Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ansell Limited FY 2023 Full Year Results Briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We do ask that participants limit themselves to asking two questions at a time. To ask further questions, please rejoin the queue. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Neil Salmon, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning or good evening, according to where in the world you are. Thank you for your interest and for joining this conference call today. If I start with an overview of the matters that we'll cover, I'll give you a shorter than usual business update, as much of the headlines are already in the public domain, then hand over to Zubair, who will cover the financial results, and then I'll have a slightly longer than usual conclusion section, in which I'll aim to put Ansell today in the context of the last few years and look ahead with the productivity investment program that we recently announced. Let me now start with that business update. Always, of course, we begin with safety and sustainability.
Another very successful year, showing significant year-on-year progress in both our leading indicators and also our injury statistics. The leading indicators largely measure how engaged employees are in making observations of unsafe conditions at work and thus preventing future injuries, and you can see generally an increase in the various tracking mechanisms we use of, for example, unsafe acts reported. Injury statistics, we see a slight increase in lost time injuries, but against or an already very low level, and a substantial reduction in medical treatment injuries, against a prior year that was. The prior year was already a record low, and so we set a new record, and overall, about a 30% reduction in total injuries. Moving forward to sustainability, on the left-hand side of this slide summarizes the progress we're making against our people agenda.
Within our own operations, we continue to ensure that there is no legacy of recruitment fees through our current population. That was completed several years ago, but more recently, we've reached out to former workers of Ansell that we were not able to contact originally through social media and other channels, and where we have been able to identify former employees, we have also completed remediation of fees they paid. With regards to our audit protocols, we now have included enhanced e-audits covering forced labor indicators that are a more comprehensive and intensive audit process, and we're seeing some good results from those in our internal facilities. Then very important is the establishment of independent, independent grievance mechanisms, now in place at six of our sites and to be progressively rolled out across our entire population.
Commenting on our third-party supply chain, as I announced earlier in the year, a very important milestone in that all our Malaysian finished goods suppliers confirmed, and we have verified, that they've completed their own recruitment fee reimbursement, a substantial sum of money to the benefit of tens of thousands of workers. We have also asked our key Wave One suppliers to incorporate forced labor indicators to their audits as well, we've extended our supply management framework now beyond the first wave of finished goods suppliers and strategic raw materials suppliers out to other suppliers, for example, packaging, services, and so forth. As we do so, we realize that there continue to be issues that need to be addressed across the broader supply chains, which we benefit from. I'm pleased with the progress that we are making.
That can be summarized overall in generally a much improved closeout of audit issues, both internally and with our third-party suppliers. The right of this page summarizes our key environmental goals, and I'm pleased to say that against all three of these, we are on track at this point in time, although admittedly, some of the reduction in emissions and water consumption this year was also a function of lower production volumes. But more importantly, we are on track against the underlying investments that will take us to that 2030 and 2040 goal. Electricity, for example, was 2% just a couple of years ago, sourced from renewables, now up to 29%, and overall, including the use of biomass, over 50% of our energy is from renewables. Important progress in water withdrawals.
We're investing in sophisticated reverse osmosis technology. We have a ways to go before we have fully optimized that, and that will be a key focus for the next 12 months. Then zero waste to landfill. All the Ansell facilities in the original, original scope of this project are now zero waste to landfill, which is a huge accomplishment across thousands of different items. Two have not yet been certified, but the certification process is well underway, and we're confident they will be. Now we're adding in our two more recent facilities, being Careplus, now known as Ansell Seremban, and our under construction facility in India. Turning to financial progress and outcomes. The external environment I've commented on already. We see strength in key industrial verticals.
It is a bit of a mixed picture in industrial, both geographically and market by market, but overall, we continue to find ways to grow, and I expect that to continue for the next 12 months, and we do not yet see the onset of recessionary conditions that have been long predicted. The key factor affecting top-line growth in healthcare is customer destocking, and I'll comment on that further in a moment. Foreign exchange rates were also a headwind in fiscal 2023, and we expect that to worsen in fiscal 2024. Overall, I think it was satisfactory that we delivered EPS at the low end of our original guidance range, in what turned out to be more challenging market conditions than we had forecasted at the beginning of the year.
I'm pleased with the overall organic revenue growth for industrial of 4.3%, and above five, as you'll see in a moment, for mechanical. Yes, we did see lower sales from destocking in healthcare, but if you look through those to the end user demand, as reported by our distributors, you see a more positive picture. Overall, EBIT margins improved, and in particular, industrial margins improved in the second half. Which takes me to the bottom left part of this page. These were the key goals I set and announced to you six months ago. We achieved all of these. We continued organic revenue growth in industrial, we improved industrial margins as the price increases we had communicated, came through fully, our selling prices and input prices came back into sync.
We also saw, encouragingly, a strong sequential improvement in Exam/SU volumes in the second half versus the first half. The one piece of this, although we predicted, but of bigger magnitude than expected, was the stocking in surgical end user demand, and that's what took us to the low end of the guidance range, offset by incentive reversals. Then middle right or middle, middle bottom of the page, I should say, we continue our program of investment behind long-term growth and value creation opportunity, and I'll comment more on that in a moment. Let me now go through our SBU highlights in a little more detail before I hand over to Zubair. Exam/SU, yes, down almost 30% year-on-year, but note that over the 4-year time period that we're highlighting here, revenue up 2%.
Now, volumes were down in that comparative period. Revenue, therefore, is up on mix improvements in the business and also on some remaining favorable pricing. In particular, if I look at that strong sequential improvement in volumes in Exam/SU, we see signs that this business is emerging from its destocking phase, and overall, a stronger mix and portfolio than we had prior to the pandemic. This, coupled with our investment program in Thailand, and now through the acquisition of our Careplus joint venture, means we're approaching 40% of volume produced in-house, and we'll get that close to 50% volume in the next 12 months. Revenue higher than that, because generally, the pricing is higher on our more differentiated in-house produced styles. Four years ago, we only made one of our top 10 styles in-house.
Now we make, the majority, seven to eight of our top 10 styles in-house. That's a significant change in the makeup of this business. Surgical, a disappointing last six months. We had strong revenue growth in the first half and a decline in the second half, resulting in an overall moderate net decline in the 12-month period. Note the 8% growth over this four-year period, indicating a business that has performed well, despite being currently dampened by destocking effects. Encouragingly, our position with this business globally, which sets us apart versus all other players in this space, continues to give us opportunities to grow. We saw good double-digit growth in Asia Pacific, particularly 20% growth in India.
Also, we continue to see the general trend shift towards more differentiated synthetic styles and away from natural rubber latex. Life Science here, a similar picture to exam single use in the year-over-year effect, again, largely of destocking, but also some end-user demand impacts as vaccine production, for example, was not so apparent in the year versus the prior year. Against the four-year time period, also a good compound annual growth rate for Life Science. This is a business we continue to invest in, we continue to believe has long-term, higher growth rate potential. Turning now to Industrial, here's the Mechanical 5% growth rate in the year that I commented on.
I'm very satisfied with this result, especially as Mechanical also had some destocking effects in more, with specific customers and specific verticals, but it had to overcome in the year. That 3% compound annual growth rate is within the, within the range of the long-term growth rates that we said we anticipate for Mechanical, but at the lower end of that range, and I think our more recent performance suggests, indeed, we can do better than that rate going forward. Very encouraging to see the success of new products, to see the success of our RINGERS integration, which gives us a strong position in energy, the energy vertical, and we also see double-digit growth in products, designed for electrical protection, electrical vehicle production, for example, and also other, other markets where electrical protection is required, and we're innovating in this space, too.
Chemical, more consistent story here. The chemical body protection, if you remember, was another product range that saw elevated demand during the pandemic. That corrected the most quickly of all our SBUs, and so this business was out of that phase in this period, and so you see a fairly steady growth rate in the 12 months and over the four years. While mechanical margins have improved over this time period as a result of investments that we've made, chemical margins have not improved, and so this is an area of focus for us going forward and linked to our productivity investment program. Now let me hand over to Zubair to run through the financial summary, and then I'll take it back with some strategic comments at the end.
Thanks, Neil, and hello everybody, and thanks for joining the call. I'll begin, as usual, with highlighting a few key items here in the P&L summary on slide 11. Beginning with that sales decline year-over-year of nearly $300 million. Of course, that was largely driven by that pricing normalization in the Exam single-use business. At the same time, the cost of purchasing that product from our outsource partners, obviously, also proportionally declined. Overall, there's a benefit to GPAD margins. As you can see here, at the group level, we've moved from just under 29% GPAD in fiscal 2022 to nearly 31% in fiscal 2023.
Now, we're very focused on continued improvement in these margins, but pricing comparisons against the first half of fiscal 2023 in that exam business is going to negatively affect our sales growth. From the second half, however, I think we target to be back in positive territory, and that's given the volume trends, highlighted just now. Neil's already covered, of course, the other key points regarding revenue, so, I'll move to this SG&A line. In that regard, we always plan for some growth as our in-person customer-facing activities are reverted to more usual levels, but the increase in SG&A has been muted, by incentive expenses, being a lot lower than the targeted spend.
Of, of course, we highlighted this in the earnings call in July, and as promised then, we've disclosed additional detail in slide 34 to help clarify the various parts of that incentive unwind. Because of that lower expense, SG&A as a percentage of sales at just over 18%, although it's considerably higher than fiscal 22, as you can see here, it's still lower than we'd usually expect. In past calls, I've mentioned target SG&A levels could be anywhere between 20%-21% of sales. Although those sorts of percentages are still reasonable, we'll challenge these ratios through our Accelerated Productivity Investment Program and digital initiatives, and Neil's going to describe more about that shortly. Then the last thing I would note here in terms of the P&L, is the effective tax rate, which closed the year at just over 21%.
At the half year, I did outline, although we had a steep increase in the Sri Lanka corporate tax rate, we benefited from using unbooked tax losses we'd built up in our Australian entity against FX hedge contract gains. Absent that size of benefit, we're tracking to a higher effective tax rate, and that's gonna be expected to move all the way across fiscal 2024. In the next couple of slides, I'll talk to the global business unit performance, and beginning here with the healthcare business unit on slide 12, you can see the full effect of that exam single use pricing coming off from the top line, as well as destocking in both surgical and life sciences. Also of note, is nearly $50 million of unfavorability, driven by FX and our exit from Russia.
With that sort of sales reduction, it's no surprise to see a commensurate drop there in EBIT dollars. Now, that said, constant currency EBIT margins, in fact, showed 80 basis points of improvement because of that pricing normalization in the exam business, as I've just mentioned. Turning to the Industrial business unit, here, a much better top-line story, with just over 4% constant currency growth. As highlighted by Neil, the Mechanical business unit is delivering good growth, and we're pleased with the new product introductions, and both Mechanical and Chemical business units enjoying the benefit of favorable pricing and mix. Now, in constant currency terms, EBIT grew double digits, although on a reported basis, the Industrial GBU was also impacted by that Russia exit and unfavorable FX.
Without those items, EBIT margins grew 120 basis points, and we think that provides a really good base going forward as we look to accelerate productivity initiatives, which again, Neil is going to describe very shortly. The next slide is our usual cost summary. Overall, it's been a mixed bag in terms of our cost picture. We've experienced double-digit reductions in the cost of natural rubber latex and NBR cost versus fiscal 2022, but to a large extent, those savings were offset by higher employee costs at a couple of our larger manufacturing sites, and that was together with increased energy costs in Malaysia and Sri Lanka.
As we look out into fiscal 2024, I don't expect further significant reductions in NRL and NBR costs, but at the same time, we are planning for lower energy costs, with trends in the second half of fiscal 2022 or sorry, fiscal 2023, supporting my assumptions there. Lastly, in terms of cost, I'm just reconfirming here that the exam, single use, outsource product costs now remain stable and somewhat predictable compared to the last couple of years. In terms of capital expenditure, turning to slide 15. Here, you'll notice that we've spent just under $70 million, with a large portion of that going into the Greenfield India surgical site. At the same time, further insourcing of some of our differentiated exam single use products is also included in that $70 million of spend.
For fiscal 2024, we're targeting CapEx to be in the $60 million-$80 million range, and this will include spend to realize some of our ESG ambition, and it's you know, obviously, we've continued progress with the Greenfield site there in India. We've also recently established a brand new distribution facility in North America, and fitting that out will incur some CapEx in fiscal 2024. Now, although this is still elevated spend versus our history, I've said this many times, when we reinvest in ourselves, we do yield the best returns in our overall deployment of capital, and therefore, we continue to encourage our teams and ourselves to look for innovative ways to drive further automation and support sales growth. Moving to the cash flow slide, slide 16.
Following our H1 results, I did say that we would be targeting a much better H2 cash picture, and we did realize some of that goal with a 93% cash conversion. At the same time, I did say I'd be disappointed if we didn't close out the full year in the 90%+ range, and clearly, we fell shy of that ambition, but a result of that sharp destocking we endured in Surgical and Life Sciences. Now, preparing for the slowdown in production in fiscal 2024, which we spoke to in the July call as well, also drove a significant reduction in trade payables in the fourth quarter. Of course, that consumes working capital.
Now, given our inventory reduction plans for fiscal 2024, I also target for this significant capital, working capital unwind and a corresponding cash inflow in the next 12 months or so. Turning to the balance sheet. Despite all the noise in the last two years in this industry, the one constant signal is our strong balance sheet. As you can see here, even following those capacity investments and the somewhat bumpy sales trajectory, we continue to operate with relatively low levels of net debt. Here you can see we've only just ticked up above that one turn of net debt to EBITDA, and that's following the new leasing arrangements we've got for that new warehouse facility in America, I've just mentioned a few moments ago. Also of note on this slide is the working capital movement.
We've driven down nearly $17 million of inventory since the 1H results. At the same time, we have that offsetting reduction in trade payables I just mentioned. Lastly, of note on this slide, we closed the year with pre-tax ROCE at 11%. That's not surprisingly down on fiscal 2022, given we have lower EBIT and lower and higher capital employed. Now, the multi-year expansion of that capacity to support the growth in our premium and differentiated product lines is inevitably going to create a temporary drag on ROCE. We plan for that, but we do target increased returns in the midterm as we're going to leverage that newly installed capacity. Our EBIT will benefit from the productivity programs. Wrapping up this financial section, I'll give a brief overview of our debt profile.
Again, consistent with my comments at the half year, we continue to operate the business with plenty of headroom in terms of liquidity, and as called out on this slide, we have $100 million of senior notes maturing in the next few months. These will be more than covered by our undrawn facilities. Also of note, I'd say here, most of our gross debt is with fixed interest rates. So we do have some protection against the current swings in the macro interest rate environment, and who knows where that's heading. In summary, quite a few moving parts, both internally and externally. We've been managing that for one, two years now. We'll continue, again, to manage this business with a keen eye on long, long-term value creation.
With that said, I'll hand back to Neil, who can describe more about what that means.
Thank you, Zubair. Let me turn now to this next section. I realize as you look, try to model the business over the last few years, it's hard to see the underlying trends of the business. In 2020 and 2021, we had a period of acute demand for infection control products and price increases, particularly for Exam Single-Use. Also, a period of manufacturing and supply chain disruption affecting us and our customers, and which led to customers running very cautious levels of inventory. So some of this demand in this period was actually going into inventory rather than supplying end use demand, but that was difficult to see at that time.
In the 2022-2023 period, we see the opposite of those effects, so end use demand came down more quickly than our distributors had forecast, leading to some overshoot in their inventory levels. Since then, we've been in this destocking phase, which has been working through our businesses at different rates. Chemical, as I mentioned, was the earliest to exit that phase. Encouragingly, exam single use now seems to be at the end of that phase. I now realize there is longer to go for surgical and life science, and I'm not expecting those businesses to be through the destocking phase for another six to nine months.
In the 2022, 2023, we see the exam single use price reset. As we're very clear in this presentation, there's another $30 million to go comparing fiscal 2024 to 2023. Note, those are prices that are already in the market today. On a sequential basis, we now see exam single use pricing relatively stable. We expect that to continue into next year. Given the last big price reduction was six months ago, the first half of next year will be affected by that. As you're aware, we have fully exited our Russian operations, I think one of very few multinationals to have completed the exit. I'm very happy we did that quickly and effectively, given the reports I read of other companies who are in a difficult situation right now.
Foreign exchange has been a headwind in the last 12 months and will be again in the next 12 months. Even if underlying rates improve from here, our hedge book now largely locks in the outcome for the next 12 months. As Zubair has highlighted, we see increases in interest and tax rates. What I'll now try to do is step back from these shorter term trends and give you a picture of Ansell today versus, prior, pre the pandemic. Talking to organic growth, first of all, so I showed you those four-year organic growth rates. All five of our business units have achieved positive organic growth rates since F 19, even though I'm using a comparator period that is dampened by destocking.
Important that the Exam Single-Use business and the Mechanical business, our two largest SBUs, have improved the underlying quality of their businesses through mix enhancement, new product innovation, particularly in Mechanical, and also the benefits of our prior restructuring program, Project Horizon, which has resulted in a long-term and sustained improvement in Mechanical margins. During this period, we've remained very focused on our pre-existing and long-term investment program. We have not been distracted or chased after, pandemic demand or even what we viewed as temporary fashions, for example, the nearshoring trend, which, while it may have some traction, I think is gonna be much more limited than many predicted. We've stayed focused on investments that we think are for the long-term benefit of our customers and our shareholders. I'll briefly mention them here and then go through in a little more detail.
Emerging markets, continued product innovation, and now adding sustainable products to that focus, manufacturing capacity in our most differentiated styles in which we've seen multi years of above-average growth, and very importantly, perhaps I haven't stated this enough, improvements in the underlying supply chain planning and digital system capabilities of the business, which are fundamental to our ability to meet, to satisfy our customers. When I look forward over the next 12 months, clearly the EPS figures that I've already trailed to the market are, are nothing to get excited about for the next 12 months. Going into S 25, we do see the headwinds I've already commented on normalizing, those that I can see today, that is at least.
I do believe now is the right time to position Ansell for the next phase of growth, and that's the reason why we have announced and why we are starting to implement our Accelerated Productivity Investment Program, which is targeting significant long-term value creation for shareholders. Now let me go through each of those in areas of investment focus and give you an update. Emerging markets. In the last 12 months, sales largely level year-on-year. Of course, that's an overperformance against the overall business, and so we've seen another further significant step up in emerging markets as a % of the total, now approaching 25%. You look at the four-year growth rate, and you see double-digit growth in emerging markets. It's been a mixed picture over the last 12 months.
Weakness in China has been widely reported and commented upon, and indeed, we did see that in both our industrial and healthcare businesses. We saw great results in Latin America, another year of solid growth there, and within India, the, our medical business is doing well, as I previously mentioned. Overall, there is no one else in the industry with the geographic diversity that Ansell has in either the industrial or the healthcare portfolios, and that continues to be a, to our advantage going forward, and we continue to invest behind our effectiveness in these markets. Turning to innovation, the one aspect of SG&A that has consistently grown ahead of inflation is our spend on R&D, a 10% growth rate over this period. We see some really encouraging results, particularly in Mechanical.
The product on the top mid- middle left there, 11-561, is one of a family of ultra-lightweight, high-cut products that are getting great reviews from customers. We're, we're launching subsequent products in the range now. Each time we bring one of these to market, we get very strong customer feedback, and the challenge is: how do we keep up with demand through ramping up production of what are quite specialist styles? We are the only ones with this polyisoprene hybrid technology for surgical. Now we have introduced it in a micro-thin form. Again, a product that's getting good response from customers. Our Chemical business is extending into thermal protection. That's really the core of innovation in chemical multi-risk protection. How do we combine cut and chemical, cold and chemical?
Because those are multi-use products that allow customers to get rid of many products or m- or we- workers having to wear many products as they do today. 94-242 is the first genuinely new product we've launched in exam single-use for a while because that business was not able to launch products while it was dealing with the pandemic era. There's a great story in the annual report about how Emirates Airline is using 94-242 to paint planes. Would you have known that an exam single-use product is pretty critical to the safety of the worker and the quality of the paint job as Emirates repaints its entire fleet? Some great examples of innovation driving differentiation across all our businesses.
Perhaps the most, the smallest, but perhaps most significant here is our Inteliforz range. This, you may remember, are connected PPE, where we use a variety of devices and sensors, and the fundamental objective here is to warn workers of injury risk before an actual injury event happens. We have now our first customer subscriptions. The revenue from those remains small, but it's encouraging, and as a result of the leading work we're doing here, we're unlocking multimillion-dollar opportunities across our existing portfolio. That's really the key to Ansell going forward. Nobody else has the portfolio we have and the ability to unlock value at the end user level, and that's driving a lot of the focus that I'll talk about as we reposition the company going forward.
The biggest area of investment in terms of dollars has been in our manufacturing assets, and these you are mostly familiar with. We continue to build out our greenfield facility in India. We acquired our wholly owned, we took Careplus wholly owned, six months ago, now renamed Ansell Seremban. This facility is doing great for us. Its productivity and yields have improved as we predicted, and we are now introducing that technology to the site that we didn't want to do when it was a joint venture site. It's one of very few facilities in Malaysia today producing these products that's running at a very healthy utilization rate, and that's talks to the differentiation of this portfolio. Then we continue to work through the expansion of our Thailand facility.
The lines are running, but there's more work to do before we achieve the cost targets that we set for these lines. On the right are the investments that, while smaller in dollars, are just as fundamental in capability in our systems and processes. We have overhauled our entire supply chain planning processes, systems, and also brought in a number of very talented players who are creating leading capability in this area. This begins, yes, with the ability to predict customer demand. That's something that we have clearly struggled with over the last 12 months. Working with distributors to model their sellout, their inventory levels, and to better anticipate moves in the market. This is generating significant improvement in customer satisfaction metrics.
We use, as many companies do, the Net Promoter Score, and we've seen that improve substantially over the last two years as a result of these changes. Then, although I've only recently announced our ERP program for our commercial units, this program has long been underway for our manufacturing units. We've seen in the last 12 months, thousands of manufacturing employees move from 30, 40-year-old ERP technology to the very latest cloud systems, and what's most important for you to know is that that went live. All those go lives have happened without a hitch. We have a very good team who's very practiced in implementing this system, and we're seeing great results, and it's now unlocking part of our productivity opportunity for manufacturing.
Then finally, we've entirely overhauled, added new and replaced old e-commerce systems, which interface with customers in various ways, portals that allow distributors visibility on where their product is, orders unfulfilled, and so forth. Building out our presence on e-commerce. That part of the business is still small, but is growing at a healthy rate. Also creating the potential to supply very targeted customers that are not supplied or not served by our existing channels through direct sales on Ansell. But that's probably the smallest of these investments. The other two are the more significant to our growth going forward. With so much progress in these areas, how does it, how does it stack up that FY 2024 EPS that I've given you an indication of already, will be below our adjusted FY 2019 EPS?
Well, these are the headwinds shown in a bridge that explain that. Firstly, a significant FX headwind comparing 2024 to 2019. I do expect in time this will reverse, but the earliest that it can do so, because of the hedge position we now have, will be in FY 2025. These other impacts will not reverse, we've lost the earnings of our Russia business that was highly profitable on an incremental basis. We see higher interest rates impacting interest costs on debt, and the investments we've made in CapEx, and also temporarily in working capital, mean we have a lower net cash and gross debt, and higher gross debt position. Tax rates expected to go up into next year and a moderate offset from our share buyback program.
If I adjust for all of these, we do see EPS higher, comparing 2024 to 2019. A moderate rate of growth, certainly below our ambitions for this business, I think important still to state that after making these adjustments, our FY 2024 EPS will be moderately higher than our FY 2019 EPS. We need to do something about these headwinds to the business rather than just accept them as they are, and we also need to really position Ansell now to take full advantage of the investments we've made. Those are the drivers behind this Productivity Investment Program that I announced a couple of weeks ago. Three main areas of focus. Simplify and streamline our organization structure.
We've had a, quite a complex matrix structure over the last few years, which has achieved significant results in terms of repositioning Ansell as a leading, innovator, substantial work, clearing up our branding position and consolidating to a set of global leading brands, and also driving key strategic initiatives. It was a complex structure, and we knew that after we had achieved those goals, it was time to put the focus of the organization structure back on the customer. That is fundamentally the change we're making here. Focus on the customer, organize back from the customer, and reduce a lot of duplication and overlapping responsibility that the previous structure entailed.
If we get this right, the more significant benefit of the new structure will be an enhanced ability to execute in the market, which, of course, means a higher growth rate, but the immediate benefit will be lower SG&A. We expect those benefits to begin this year, and then be in full effect next year. Manufacturing productivity. We've seen good results in the last 12 months from our automation program. We've had one of the highest rates of manning improvements through putting automation steps in place, particularly in packaging operations. Now we want to step up our ambition, but we also need to reduce our manning levels appropriate to the slowdown in production, that I'll comment on a moment, that will allow us to rebalance our own in-house inventory in the way our customers have already done.
The goal is that our once production volumes improve, as our destocking phase is over, the automation investments we've made will mean we don't have to rehire, and we can run our facilities fundamentally at a lower manning level into the future. We continue to pursue our multi-step make versus buy or insourcing/outsourcing program. I've commented already on the success of insourcing in the exam single-use business. In some other parts of our business, we're clear that there are products where there is no Ansell differentiation and where third parties have greater economies of scale for us, than us in those products. In some cases, we will proactively outsource to reduce cost and then rationalize any assets that remaining at Ansell that are not competitive with global standards.
It's a multi-step insourcing and outsourcing strategy, both steps designed to create value for customers and shareholders. Then finally, the IT program here. With the confidence that we rightly claim through success over the last couple of years, we're stepping up our ambition here, and in particular, over the next two to three years, we'll bring our commercial units all onto the same digital cloud-based ERP platform that is already proving successful in our manufacturing operations. At the same time, but independent to these decisions, we have decided that we need to proactively reduce Ansell inventory, and that means reducing our rates of production. In the short term, that creates headwinds, and coincidentally, the headwind cost of lower rates of production more or less offsets the benefits of savings from the productivity program over the next 12 months.
Of course, we only expect a one-year effect of slower production, and so that will normalize going forward. But overall, the inventory reduction should fully pay for this program. Let me summarize the financials here. The overall pre-tax cash cost over three years, we estimate around $40 million-$50 million, and we expect the same amount of savings once we're at full annual run rates, which should be in FY 2026, around $45 million. The second component is the IT spend. Now, in years gone by, this would have been a CapEx item, but with the change to accounting standards, we now need to expense it, and so that's why I wanted to call it out for you today so that you see it going through as an expense item. Here, I have not yet signed off on the business case for this.
I'm confident there will be a good return, probably more limited than the return on the cost reduction above, as usually the case for IT investments, but nevertheless, a return. As soon as we have that business case approved, I will update you, I would expect probably at our half-year results in February. The P&L impact, similar to the cash impact, there's only a moderate amount of non-cash charges to the P&L to facilitate these changes. You can see the 24 effect of productivity of savings on the right side here being offset by that temporary headwind from the inventory reduction. Overall, I believe this is the program needed to power Ansell's EPS growth to the future.
For the reasons I've explained here, we'll not see a net benefit in FY 2024, but in FY 2025 and beyond, we want to get EPS growing again. We want to get shareholders seeing value creation. Let me conclude now with focusing my lens on FY 2024. These numbers, the EPS range here, is as announced to the market in July. The EPS range, after excluding transformation costs at $0.92-$1.12. Sales trends, as guided in July update, and as I've mentioned, note that that $30 million remaining exam single-use price correction will affect first half-on-first half sales. Also note that the inventory correction cost effect will be largely a first half effect. FY 2023 earnings were protected by the hedge book that we had in place 12 months ago.
Those hedges have rolled off and been replaced by hedges at current rates, we will see the full effect of, in fact, last year's exchange rates in FY 2024, that will reduce EBIT by $9 million, we estimate. We've talked about the normalization of incentive costs, assume we pay closer to target levels in FY 2024. We talked about the higher tax rate and the higher interest cost. Zubair summarized the CapEx program. I do expect these investments to generate long-term growth and value for shareholders. We're probably in our final year at the-- this elevated rate of spend, the biggest individual chunk continues to be on our India surgical facility, which will ramp down in years after this. Our dividend policy is maintained.
We'll continue to pay out at that 40%-50% rate and on earnings prior to transformation cost. As you know, we've had an active capital management program for many years. We continue to look for active deployment of capital, and based on how we see the opportunity for investment right now, I do expect an elevated rate of share buyback. So I'm indicating, of course, subject to market conditions and our ability to complete the program, that we should be targeting around a buyback of about $50 million over the course of these next 12 months. Let me wrap this up, and then we'll go to questions. Fundamentally, on the left, we believe we see favorable end-use demand, but I accept that's difficult to see in our reported sales, and that's largely because of the stocking in the healthcare GBU.
On the right, we continue to stay focused on long-term investments. The programs well underway will now be augmented by our accelerated productivity investment that is designed to build a platform for superior growth, also lower cost, and of course, those two together mean superior returns. With those two elements in place, then remember our global leadership position, unmatched by anyone else in our industrial or healthcare positions, in growing differentiated market segments. That's the core value of Ansell, and now we need to see it come through in the next phase of growth for the company. Thank you for listening, and now let's go to questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Once again, we do ask that participants limit themselves to asking two questions at a time. To ask further questions, please rejoin the queue. Your first question comes from David Low from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much for taking my question. Could we just start with the incentive program? Thank you for the additional information on slide 34. Just would like to understand, of that $56 million in FY 2023, what's it sensitive to? If we're modeling and sales or EBIT, it comes in above or below, how do we sort of estimate how much of an impact we should see in that incentive program line? Just in the same vein, FY 2024, it looks like there's still a little bit of a reduction there from the non-repeating reversal of prior year accruals. Could I get some clarity on that, too, please?
Sure. Generally, so we have the sales program, which is relatively small. We wouldn't normally call that out, but we wanted to give the overall picture. Then we have the short-term incentive and the long-term incentive program. Generally, we set the short-term incentive program consistent with our guidance to the market each year. Of course, if we're trending ahead, then incentives will increase, but that will be the net effect, because we have to pay for those incentives through improved earnings results, and the opposite effect happens. It's not a precise math formula that says, at the low end of our guidance range, you would expect to see limited or threshold level short-term incentives, but usually, that is how it will work out.
Long-term incentives are set on a three-year time horizon. The metrics used vary somewhat, but the two most important are EPS growth and ROCE. This is where it becomes a little more difficult to model because, for example, the EPS growth rate in the most recent program that vested in FY 2023, we actually achieved a decent EPS growth rate on a organic, constant currency basis, but we failed the ROCE gate that was put in place for that plan, and so that plan did not pay at all this year. The reason for the major adjustment in FY 2023 is because we now estimate that the plans vesting next year and the year after also will not pay.
Those plans were set during pandemic era with, with higher base EPS, and it seems unlikely that we'll be able to recover the business quickly enough to get back to the, to, to get back above target threshold. That's what's unusual in FY 2023. We've had the, the normal, but still not wanted, of course, a reversal of STI expense, which is a within the year item, but then we've also had a take back of provisions previously made on plans vesting this year, next year, and the year after for long-term incentives. Yes, there is still some accruals remaining on those, and, and we'll give you further updates, but they're relatively limited versus the numbers that we've talked to at this time. I hope that gives you a, a satisfactory explanation there, David.
Yeah, thank you for that, Neil. Just to clarify then, so $56 million in FY 2023, and 80% of that is the short-term incentives?
Yeah.
They should line up reasonably well with the guidance program.
Yes.
Are we talking zero at the bottom end?
It's not. As I said, it varies. We guide EPS. These metrics are set with, on EBIT. There's always some difference there. There's also revenue, as usually it wasn't in the last 12 months, but isn't often the measure. That's not, it's not by- that's not the formula, but you, you will, you will see a correlation, certainly, between where EPS is in the range and the amount of short-term incentive that's paid.
All right. No, no, that's helpful. I think just as it was such a swing factor, it's helpful to have it called out. One other topic quickly, maybe for Zubair, just on the FY 2024 cash flow, you said it was gonna be better. What, what sort of cash conversion are you expecting in 2024?
Yeah, so I won't be pinned down on that, David, but of course, with the working capital unwind, I would expect it to be north of the 90% that I was targeting this year, but more to come on that. You've seen, David, we've announced a continuation of our buyback program, which is pretty significant as well. When you wrap all that together, yeah, I'm pretty bullish on the cash conversion going into next year.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question is from Sean Laaman from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Neil. Good morning, Zubair. Hope you're both well, thanks for the question. You've, you've called out, and, and thank you, called out, I think the $30 million in the first half from price reductions, just or implemented six months ago, I think I heard correctly.
Yeah.
You're also calling out, I think, another six to nine months, potential of, destocking to occur.
Yeah.
Now, now, in line with that, you've also talked about, you know, investing and, and observing some improvements in supply chain planning. You know, can, can you help me sort of tee up the two things and say, you know, specifically might of what happened in the improved supply chain planning that, that gives, or might give investors confidence that you've got a good lasso around the, you know, the impact of price reductions and the, the destocking going forward?
Sure, yes. The main, we, that, that actually, that give us a read on whether the investment that we've made in systems, but also process and people, is delivering results. The first two are ship to promise, so that means every time we commit to a customer that they're gonna get a certain amount of product by a certain date, do we hit that promise that we've made? I, I won't give you the prior year, because it was embarrassing, frankly. I can tell you that we exited the well above 90%, and that's a substantial improvement. Now, more than nine out of 10 deliveries arrive exactly when we say. Of course, we want so, so that the ... It's, it's a true exception where it doesn't arrive as we promise, but it's progress.
That's the first metric. The second is , when we set a demand plan, and we look three months ahead, how accurate are we? This is at the SKU warehouse level. Ansell has something like 20,000 SKUs across something like 12 major warehouses globally, so very, very complex data set. Our goal here is to get to 60% forecast accuracy three months out, but also to consistently be neither over-forecasting nor under-forecasting. Those two metrics, and we've only tracked them for a shorter period of time, we didn't have the data to track them before, but they, they also exceeded or met our improvement goals over the last 12 months. I think now benchmark very well against what you see other players.
As I mentioned, the real acid test of this is, do customers notice a difference? This is where the Net Promoter Score comes in, and then also many customers have their own methods of measuring our fulfillment rates, particularly in the U.S. Many customers are reporting to us that we're now a top quartile performer, and it's a long time since they've seen Ansell perform as well. Frankly, for, for years, this was never really a core strength of ours, and we assumed we could win just through the strength of our product, but availability was not a core strength.
That's, that was not the right formula before. We put a real focus, because if customers make the decision to go for an advanced set of protective equipment that Ansell offers, then we want to make sure they never have a reason to revisit that decision. Supply chain reliability is key to the stable base of the business, ensuring that new wins are always on top of that stable base. Those are some of the metrics that I can share with you, Sean, that, that do indicate improvement. There's another metric that I don't have a precise read on, but it's what % of our customers do we have collaborative forecasting with? Which means those customers are now sharing their sellout data. That's pretty good. The next level is they're sharing their inventory levels.
Only a few customers today are willing to do that, but of course, if they don't share that with us, precisely, we can still model it through looking at different trends. That's really new in the last 12 months. We've never used that data in, in the sophisticated, rigorous fashion that we are doing today, and that, I hope, will give me a better ability to predict these inventory change factors that are so significant in the short term, as, as our distributors around the world make those decisions to increase or reduce inventory, as they view the economic cycle ahead. Hope that gives you some context to that point, Sean.
It, it does. Thank, thank you, Neil, and, and one quick follow-up. I can sort of see the sort of outlook for the healthcare side of the business, but, h-how much variance, you know, with respect to guidance is there, in some of the industrial assumptions, you know, given the, the macro outlook? If you give us some, some sense or, or commentary on, on how you're thinking about that would be very useful.
sorry, that's, looking back over the last 12 months question, is it, Sean?
Looking, looking forward to fiscal 2024, just, looking at the macro picture and sort of tying that into how you think about the industrial performance in, in light of guidance.
Yes. I'm pleased with the industrial performance. It was, in the last 12 months, it was a little short of our targets at the beginning of the year, but I think that, that's fully explained by what was a moderate slowdown over the last few months. But importantly, although PMIs have been below 50 for many months in the U.S., a dip quite a bit in the last few months in Europe, occasionally you see reports of Germany being in recession or other countries in recession. Historically, that would have had a much stronger and direct correlation to our mechanical growth rate. I think it's encouraging that we continue to grow that business.
Yes, the second half growth rate was lower than the first half, but it continued to grow, and so far, I expect it to continue to grow into the-- into fiscal 2024. That business is continuing to perform at or above our previous long-term growth expectations, and we're encouraged by the, the potential coming through in innovation. We have one of our strongest new product portfolios at this stage. Those products are very profitable, they're highly differentiated, and they're in strong demand by customers. The Chemical business, I'd say, the top line growth rate is satisfactory, but not great. Chemical, though, the margins have suffered more than Mechanical because of where the manufacturing assets for that business are based. It's more concentrated in Malaysia, where we see higher inflation factors, particularly on utilities and on people cost.
A core element to the Productivity Investment Program is to wrestle with those chemical margins. We've-- we view there are some portfolios of the business, which, we're questioning whether we should be in for the long term. Generally, those are net zero margin businesses, we'll give you further updates as this program reaches decision points. But we, we, we have the opportunity to exit some of the really zero differentiation, chemical hand protection. It's not actually, not chemical, but going to other markets. Then also take out the rationalize the manufacturing base or outsource those products, as I was mentioning earlier. In chemical, the real op- the real focus is improving its EBIT margin, and while continuing s- innovation, but the innovation opportunity in chemical is not as big in mechanical.
I hope that gives you more context to Industrial, but overall, I'm pleased with how the Industrial business is performing. If you look at Industrial margins in total, at 14%, that was the improvement level that it got to as we completed the previous restructuring program. I'm glad we sustained it at that level, and now I see opportunities to improve it again, probably more in FY 2025 benefits going forward.
thank you, Neil. I appreciate it.
Thank you, Sean.
Thank you. Your next question is from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions, Neil and Zubair. Neil, one for you. Historically, Ansell has provided some longer-term organic growth rate forecasts for, I think, for sales across the key GBUs. Just wondering if you're willing to provide your best thoughts on what you think Ansell can grow sales at across the two divisions, maybe into 25, 26. Are you sort of still sticking to that 3%-5% organic type growth rates? Do you think anything has changed?
Yes. we have not updated it, and, and that was for good reason, because until we exit this, destocking phase, it, it's hard to give. Well, our, our, the sales we're selling into distributors are, are not a match to the fundamental growth rate. In fact, if I go back to that 3%-5% and give you some directional comments, as I mentioned before, we had, we had mechanical at the lower end of that range, and indeed, that is the growth rate that we've seen FY 2019-2023, as I commented. that 5% growth seen in the last 12 months is an indicator that business can grow at the upper end of that range, and that's certainly, the ambition that I seek, as we, as we develop that portfolio going forward.
The surgical business, at 8% growth over four years, that maybe is a higher rate than we can see long term, but definitely above the 5% range for both surgical and life science. The real, the key question then, and I, I don't, don't want to give a prediction at this stage, is, is for the exam single-use business. It's, it's been through the most significant ride of elevated demand, destocking, and a significant mix change in the business. Here, 1.8%, I think that was the number I showed, and that included some pricing favorability. That's not our ambition for that business.
Yes, if we can get exam single-use also in or at the top end of that 3%-5% range, then that will enhance Ansell's overall growth rate. We see encouraging signs. Certainly, our exam single-use business seems to be significantly outperforming the commodity-oriented players in Malaysia, who are still reporting very low rates of utilization, cash negative positions. That just shows the benefit of our strategy of, of not focusing on the high volume commodity end, and instead, on the differentiated portfolio. It is a competitive marketplace. Let me promise you a more thorough answer to that question in time, perhaps six months from now, as we look ahead and, and, and set longer-term growth goals for the business.
Thanks, Neil. Appreciate that detail. Just one quick one for Zubair. Just looking at inventory levels, Zubair, looks like back to FY 2022, based on the full year 2023 end result. Can you give us a sense of where you hope to get that inventory dollar value back to, say, by the end of FY 2024?
Yeah. I don't usually, and you've never heard us disclose inventory targets, because we do like to maintain flexibility in how we approach service levels, safety stocks, et cetera, and all of what Neil's talked about. I will give you an indication that we're looking to reduce or exceed the $40 million-$50 million cash out that we've got from that Accelerated Productivity Improvement Program. Depending where demand is, or, or how we feel our we're bedding down all of what Neil spoke to earlier on the supply chain improvement, we could accelerate those targets, or we could pull back a little bit. Certainly we wanna be able to self-fund that program that we just we just described.
Of course, one last thing. It will be predominantly focused on the exam, single use, and Surgical product lines, of course. Again, we're pretty comfortable, we'll still be able to meet the end-use demand, even with cutback levels of production. We'll speak more and describe more about this in the half year, results. Thank you. Sure.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Daniel Hurren from MST Marquee. Please go ahead.
Oh, good morning. Thanks very much. I was just, we just noted a very, very, stark difference in margin performance for Industrial in the first half and second half. I just wonder if you could unpack that a little bit and talk about what's happening there. I guess, i-is second half the right way to think about it going forward?
Yeah, so well, we flagged this six months ago, if you remember, and I've, I've long said for industrial that fundamentally, consistently, I've just achieved my 10th year anniversary at Ansell, and I've had this discussion in my previous role as CFO, as president of industrial, and now as CEO many times. The question being, fundamentally, can we manage pricing to offset cost inflation, and maintain a steady level of underlying margin, and then step up margin, when we do step change activities like we did with that manufacturing restructuring program of a few years ago? Fundamentally, the answer to all of those is yes.
I've also said there will be periods, because generally we price, six to nine months in advance, sometimes 12 months in advance, according to the customer relationships we have, and our costs often move more quickly than that. That's what we saw in the first half. We had an elevated period of inflation. We priced to, not to the inflation we saw in the first half, but to the long-term inflation we expected. I told you those price increases would come through in January, and they did. We also saw some moderation in inflation, as expected, and so the industrial margin came back in line, in the second half. I think a better read of the underlying fundamental margin in industrial is the average for the year. That's what I expect to continue into next year.
Of course, we are ambitious to improve that further. The key area of focus, whereas the past, the prior restructuring program was mainly focused on the mechanical manufacturing base, this new program, yes, it has a healthcare element. The industrial element is more focused on the chemical margin. We expect that, but we won't see that benefit till FY 2025 or FY 2026. We expect that to come through in those years as an, an improved industrial margin. Yeah, I hope that gives you a bit more explanation of what's happening to industrial margins.
Sure. Thanks, Neil. I guess, but the within that, and if you think about that price increase, it appears that volume may have dropped off a little bit in the second half. Does that relate back to the comments that you made before about there is some slowing in some markets with interest rate environment?
Yes, that's right. China was probably the most significant swing, first half, second half, where we saw. We did not see the COVID bounce back that we were hoping after the COVID shutdowns ended. Automotive, which is by far our largest vertical in China, has been very soft the last few months. We have opportunities to broaden our vertical focus in China, and that's what our very long-term, successful Chinese team is focused on. Within Europe, actually, I think the more significant story is that even with some quite soft economic readings, we have continued to grow that business. That-
Mm-hmm.
I don't believe that's by accident. We've put a lot of focus, and Europe is a factor, in fact, ahead of some other parts of the world in adopting our new approach to end user targeting. We've invested in new selling methods. We call it Selling the Ansell Way, and then really using our investment of some years ago in sales pipeline management, to get a real focus on winning at the end users, while of course, shoring up the base, as I mentioned, through improved service. Europe, I would say, has in fact outperformed what you would have forecast from economic conditions. We see pockets of success in the U.S., the U.S. has been affected, in particular, by some very significant destocking in the logistics vertical.
You may remember that that was a significant source of growth for mechanical during the pandemic period, and really was, was enough to offset all the, in manufacturing-related softness, with growth in logistics, as the e-commerce sector grew at a terrific rate. That sector has retraced its steps, as you're well aware, over the last year or two, and, and also led to a destocking effect. If, if you back out that, then the mechanical growth rate is even more impressive over the last 12 months. I decided that 5% was enough without me having to give you yet another adjusted number for mechanical. Yes, a little bit of a headwind in that vertical, but offset by a good growth in our RINGERS portfolio to energy, good growth in our electrical protection range, as I mentioned earlier.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Vanessa Thomson, from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good evening, Zubair, and good evening, Neil. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to come back on the Surgical and Life Sciences destocking. We now think that the Exam pricing has stabilized. Given you expect another six to nine months of destocking in Surgical and Life Sciences, where is pricing there? Is it a separate effect in that, in those categories? Thank you.
Yeah. Pricing has not moved nearly as much. Generally, it's particularly in surgical, most customer contracts are on a three-year pricing basis, so that means that prices, except for some exceptional arrangements, did not increase much during the pandemic. In fact, with inflation having also affected surgical, prices are a little bit behind the inflation, the inflation pattern in surgical right now. One of two things will happen from here, either we'll start to recover that in pricing, or if some of those elements of inflation normalize, then we'll be back to more steady state. There isn't a big effect on pricing in surgical.
in Life Science, in our specialist Life Science products that go into clean rooms, that are produced and packaged in sterile environments, also limited pricing trends. We do sell into Life Science. We, we include it in our Exam Single-Use business. We do sell more, more standard single-use products into Life Science, but that's, that's within Exam Single-Use, and there we see the same pricing trends. overall, pricing much less of a factor for Surgical and Life Science. It's really, it's really about volumes.
Thank you. Then I just During the pandemic, you know, there's a lot of talk about stockpiling and having three months of PPE on hand.
Yeah.
Do you have a feel for what customers, given all this de-stocking, what customers have on hand now? Is that just a non-issue going forward? Thank you.
Well, certainly any, any intentions to avoid issues in the future by, by holding ongoing reserve levels of inventory, they have not come to pass. So it's hard to give you an average number, because it's across so many different players, globally, and according to the length of supply chain, different parts of the world will hold different levels of inventory. I would, I would say, average inventory, at the already in many parts of our market, and by the end of this period that I'm predicting for surgical and life science, will have retraced all the way back to, to pre-pandemic levels. Of course, the second reason, it wasn't just the pandemic disruption, but also that general period of supply chain uncertainty, caused by, and then, continued by the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
That, that led to customers holding elevated levels of inventory for longer than we had thought. The speed of the correction has really been. We, we went within a really short period of time in surgical, from customers concerned about back orders, concerned about still building up to previously high inventory levels, to then it changed within a period of weeks and moved to a de-stocking phase, as customers reassessed those various risk factors. That was really For surgical, that was in the first half of the last fiscal year that we saw that shift happen.
Thanks very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Laura Sutcliffe from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hello, thanks. This is, maybe an extension of some of the things you were talking about earlier, but could you, maybe give us some thoughts on whether you believe your portfolio is gonna be a different shape in any way, come the end of your program in FY 2026, or should we expect things to look largely the way they do today? Thanks.
Yes. We're not expecting any fundamental portfolio shifts, if you're thinking about business exits or, or rationalization, other than that one piece of the chemical business. I'm, I'm not gonna give specific details right now, because it's not finalized, but, but there are some parts of chemical. Chemical actually covers, it covers our, our products for the food industry, it covers products that go into household gloves. There's quite a wide range. They're similar types of products, but, in food and in household gloves, the, the differentiation is less, the protection requirements are less than in the high-end chemical, which is where we focus for differentiation. But that's. It's not a huge change. That's, that's really, it's a piece of our business, but not, but not huge.
I, I will update you on those. Within exam single-use, we've really already done the portfolio shift that I talked about. At the beginning of the pandemic, we exited much of the lower margin business that we did have, some private label, some retail type business, and that's why that business today is a healthier mix than it was, and we want that to continue. And no such big shifts in, in the other SUs. I think key is that we, we continue that track record that I talked about, of investing in differentiation. Also we're really shifting our focus. Rather than selling product by product, we realize what customers really value from us is the portfolio solution.
We're putting particular emphasis over the next few months, on helping customers understand how the portfolio choice they make impacts their sustainability goals. There really is no information today about if, if I make this selection of gloves and, and chemical protection overall, what, what is better for the environment? We, we see there are several competitors out there with, frankly, false claims or, or claims that are not what they appear. Perhaps I should say it that way. Whereas you don't really get an end-to-end sustainability benefit if you go for a product that claims to be carbon neutral, for example. At Ansell, of course, we set ourselves a higher standard, and we'll be rolling out in the next few months, the sustainability characteristics of our core set of products across all our ranges.
Talking about the, how, the raw materials that are used, the manufacturing processes, and whether they use renewable energy, the packaging configuration, as well as the product materials themselves. That just goes to that significant piece of differentiation, which is helping customers understand the full portfolio they need, and with our advice services, also creating differentiation. AnsellGUARDIAN, that we've had in place for many, many years, and continue to invest in and improve. Now in the future, in Inteliforz, which brings a connected PPE into the frame as well. That piece of differentiation is, I think, gonna be increasingly important going forward, alongside the product specific differentiation.
All right, thanks. That's clear. Then could you maybe also talk a little bit about what will happen to some of your manufacturing footprint under your productivity program? Are you, for example, running all of your build programs to completion, and is there anything that will be shut down? Thanks.
Yes, we are running all our build programs to completion. We have the flexibility to adjust timing, according to when we expect demand to come on. In any case, some of the, the India facility was anyway delayed somewhat by government approvals, and that's fine, against our, our latest estimate of when we will need that capacity. No, we don't expect to close entirely any facilities, but we do see opportunities for optimization and rationalization within our footprints. There, there may still be certain lines or certain aspects of this facility that we will rationalize, and generally, we're doing that because we want to in-source, often to the same facility, products that are more differentiated.
It's not, it's not the same in the Project Horizon, if you've caught up on that. We, we shut three facilities and consolidated into a remaining footprint. We don't have the same opportunity to do that this time. It's more optimizing within our current network. That is the reliability of our global network, both in-house and with now a smaller and much more closely managed set of finished goods suppliers, is another key differentiator that we bring to our customers.
Again, no one else has the geographic diversity or the strength of third-party supply management, that we now have, and, and can offer to our customers for reliability of supply, but also, reputation management, because, of course, understanding how your products are made and where they're made, is now so key to ourselves, as well as to our more forward-thinking customers.
Thanks very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Paine, from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just wanted to come back to your commentary that the majority of exam and single-use is now produced in-house. Be good to just work through the longer term benefits of this move, particularly on, on margin.
Yeah. I said, in volume terms, we'll get to about 50/50. The majority statement is true if you allow for the pricing difference, and so revenue. Generally, our Ansell Seremban facility is a great facility, but it's a medium-sized facility against many of our competitors that have much larger facilities, where the big volume is on the high speed, standard Thin mill nitrile, as we call it, which they can run at terrific rates, and they're just producing the one product. Of course, that is always a game about the absolute lowest possible cost. Because that gives those producers generally good economies of scale, they're also quite competitive or similar on a competition base, competitive basis, to our ability to produce those products in-house.
We don't get a huge margin improvement through insourcing versus outsourcing. On some sales, yes, but it's, it's, it's moderately favorable, I would say, over the total portfolio. It's, it's really about the differentiation that comes from the strategy. As, as I commented before, while we were very pleased with Careplus in, in the joint venture configuration, we were aware that as we were, if we were to introduce newer technology to that facility, we weren't going to be in, necessarily in control of that technology long term. Now that Careplus is wholly owned, we're stepping forward with those new product introductions I talked about, including the, the one that I mentioned, that Emirates has adopted for, for paint maintenance, airplane maintenance. That, that's really...
Also, now, these are step change innovations, which are not yet commercially proven, but if we can come up with a meaningful differentiation in exam single use in the carbon footprint of the product, through working with bio-based raw materials, combined with different manufacturing processes, then that's a real breakthrough and a step change for that product range, and we wanna be sure that that technology is only understood by ourselves. It's, it's really a differentiation point, and it's also important to our customers, as I mentioned, and this is increasingly the case, we really want to understand where their products are made.
That's something we can give them, with a level of transparency and visibility, both the processes at Ansell and the processes at our suppliers, whether raw material or finished goods suppliers, so that that level of transparency and integrity to the supply chain is an increasingly high prominent aspect of conversation with key customers globally. That's the value of the insourcing strategy for exam single use.
Okay, that's great. Just one other thing on the transformation program that you had previously. Just thinking, you, you're targeting over $30 million in savings from that program. Is, is the new program a, a progression of the old one, or did you, you know, were you able to book that $30 million savings from the transformation program? You know, any, any update you can provide there?
Yes. Yeah, we recorded and have sustained that prior program benefits. As I mentioned, it was largely the mechanical business which where we saw that manufacturing rationalization, the facilities we shut down were mechanical facilities, and we consolidated that production into in one case, a dedicated mechanical facility, but in other cases, multi-product facilities, for example, our large Sri Lanka facilities. We have sustained that improvement. It's been difficult to see in the overall Ansell margin, but that's because of the margin trajectory that the healthcare business has been on, rather than the industrial business. This is not, certainly not redoing programs previously completed.
We believe we've sustained those benefits, locked them in, and now we're shifting our focus to other parts of the business, where productivity opportunities exist.
That's great. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from David Bailey from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Two questions from me. Just firstly, within surgical, just interested in the competitive dynamic in that SBU. I know there were some comments a few halves ago that maybe there's been some increased capacity coming online from other suppliers. Just interested to understand what that segment looks like from a competitive standpoint. Then secondly, following on from Saul's question about those medium to longer term targets, 6-12 was the EPS hurdle, if I'm not mistaken. The LTI, 2023-2025 was 14. I'm just interested to understand why there's a difference there, and if that's the new baseline going forward?
Surgical capacity. Yes, part of the reason that we had elevated sales in FY 2022 in surgical, was that the major branded competitors to ours were, were behind in their cycle of capacity addition. Some of that demand was, was substituting for back orders on, from, that arose for those other suppliers. Some of it, in some cases, and we have taken a step forward in, in structural market share in the U.S., but our sales in FY 2022 had, had an additional boost from, from temporarily fulfilling competitor orders that they were not able to fulfill. That's come back out again now, and we have sustained that step change improvement in market share.
Yes, our growth rate, now we have all the major all the four major players have restored their product availability, so back orders, which were acute even 12 months ago, or 10 months ago, are now largely addressed across the industry. Yes, pretty much. Well, the three of the four major players, ourselves included, do have plans to bring additional capacity to the market over the next few years. Particularly if you look at the underlying synthetic surgical rate of growth, we expect that to be absorbed by demand over over the period in which capacity comes on, assuming that each participant is suitably flexible about when they bring additional capacity to market. Of course, that's to be seen.
I, I can't comment or, and I'm unaware of future plans of our competitors, but it, it's certainly the approach that we will take. There was a lot of talk about, you know, are we gonna see a whole range of new entrants to surgical? Again, in, in my 10-year time horizon, that I've fielded that question, it seems like every year or two. So far, really not so. Yes, there are Malaysian producers who are more dedicated to exam single use, who also make a competent low-end range of surgical products. Those are largely the same participants, pre-pandemic to now, and we're not seeing a major increase in the number of competitors for surgical. Some additional capacity has come to market. We anticipated that.
That's meant that the back order situation is now resolved, but fundamentally, we don't see that as anything more than a normalization of supply-demand dynamics. Not-- We don't see the same substantial excess of supply that is affecting commodity Exam/SU players. Us less, as I commented already, but certainly in the commodity Exam/SU space, there's been a substantial oversupply. We also see Malaysian players in particular, announcing quite major reductions in capacity, and they're closing often their older facilities, and then doubling down on these newer lines, which, as I mentioned earlier, are really focused at the lowest cost possible position for, for the commodity, Thin mill nitrile styles. That was the first part of your question, but I'm gonna have to-- you're gonna have to remind me what the ...
The EPS growth rates for long-term incentive plans. Yes. Well, those are set each year by the board. The board hasn't announced the new program yet for that will start in FY 2024, so I shouldn't get ahead of the board making that announcement. Yes, those are typical ranges that we see. In the order of high mid-single digit EPS growth, will typically be the midpoint of the long-term incentive plan. As I noted, we also use revenue from time to time as a metric, and we use ROCE from time to time as a metric as well.
Thanks.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Neil for closing remarks.
Thank you. Well, thank you for the good questions and for the level of interest in this call today. as I've said, we're not excited by the earnings projection that we've given you for the next 12 months, but I am excited by the long-term potential for this business. I believe the decisions we've making over the last couple of weeks will power the business forward. Yes, more productive, and with a cost base fit for our business and our markets, but also a more effective business that can deliver on its potential and achieve higher organic growth rates going forward as well. I very much look forward to updating you on our pro-