That time we had only the CFO speaking. Now we have a full floor with all of the important executives of the group, and this is not simply a message to shareholders on recent results and the near future. Within CSN, this has begun to be the end of a cycle, of our budgeting cycle, our strategic planning, that takes the entire half of the year, and it's something that permeates all of our business. We would like to share this with the outside audience, especially investors and analysts, but also with our in-house audience, which is a great client for these messages. We have a very challenging agenda today in terms of the topics we would like to cover. We would like to cover the agenda in two hours. We know that you are all very busy.
We are in December, after all, and I will begin here as the master of ceremony. As a marketing person, I wanted to have Juliana Paes here, but we did not have enough budget for this. So I will introduce our CEO and Chairman, Benjamin Steinbruch, for his initial remarks. Once again, thank you all very much. Okay. Good day, everyone. Good morning to all of you, and thank you for attending our CSN Day. I have already requested additional chairs. Of course, you can sit wherever you find some space close to the door so that we can comfortably seat everybody. We're going to attempt to finish this presentation in two hours and allow one hour for questions and answers, allowing all of you the opportunity to speak.
It is important for all of you to become aware of what each executive does, and you will hear this during the presentation. I will very quickly begin my initial address, and then we will speak about each different sector of the company. Let's begin with the year 2023, a year of great achievement. Despite all the difficulties we faced in mining, a record production and purchases as well, attaining 42.5 million tons. We had BRL 3.9 billion in terms of payout of dividend and an appreciation of our stock of 69%. In steel, we have heavy investments. In truth, we are building a new plant at Presidente Vargas within the old steel mill, and these investments are significant, not only in terms of amount, but also in terms of quality and environmental issues.
Presently, we have the capacity for 3.8 billion tons, and ensuing all of these investments, we will resume our original investment, which was of 5 billion tons. Therefore, these investments are geared not only to refurbish the equipment, to comply with environmental standards and to resume with a full production, eliminating bottlenecks, which is our goal, and we have already produced 5 million tons. We have 19% of our production in green steel. The entire production from Germany is deemed to be green steel. We have 0.2 carbon per steel ton, when the standard is 0.6. Therefore, the entire production in Germany is deemed to be green steel, and we were able to begin to internationalize our program. We have an exchange program through which we take our associates to United States and Europe.
We were able to do this with 50, and we will work with an additional 50 this year, with a fixed number of associates in United States, Germany, and Portugal as well. When it comes to cement, we are already the second largest player in Brazil. Something that, of course, fills us with pride. A decade ago, we were insignificant. We began very shyly in a primary fashion, making the best of our blast furnaces, and from there, we reached the second ranking in terms of production for cement. Now, the integration with LafargeHolcim has been concluded with gains of over BRL 500 million annualized regarding EBITDA, and there's a great deal more left to do. We had 13 million tons of cement sold, that is to say, an additional 7% vis-à-vis the market.
The market was very tight, and despite this, we were able to increase our production by 7%. In energy, we are among the largest generators in the country. We have 2.1 gigawatts, which enables us the tranquility to be considered self-producers if we have any expansion, and we're going to transform energy into one of the main businesses, and it will be one of the main pillars for the future of the company. We have clean energy. All of our energy is renewable, and we had an EBITDA, BRL 584 million annualized, basically, due to a cost reduction in generation for CEEE, and all of the rest of our units. All of this led to a reduction of 43%, therefore, in the CEEE.
Now, new businesses, which is something I referred to some time ago, that CSN is like the hat of a magician, enabling us to build new businesses constantly. We have the first example of the CBSI, that began very timidly, working with maintenance of gardening and the painting of our units. It gained value, it increased the quality and quantity of services it carried out, and nowadays, we are servicing not only CSN, but also significantly large companies with more complex work. We also work in maintenance of the equipment of CSN, not only for mining, but also for the steel and cement plants. Last year, we had a profit of BRL 600 million. This year, we will easily jump to BRL 1 billion. We have the agricultural lime, which is our entry into the agribusiness sector.
We truly believe in this sector and the verticalization of logistics. We have another large business for logistics and the consumption internally of logistics services at CSN is enormous when it comes to highway transportation, railroad transportation, and maritime transportation. If you analyze the figures of CSN, you will observe it represents more than BRL 1.5 billion. We are developing this cautiously. We have bought horses and carts to enable us to begin this work, but our goal, of course, is to fully develop the potential that we have, ensuring that logistics will become a big business for CSN.
We have other opportunities that we foresee, when it comes to real estate and additional areas, which means we have several fronts that we're going to work on as part of the business that we run, and the idea is to transform all of these into significantly enlarged businesses, all linked to CSN. Subsequently, we will be working with the market. Now, to in this first slide, to the right, you see CSN3 with an appreciation of 18%, with a payment or payout of 13% of dividends and 31% of appreciation in November, and CMIN, with an appreciation of 69% and a payout of dividends of 17%, and general appreciation of 86%. These figures are highly important, and they point to the path that we are now adopting.
So to speak about steel, basically for 2024, we will have a resumption of domestic activity and the resurgence of international prices. We hope to have good news in the steel area in 2024. We faced difficulties, several poor news in 2023, something that we already expected, as part of what we had to face. Nothing was unknown to us, but in truth, there was a convergence of these problems, creating a hurricane inside of our steel plant. Now, despite the willingness and the speed to resolve these difficulties in the steel plant, as well as in mining and cement, we're working with very large, parts and equipment. They demand very long delivery time, and of course, this delayed our everything due to the supply of spare parts and the equipment per se.
So we're fully aware of everything that we have to carry out. We truly believe in normalization beginning in January, with production returning to normalcy. Of course, this is a progressive process. We're convinced that we will be able to reduce costs, increase amounts, and enhance the quality in the steel plant. When it comes to mining, we had this significant growth this year, and we're going to continue on strongly, growing production, maintaining purchases from abroad, and perhaps in a more selective way to allow for an increase in profitability, which was significant between 2022 and 2023. It should improve in 2024. Mining, therefore, is on a very positive, promising path compared to steel, because of the difficulties that we faced. Notwithstanding this, we truly believe that our steel plant will have a better performance in 2024.
In cement, we had a good year. We attained 3 million tons, an expressive figure. We had good margins. We also increased our market share. We're investing heavily in related sectors such as concrete, logistics, and other sectors, and agricultural lime, and we hope to have very good results and to increase the amounts that we produce. Well, speaking about operational excellence, this is what we attempt to do, this is what we should do and reduce costs. The market prices, the sale prices, we're not the ones that control this. Now, the cost, yes. Therefore, we're focusing on cost. We're gonna continue to focus on cost. We would like to be a low-cost producer, and we're seeking this through the investments that we're making in all of the sectors of our activity. We believe that we will reach our goal.
Now, expansion, and in the presentation, you will observe we have a highly aggressive investment plan. We have a highly diversified plan with excellent figures. We need to choose and through whatever will give us a greater return. All of our projects are good, and every time we diversify and move forward, we have greater opportunities for advancement. And we do have a commitment with the market of having a leverage below 2x net debt EBITDA. This is one of our priority focuses as part of the heavy investment plan that we have set forth, and because of our options, we're focusing on this. We do have the commitment, and we will deliver that, as well as the payout of dividends. To speak about the vision for the future-
I'll be touching upon something that I'm sure will be of your interest in terms of questions and comments that you may have about the moment we're now going through. I think we'll go after operating excellence, and I'm sure we can deliver it and also add value and going global also. Not only that, from the point of view of practical, in practical terms, and giving a bit of a spoiler in terms of technical figures, the Brazilian market is of about 25 million tons. We are now importing 5 million tons of steel, 5 million tons of products with added value. Our own production reaches 30 million tons, and we export 12 million tons.
So basically, that's the makeup of tonnage in Brazil. In terms of taxation of imports, as of January 1, a criteria that will define 10%-16% of taxes on imports. And other countries, both countries in the European community and the U.S., and also Mexico and Canada, we're talking about 25% import tax for everyone across the board. So it's like challenging the law of gravity. If Europe, if the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, if they are levying 25% of taxes on us, why are we levying only 10% on them? Why? So when we export 10 million tons, 5 of steel and 5 of added value products, 68% imports rather, sorry, imports, 68% comes from China.
So we import from China 6.8 million tons, and Brazil is quite concerned, quite scared of discussing steel matters with China. Now, I'll provide you with some numbers. Brazil should not be scared of negotiating with China around steel. China produces 1.015 billion tons of steel. That's the figure, 1.015 billion tons of steel. We produce 30 million, three zero, 30 million. Just to give you a better idea, the consumption of ore in China is of about 1.3 billion tons. Internally, 175 million, and they import 1,198 million tons. Iron ore imports for China, 1.198 billion tons, out of which 246 million tons from Brazil, 246, and 788 million tons from Australia.
And my question is, a country producing 1.15 billion tons, 7 million, would that make a difference to them? That's what they export to Brazil. Does that make a difference to them? It's like nothing. Zero. Zilch. If you think about our relationships with China around protein and ore, it's simply a matter of sitting around the table, discussing it, and bringing opportunities to Brazil across other markets, and also helping us preserve our internal market. So it rests clear that the Brazilian government should have the courage, the stamina, to sit with Chinese and negotiate only 7 million tons out of a vast universe of 1 billion tons. So it makes no sense, after all, the government will need to do something urgently around that.
We have several steel companies halting their production because there is no market, and because of this unequal competition, it makes no sense. So we need the government to act fast to address that, and that will allow us also to organize the market internally. So I'd like just to make this clear. When we talk about imports, we're talking about 7 million on the one hand and 1 billion on the other. It makes no sense to destroy Brazilian production just because we don't want - do not want to sit down with China and discuss different terms, and we do not want anything out of the world, out of this world. We export, of course, we export 12 million tons of steel. We're talking about steel sheets, or more than half are steel sheets.
When we export added value products, we pay 25% as a reminder to all those places I mentioned. Why do they only pay 10, 10 to 16%? That's the only question. Equal treatment across the board, that would be only fair, and we are lagging behind in terms of discussing that with China. A final issue I'd like to raise before we move on. You will see throughout the morning here, that we have a very firm commitment in terms of investments, organic investments and sequential, investments as well. In other words, as we start, we need to finish, and we have already started. P-15, for example, heavy investment that we have, we have already started it.
We are now about 25% contracted and already receiving equipment, and when we start, as I said, we need to finish, just as for the rest of our activities. Furnaces and heavy industry components. So if you're telling us you're going to maintain leverage, you're going to pay out dividends, where is that money coming from? Well, we have the operating front. You will have a chance to see the flow, and have a chance to analyze the situation and talk to us from the operating point of view, what we have to comply with those investment needs, and also things which are already known, but it's something I'd like to emphasize. We have, for example, 200 million pellet feed. We already have 200 million tons extracted, and we'll close the year with 300 million tons.
Just waiting for P-15 to be ready to start processing it. We're talking about real ore, quality ore, which has been extracted, and it's just waiting for the new plant to be up and running. As we changed the mine characteristics, we need to change the production line characteristics as well. This can be monetized through partnerships or organically. We decided to invite partners to share the burden with us. It's not a complicated process, it's a mere filtering process, and it's quite assured, because the ore is already there. So we do believe there might be third parties interested in expediting the process, and that will require less capital on our side. As for the dam tailings, we have 200 million tons of rich ore, richer than the ones that came from 60, 50 years ago.
This gives us 125 million tons of rich ore, because of those damn residues. It's 400 million tons, but actually 225 million, half of ore, which has already been extracted, part of which will be recovered, and part of which will be processed. Within our internal policy, as mentioned before, our idea is, as we move forward and become stronger across other lines of business, we'll remove it from CSN, go public and build independent pillars. In principle, we have 5 of those: steel, mining, cement, infrastructure, and logistics, and energy.
So as we have reached enough numbers, enough results, and the right size, we will spin them off CSN and list them in the stock exchange, so they will, they will become independent, autonomous business, so that they can grow in a productive way within the potential that they have. So we have cement, which will be probably the next one to be spun off. Irrespective of organic growth, as you know, we have two plants for cement, and we may acquire another company. Still, the idea is to offer a large and unique type of business in the cement industry, to offer that to the market. And we are sure that we are already in place to do that now.
Along with those two units that we already have, other opportunities that may come up in the market, we are well-positioned to offer a promising business to the market. The same goes for the steel industry. We intend to make an IPO for the steel arm of the company. As soon as we have more clarity of the investment situation, of the production, ramp up and better numbers, we will go to market and also offer our steel arm as an independent business. The same goes for energy. We have the possibility, which was actually our first interest, to reach out to a strategic partner. Unfortunately, our partner gave up, but the idea, the intention remains.
We want to grow our energy business and either promote an IPO or bring about a strategic partner for us to be able to have a promising, prosperous business around clean energy produced in Brazil. In addition to that, just so you know where our resources are coming from, and we do have this commitment of deleveraging the company and of also to paying out dividends. Today, we own 80% of CMIN. The idea is to have control, but not necessarily have higher share. So the market value today is $8 billion. If you consider 30% that we'd have on our side, we're talking about $2.5 billion, 12 billion BRL, a normal market operation that would allow us, along with the operating results, with that, we'd be able-- that would allow us to face any challenges concerning either investments or market oscillations.
Just as we have Usiminas stock in our hands, strategically, that stock is not part of our strategy, but we are waiting for a sentencing from the court related to the tag-along options, and then decide what to do with the shares from Usiminas. The Usiminas controllers have already decided what to do, irrespective of the court decision, but that's something we can also use to offset investments or any sudden market change. We can do that if that's the case. So basically, that's what I had as opening remarks. We are quite aware of our situation, we're quite committed with everything that has been said up to date, in terms of quality growing, in terms of the deleveraging, in terms of dividend payout plans.
And we also see a slow drop in the payout, just to, you know, fund those investments, but nothing major, well thought of, so it won't really interfere in our larger assumptions. And just to emphasize, we do have an opportunity to grow ahead of us, not only across the assets we already own, but across other verticals that will be addressed this morning. All of that allows us to pick and choose the best alternatives in terms of returns. I'd like to thank you all once again for being here, both here and remotely, and thank you all who worked to organize this CSN Day. I know it's hard work for us to be able to have a quality event. Also, thank you, Leca, and her team. They worked, they worked tirelessly overnight, I know, to make this happen.
Those last 3 days have been hectic to get this up and running, so thank you. Also, Carolina, who is here, Ricardo, my brother, who's also here with us today, so all of you. So this is a day where we share some joy despite the challenges of 2023, and of course, the challenges we have ahead for 2024, but this is also a celebration day, and we are happy to realize the potential that we have to move forward in terms of opportunities. Again, I repeat, despite all the difficulties we have in Brazil, we have huge growth opportunities.
Now, as we also try to go global, Felipe is in New York, and he'll be talking to us from New York to talk about CSN Inova, another important investment, another important in business pillar for us, to develop our own technologies in ESG, okay? So that's what I had as to start, and I'll turn the floor over to Alberto Senna, who'll be talking about CBSI, one of our main hopefuls for the future, have reached BRL 1 billion this year, should exceed BRL 1 billion next year. So thank you very much. So I hope you could get far more. Is that so? I could. You have 10 minutes, okay? I had more, but I'm the only exception. You all only have 10 minutes, okay. Okay, good morning, my name is Alberto Senna, I am the director of CBSI.
I had a chance of being here last year for the CSN Day, and if you're here, you will remember our chairman talking about the several opportunities that the group had back then, and also a strategy that he called 1 billion BRL companies, as he called it back then. I am glad to be here today to present to the market the first case coming out of that strategy. CBSI is a company for industrial services, a company that has been getting ready to service several industry segments, providing quality services across different areas, as you will see in a moment. The company today, within the CSN Group, has already provided savings of BRL 200 million. Those savings are measured by the price CBSI provides that service within the group, vis-a-vis the difference of the second bidder.
Even though it is a company that belongs to the group, the CBSI participates in the bidding processes, just like any other external company, and that's a way to keep the company competitive. In addition to those BRL 200 million in savings, we do have our own results, which have been improving year-over-year with investments that have been made also. Our portfolio, as Mr. Steinbruch said earlier today, our portfolio has been changing throughout time. In 2021, we had 37% of share and facility contracts. In 2024, we expect a drop to 19%. At the same time, we have moved from zero share to something close to 25%, and refractory segments, where very few companies in Brazil operate today. Only two actually do that in Brazil. They do repair coking structures.
So, we become very quickly one of the first and most important players in this segment. Another important segment we work in is electromechanical maintenance services. In 2024, we expect to reach 34% share around electromechanical maintenance services. And our gain is not only financial, we also have a quality gain, which is quite important to mention today. CBSI provides quality service to the group. We have been acknowledged by other engineering companies abroad as an excellent player in their refractory scenario. And evidence of that is that we have participated and won bidding processes both inside and outside the company. Recently, we put together a lamination shear at a steel company in the south of Brazil. We are now operating in several port terminals in Brazil, providing important services of industrial painting for the preservation of those terminals.
Year-on-year, we have been increasing our share in external contracts, which shows that we are competitive, that we deliver quality services, and that we are on the right track.
You can see our growth from 2021 to 2023, where we have increased threefold. We reach BRL 1 billion profit with a net revenue of BRL 2 billion, and it's thanks to that strategy of seeking segments with higher added value, with material that is deemed to be of better quality. The number of headcount, which is important in service companies, has not accompanied the revenues. We have increased the revenues, proportionally, much more than we have improved, headcount. Things don't stop here. The company is focused on supporting the CSN group in investment and CapEx. All of this will be presented by my colleagues during this event.
We have also increased our client portfolio outside of the group, and we have mapped out a pipeline of possible partnerships and M&As to enter new segments, or in-house to work with expertise that will make a difference for the group. Now, CBSI is the first case of the many opportunities we have of unleashing value. This is a very sound opportunity for us. Thank you very much.
I call upon my colleague, Helena.
I'm going to need more time, Mr. Chairman. Good day to all of you. It is a pleasure to speak more about our ESG journey. I will try to be brief, despite the 15 slides I have. We're going to show you our new materiality matrix and good practices state that this should be redone every two years, and we have done that. The great novelty refers to human rights, that has become ever more relevant because of the expansion, especially of the mining. All the other systems remain the same. Their governance is established by the ESG governance. We have projects that are being accelerated through CSN Inova, and once again, we report using the most important market frameworks. Now, to speak about risk management, which is the main risk to our company, climate risk.
In 2023, we condensed the climate risks and others in a single matrix. This enables us to map out risks and opportunities for each segment. Speaking about the impact and the dependency of our operation in ecosystem, this allows the company to truly understand the resiliency of the business, vis-à-vis the challenges caused by global warming and to create practices to fight against each of these, and to integrate this in our decision-making process. We had divided our governance into three main pillars: mitigation, engagement with shareholders and others. Now, in terms of mitigation, during 2023, we attempted to integrate all of our new assets, especially those of cement. They have high carbon emissions. We have created a new roadmap for cement, and this month, we can submit it, our new goal to the initiative.
Now, cements represent 45% of the emissions of the CSN group as a whole, something that is very relevant. We hope to have our goal approved by the SBTi, and we want to have goals aligned with the limitation of increase in temperature of 1.5 degrees. Now, in cement, we represent a benchmark in Brazil. We have the lowest emission of CO₂ per ton of cement produced. It was a year of integration. We have reached 2,000 SKUs, reported a pipeline of projects so that we can reach this new goal of a 23% reduction of emissions up to 2030. This goal has been submitted now in December of 2023, and we're fully convinced that it will be accepted.
In 2030, we will begin working with the goals that we have set forth for 2050, with an advance of 20 years. All of this through several projects that were developed alongside CSN Inova and other partnerships by using green hydrogen to stabilize our furnaces, technologies that increase our operational efficiency, and that in 2024, will be replicated to other units, enabling us to comply with our goal in 2030. In steel, we ended 2023 with 19% of our production classified as green steel, a very low carbon intensity, perhaps one of the lowest in the world. We continue our decarbonization in Presidente Vargas, especially with the coke batteries that are important when it comes to the emissions of CO₂. In 2024, with projects of this sort, led by CSN Inova, we hope to achieve our goals.
We have used some pioneer projects in the steel mine in 2024, an in-depth study to seek technological enhancements in Presidente Vargas, with a focus on decarbonizing. We hope to capture 5%-10% of the greenhouse gas emissions and enhance our process. Of course, this will have an impact on the steel plant cost in general. Now, the decarbonization of mining goes through the fleet. We ended test with two electric 60-ton trucks this year, with a performance 30% better than the combustion trucks. We are acquiring more of these trucks for 2024, and a gradual replacement of these trucks with electrical truck, as we have renewable energy. We also have a reduction of 9% between 2022 and 2023, because of operating efficiency, a reduction in the use of diesel with a positive impact.
This will enable us to comply the goal in 2035. Another goal that extends to 2024, thanks to CSN Inova. We're going to work with cold treatment of our iron ore, which is very important in the Presidente Vargas plant. And we also will be producing pellets through the P-15 project, with a strategic role in the decarbonizing of the global world. Now, this pellet feed, I believe Pedro will refer to this further ahead, simply so that you can understand the dimension. This iron ore, when used with a worldwide average factor, the 15.5 million tons that we will produce, will reduce 10 million tons of CO₂ per year in these plants, which is more than all of the emissions of the Presidente Vargas plant during a year.
As Pedro will mention, we're working with a joint venture with the Japanese, and this reduction could reach 70% compared with the blast furnaces. We have plans to expand production. We also have investments approved to work with a solar park, which means that in the near future, as soon as we have the hydrogen available, we could be considered net zero in terms of carbon. Now, in cement, although the average emissions we have are lower than the rest of Brazil, we also have a product that is geared to large, sustainable works with a very low carbon footprint. It also uses less water, more co-processing. We tend to say that our cement is green, although the bag holding it is red. It will be produced in other plants seeking a specific niche in sustainable and premium construction.
Finally, we want to capture the synergy in terms of energy. We have 150 potential megas for 2024. This amount should increase as of the coming into operation of the Floriano project, an enormous project for solar energy, perhaps one of the largest in the country. It is in a stage of licensing in the state of Piauí. Now, to speak about other topics going beyond carbon, something that refers more to biodiversity. According to the four, the World Economic Forum, this is the fourth major risk for the world, and water management, of course, is fundamental for our business. Every year, I show you our KPIs. We have reached a reduction of 30% in water consumption in the last three years. We also had better rainfall.
We were able to make the best use possible of that water in our processes, and as part of this study, we have worked with a very detailed study of our water footprint to work in a more efficient way in the process. We have more than 90,000 hectares of preserved areas. They're monitored in terms of their biodiversity, their wealth, and the positive and negative impacts that we generate in those areas. Now, we have made of our tailings a significant business. Last year, we invoiced BRL 260 million in special sales and co-products and scraps. This is part of our DNA already, and of course, the heavy investment that we're making in the Presidente Vargas plant is geared to improving control.
This represents BRL 16 million invested in maintenance, repair, and repairing the filters for centering, which is of course, a problem in terms of particulates in Volta Redonda. The community has perceived an improvement, and we also have an increase in the monitoring network in the city. It is the third largest monitoring network in the country, only in third place after São Paulo and Brazil, and this enables us to work preventively. Now, to speak about security, we have reached our lowest accident rate in the last three years, a highly important result with a reduction since 2014. This includes all types of accidents, with or without leave, impact on third parties. We have had 10 years without accidents at Cimentos. All of this, thanks to investments in technology, training, the engagement of our leaders. We know that we can't celebrate safety.
In this context, we still live day to day with potential serious accidents, and because of this, we have created a program for 2024, focusing on high potential risks, enhancing the part of process safety. We also have a program that was launched this week with the participation of directors to prevent fatalities and high-risk potential accidents in all areas. I am coming to the end, Mr. Chairman. I have only three slides more. We have made strides in terms of our diversity. Last year, I said we were 5,000. We are now 5,600 and some as of October; we must be more than that: 6,342 women, a growth of 87% since we set forth the goal in 2020. In 2024, we will have increased the number of women twofold.
We're working more with people with disabilities, with Black people, and if I'm not mistaken, CSN has 50% of racial representativity in the company, with an increase of 24% in leadership positions. In CSN Cement, we have several women in leadership, as well as programs that were awarded and that have come thanks to a very powerful program to improve performance, such as the WOB Initiative. Now, the project of our foundation, I would take the entire presentation to speak about this. The foundation has existed for 62 years, and the highlight are the new units of what we call Garoto Cidadão. More than 1,000 children, 5,500 youngsters, only for the year 2023. For those who are interested in this, please read our impact report for CSN that was published this year.
It will refer to all of the changes in the foundation as well as the investments. Now, when it comes to social action, going beyond the foundation, we have something in the state of Piauí, our first project for inclusive work, impacting more than 100 families. We're creating production change for honey, for organic cotton, changing the life of that community, and also working with the railroad that crosses that community. And because of the changes we have made, we have created a specific area for social innovation. We're creating action plans to mitigate the risk when it comes to our expansion, especially with CMIN. In governance, of course, we have worked with projects that enable us to understand what is critical in terms of our suppliers, and the next step would be to include everybody in an ESG matrix to mitigate risk.
But we've also become more engaged with our partners to develop new products and new technologies. This has been the year for our first operation in sustainable finance. We closed a BRL 500 million credit line, and in 2024, this should lead to additional financing. Now, this slide summarizes my entire presentation. CSN is finally in the place that it deserves among its peers when it comes to its ESG ratings. CSN and CMIN are among the 10 best in the Sustainalytics ranking. We have CSN in the ninth place, CMIN in the sixth place, in Sustainalytics, which is a global report in S&P Global. In 2023, we were the only company in steel, mining, and civil construction segment to be elected for the Global Yearbook, and this is part of the Dow Jones Index.
We were also awarded with the Seal of Industry Mover because of the evolution of our ESG practices worldwide. So finally, we are in the space where we should have been for some time already. What was important was to be able to share this. The challenge now is to remain there, continue to move forward, and deliver ever more value to our shareholders and to society.
You took 20 minutes. 20 minutes, not to raise false expectations and also to avoid fake marketing actions. Out of those 8 things that I mentioned, relative to a potential deleveraging of the company, and a potential sale of 30% of CMIN, which totals BRL 12 billion, I do not want to sell it. I do not want to demobilize anything. Just for you to know that the possibility is there on the table, that we may have, an excess of assets that can be monetized if the case be, if we are allowed to do things faster than we, than we can. So, I remain the same. I do not want to sell anything. It's just a possibility, right? Just to be sure. Good morning. We will now have Felipe. He's coming to us online from New York. He's gonna be talking about CSN Inova.
Benjamin, nobody thought you wanted to sell anything, right? Just to be sure. Rest assured, nobody thought that. Okay, good morning, everyone. Can you hear me? Okay, let's get started then. Well, I'd like to thank Helena, as usual, for her partnership. My name is Felipe Steinbruch. I am the head of CSN Inova. It is a pleasure to be here with you all once again to talk about CSN Inova, talk about this year and look ahead for 2024. So picking up where our president left off, our commitment to going global, I'm not gonna be talking about. I'm talking from New York, as it was mentioned, from our office in New York, and we are very much involved in this business in technology and other strategic areas to help the company, support the company in its growth path around the world. Next, please.
Well, just as a recap, you've seen this before. I showed this last year. We created this innovation platform back in 2018. We have four complementary tools which are used to support the group in an active and strategic manner. We're talking about CSN Inova Open, Tech, Ventures and Bridge. And it's through them that we seek out innovative solutions for our main strategic challenges. Next, please. The main takeaway here from this slide is that we were able to create a systematic, straightforward way of prioritizing our objectives. And as Helena mentioned, this is a living organism, and which reaffirms our commitment as a group with ESG issues. So prioritize and use innovation solutions to address those strategic challenges. As you can see, those challenges are real, material, objective. In other words, objectives linked to our everyday operations.
We are quite focused on the group's core business, looking at today so that we can improve tomorrow. So these challenges, to some extent, reflect the way we have identified today's industry standards or patterns, without forgetting about tomorrow. We have challenges around new materials, which are always challenging us to look at new trends in the market, what's gonna happen across different segments in the coming 50 years, if you will. Just as we have first challenge in terms of reducing fossil fuel consumption and energy use. That's something we do today, of course, but something that will have a short-term impact. And we do that through our open methodology, focused 100% around pilots. Pilots are our raw material, if you will. Next, please.
Unlike the past two years, as we mature the company, we are now ready to start showing more detail of our numbers, our figures. The idea is to, to be able to create new business and then be able to spin off those new business, use the group as a lever, just as happened with CBSI. From left to right, the main figures I can share with you today in terms of the breakdown of our businesses. And, and of course, that shows how flexible we are, how flexible our methodology is. We are able to operate across all the business of the group. It could be corporate, it could be mining, steel or cement. Our methodology works and can be used across the board, and with a very positive impact in all segments.
That, of course, goes to the fact that, because we are in close contact with those five segments of the Brazilian industry, today, we can easily find those industry patterns. If it works within CSN, it will very likely work in any other company in this industry or in any other industry. So that's a way for us to prepare CSN Inova to gain scale in the future. Now, if we look at the chart in the middle of the slide, our portfolio maturity, that increase of initiatives from 55 to 73, as you can see on the slide, in one year, that shows how we have been able to scale up our business, how we have matured through time. In addition to that, it's noteworthy, our commitment with innovation and excellence, which can be seen in the increase in our team.
We moved from 2 people in 2018 to close to 40 people today, 2023. That shows, of course, the growth of Inova as a department, as a platform, but also reflects a larger portfolio. We have more people dedicated to innovation across all segments, which of course, leads to a broader portfolio. The main thing here is to say that for the coming years, we will be totally focused on successfully growing the business. Our focus as an innovation platform will be to scale up our methodology across the whole CSN group, just as we did for some of those first projects, starting in 2029 and all the way through 2023, add up to an impact of a little over BRL 400 million. And when I say impact, I actually have three main underlying pillars. Number one, savings.
Most of those projects allowed us to have a very significant impact in terms of savings for specific areas or specific segments, provided we bring about good solutions, plug them into the group, so that will lead to savings. So savings, number one. Number two, an increase to a new revenue line. An existing revenue line, we simply expand this revenue line. And then number three, the most desired for us as we look forward, new revenue streams. And that's quite clear in our president's speech, and then Beto and Helena. When we look forward to the future as a platform, we want to use the group first early on to benefit the group, but then create businesses that can be spun off later, reaching that magical number of a billion, right?...
But it's also worth mentioning, I'm gonna give you 3 quick examples of businesses. Number one, hydrogen for fossil fuel reduction in cement kilns, as mentioned by Helena. Very nice project we did with our cement area from Edvaldo's team and a Portuguese company called UTIS, our partner. We start in 2021 with 4 containers in Arcos, and through an electrolysis process, those containers that are placed by the furnaces, they inject small amount of Green hydrogen in our combustion process there. And we had 3 immediate and wonderful impacts. Number one, a reduction in natural gas consumption, which causes savings, of course. Number two, a decrease in CO₂ emissions, also quite significant. And number three, an increase in productivity. So in addition to those two, we also increased our productivity.
We moved from 4 containers in 2021 to 10 containers today, installed and running, with a huge potential to be scaled up. We also explored this partnership with UTIS, and we are now trying to adapt that to the steel company as a whole. We'll be contemplating furnaces starting in December. So if that works, it's gonna be very interesting for us. Project number two, which is worth mentioning, the draining or drainage equipment, you know, that humidity for iron ore is a huge challenge that we have to mitigate humidity contents in iron ore. To be able to move that raw material, humidity is a problem. And also the cost of freight, because you have higher weight when you have high humidity. So that drainage system is also very promising, and it's a project we believe has a huge potential for mining.
In closing for this slide, a third example that shows the flexibility we have reached is the Lei do Bem, the last one. As a group, we have always tried to benefit from that law, Lei do Bem, but that's the first year we reached a figure close to 30 million BRL. And we're able to reach that number for the first time. Also, we are constantly looking for alternative funding lines. So I'd like to share with you that in 2020, we got funding with FINEP. In addition to serving us, also served the cement area. So we continue with FINEP, BNDES, trying those alternative funding lines geared towards innovation. So in summary, we started with low-hanging fruit.
As you can see, we focus on savings, but then as a next wave for the company, our focus will be on new businesses, on generating new revenue streams, and also being able to build an independent business. Next, please. Well, speaking a bit of our portfolio now. As you saw, we have our four pillars. One of them is our fund, our CVC. Today, we have nine invested companies, out of which seven are part of our group or work with us through our open methodology platform. I'd like to highlight Gauss Fleet. Gauss Fleet, something we closed, a deal we closed now in the second half. They digitalize and improve internal logistics. It's working at Presidente Vargas today.
We're scaling up, and Gauss Fleet represents a new moment for the fund, which will be to focus on investments with a more relevant share and more active participation around solutions for the mid, the short to the mid-term. We're going to continue to look in the long run as well. Two of those companies work with green hydrogen and graphene. But this shared value is very much based on the possibility of bringing solutions from startups, plugging those solutions into our platform, scale that up, and then you help those entrepreneurs to test, pilot those solutions, and then they can take that to the market along with us. So that shared value is very important, and that sets CVC apart from other investment vehicles.
So we are quite committed for the next two years in increasing our portfolio this way, with a focus on companies that have synergy, technological maturity, of course, always with an eye at long-term possibilities. Next, please. In closing, I think we are quite committed. Our ambition is to be the sixth segment of the CSN group. Since we were created, that's what we have been looking for. The process is quite clear now. There is nothing else to move. It's a matter of scaling it up, and it will happen in three phases. Having successful pilots, those pilots will be then scaled up within the group, and those successful steps, once you have established, and once you have had impacts, we can spin them off in three ways.
Number one, to have an internal development, create a new area, that has happened before, or we could perhaps create a joint venture with a third-party partner. And the third avenue for that would be to, through CVC, our fund, bringing those solutions inside, expanding them in-house, and then helping them take solutions to the market. Today, we have three spin-offs that were created in-house. Number one, Circula Mais, was done internally, along with the sales, special sales team. Early on, it benefited the group as a whole, because we were able to leverage sales through electronic bidding processes in there. We maintained the same model, and we did a spin-off, a new company, a replica company. Today, they already have revenues, and they have 10 active clients. That's good to show how that flow that I just explained to you works.
In addition to that, we remain committed with the development of new technologies and trends, specifically talking about green hydrogen. Today, we have a green hydrogen cell, which was created just now, this quarter. We have seven people totally dedicated to that area, to creating green hydrogen initiatives within the company, but also looking outside the company to see what are the trends around the world. We also have advanced phase studies for a pilot plant for green hydrogen in Paraná. We have five lines in Paraná, so that green hydrogen would be replacing natural gas, just as we did with UTIS, with cement. And then, at a later phase, we would try to understand whether ammonia would make sense for fertilizers or as a replacement for fossil fuels.
Another interesting initiative, in addition to the electrification of the fleet, as Helena mentioned, we're also doing some pilot processes for electrolysis within the off-road trucks. Interesting, to be able to inject green hydrogen directly into the, the trucks' engines. And lastly, UTIS, as I mentioned, cement and steel in high scale. And a last thing, which was also mentioned by Helena, also have to do with our flexibility in our methodology. In addition to innovation actions, in operations, we also, along with the CSN Foundation, we will start, doing innovation works in the social arm of the group. We have a first case, and the first case will be this fostering the honey and organic cotton production chains for, agricultural families in the countryside. So that's what I had.
I'd like to reinforce that we are totally committed in bringing the best technology that there is around the world to the group, so that we can increasingly improve our positive impact in Brazil and in the world. That's our mission. Thank you all for your time and attention, and I remain available as always, and I turn the floor back over to our commercial director, Mr. Martinez. Thank you.
Good day to all of you, and I would like to begin working, speaking about the global steel market. Everything happened in the United States. Everything good happened in the United States, and in our forecast, it will continue to happen in 2024. It is a country that, in fact, we would like to see this in Brazil. The industry represents 25% of the GDP. It continues to be strong, growing all of the steel mills, and especially the ones that we follow up on, as a core of SDI, will have an EBITDA margin between 21%-27%. SDI acquired our unit in the United States.
The GDP for the fourth quarter was up 5%, unemployment zero, the economy growing, well, a closed economy, and the last month, the steel went from 880 to 1,150. In the automotive industry, 1,150 in BQ, and a rather realistic forecast is to get to the fourth quarter in 2024 to 1,220, returning to the levels of 2023. In the United States, everything is good, a recovery of the automotive sector, a great deal of work and infrastructure, all of the programs ongoing in long steel, in other steel. All of the companies are growing the number of clients, and as you can see, all of the clients are growing in flat steel, in long steel, and in the infrastructure sector. And consumption, good.
Companies quite optimistic for the coming year. Now, besides this, we observe that there is discipline when anything happens in the last few months. For example, we see discipline on the supply side, as you can see here, even when the market is somewhat soft in the short term.... I think fantastic in China. To add to what was said by Benjamin, there is something very interesting. The prices in China have risen, they're at a better level. They're around $566-$580 per BQ, which is also positive for us. Another very important side, although China in 2023 exported 1.1 billion tons of steel in exports in 2024, based on the fact that we have analyzed, they're going to focus more on civil construction, not necessarily in real estate, but in infrastructure, focusing more on the domestic market.
Of course, we're inferring this. We estimate that the trends for China to export, their appetite for exports should be reduced, and this should favor us. Now, this is what we are calculating here, also due to something that should happen, a recovery of the margins of the plants in China. If we look at the EBITDA of all of the steel plants, with rare exceptions, all of them have a negative EBITDA. Of course, they're all subsidized, they're all tapping the markets throughout the world. Well, this is the best backyard for them, for the Chinese, and this should favor us because of the recovery of margins that will be happening in their domestic market. Due to a reduction of inventories that they had in the last quarter, there was a recomposition of inventory that will facilitate our life.
What also happened in 2023, and that favors us in terms of iron ore, the blast furnaces worked with very high utilization levels. I have never seen levels be lower than 90% in China for blast furnaces. Well, basically, this is all. I'm not going to continue on because we have several speakers. And subsequently, we can answer some questions during the Q&A session. Now, Brazil, great deal has been disseminated in the media, and I'm optimistic and realistic when it comes to the coming year. I don't think the market was bad this year. What was bad was Brazil that allowed for the import of so much material. 13 point some of apparent consumption is not bad. It's reaching the levels of 2010, 2012, where it was close to 15 million.
What was terrible was to see 22%-23% of material, 3-4 million tons coming into the country. Now, let's carry out an exercise. If we cut this amount in half or 15% or 16%, it's more than 1 billion ton entering our domestic market for the coming year. Now, what was bad this year was CSN in terms of operations, in terms of operational excellence, and Brazil, when it comes to protecting itself against asymmetric, unloyal imports that are out of specification, totally out of control, and as I can say, absurd. When it comes to the market, you have seen very positive signs. Let's look at Volkswagen, that is working with a second shift of trucks in Resende, do more chassis for buses that work for schools to service the demand of trucks. The automobile sector is working with a better outlook for 2024.
I am part of two or three boards of suppliers for Volkswagen and other companies, and they are speaking about more positive figures for this sector the coming year. The other sector, we're repeating what we already know. Civil construction was the best year for concrete and for those that sell construction mesh. It was an excellent year. There's a carryover of work that had to be finished. If it wasn't a good year for cement, it was an excellent year for cement. All buildings have to use cement, and cement was used broadly this year, so the meshes and everything else had an excellent performance. All of the companies working with the extended products and in construction did very well. Simply look at their balances.
The same will continue to happen in the first half of the year in civil construction, and I'm not speaking about infrastructure, because positive things will still happen in that sector. IABr says we will have a growth of 3% the coming year. Now, in my opinion, the growth the coming year will be 10% growth for CSN. We have to recover what we were not able to achieve this year and have an increase, because we do have room for growth in some markets. Now, regarding the premiums, and this is in accordance with a report that Leo has just published. Looking at the premium regarding the import product of BQ 564 of 3,800-4,000. This represents 8%. Now, we don't live from the Q.
Our output is practically 50% of coated product, and the premiums are higher there because premiums practically reach 15%. We did well this year for those who were able to live well this year, with imports of 23%. Going forward will be very simple. It's a positive sign, and for the coming year, we could perhaps think of a margin recovery due to cost, to operational excellence, and why not? Because of a price increase. We need to recover our historical margins of 25% of EBITDA, which is what I am used to working with for the last 22 years, basically. Now, in terms of the commercial strategy, no changes either. Let's look at 2023. That was a very difficult year because of imports.
We did not change anything at all, and despite the balance of imported material, we were able to increase our share in coated material. In the third graph, you can see that we maintained 50% of our output in coated material. We had 41% for galvanized, 9% for metal sheets. Slightly impacted, because of impacts from other countries, but not China, and we're working towards resolving this. In the strategy, our footprint in several markets, not having all of our eggs in the same basket, of course, a full portfolio of products. We are the, best portfolio, cold, laminated, hot laminated in all sectors to sell less for more, a highly fragmented base. In flat steel, we had a growth of 12%-14% in clients.
We have 2,300 clients in the steel network, and integrated solutions for all customers. Not only industrial customers, but also those of civil construction. We're working on other solutions, integrating into the portfolio, the cement, the concrete, value-added products, and reinforced steel. Now, in the bottom graph, in the circle, I like to change the word spot for sales without a fixed price. We have 66%-70% of a floating price. We can do whatever we wish, and this helps us in terms of price flexibility and freedom to do whatever we want with price. And between automotive and white goods, jointly, we have 24%. So this, of our contracts extend for 3-6 months. This is a change that we implemented quite successfully during the pandemic and that has remained.
In strategic projects as a conclusion, we have a relatively small CapEx of BRL 1.2 billion for a very conservative figure to deliver additional EBITDA margin of BRL 1 billion until 2027. We can advance several of these projects, and they refer to some activities that are practically in place. One is an increase of participation in Panatlântica . We go from a stake of 10% to almost 30%. We're very, very close to having an industrial trust once again in the United States through service centers, and I'm referring to several of these centers. The Lusos ider service center, that is already under construction. The expansion of pre-paint that is coming to Brazil. The material is at the port. We're going to begin to assemble it.
Expansion of cold rolled products, expansion of tin plate that should be concluded until 2027, and optimization of long steel from 200,000 to 400,000 per year. This is what I wanted to share with you. I will give the floor to Alexandre Lyra, who will speak about the operational excellence.
Thank you very much. A good day to all of you. I am Alexandre. I joined the company a short time ago. I began in February, and I am responsible for the UPV plant, the Presidente Vargas plant in Volta Redonda, and the subsidiaries we have in Porto Real and other sites. Now, upon arrival, I was faced with an enormous challenge. Benjamin has mentioned some of this. In the first half of the year, we underwent difficulties, especially in the steel plant, because of specific equipment.
These were not problems spread out throughout the plant, especially in the system to capture gas from converters, as these are big, large equipment with a long lead time. We immediately carried out a diagnosis in terms of what we would have to improve, in terms of spare parts. We placed the orders among the suppliers. We carried out the first maintenance of a converter in August. The second maintenance will take place in December, and this cycle will end in February with the third maintenance... converter as part of the challenges that will make these figures possible. And all of these figures, of course, have double-digit plate production, almost 30%, cost reductions of 10% in plate cost, rolled products 19%, and in sales, 22% for laminated deliveries.
Now, to make this significant growth feasible in 2024 compared to this year, we're basing ourselves on four pillars to enhance our operational excellence. As I make my remarks, you will see that most of these pillars are leveraging what the chairman mentioned, that CSN does have skill. We're in several businesses, from maintenance, innovation with CSN Inova, and we're going to make the most of these synergies to enable these enhancements in operational efficiency. First of all, we're going to work on our coking. The coke and reducers have a significant weight in the cost of our steel plate. Now, to go back to a level of production above 50%, essential to guarantee our competitiveness in 2024, so we will invest heavily in the coking plant, almost BRL 4 billion planned until 2028, 2030.
In sintering, once again, heavy investment connected to environmental impact for our electrostatic reducers. In the machine efficiency, we have changed the strategy for maintenance of our sintering machine, and this will enable us a growth of production of 30% in a few months. This will continue on during 2024, 2025. Now, capturing the gases from the steel mill, I have already spoken about this. We're concluding the cycle that will end in February, help us in the production of our converters, and we're working in the continuous lamination products, both in the steel mill, so that these can be used in our BQ rolling machine. Now, all of this in synergy with CBSI. CBSI is growing not only in terms of labor, but in the quality of the maintenance labor.
We spoke about the growth in electromechanical maintenance, and they're offering us full support to enhance our maintenance processes. The second bullet point, productivity. We're going to focus on productivity gains. When we carry out maintenance services, we have a control tower through which we will monitor the entire maintenance team, our own, as well as that of CBSI. Whenever we have a breakdown, we will mobilize our personnel to reduce the mean time to repair. This is the focus of productivity with the help of CBSI. Now, the third point, the third level for improvement is specific consumption and metallurgical yield. We're going back to a practice where we were a benchmark in the past, something we lost through the years, the issue of technical excellence and deep knowledge of the processes, the stability of the processes.
We have a significant problem in terms of implementing Lean Manufacturing at the Presidente Vargas plant. But a Lean Manufacturing that will be connected with all of our innovation initiatives that we have in our portfolio, using analytics to better understand the variability of the process. An example is a better control of fuel consumption in our regenerators in the furnace. This will enable us to increase the temperature and reduce the consumption of coke in the blast furnace by using analytics. So specific consumptions and metallurgical yield will be deployed through Lean Manufacturing with the support of Inova and by mobilizing our teams. We have gone from 0 groups of Kaizen continuous improvement, which is the base of the Lean Manufacturing process, reaching 60 at the end of the year, and our goal is very bold.
We want to go beyond 1,000 groups of continuous improvement, involving operators as well as managers, all working jointly towards stabilizing the process.
As for ESG, starting with people, we have a very nice program in place to innovate Safety 6.0, using all the track record we have of incidents at the plant for the last 80 years and transform that into knowledge to really understand what, when, and the circumstances of an event, so that when we have to interfere or work with an equipment, piece of equipment, before that, we know in advance the risks that intervention could entail, so that we can operate preventively. That's what we call 6.0. Also very important in terms of motivation is to have our leadership on site. So every day, from this plant's director to all the way down to supervisors, we everybody visits the area. They take about an hour to look at safety, cleaning, interacting with our employees.
We only be able to implement those initiatives to improve, if we have operating discipline and if we generate engagement on the part of our employees. So to be there every day at a fixed time, there is no excuses. I have a meeting, I have a phone call. No, we are all there present on the floor to generate engagement on the part of our employees. Also, about the environment, I'm not going to repeat what Helena has said. We have invested in the sintering. We're also making our operating people aware of their role in decreasing environmental impact. In terms of investments, I'm not gonna go into detail, but, as I mentioned, as coke is key to our production, we need to increase our own production to be more competitive and reduce environmental impact. We're now investing in batteries to recover furnaces.
We have already demolished an old battery, which will be rebuilt. Actually, two batteries will be rebuilt by 2028. We also see that our investment plans is quite ambitious. We're talking about BRL 8 billion from 2023 to 2028. Most of those investments are already ongoing in terms of engineering development. Quite advanced when you talk about the coke or coking processes. And for the next months, we expect to hire battery number two. So again, BRL 8 billion of investments in the coming years, which will generate an EBITDA win of BRL 8 billion. In other words, a great profitability for shareholders. Those are heavy investments, massive. You know that steel is very capital intensive, but all projects are well mapped out, and we are already, by 2023, starting it.
We'll continue to detail the engineering specs, the hiring of suppliers to complete all that by 2028. Thank you very much. I turn it over now to my colleague, Andreas, who'll be talking about mining. Over to you, Andreas. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. It's very good to be here once again at another CSN Day, 38 years in the company. So I'll make a brief presentation as usual. I only would like to underline a couple of relevant points relative to our mining operations. Our leadership is all present, general managers. We have people connected online from Pires, Casa de Pedra, from Fernandinho, and from Porto. And they are responsible for the successful journey we had in 2023, and also work to make things happen in the future.
Our new operating model, as the president has mentioned, around our new product portfolios, a product that has delivered valuable results over 10 years with no fatal accidents. That's a landmark within this industry. A lot of discipline in allocating capital, in line with the best ESG practices, and always hungry for innovation. Record production levels, record shippings, quality improvements, better costs despite inflation, peaks and capital allocation, maximization of assets. We're working so that in 2024, all our units will be working at full steam. And of course, prioritizing projects that bring about more return, CMIN-Lamas, CMIN P4, CMIN P15. As for ESG, dams. All dams are stable. Our focus now is in speeding up decommissioning within, of course, the best management practices. A highlight around diversity and decarbonization.
We are ranking number 6 in the global ESG ranking, and we're gonna fight for number 1 in the coming years in governance. We have a technical office now encompassing risk mitigation, expecting more stability and sustainability for our results. In closing, we are a large mining company, and we know quite well the resources we have at hand, and we have an important role to play to support the steel industry, which has significant challenges ahead of us. And I'm talking about our clients, our raison d'être. I now turn the floor over to Pedro, who'll be touching upon our figures. Good morning. I'll start talking about our seaborne iron ore demand for 2024. We expect this market to have a deficit next year. We see demand going up by 39 million tons, a supply that's growing only at 21 million.
Much of that growth in demand comes from China. This is not a consensus, but that's how we see it. We see an important increase of $140 billion, the package which was announced by the government in China, along with an inventory stabilization, as we show in the next slide. Southeast Asia should continue to grow above the world average from the point of view of GDP and industrial output, and with this, we'll have a higher demand for steel and iron ore. Japan and Europe, after two years of weak performance, we expect to see a resumption starting the second half of next year. On the supply side, a growth of 11 million tons coming from Australia, two projects from Rio Tinto next year.
From Brazil, we have our own growth, 2.5 million tons, and also marginal increases from general miners across different areas of the country. For Canada, they're overcoming operational problems caused by fires and also projects ramping up, and that should have positive impact in demand and supply. As of China, as Martinez said, from January through this November, have the highest level of use of blast furnaces in China for the past three years, 89% of use, and their inventories reached historical minimum levels. If you compare the average for 2021 with what we saw last week, the last available data, there is a gap of 31 million tons which have been consumed from Chinese inventories. We see a recovery of those inventory levels, especially at the port levels.
As steel mills, we continue to work at a very pressured, working capital level. From the incentives I mentioned before, that $140 billion impact comes from an incremental demand, according to specialists, of 7-12 million tons for steel of additional consumption. And then if you adjust for additional, that's 19 million additional tons. So if you add those two effects, a gap on the one hand, and this growth in infrastructure spend, we see a growth of 25 million tons. So the real estate industry was a main driver for China. We see a recovery, or at least stability, with a possibility of an upside next year. Auto production in the in China, auto exports in China - from China will also increase in 2024.
$120-$130 is the expectation for prices that we have. That's a market consensus, give or take, which is already priced in futures markets. If you look at the average for 2024, it's sitting at $125. Maritime freight, low growth in the Capesize fleet, combined the bauxite volume from Africa, should be able to sustain a level for freight costs, about $1 up. Still, we were able to negotiate amounts. We have offers below $20 for next year. We expect to conclude some of those negotiations next week. There is an important initiative on the sea freight front, which is a dredging in the port of Itaguaí to increase the draft of the channel so that we can increase the volume shipped by vessel.
This will have an increase of $0.80 in terms of savings, and that's a fundamental cost when we look at the price of freight as delivered in China. Moving on to our dams management. Once again, in September, we had the revalidation of the stability statement from ANM for all our dams. We have concluded the works for the Vigia Dam, so now we have only one upstream dam to be addressed. We have concluded the engineering works for the Breu. We have already created a channel, which is a key part of the process, and we have already contracted studies for the de-characterization of the Casa de Pedra Dam from the governance standpoint, which is also key for the operation of Casa de Pedra. We have been conducting external audits twice a year in all dams, including projects.
We have advanced in the reprocessing process for tailings, and I'll be touching upon that in a moment. We have something that we have to celebrate every day, and we're very proud, that which is zero accidents in our dams. That started in 1913 in the Casa de Pedra mine. As for operational resilience, we have invested heavily in a more robust rainfall program to avoid floods. We have improved our process for drainage and mining plan. We are working at larger stocks near production plants to avoid disruptions, even on heavy rain days. As for railroads, inspections, monitoring, prevention of accidents, we have been doing diagnosis on a continuous basis to prevent high impact events, such as the one that we had, unfortunately, early in the year, but that didn't prevent us from breaking records in volumes.
In terms of handling at the port, we have adopted a technology, Felipe mentioned, which is a forced drainage of ore, reducing water instead of carrying water on the containers, decreasing the humidity content of the ore. We have, as you call it, dewatered those components from our mines. We have stored low moisture products that allows us for a better blending of the materials, and we have created a simulator and have adjusted the rates by product type. The concrete result is a higher match between our plans and our execution that led to a drop of more than two-thirds of cost in demurrage. In 2022, it was $0.65 per ton. Today, that number is at $0.21, and we're breaking records in volumes. That was really an important evolution for us.
Now, maybe the most important metric for our investors now, volume of production. The margin per ton is very high. We have a guidance for the year of 42-42.5 million in 2023. We are getting close to that. We're quite confident we'll deliver 42.5, maybe exceed 42.5, the cap of the guidance. We are working hard to deliver that. We're working hard, as I said, to deliver the best possible by the end of this year. Next year, we're going to deliver a growth of 2.5 million in production, and we'll be buying less, 2.5 million. So we have a guidance for next year of 42-43.5 million tons.
That improvement in mix will generate a decrease in our cost, CPV, and this reduction has to do with the discipline of trying to find better unit margins to better compensate the whole logistics system. From the point of view of sales volume, that can be supported by a potential reduction of up to 1.5 million tons of ore that we have in inventory today. Those low margins from China, as Martinez mentioned, they favor our low-grade niche, and that's the view for 2024 so far. As for C1, we have a guidance of $22. You see a cost moving sideways. We're going to make a big effort to reduce that some more, despite the inflationary pressure. And for next year, it's $21.5-$23 per ton.
With an increase in freight of $1, we'll have more logistics costs, such as diesel, railway, and we are trying to reach a higher operational resilience, which will include higher investments and also in higher preventive maintenance. At the same time, we have a scale gain, and because of the additional volume, we're gonna be bringing to market our own production, an increase in efficiency, several initiatives to increase efficiency and reduce costs. One of them, just as an example, is placing advanced diesel stations to reduce replenishing of those trucks. The combination of a C1 in line in 2023 and a mix improvement will result in a more competitive COGS next year. In other words, better margins, given the price projections as of today. Now, as for our projects, we have an expansion project, what we call phase one.
We are increasing by 1.5-28.4 million tons, which will lead us to a volume of 68 million tons in 2028, an average iron content of 65%. But quality issue is key. Today, our discount when compared to benchmark, is of about $10 below the 62 level. And with this level of quality, we'll be able to have a premium to be above $10. So more than $20 of gap, that will be margin, cash generation for our shareholders, given that costs will move sideways as we move forward. CapEx, as you may have updated, 15.3 million, an average CapEx of $3 billion, or BRL rather. That CapEx accounts for a growth of unit CapEx per ton of 5%, in line with the inflation of the period.
As for the gain in volume, I'd like to highlight the review of operating parameters for P-15, which allowed us to expand the plant's capacity after the acquisition of the main bits of equipment coming from first-line equipment suppliers, and the elimination of some bottlenecks, and we moved up to 16.5 million tons. Updating of the projects, I'd say discipline in hiring led to an update in schedule and CapEx prioritization, the hard work of the technical team in trying to find best solutions for all projects. P-15 is an example, of a concrete example, along with a commercial strategy, which is part of our DNA, of always negotiating to the last penny with all suppliers. That allows us to update schedules, and we are increasingly more confident as projects move forward and become more mature.
The ultra fine projects, 1.5 million tons to process part of the tailings that come from the central plant. We are already working on the details, negotiating the first bundle of equipment. It's moving forward really well. CMIN Pires, we are at the basic engineering process. CMIN, P4, and Casa de Pedra, 1.5 million tons each. In the case of P4, engineering has been concluded. We're gonna be going to market with technical specs in the next weeks. As for the Casa de Pedra, we are doing the probing and characterizing the mineralogy. As for P4, is a project that has led us to consider expanding capacity, sort of anticipating some of the volumes coming from phase two. As for the port, we're expanding to 60 million tons, progress in infrastructure work. We're now finalizing the contract to expand the pier.
That's an important step to enhance capacity, and we are already negotiating the detailed engineering to expand the railway lines by the port.
P-15, our gas station has been concluded. We have 27% advance in this project, and in the office, we have 75% advance, releasing 100% of the area where the project will be built. And with the new hiring, we have bundle two, excluding what has already been contracted, which is filtering. Now, the second part of the structure is pending. The first part has been started, and the updated startup will be in 2024. In terms of EBITDA, we're foreseeing BRL 4 billion. If this plant had been operating in 2024, the EBITDA would be almost double. It would represent BRL 7.5 billion at present day prices.
This shows the value generation that this project will offer our shareholders, novelty for the market and additional step we're taking in verticalization of the chain that is part of the green steel. As Helena mentioned, we're developing this project in partnership with JFE. JFE is also a shareholder of C MIN, and we have a very competitive, efficient local system, creating a pilot plant, a pilot plant. And in Abu Dhabi, we have an employee devoted full-time to this project. We're doing very well in terms of the feasibility study, and we're awaiting the final investment decision in the coming month. Now, the capital allocation is very relevant. We're only at 10% of the project. Now, the emission per ton represents a drop of 73% ton of steel produced. This is part of the solution of decarbonizing the global steel segment.
Now, regarding performance highlights, our guidance is 42-43.5. Who knows, we can maintain and overcome what we're delivering this year, which is a record. We're delivering a growth of 25% vis-à-vis the previous year. This shows an advance in operational excellence, considering no new plant came into operation. In terms of cost evolution, this will be the third year with the cost going sideways despite the inflation in the products. Now, this additional volume that we delivered this year shows a growth in revenue and EBITDA, despite the drop in iron ore prices vis-à-vis 2022. Now, regarding our balance, one more year where we end up in a deleverage position with a cash position of 10.6 billion BRL in the third quarter. This operational result enables us to keep our payout policy of 80%-100% of net profit.
We have already paid out BRL 1.4 billion to our shareholders, and along with this, we continue with our investment and expansion plan. We have secured funding of $1.4 billion for the long term with JBIC and NEXI, and this is important for the execution of our growth plan. This was mentioned by the chairman at the beginning. We have a shareholder return of 86% throughout the year of 2023, since January until the end of November this year. I would like to conclude by speaking about ESG. We're very proud of the performance we have had so far, and we intend to continue on with this agenda. Of course, we preserve the privacy of all of the players, but we're working with four of the best in class.
We're the best in terms of lower CO2 intensity per ton of iron ore produced. We continue to make strides by expanding women representation in our workforce. As Helena mentioned, we're going to continue advancing in this. Safety is a non-negotiable value, of course, and our results have been exceptional, perhaps the best in the world, with zero fatalities in the last decade, with the lowest frequency rate. And this explains why CMIN is in the sixth best place globally among 159 companies, and we're going to continue to work on this, to continue enhancing this Sustainalytics agenda. Thank you very much, and I give the floor once again to Martinez. Very well. This is a challenge to be as brief as possible. Cement to begin, we only have good news.
We're undergoing a new growth cycle in Brazil after several decades, there is no doubt of this. In the last decade, after a peak in 2014, 2015, we have a growth cycle, and we're very close to our effective capacity with low cost, which is something that we can in the market to be able to compete among the players. Obviously, all of this is supported by a very favorable moment in the real estate sector, civil, construction, residential construction, and others. And as I mentioned previously, infrastructure hasn't begun yet. We have some investments, some private initiative, but nothing has happened in the public sector because they're working with sanitation, concession, highways, and ports. Of course, this will materialize, and we will have a change in our product portfolio. Now, the foundation for our prices is very important.
In the more developed countries, we have much higher price levels. Of course, it's very difficult to say that we haven't recovered the prices, because beginning in 2021, we have a growing curve in terms of prices. In December and January, we should recover 12%-15% of prices in reais. To speak about integration, we have absorbed Lafarge Holcim. We didn't fire a single employee. Those who left, wanted to leave, and or they left because they couldn't adopt our working culture. Synergy, we have attained most of them. They represent BRL 600 million. At present, we have BRL 500 million. The diversification is full. We have all types of cement, several product portfolios. With added value, we have concrete. We're working with builders, we're entering construction material stores, pre-molded material, and then some, and logistics.
Basically, we are a logistics company that is distributed products, rebar, steel, iron, and much more, and we're going to become a very large marketplace. 40% of our clients place an order electronically through e-commerce, and all of this will be crowned with our network. Very soon, you will see stores in São Paulo and Rio, basically in the Southeast region. Edivaldo will explain to the right the other synergies that we have and the part of integration. Growth, of course, has taken a very fast pay. We are growing to 13 million ton market share. I tend not to speak about this, but we have had a growth. We have 22% of the Brazilian market at the lower left, as you can see. In São Paulo, we had a growth of 31-32%, a growth of 24% in the Northeast.
We are in a region, well, we're still not in the South and Central West. We are still in a very restricted region of Brazil. We're always betting on our customer base. We have 20 clients registered, and regularly, we sell to 13,000 customers per month. So remember, I said we sold a great deal in bases because of the structure and with the entrance of LafargeHolcim and the cement, we are now prepared to service the infrastructure sector in bulk. Now, we have 69 bases that will be sold in bulk, that can be used in construction companies covering the entire region of Brazil, and it can grow in São Paulo and in other states. In terms of the retail market, you have the novelty, the Fortaço stores. They are construction material stores.
The intention is to reach 200 stores in a 3-year period. This is retail selling. It's not a business that we're continuing because LafargeHolcim did not focus on this. We're not going to compete with our clients. We want to clarify this. It is an extension to come ever closer to the final client. In terms of value-added products, we're working with quartz, sand, all of this to complement our product portfolio. Now, all of this is part of our growth strategy. Concrete? We have no intention of investing in concrete plants. We're going to invest in partnerships. We want to reach 1.5 million, which is what our main competitor has nowadays.
In terms of logistics, we have to position ourselves, create a distribution center, service stores, regional stores, all of those service points that will be able to work with steel, cement, and perhaps work as a marketplace platform for other material. I will now give the floor to Edivaldo to speak about the industrial part. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm going to speak about the cement platform. We had two recent acquisitions, LafargeHolcim, and we have become the second biggest cement producer in Brazil, with an installed base of 17 million tons, going to 25 million with the expansion projects. We have a concentration in the Southeast, but we also have a presence in the Northeast and Midwest. Now, the distribution centers are very important to offer us greater capillarity in the sale of cement, and we're working with value-added products, concrete and others.
At the end of 2023, we now have full integration with LafargeHolcim, with an annualized gain of approximately BRL 500 million, highly aligned with what we had forecast upon the acquisition of LafargeHolcim. Of course, this is a reason of pride, and we have an excellent team that will guarantee that we will continue to capture positive results. It's important to manage costs, as has been mentioned. We're ending with a reduction of 7% in costs, but for the coming year, what we're seeking is an additional 8% cost reduction. Now, this is important and because of the growth that we will have in the market, and this growth is only possible thanks to the capillarity that we have with logistics, with the assertive commercial strategy, and because of our competitive costs.
Now, this year, we have worked towards reducing bottlenecks in the plants that we acquired and reactivating equipment, blast furnaces, and reactivating the plant in Sorocaba that has been operational since March of this year. Helena spoke about our commitment towards sustainability. We have the lowest CO2 footprint in Brazil, but this does not suffice for us. Until 2030, we would like to reach what the sector is seeking for 2050. The Geocycle platform, which came with the acquisition of LafargeHolcim, is a platform that captures and prepares tailings residues, and they're going to give us a boost. We're expanding this platform, and we're going from a dependence of 60% of coke fossil fuels to less than 25% until the end of 2030. We're also very proud of what Pedro mentioned in terms of mining.
The rate of accidents with lost time has been dropping through the years, has become stable at a very low figure. Of course, we're looking for a zero rate accident. We do have one of the lowest rates of this sector in Brazil. What is very important as part of the businesses, as mentioned by Benjamin, the BRL 1 billion business. This is a business we just inaugurated. We began selling agricultural limestone in November, and through using our existing assets, as well as through the rights of mining that we have granted in several parts of the country, especially in the green part, where you see the growth of agribusiness in the country, we're entering this business with great strength, and we hope to reach, in the midterm, more than BRL 400 million in EBITDA and net, net revenue above BRL 1 billion.
Now, to go back to cement, where are we heading to with cement going forward? We're the second largest producer in Brazil. We have an organic way to grow, and we can also grow through M&As. In terms of organic growth, we're ready to set up three new plants in Brazil to service markets where we do not have a strong participation. A plant in Pará for the northern region, a plant in the Northeast that has the challenge of servicing the market in Bahia, and a third plant in Paraná, where we would like to service the southern market. What is interesting about these projects is that they are ever more mature, they're extremely mature. We have an operating license in the Northeast. We will be receiving the operating license in the South in the first or second quarter of 2024.
This will enable us to set up our plant. Of course, these projects will start up as soon as it makes sense, depending on the market and when well, the utilization factor of the industry goes beyond 80%. Brazil continues to grow, this will be a very pressured, thing, and everything will depend on the company capital, and we have the chance of growing through M&As. Our track record has been very interesting in M&A because of our acquisition and the way we capture synergies. We are confident in terms of new possibilities in Brazil and outside of Brazil. Of course, we will carry out these acquisitions and mergers if they make sense for the company. Now, to conclude with the main highlights, we grew sales 7% in 2023, vis-à-vis 2022.
So our competitiveness, our strong commercial strategy, and the capillarity of our logistics, net revenue grew 60%. We had a significant cost reduction, and the EBITDA margin grew 30% compared to last year. The margin is very close to what we had last year, but with the integration of the LafargeHolcim asset, this should allow us to return to the revenue levels we had in 2021, above 30%. Thank you very much, and I will now give the floor to the energy director.
My name is Rogério Pizeta. I am the Energy Director. I'll try to summarize or briefly summarize what we have to show in terms of energy for the period. To do that, I have to go back and talk about the strategic rationale, which was proposed in August last year, when we announced the acquisition of CEEE. The strategic rationale was in attractive investments or to make investments in attractive plants, trying to diversify business and industrial competitiveness through production and cost reduction, through energy cost control, without forgetting sustainability, of course. All those investments are made in renewable plants. I think we were successful. We've been successful in the year. We are now reaping the fruit in 2023. We are consolidating our strategy. We are self-sufficient, sufficient in energy, with renewable energy. We have collected the benefits of the plants and synergies that we have.
We have consolidated as a relevant player in the energy market. We rank probably among the 10 or 15 hydropower generators in Brazil. We have the turnaround of the CEE through operational efficiency and cost reduction, using all the management processes that we have in place at CSN, and we continue to move forward in project development, brownfields from CEE and the Greenfield projects in Piauí, the Solar Floriano project. We continue to move forward. With that, we managed to reduce CO2 emissions in our plants, and also, we also obtained I-REC certification, as mentioned by Helena. That all takes us to this current situation on the next slide. Our portfolio, we moved from a simple operation with a share of only 2 plants, Itá and Igarapava, to actually have an energy operation per se, where we operate, manage different power plants. 4 or 5 by now.
So with that, we reached 2 GW of capacity, and we have in a pipeline projects, Povo Novo, for example, wind plant for the south and the photovoltaic project in Piauí/Floriano, a solar project at 1.2 GW. With that, we aim to reach 3.2 gigawatts of capacity. That shows that CSN does have the ability to absorb new investments and deliver what was promised, and that can be translated into this energy balance sheet. 2022 generated a small amount, 2023, a higher level. We were able to absorb all of the acquisitions and the demand from Lafarge, Elizabeth Cimentos, and we're ready to absorb future acquisitions with energy surplus. So, the limestone project is one of them.
We invested in hydrogen as well, so we do have an interesting capacity to offer energy to all those projects, and still operate as a player in the energy sector as we're able to sell our surplus energy. So, and what does that mean in terms of numbers? Here we have a better idea of the whole. Actually, that does not apply to energy specifically, but we can see savings producing the steel, BRL 100 million, BRL 190 million cement, and BRL 110 million in mining. CEE with an EBITDA between 160 and 165 this year. So the whole energy business, when combined with the savings we collected from the acquisitions through self-production, synergies, and also the two consortiums we participated, where we leased two CEE plants.
With all of that, we have about 580 or 600 million savings. If you consider the future purchase of energy, we will reach 870 million in savings. So what's the takeaway? 100% of the objectives were obtained, were delivered. We have PCH Sacre, Santa Ana operational, delivering self-production synergies, replacing the contracts which were in place, or legacy contracts that we had from Lafarge and Elizabeth Cimentos. Now, moving straight to CEE, we show CSN's management capacity, the tools that we use, highly and successfully integrated. We were able to delay some investments so that we could better analyze the scope, do the right quotation processes, and deliver better results.
We focus on this first year on reducing costs, restructuring the teams, fine-tuning the whole management process, restructuring contracts, especially those which are recurrent, and of course and are already leading to savings, which are significant in terms of cost reduction. We'll see those reductions coming on stronger in 2024, because part of that only happened throughout the year or later in the year. So there's a trend in cost reduction for next year. EBITDA tends to go up when you look at the price, the future price curve. On the left-hand side, in the bottom, we see our generation capacity, the projects, Bugres and Jacuí, the first two. As they are ramped up, we have an increase in the physical guarantee. They are in the pipeline. COG, the operational center, will allow us to integrate all plants, centralizing the operations.
So we are able to deliver all the numbers we had planned to deliver. After that, the Floriano Solar Complex, 1.2 GW, being developed in the state of Piauí. We filed for the permits in February 2022, so we can count on I-REC incentives for energy production with the respective discounts. We have a public hearing held in August. The LP was renewed for until 2025, PL. We are installing a tower to create an alternative to sell that energy in the free market or in the captive market. We are working towards that right now as we put up this new tower. That was a regulatory demand, if you want to sell energy in the captive market. In terms of energy, that's what I had. I'll briefly go over natural gas.
That's also an important challenge we have ahead of us. We have a very large consumption of natural gas in Rio de Janeiro. With UPV, we account for 50%-60% perhaps, of the total volume. With the changes we've seen in the market, in terms of regulation and the new environment, that allows us to start talking about migrating to the free market for natural gas. The tariff is about 70% molecule, and the remaining is distribution and transmission. So in the second quarter of 2024, we intend to have at least UPV out in the free market, obtaining that benefit of cost reduction for the molecule through competitiveness.
With that, we are trying to have a reduction in cost, or higher EBITDA of about BRL 180 million, or even more, depending on market conditions, that we buy the molecule. For that, you need to overcome a few barriers, especially regulatory barriers. We have contact with the regulatory agency in Rio, the government, gas suppliers, working together to make that process viable, so that we can have something concrete by the beginning of the second half of the year for the free market. And then we do the same thing that we did in energy. We start with the free market, and then we move forward in supplying more gas, and then we create a new business line in natural gas. That's the way forward.
That's the market gas is becoming ever stronger. We already have free markets in two states, Espírito Santo and Minas Gerais, and then we are working hard to develop that in Rio to reach those objectives. I think I... That's what I had. Thank you for your attention.
Marcelo.
I turn the floor over to Marcelo. Thank you, Rogerio. Last year, our energy business was presented by the CFO. This year, as we grew and all the good news, we had an energy head, Rogerio. And this year, we have the CFO to talk about logistics, and I have Tufi Daher, our special guest. So we are also working to develop our fifth pillar in logistics. A brief overview of our main assets. Those are very special assets with excellent, recent performance and a huge potential. The example that stands out is MRS, one of the most important railways in the country, quite well known for transporting ore and bulk loads, but with a huge potential for overall loads or shipments after the concession is renewed.
There is a huge growth potential, with access to multi-transportation modes, to be used by the agribusiness, pulp and paper, civil construction. It has been growing at a 10% pace with margins of, margins of 20%, so the potential is really huge. When you look at our balance sheet, the historical cost is BRL 2 billion. If you consider market multiples, that asset alone may be worth over BRL 10 billion, so a lot of value to be unlocked. So MRS, Tecon. Today, Tecon plays an important strategic role for CSN. We use this terminal to import raw materials such as, slabs and pallets, and also finished steel, have been bringing structural profiles from Germany, to the Brazilian market, so that provides us with a lot of flexibility.
Also for exports, as well as we export our own steel with unheard of flexibility, and also with other potential clients. The port has been going through a transition now. The challenge of seeing a change in the segment, and now we have global players, so there's a drop in the volume of containers, and we are being successful in finding alternatives to continue to grow. But a lot of potential to grow, to explore in oil and gas, with a huge area in the back of the terminal, very well placed, close to the R4 route for the pre-salt gas. This could become a new Porto do Açu, or become a hub for partnerships in oil and gas storage and lubricants, so a huge potential to be explored at TECCON.
And at FTL, that's the old operational network, 1,200 kilometers leading Fortaleza to São Luís, today transporting 3 million tons, especially fuels, also with a huge potential in agribusiness, has been growing exponentially with the renewal of the tracks. Next step is to renew the concession and new investments that will increase potential EBITDA by more than five-fold, especially with the new network being built. And now I turn the floor over to Tufi Daher, the company's CEO, FTL's CEO. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll try to recover some of the time. Are we gonna be watching the, the footage now? FTL is now in construction in the northeast part of Brazil, bringing opportunities for several families. Crossing 53 cities, we'll transport grains, ore, and containers for export through the Pecém port. Works are at a very fast pace, creating 8,000 new jobs.
FTL, FTL, bringing development to Brazil and to the northeastern region. So the FTL is a concession, which is a fundamental link for the region. We'll bring Brazil closer to the world's largest markets, the West, China, Europe. It's a railway which extends today 1,200 kilometers in two phases. Phase number 1, we have over 70% of that concluded. It's a world-class railway. A similar one would be Carajás. Carajás has the same quality standards as the FTL or the TLSA. R ecent market survey showed a great potential for grains, fertilizers, ore, fuel, cement. And they do not compete with the, with what is already being done, right? Those are new markets. Construction work is moving fast forward. We have 2,000 people working. 70% of the work has been concluded, as I said.
Startup is expected to happen in 2027, and the commissioning phase for the internal market will start in the first half of 2025. The cash generation, EBITDA, it has a very high CapEx and a very low OpEx, so the EBITDA margin is very, very high, and the outlook is that it will very soon see about BRL 3.5 billion in terms of resources for the CSN Group. The group today is, of course, concentrated on energy, cement, steel. But looking ahead to the future, as it was shown, you have new businesses in the horizon, in the radar, which will ensure a long life to the group. Examples of that, Inova, and very, very soon, this railway, the FTL. Here we have a railroad building machine, the largest construction site in Brazil, in this segment, infrastructure. It, everything is owned by us.
We have one of the five largest producers of railway ties in the world, made of cement, cement-made ties for the tracks. We have the largest welding station in the Americas. I think we import the tracks, we weld them locally, only using our own equipment, our own trains, our own locomotives, our own assembly equipment, all ours. We have a concrete plant. If we combine the São Paulo City region, it won't reach the level of production we have up there in Salgueiro. And just to finalize, a few images of works that have been concluded, something close to 900 kilometers. Carajás has 870 kilometers of railroads. We have close to 900, part of which 190 stays in Pernambuco, the neighboring state.
We are now focused on finalizing our project and make it operational by, as I said, 2027. That's what I had. Thank you.
Well, let's begin to conclude because of our time constraints. Speak about the financial performance as if it were a summary of the messages we conveyed to you. Well, all of the main businesses giving us very good results. I would say that they are reasonable results that point to the importance of diversification in the CSN group. Very good results in mining, cement and logistics, a highly difficult year in steel, and despite this, delivering the best year of our history. And with everything that we have shared with you, the outlook for 2024 is growth. Of course, we don't give guidance in terms of growth, but with a better mix in mining, with better prices, we should have substantial growth in 2024. Now, the growth in steel will come domestically, although there are doubts in terms of the price of steel.
We have reached the floor of the prices in Vale, but in CSN, we have a good outlook in terms of prices and volume. Brazil will pick up, pick up a different pace. There will be a growth in construction, so we will have higher prices, more margins, better costs, and this will be a year where the M&As will show us why they are part of us, showing us the synergy, the resilience and competitiveness that they have brought us in prices. Of course, it was a year with mixed results, opening the path for better results still in 2024. And of course, this should bolster all of our priorities. Our main priority is to continue de-leveraging. EBITDA is an important ally. During 2022, 2023, we had a normalization. There was an increase in leverage.
Now, with the M&A showing their results and generating cash, we have a natural deleveraging. The third quarter was the first quarter after 5 or 6, where we see a reduction. We will comply with our guidance for the year for 2023 and in 2024, a leverage of 2x. And additionally to this, we have what Benjamin mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, a recycling of capital. The group is highly diversified, highly wealthy. Transnordestina has BRL 9 billion, but this represents BRL 20 million per kilometer. These are BRL 20 billion in a subsidiary that we don't pay very much attention to. So, working with capital will not be difficult. We have several options, and we can guarantee the deleveraging within the year of 2024 and beyond. Another ally will be a disciplined capital allocation.
We're growing with responsibility and a more normal framework of dividend. We will tend to have payouts closer to our standard, our historical payout, and all of this will help us to finance our investments. The talent that we have is of delivering P-15 and building a new UPV, as mentioned, and this, of course, will change the levels of CapEx. We went from BRL 3.4 billion to BRL 4.4 billion. What we can foresee is BRL 6 billion for the year 2024, and we will be in that range of BRL 6 billion-BRL 7 billion, extending up to 2028. There are no novelties here. We have the P-15 and the great revamping within UPV. Now, the impact of this will be very clear. It has a low risk, and it will be visible through the coming years. We have brought you estimates of where this will take us.
We're speaking of a different company. In 2019, our EBITDA was about BRL 7 million. In four years, this will increase fourfold. We're expecting an EBITDA of 20-some million, a very high return on CapEx, and of course, this will have to be financed. So a few words on liquidity and indebtedness. We have a very sound liquidity position that covers our short-term debt, and we have carried out relevant efforts, BRL 18 million, up to uptake to enhance the quality of our liabilities to resolve the amortizations we have in 2024, 2025. We recently issued a new bond, taking advantage of the window to begin to lengthen the bonds in 2023.
We can also issue new debentures in the future with new instruments to finance the CapEx with IFC, with banks, development banks, such as the BNDES, for the renewals and UPV and the Transnordestina Railroad. Now, with this deleveraging, we will have a continuity of our upgrades. Our rates that are double B with a positive outlook can perhaps be upgraded in the coming month. And in the midterm, with a track record and a sound financial position, our pursuit is to obtain investment grade. And of course, we have to work with marketing and think about our investment thesis, why our investor in CSN will be gaining a great deal. We're very optimistic in terms of the appreciation of commodities like iron ore. We have a dollar becoming ever weakened, China becoming stronger.
Now, for those who invest in CSN with a short-term vision, the price of steel will drop. But there's much more. When we look at our micro case, bottom up, there are very interesting things at CSN. This competitiveness will bring about this verticalization. CBSI, the integration of the portfolio allows us a unique price competitiveness. These global cycles, like iron ore, local cycles, like cement, electricity, creating stability, this grants us resilience, and very few players are showing growth. Many companies have not invested, and we have vectors that have been contracted. In 2028, we're going to triple the figures obtained before the pandemic. What does all of this mean? That we're going to deleverage. The concern that we have with the increase in leveraging will disappear, and we have that issue of the re-rating. CSN is a highly complex group.
We acknowledge this, and the market puts in a discount of this holding as we're working with multiples. We normally work with higher multiples, like electricity, cement, mining, without referring to logistics. We're going to work to continue to show the value of our other business, and the re-rating will show the value. This is just a small commercial to end the presentation, a little behind time, and we can now offer you the floor for questions and answers. First of all, questions and answers for those who are with us in person, then we will open the floor for others accompanying us virtually.
Thank you all, and congratulations for the event. I have two questions at my end. The first, I am Edgard from Itaú. The first question to Benjamin, to link this with what you have just said, Marcelo, how do you imagine CSN in the future?
A listed holding, a non-listed holding with subsidiaries, and which are the expectations if the company is a holding, will you have a discount, a tax waiver or not? Would this make sense? Which is your mindset in this case? The second question to Martinez, to think a bit about the import and that underlying discussion of the import, levies. Of course, this is a very complex issue involving several players, several stakeholders. If we look towards 2024, if we presume that this import tariff will not be added, which will be the level of import going forward? We have seen a reduction in the volumes of import, and perhaps the domestic market will gain share vis-à-vis imported products, and how would this translate into price for 2024? Thank you all once again.
Now, when we think about the future of the CSN, we have already referred to this. CSN holds extremely good assets, and we believe that it's going to spin off each of these assets once they have the right size and the results to face up to market demand. In principle, our intention is to have five businesses listed. CSN would be at the top of all of this. We don't appreciate that type of holding. We're going to favor the companies that are below us, and once that holding is emptied out, it will simply work with control and not for investors that would like to invest in the company. So having said that, we have five businesses that are our pillars.
We have CSN Inova as our sixth pillar, and based on this, as all the other businesses grow, we will have independent, listed companies that are managed in an autonomous fashion, and the holding above all of these will continue to shrink steadily. So we're going to spin off these companies, create businesses, add value to them, offering options to investors that want to work only in energy, mining, logistics, technology, or value-added products. That is to say, we're going to create new businesses, and this will be done independently, and each company will manage itself. And well, those who want to remain close to the business can do this. I look upon growth in a very positive fashion. We have accrued excellent assets. We still have good assets that we're going to work with, always with that commitment of deleveraging, of offering good payouts to the shareholders.
We do have an enormous group of unique assets, and we're ready to share the development of those assets. Our intention is to have open companies. It is important to maintain a control on these activities and to offer to each person that identifies with one of the activities, that possibility of investing. I will have to leave, and I would simply like to once again thank all of you. State that CSN has a very firm, tough team of executives, and you can count upon having a reaction from the steel plant in 2024, offering you good surprises. We also count on our other businesses. We are directly involved in terms of the development, the progress of the company. We have 37,000 direct employees. I had never imagined that we would reach such a huge number of direct employees.
CSN can double its activity in the coming four years, and of course, this is the challenge, a potential that few other companies have, and we're working in that direction. If any of you subsequently would like to converse with me, we can arrange for that. Please speak to Marcelo, and Marcelo will make this feasible so that we can respond to your questions. I would also like to thank Yamaguchi here for his presence here. He is a partner in CSN Mineração. Thank each and every one of you. Thank our entire team once again, and once again, underscore my conviction in terms of the growth of CSN. Thank you very much. I'm sorry, if you could give us your name again, Edgar. Your question is a very timely one, and I'm going to answer it, because now with more time, I can give you a good response.
We had worked with the historical theories of import in 2010, to give you an idea, the penetration of imports in Brazil reached 25%. Well, that's a very high figure. What happened in 2010 is that apparent consumption reached 15 million, and Brazil's GDP was 7%. At that time, what had really happened was that the growth of Brazil with the growth of imports sort of mitigated the impact on domestic sales. Then we had several different cycles, and throughout that series, it's important to understand the background, sometimes looking in the rearview mirror is important. It offers us some teaching. During the last 14 years, the penetration rate of imports in Brazil varied between 12%-14%, with a few peaks that never went beyond 15%. I prefer to think that history repeats itself.
As an engineer, the trend is for everything to become mitigated. 2023, I believe, was a peak. A peak that was a perfect disaster for CSN. The market was not very bad. We had a highly, well, unbearable operating performance. We have addressed this, we're beginning to see results, and in 2023, we also had that penetration directly into our market. So I'm working with two scenarios here. Now, the perfect scenario, the Midsummer's Night Dream, perhaps, what we had in the pandemic, and of course, leaving the disease aside, would be for the government to become aware of what is happening worldwide and simply copy what other countries are doing. Work with a dumping tariff or 25% of safeguards, which is what Mexico, United States, and Europe are doing currently. That would be excellent for us now.
In my model, I prefer to use what you have just remarked on, using the data that China, it's not going to reduce its steel production. People would say that they will become more environmentally conscious and stop producing the way they produce. It's not going to happen. They're going to use their production internally, domestically. They can't build any more buildings. There are empty buildings everywhere and ghost cities with new buildings. They're working on infrastructure at present, and in my model, I'm placing that import at a more civilized level of 14%-15%, and 1,200,000 will come back to the local market. That would, of course, be more interesting for us. Well, in CSN, I cannot be very greedy in galvanized products. I have a competitor that has a better premium in hot roll products.
Now, we did very well in these difficult periods of this year, so the outlook is positive, and Edgard , I'm aligned with you. We should explore a drop in import. Now, when it comes to cost and, well, we're late, so we're going on. When it comes to cost, this conspires in our favor. To prepare 1 ton of slab, you need 1.6 tons of iron ore at $137, plus 0.6 of coke. You'll see how much coal we have and or in the slab. The Chinese like to lose money, so the trend conspires towards a recovery. In the case of CSN, a better EBITDA because of operational excellence, perhaps we can recover prices in specific product lines. This covers my strategy, at least for the first quarter. The second quarter, God knows what will happen.
We're going to work day after day. Thank you for your question.
Thank you for the question. This is Rodolfo, J.P. Morgan. Thank you for the presentation, very detailed across all business lines. We like to see that type of disclosure, that level of disclosure. I have a question for Martinez. Martinez, you said, or you mentioned briefly, a willingness to have a footprint in the U.S. again. So what would be the rationale of that move? What kind of profile, would make sense for that kind of move? Thank you. Thank you, Rodolfo, for your question. Rodolfo is somebody I've known for, for a while. I do not have a lot of time, but to be sure, what is sure is that we will once again have one or two industrial addresses in the U.S.
Actually, when we left the U.S., it was painful for us because we bought that when I joined the company, and we paid $50, sold for $500, and in theory, we made money. We did, but we left during the best cycle of the American economy. Then the SDI, SDI, with 24% EBITDA margin, copying our project, our growth project, placing zinc, the painting line, and becoming one of the largest American plants ahead of U.S. Steel, Cleveland-Cliffs, and others. So, this is all between us, right? Don't let this out. Anyway, in answer to your question, having an industrial address in the U.S. means the following: number one, I need to benefit from the quota we have there, a rate that we have there.
To round it up, 300,000 of coated material, pre-painted and galvanized, 100,000 hot rolled, and 50 of cold-rolled material. At this price level, if I able to reach a good service center, I can add, I, I am, in other words, I, I'm, I'm less dependent on selling coil. I am, I become more American than Brazilian, if I may. Because they, they say, "Well, this is from the CSN." "No, no, I don't wanna do that. I want to sell last price, last minute, and then be able to capture some of the American retail that pays more." So at first, a service center would be a first approach. There are other plans that we are now assessing with other technologies, but that's down the road. Maybe Marcelo can, can add to my answer in terms of growth in the U.S. Very briefly.
Last year, we talked about that, and it's a very interesting project for us. Today, rebar plants are emerging in the U.S. because of the potential of this market, but we made a conscious decision of not doing that now. Because of the capital issues, we favored deleveraging, and also because of timing. Those are projects that would take 3-4 years to mature, so that investment profile would not match the moment the group is going through now. So we are following the path of investing less, growing fast, and service centers add a lot of value. We're talking about $30 million investments in one or two investment or service centers to reach the ability to process 300,000 tons, and then gain commercial expertise and a pulverized client base that we do not have in the States today. That's the rationale.
Very important, Rodolfo, to mention. The ESG issue and the CBAM, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, is stronger in Europe, but there is already noise reaching the U.S. If you look at some works being done by the U.S. government, you cannot, you can only have poor, you cannot have materials poor, poured and melted in the U.S. You know that, right? So it's useless to buy an asset in the U.S., and I was part of several negotiations. Some of them, thank God, never worked, because everything needs to be brand new and clean there, it has to be hot rolled there with the right ESG adjustments. If you buy something old and expensive, you are automatically thrown off the market. That's an important piece of data you have to have in mind.
Today, you see that clearly when you look at Cleveland-Cliffs, for example. They have many assets that will cause problems in the future. But there are so many people involved that they can simply stop, go on strike, and say, "Well, I have a lot of people on strike. Solve that for me." So that would prevail an environmental strategy, right? If you know what I mean. So we're looking at opportunities that are totally ESG-based or free of ESG issues, if I may. And there are good things to be done with lower investment levels, more dedicated plants, and not only in flat steel, but in long steel as well. That cycle in the U.S., in my opinion, will last for at least another 10 years.
We're talking about trillion-dollar amounts. And the best way for a country to grow is with investments, which does not happen here. Marcelo, hello, hello. Marcelo, I have a question from Marcio from Goldman Sachs. Good morning. Good morning. Could you comment on prices for January, for long and flat steels? And then a second question to Luiz: What's the potential in productivity improvements for next year? Then a question around mining for Pedro. In mining, what kind of CapEx can we expect, and what are the reasons for the delays on the mining front? Marcio, being brief, we do not have any price increase announced for January. I clearly said we are monitoring the premiums. We're looking at it from an intelligent point of view, looking at the premiums. So there is nothing to be announced for January now.
We're going to be monitoring that throughout the month and then decide what we'll make early next year. As for the steel industry question, as I mentioned, we are now finalizing a cycle of maintenance and repair at the converters, at the gas collection systems. That cycle will be completed in February, a couple of months. With that, we'll have operational stability at the steel industry, and other investments are already ongoing. Sintering is more focused on the environmental front, which will not impact production levels. So the main challenge for us, from the point of view of volumes of productions, is at the industry, at the steel industry front, and those maintenance works will be completed by early next year. As to the question about our trust on the CapEx level, we'll do what makes sense to our shareholders.
We checked price sensitivity for next year. Our project group will be delivering an EBITDA of about BRL 11.8 billion, with a CapEx of BRL 15.3 billion. So we're talking about highly profitable projects, and that's the level of trust that we have in the project. So every day, they become more mature and confirm our expectations. The reason for the delays, to your question, have to do with this commitment, this discipline, as we allocate capital from our shareholders. To give you a concrete example, for 15, we went to market with a single infrastructure package, saying that if I generate synergy, we have scale gains, we'll decrease interface with third-party contractors, and then we received a price which was above what we expected. It is a complex project.
It's a very select group of companies that can deliver the quality that we require. The other part of the project is simple, to build the entrance gates, cafeteria, but it's all big. It's a cafeteria for 1,000 people. We decided to break that down, divide the scopes, go back to market, contract other companies, and they needed a month to analyze technical proposals, and they will have different technical proposals, and we send our team to review it. Instead of forcing the proposals, whenever we come across intelligent alternative proposals, maintaining the same level of quality, we're exploring each and all of those new proposals, and that led to delays. That's why we have updated the assumptions. It also led to a higher compliance for the CapEx, despite high inflation rates.
As for the commercial front, I'll give an example. Sometimes you have a proposal on the table, and they say, "Go back and remove another 10%." And they say, "No, I can't, I can't." But oftentimes, they delivered the 10% discount. So that's why we have some delays. They have to do with the group's DNA, the group's habit of looking always for the best possible deal at the very best possible quality. Cost control is something we really insist on, even though it might lead to delays.
Good afternoon, Camila from Bradesco. A question about prices. You mentioned that we're thinking about growing volume by more than 10%. My question is, in a landscape which is less optimistic than the one you are mentioning, maybe China will not export that much, would you consider maintaining a slightly lower price to be able to get an increase in share and imports. A second question. Despite this is a small part of the business, if you could talk about automotive contracts, any reduction expected for Q4 or Q1 next year? Thank you.
Starting with your second question about the automotive contracts. I am not the main supplier for this market, but the competition made the necessary adjustments, about 7.5% or 10% for the main players. We made a small adjustment, smaller than that. We did something like 3%-4% for the two main players we work with, that we have today, for the first quarter of 2024.
Our price was well adjusted, actually, and slightly higher than the spot price. So, and when we talk about automakers, I also include the white line manufacturers, because they also have contracts to the same tune of three months. So they're somewhat in line and well-priced when compared to the spot market right now. And should something happen next year, they should go on like this. As to your first question, there is no possibility of working below, because of the very numbers. The margins we had in the last quarter are very low margins. There is nowhere to go, right? We have a recovery from operational excellence, which will contribute to a margin increase, but I do not want to use that cost buffer to deliver that to the clients.
I cannot do that, and I cannot work with a margin which would be lower than the premium, right? So it's quite the contrary. Now, as we diminish capacity, there are other things that will help the market be more adjusted in terms of demand. For the long steel market, where we are also full, I've heard that, competitors are diminishing capacity, Usiminas will shut off one of their, blast furnaces. We'll work this year or next year to offset what we didn't do this year. So I think the premiums, in my opinion, will be what the world is. About 5%-10%, depending on demand. That's basically the equation I'm expecting to see. In the specific case of CSN, we take special care for coated products and tin plate, which became a difficult business. It didn't use to be difficult.
When you look at Rassel stein, Corus, Nippon Steel, companies that were not that competitive in Brazil, as there are no other places to export, they did the same thing as China did. They copied China and started exporting to Brazil, so we need to be careful about that as well. But in terms of profitability, I think next year we'll be able to recover our margins with, again, a scenario of operational excellence and a good pricing structure. In a more hostile scenario, have in mind that I'm not considering sending BQs to Portugal. I'm gonna continue the BQs in the internal market. We have a way for that, a way out for that. That's a relief for Brazil, and in a very extreme scenario again. And I would imagine that in the US, I am working with our quota for zinc materials.
So I have a degree of freedom that allows me to manage well that position I have there. So I'm quite reassured, for I think the worst is over. This year was bad. I had no products to sell, didn't have a good market, and high imports. Next year is gonna be much better, rest assured. Looking at the past promises I made, I usually get them right, right? So it's gonna be better. Do we have time for one final question, perhaps? Is there a question? Marcelo, I have two questions for Pedro, and they are the following: From Lucas Laghi, from XP, he congratulates you on the event, and the question is: The market seems to be pressured for 2024, taking into account the higher demand from China.
How do you see the marginal return from the phase one expansion project in a context where you have more capacity for high grade, or not only from CSN, but from other projects?... such as Simandou. And lastly, from Thiago, and the question is: In the presentation, you increased your projection for investment for CapEx from BRL 3.8 billion to BRL 15 billion now in 2023. But for the year, what we saw was investments below what the market expected. So the question is, do you intend to recover that throughout the cycle through 2027?
Thank you, Lucas. We truly are thinking of a very tight market. There's a deficit of 25,000 tons in China. Incrementally, in infrastructure, there should be a growth with stabilization of real estate and especially infrastructure in ports. Now, in the project that we have in the portfolio, we have a long-term price that incorporates the products you have mentioned. We have spoken of an amount greater than BRL 6 billion, always being somewhat conservative, with a CapEx of BRL 15 billion. These are exceptional returns based on more conservative premises. Now, the coming year, this would represent an EBITDA of BRL 11.8 billion. That would be transformational for the group, despite the scale that we have already reached. Regarding the question of Thiago, the low investments in 2023, I think they're connected to the delay in the project. We explained why this had happened.
There will be a relevant ramp up the coming year. We're referring to reaching figures of BRL 15 billion for the coming year. The coming year, we should increase that amount threefold, with a relevant impact in the progress of each of these expansion products. Of course, underscoring the P-15 project, that represents a large part of this amount. Very well. It is 1:30. It has been a long session. I would truly like to thank all of you for your presence, thank the investors, the analysts, the CSN team, for their devotion and preparation of this event and for the interest. I think we had some very important messages for 2024. Our IR team, once again, is at your entire disposal. Thank you very much once again.