle together. From that sense, I think it gave us for sure the positive, as Maria also indicated, carving out from existing infrastructure, these type of terminals is not as easy as it may sound. We've learned a lot. We are continuing to learn quite a lot on this. We still keep on pushing on some of the mega projects that Maria is talking about. We're giving it also a new push to put this concept in front of a lot of people that find it interesting. We keep on moving forward to it.
Is the growth what we had anticipated? No, it's not. It's not at the level that we would have expected and would have hoped it to be when we started it. We are going to continue pushing for it.
If I can just address on the growth side, I think what we are finding is that growth will be more inherent with the, I'll call it existing tenants, right? There are multiple tenants within the fence lines of these industrial parks in many cases due to the legacy past situation. There is where a lot of our project pipeline is coming from. External clients, yes, we are in discussions right now, particularly in the Louisiana-Mississippi River, as I mentioned. There is the potential also with diversification of a customer base, but I would anticipate we'll have more growth with the clients within the fence line, but we will also have some clients that will come from outside the fence line.
The pace is maybe not what we had put in our initial investment plan, but we can see the funnel coming together that it'll, it takes time though. The learnings have been very helpful as we do the next big project. That's what's key because it'll make it more efficient, the next big project and the next big project.
Thank you. With that, I think we're at the end of our Capital Markets Day. I want to first close out the people that are online and have been following it. Congratulations. You sat it through for the full, almost four or five hours that we set out for you. Thank you a lot for joining. Have a good rest of your day. If there's any further follow-up questions, you know where to find our IR department with Fatjona and ask any questions. For the ones over here, thank you a lot for also staying patient and staying with us for this morning. I hope you found it interesting enough. Apparently, if not, you wouldn't have been staying over here. We happily invite you for lunch and have the opportunity to still continue. Thank you.