Welcome to our Stakeholder Day 2023. We are really pleased to have here with us at MM Gerdau, the Museum of Mining and Metals, all of the stakeholders to continue our transparent dialogue. This event is being broadcast live with simultaneous translation through our Zoom platform, for those of you who are with us online. To facilitate, for those of you who are with us today, this is the QR code for you to download the presentation. The QR code can also be found to your left, and you can download the presentation and follow it with us as the executives proceed with their presentations. Here is today's agenda, with the main points that will be mentioned by the company's executives. At the end, we will have a 10-minute break before we go to the Q&A and closing of the event.
Well, we would like to remind you that Gerdau is the largest Brazilian steelmaking company, the last, you know, the largest scrap metal company, and global leader of special steels in the world. Currently, over 60% of Gerdau's production in Brazil is already located in the state of Minas Gerais, which shows that the company is becoming, you know, a Minas company at heart. Throughout the presentation, we will show videos that represents us in all of the areas where we operate, and also has to do with the stakeholders with whom we work. To begin our presentation, I would like to remind you that forward-looking statements may talk about uncertainties, and none of these statements are a guarantee of performance, because they only make sense the day where they are presented.
We will initiate with an opening video that will kick off our opening day. Steel, a crucial part of some of the most important structures in the world. A world in constant transformation. Transformation involves a conscious use of energy. A migration move to new energy matrix. This is something that has already begun. Clean energy is a reality and a necessity. All technologies that involve renewable energy sources really demand the use of steel, and steel, therefore, plays a crucial role in this transition. It is used in all different kinds of industries with different uses. Steel, it's an irreplaceable and essential material. It is present in the new infrastructure solutions, in the use of solar panels and also wind farms. It's also an alternative to the production of hybrid and electric vehicles.
To be part of this global transformation process, you have to be committed to decarbonization of the planet. Gerdau has been building a sustainable, ecological, and environmental culture throughout its more than 120 years of history. Our steel is immensely recyclable, and it has a very low carbon footprint. 71% of the steel produced comes from the recycling of scrap, and we are the largest recycler of ferrous scrap in Latin America. Also, Gerdau is the largest producer of Charcoal in the world, producing over 250,000 hectares of forests. We are working diligently to reduce by 10% our, you know, our GHG emissions, and we have the lowest averages of GHG gases, 0.06 tons per ton of steel, which represents the less of the average of the sector.
We are committed to carbon neutrality by 2050. Gerdau is a production leader with low carbon emissions, and it will be part of this new future, totally committed to be a part of the solutions facing the challenges of society, and also sharing, sharing value with its stakeholders and contributing to the advancement of the future. Gerdau, the future is molded. To kick off our presentation, I would like to call Gustavo Werneck, the CEO of the company. So welcome to you all once again. Well t here is no other way to initiate this event today without speaking about my emotional relation to all of you today, and with all of it that is around us. It is as though I, I was welcoming all of you to my own home.
So everything you see around us, especially to those of you who are here for the first time, all of this has been part of my life since I was a child. So the Liberty Square, right in front of me, which is an icon of the city of Belo Horizonte, is where I spent most of my childhood. It's I remember like it was yesterday when I was going to the square with my parents and my bicycle, and I was playing soccer right next door. There is Xodó. I remember I would go to Xodó, the snack bar, to just have a milkshake. So that's my suggestion to you. If you s o if you wanna leave here and go to Xodó to have a milkshake, you would taste the best milkshake in Belo Horizonte or even here at the museum.
Maybe with all the feelings we have, I can almost smell the ore around us. This is a place to tell stories for those of you who never had the opportunity to visit the museum or to learn more about the history of Minas Gerais, the history of Gerdau. So I would like to invite you to come back here and just enjoy and learn from everything that is inside the museum. This is a place that tells the true story of ore and everything that happened in Minas Gerais. So welcome you. I welcome you as though I was welcoming you into my own home. This has a close relationship to my hometown and to Gerdau, so welcome you all.
I would like also to tell you that this stemmed from a lot of conversations that we had together throughout this journey, when we are intently listening to each one of you, and as part of this attitude, to be very transparent and to have a very close relationship to all of you. For the first time, we decided not only to have our Investor Day, but now we have a Stakeholder Day. So as stakeholders, we have people here from, you know, the government, mayors from the towns and municipalities where we work with. We have also representatives from civil society. We have customers, we have partners, vendors. We have members from the communities where we operate. So for us, it's a great pleasure to, through conversations that we had with you, to expand our traditional Investor Day and then gather all of the stakeholders that interact with us.
This is a very good opportunity because we can interact with you much better, and it's important that you learn more about what we have in mind and all we want to build. This is also an opportunity for us to, to talk to you. Here with me, it's most of my team. I've been telling you, especially when I talk to analysts and investors that are here today, that knowing the way you model Gerdau and learning more about the ways that you, you analyze Gerdau, how can we translate through your models, all that subjectivity, the factors that cannot really be quantified, and that somehow I think that they should be present in the way that you'll see Gerdau? All of these topics, things that are very complex today at Gerdau, and one of these topics is succession.
If I leave Gerdau, who is gonna come after me? Who is gonna succeed me? I think this is something that should be taken into account. A company that has a very well-defined succession scheme, and things that we'll speak to you today are much better than I am. So a nd it's up to me when I work with a team like this, that I just sit and, and be quiet, because I wanna give you the opportunity to interact with them, because if we cannot translate everything into a mathematical model, at least I want you to be certain that we are training leaders, that in the future they could be much better than me or the ones that preceded me. So I would like, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for spending this afternoon with us.
For those of you who could stay with us tomorrow and visit our operations, you will have a better idea of all of the investments we've been doing in Minas Gerais. For those of you who are outside Brazil, next week, you will have the opportunity to visit our Midlothian mill in Texas, and you'll have the opportunity to learn more about our future plans for North America. But with no further ado, so again, welcome to our humble home. So thank you so much.
Hello, good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a great pleasure for me to be here to speak to you, but there is a challenge, because going on the stage after Gustavo and moreover, on his own home, it's even a bigger challenge. But I have to be honest with you, I'm a Gaucho. I think you can tell from my accent, but if I had to be born in a different location in Brazil, I wish I would be born here in Minas. This is a very rich state. This depicts what Brazil is. There's a lot of diversity, wealth and beauty, and every time I come to Minas, I feel like I'm at home. So our communication, I mean, I feel like I am a Mineiro at heart.
But now, Gustavo talked about our purpose, about empowering people who will build the future. So I'll start by visiting our slogan, "Gerdau, transforming the future." This has everything to do with the reason why we're here today, which is a breakdown of our purpose, because every day we have to be more agile, we have to be more flexible and again, more resilient, like steel. In such a challenging environment, when things change so quickly, like they are changing today, it is crucial that we have all of these features, not only in terms of our assets, but in the way of being, in the way that we relate to people, in the way we see the world.
And to start, let's talk about the world. And now here I have a general overview, what we see today in all the markets where we operate. I think it's nothing new to any of you that this second half of 2023, that just started, it's more challenging than the previous quarters since the second half of 2020. We have an excess capacity, production capacity in China, which is translated into more exports into all of our markets. International prices are lower.
The civil construction market in Brazil has, you know, less launches than we anticipated. The U.S. economy, you know, when we anticipated, you know, higher interest rates now for longer. But even then, we see that our businesses are operating at good profitability levels, as we will see further on. Most importantly, when we talked about transforming the future, we see our resilience and capacity to adapt no matter the landscape, and this is what we will continue to do in the coming years. But now, just to summarize, summarize Gerdau and what we are today. Today, Gerdau is a company of over 120 years.
Maybe we can certainly say that throughout our journey of over 120 years, maybe the last 10 years were years when we experienced a deep transformation in the company, starting with our software, our culture, I mean, and our assets, our hardware. Gerdau went through an important divestment process between 2015 and 2019. When we left five countries, we sold BRL 7 billion in assets. And this is not easy for a company that traditionally, throughout its history, grew investing, by investing and acquiring companies. So these were no easy choices. But the sacrifices and the difficulty in making these choices is what gives meaning to what we were able to achieve and build today, and that we will continue to build.
Today, Gerdau is a company that's fully disciplined in terms of capital allocation, and we will see that not only in my presentation, but the presentation of all of my other colleagues, that, that will talk about our different business operations. We are a company that has a product portfolio with very high added value. You see the pie chart in the middle of the slide, and you can see that taking the numbers of 2022, over 70, 70% of all the products that we shipped were products of high- higher added value. Maybe in the past, Gerdau was only seen as a synonym with rebar, but this is no longer true because of, you know, our colleagues of the other BOs will make that even more apparent during their presentation.
So we continue to invest to grow our essential aspects of our competitiveness with higher capacity to capture scrap, access to iron ore of very high quality, very competitive, and very modern and competitive assets. All the sacrifice and the adjustment we did to our business prepared us to capture all of the opportunities we had throughout the positive cycle between 2020 and now. If we look at the different performance metrics of the company, be it, you know, operating or financial metrics, Gerdau had a significant improvement in all levels of performance, be it in security, emission levels, profitability, and productivity, and this is translated into our results. We were able to capture a very important part of these results, and with that, we
As you can tell, if you look at the left part of the slide, we improved our leverage ratio or our debt position, and this prepared us to what we have today, a cycle of more investments, the technological updating of our assets in search for sustainability and further productivity. In 2006, until the second quarter of 2023, Gerdau allocated BRL 37 billion the following way: Well, BRL 13 billion were spent to update, you know, to perform a technological update of our assets through CapEx. We added capacity in Brazil, we acquired more raw material capacities, we tried to be more self-sufficient in iron ore. We also expanded our capacity, you know, in special steels, both in Brazil and the U.S., and we also consolidated our forestry capacity in Brazil.
To our shareholders, we paid out throughout this period a substantial amount of BRL 15 billion through dividends and buyback of shares. And when you look at the payout, I mean, if you compare that to a regular distribution of other companies, that they pay out 25% of their profits, I must say that we paid out twice as much when compared to other companies during that same period. And also, due to the increase in the expansion of our commodity cycle, an important amount was invested in working capital. I mean, we've seen that there were some adjustments in the last quarters due to a more challenging scenario that is the, what we find today. Now, instead of talking about the past and how we allocated the capital, we're now turning to what will happen in the future, how we will allocate capital going forward.
I have now a summary of our main initiatives and now our main strategic projects that, in our view, will lead Gerdau to reach another level of performance. Throughout the presentations this afternoon, every leader from our business operations, they will bring more details about all of these initiatives. None of them comes as something new to you. I mean, investments in mining, investments in the U.S., investments in special steels, and, you know, investments in forestation and renewable energy. But here I have a snapshot showing that between 2021 and 2026, we are investing 12 billion BRL to continue transforming Gerdau's business. Out of that 12 billion BRL, about 30% has been spent until the second quarter of 2023. That is 3.3 billion BRL.
Most of the investments were in rolling mill in North America, you know, casting and finishings in special steels, and some investments also went to our mining projects. This portfolio of BRL 12 billion, to be, that started to be invested since 2021 and will go into 2026, we believe will be able to generate BRL 4 billion throughout the cycle of EBITDA in a recurring way to our business. An important part of this 4 billion, in our view, has been already captured by our business, about BRL 600 million, especially in investments in the rolling mills in the US and investments to modernize our Monroe Mill.
Rodrigo, from the North America Special Steels team, will tell you that Monroe is a state-of-the-art mill when it comes to the, to the production of special steels, not only, I mean, in terms of Gerdau and in the U.S., but also in the world. Now, thinking about the future in our transformation journey, it will be impossible for us to talk about steel milling and the steel sector and infrastructure without talking about decarbonization and carbon emissions. And to that end, I would like to once again highlight, as, as we did earlier on, the excellent position of Gerdau in the steel milling industry. The steel is a recycled product. It can be recycled many, many times. I know that it produces GHG gases, but as it is infinitely recyclable, it has a very long life cycle, its emissions are not so high, and Gerdau is very well-positioned.
Our emissions in 2022 were 0.82 tons of carbon.. I mean, CO2 equivalent. Even though this is less than half than the average of the World Steel Association, when we compare ourselves, not with the average of the World Steel Association that covers India and China, but when we look at our peers in Brazil, and we compare ourselves against them and our peers in the U.S. and Canada, which is the group of companies that you see down below in small print in the bottom of the slide, we are below the average of our peers. But that's not all.
When we take into account our commitment and our target for 2031 to have a reduction of 0.32 of CO2 equivalent for every ton of steel produced, we notice that by the end of the decade, our position will be extremely competitive, and it will be at the forefront of steel production with a very low CO2 rate within the steel milling industry and among the peers that we compete with. But it's not enough to talk about targets without telling you about how we will get there. And now I have a more objective presentation for you. Starting back in 2020, when we had 0.93 tons of CO2 equivalent, now, through a very diligent work done by our business, environment, and, you know, all of our teams, we will pursue our target to the end of the decade.
First of all, we will seek for efficiencies in our mini mills. We have some examples, like the investment in a continuous casting of Monroe. No, continuous casting of Pindamonhangaba, but not Monroe, when we were able to reduce, you know, emissions by 5%. Secondly, we reduce emissions by having, by increasing the operating efficiency in our furnaces, and we will see that further on when we talk about our sustainable mining project, and this will, you know, reduce our consumption of fuel. And there will be several other incentives in production to generate clean and renewable energy, and this will also help us reduce scope two. So by the end of 2031, we will have 0.82 tons of CO2 equivalent per ton of steel. But this is not enough, because we want to go beyond that.
In order to do that, just, you know, to run a very quick calculation, if by the end of this decade, if we manage to get 100% of our energy coming from renewable sources, with that, we will be able to reduce our CO2 emissions by 2031 to 0.72, you know, tons of CO2 equivalent per ton of steel. Most part of our operations are in Brazil. We already operate here with a clean matrix. We are already investing heavily in the production of wind and solar energy, and we are also doing the same thing in the U.S. and Canada. We are making great efforts, and there are great efforts from the federal government, and we see a very clear directioning towards, you know, this energy transition, moving towards cleaner energy.
So after 2031, we will have to turn our eyes to our blast furnaces here in Mineração and analyze how we can advance in their decarbonization process. And so the third phase will certainly go through a transition from blast furnaces to natural gas. There will be a direct transition, but in order to do so, we would have to use the available gas matrix at competitive prices in Brazil. This is not a reality today, but we hope that by the end of the decade, this will change. So from then on, we would get to an excellent level of 0.40 of CO2 emission per every ton of gas produced.
We are already talking to our engineers and our operating team that we would have to move towards more disruptive technologies, be it by using green nitrogen in our blast furnaces or maybe by capturing carbon through some different and more robust ways. This is our roadmap of decarbonization to reach Net Zero by 2050. Once again, I think that each leader from our business operations will explain how, in each of our businesses, our business model and our value proposition is very much integrated, capable of seeking not only, you know, decarbonization, but the decarbonization of the entire society. Meaning that we will lead the world towards an economy of low carbon, a low-carbon economy world. Rubens will tell us more about our sustainable mining operation and what we have in mind in terms of our blast furnaces in the future.
In North America, our friend, Wang, will tell you about the effects of the IRA and how that affects our business, and where we stand in terms of our Midlothian mill in Texas, which, you know, is a place where some of you will visit next week, and how key this, this mill is in North America. In Special Steels, Aldo and Rodrigo will talk about the, the trend of electrification of hybrid vehicles and where does Gerdau stand in the scheme of things. When we talk about Gerdau Next, we will talk about, you know, renewable energy and our investment in logistics play an important role. We will be more centered in the customer, and we will have our production matrix more geared towards Scope Two.
But we cannot do all of that alone, as Gustavo was saying. We are not only here talking to investors, but we are talking to all of our stakeholders. In order to, to, to deploy this entire process, we need partnerships with our key suppliers. Flavia will come next, and she will talk more about what we are doing in that regard. Last but not least, in today's world, we cannot afford to talk about transformation or modernization or advances or, you know, customer centricity or value proposition without the support from our digital transformation. Also, we will have a presentation on that.
Okay? I think I already, you know, exhausted my time, and now, you know, I can come back here to talk to you later on during our Q&A. I would just like to wrap up, going back to our starting point when I say that the future is transformed. The future can be transformed through the integration of all of us, all of our stakeholders, in favor of what we want to build. We are not gonna do this alone. We are not going to do that with the support of only one individual.
The only way for us to build a world with less emissions, a cleaner world, the green economy, with a more modern and safer Gerdau and a more profitable Gerdau, we can do that through each one of us, through the integration of all of our stakeholders. This integration is a very important cultural trait. Gerdau, through its more than 120 years of existence, has always tried to do things in a very integrated way, trying, you know, seeking to add value in a very consolidated way, adding value to all the stakeholders. The only way to build the future is this. At Gerdau, as our slogan says, "The future is molded." Thank you very much.
We'll now show a quick video about our social project of Gerdau Transforms. It's a social inclusion project for. Through entrepreneurial actions. It's a project conducted by Gerdau Institute. We'll watch the video now. Over 121 days, I could overcome myself as a mother, as a professional. I came from Porto Alegre at 17. I was approved to join the Federal University. Unfortunately, we had a sound cut. We cannot hear the video anymore. Please hold. Well then, it's, it's a good video. We'll show it later, and it will be available in our website. But so we won't waste time. I'll call Rubens to speak about the Brazilian operation. Rubens, you have the floor.
Good afternoon, everyone. As Japur mentioned, I'm going to speak a little about our Brazilian operation. Just to show a little bit of diversity, Gustavo said his mini Japur is from the south, and I'm from São Paulo, the state of São Paulo. I think it will be difficult to have the same state of origin, because we have very diverse management. Speaking a little bit about the Brazil operation, I'd like to start speaking about the fundamentals, the strengths that we see in our Brazilian operation. We have more than 20,000 employees, 24,000 employees involved operating in our Brazilian operation. These people are in our supply chain, in mining, in production, in sales, in our commercial units, in logistics. This group of people is one of the fundamentals, one of the competitive advantages that we have at Gerdau. I would also like to speak about our industrial plants.
We have 13 of those, and as you can see, they're spread all over Brazil. This gives us a footprint and a competitive edge in supplying our clients. Then our next competitive differential is our clients, and here we speak about the markets where we operate. 20% of where we operate is construction, 25% industry, and the rest is distribution. Distribution means retail, small builders and small industries. In talking about clients, we serve 6,000 clients directly and through Comercial Gerdau, 71 branches that we have in our country, so almost 80,000 clients served in a year. In a country as continental like ours, this is a huge differential edge, competitive edge, and as Japur mentioned, steel is present in several industries, and it is just with this popularity that we can reach out to all these clients, all these industries.
Another point is our capacity. We currently have more than 8,000 tons of crude oil, being approximately 50% through integrated mills and 50% the mini mills. The mini mills is where we work with electric power and scrap. And we are the largest charcoal producer in the world. We count with more than 250,000 hectares of planted eucalyptus forests. And speaking a little about products, and I'll continue talking about products next. Sometimes we think Gerdau Brazil produces rebar, or we do rebar and we act in construction. So construction accounts for 25% of our business and some more through distribution. But that story of just long steel and rebar, that's in 2010. But we've been evolving. We've been manufacturing other types, like flat steels.
Today, we have a portfolio where flat steel will account for 60% of flat steels, accounting for 30%-35% of our portfolio. In 2023, semi-finished steels plates 15%, and we have the expectation that this will come down to 5%. In other words, adding value to the products that we manufacture. And then I'll speak about the investments we're making. So I, I said Gerdau is not just about rebar. This is a little bit of the complete array of products that we offer. Very few companies can offer such a wide offering of products. We are in merchant bars, structural steel, where we are leaders in Brazil, in flats or HRCs and plates, where we also play a relevant part in the market, the traditional rebar. So it's not just rebar.
We add value through cut and bent, offering solutions to construction sites and reels. Also, another important differential, nails, where it all began. That's the origin of our company. The agribusiness line, where we have barbed wire, galvanized products, industrial welds and wires, also adding value to construction through finished products, where we have screens, columns, meshes, and lastly, wire rod, a product that we use to supply other transformation in the industries. So you might be thinking it's just construction, industry, and distribution, but in construction, in civil construction, speak about four segments. We have the traditional real estate, residential. We have commercial, commercial building, which is also important. We have steel construction, one of the great bets we have right now.
There's a lot of room for the country to evolve in steel construction, and we are leaders in this type of product. And also construction of infrastructure, where the country has a deficit. A lot of the investments in infrastructure will have the presence of Gerdau. When we speak about the industry, it's not that simple. It's not just equipment and machinery, it's a wide array where we operate. So transformation industry, for example, a client, they buy, they buys wire rod to make nails. And then we have oil and gas, enable where we provide plates, pipes, steel to make pipeline. We have heavy equipment, wind and solar. You'll hear us speak about clean energy. And when we think about solar panels and wind turbines, it's all made of steel. Energy transmission, those transmission towers, when we think about that, it's steel. We're present there.
White line, household appliances, road implements, agricultural machinery and machinery equipment. So it's not, not just about machine and equipment. We can act in many sectors, given our wide array of products. And lastly, distribution. We work with independent distributors and also have a strong action through our Gerdau commercial, Comercial Gerdau, and it's an important differential for us. It allows us to get to more remote locations in Brazil, and we can get the pulse of the market. We can have an accurate interpretation of what is happening in the market before our competitors can do it. And distribution for retail, and we can see if the retail, agro and retail construction, these will continue to be relevant in Brazil. Speaking a little about our short to midterm in civil construction, here, I show you a little bit about real estate launches.
We can see that there was a reduction in 2022 over 2021. 2023, slight reduction, but we're still having a lot of new real estate launches. And thinking that these launches create a demand for us 18 months from now. A launch happens now, that becomes a future demand, for us. So we're still working with an inventory of construction sites, so we still have quite a good demand there. Regarding our expectations, we have heard about the growth in social housing, social housing units, where there's an expectation that with low interest rates, mid and high, and high-end housing will also improve. And in infrastructure, there's an expectation of improvement. A lot of projects have been announced, and they're still on paper. As they start materializing, this will drive demand.
In the industry, in the middle, it is one of those segments where the situation is slightly more delicate because of interest rates and economic growth. On the other hand, there are some growing expectations, for example, in oil and gas. Oil and gas continues to invest a lot and to bring us a lot of demand. Lastly, in retail and agro, here we have an expectation of better credit and income. We see consumption, confidence index improving. So as we have improved income and reduced interest rates, we can have growth in this kind of market as well. Japur also talked about capital allocation and capital investment. We have here five investments that we can detail a little more. First, BRL 6 billion will be invested for the Brazil operation in the next three years. First, the new sustainable mining platform.
I'm not gonna talk about it here because there's a specific slide about it. To increase our capacity for flat growth, we are talking about hot rolling. We want to reduce our presence in semi-finished products, well, that's part of it. I want to have more finished goods, finished products to deliver. We have 800,000 capacity of hot rolling. We'll increase that to 250. Expansion of our forestry base. Again, we want to produce charcoal-based steel in a sustainable fashion with low CO2 emissions, and also to increase our structural profile capacity growth in beams and sections. So we should improve that. I spoke about metals and products that are a differential in the market. Well, this investment follows that direction.
Also in terms of technology update, we have invested BRL 400 million to date in what we call Industry 4.0. Here we have projects that allow us to improve the safety and security. If we can monitor our colleagues or our peers, if there is a man-machine interaction in our yards, in our mills, all the way to projects that allow us to have a better production allocation, projects that allow us to manage our furnaces and to gain operating efficiency. So technology investment sometimes is limited. We speak only about the large projects, but this is a fundamental pillar for us to continue to invest. Talking about our new sustainable mining platform. A couple of months ago, we were here announcing an investment of BRL 3.2 billion in this new sustainable mining platform.
This will allow us to have access to 5.5 million tons of ore per year, but an ore of high grade or 65% iron ore, iron content, and we have certified reserves of 40 years. 40 years of certified reserves that would allow us to reduce CO₂ emissions, because we have a purer ore in the furnace, less fuel consumed, less emissions of CO₂, and we're going to have integrated logistics through Iron Ore Pipeline and Tailings Pipeline. So this will get trucks out of the highways transporting ore between the mine and the mill. So we gain efficiency, we gain and reduce emissions, and we have a social gain, fewer trucks on the road. Lastly, it's a relevant leverage for the future because this investment already produces iron ore at a certain content.
When the moment comes to transition to DRI or HBI, I already have marginal investments to make. Another interesting point in talking about CapEx is regarding the refurbishing of our Ouro Branco mill in blast furnaces and coke plants. Here, we have a refurbishing expected for 2035. It will take about BRL 1 billion. When we conclude this, we should extend the lifespan until 2035 of blast furnace one. So refurbishment due in 2025. For blast furnace two, an investment already made, and this will increase the lifespan of the furnace for 8 more years until 2030. For our coke oven plant, we make continuous investments. In the coming years, we should invest about BRL 950 million so that we can extend the lifespan of the product.
But I know the engineers are gonna be mad at me, but let's suppose we have a car, and we take good care of the car. That car will run for longer and run better before you have to invest in buying a new one. So this is what we're doing with our coke oven plants. This should increase their lifespan until 2030 or 2034. The most interesting thing is not just the numbers, the investment, and the equipment; it is about the timing. Until when I can extend the or increase the lifespan of these assets? In 2035, 2029, 2034. So you see, this is a good timing for us to choose the right technology for the renewal.
We believe that by then, we're going to have more information regarding the technology, competitive access to energy, to gas, to make a decision regarding our next investment cycle. That will be a much better informed decision than what our peers and competitors do. Another strong focus is on promoting sustainability through circular economy. We speak a lot about scrap. We recycle 11 million tons of scrap. For vehicles alone, 75,000 vehicles are recycled every year. More than 1 million people involved in the recycling chain. We create jobs. It's social impact, so 1 million people involved. If it weren't by this, they could be out of this, out of the economy. We have 11 mills and 13 depots to collect and receive scrap metal. The other part, circular economy. We already have 250 hectares of planted eucalyptus forestry.
90, 80,000 of reserves, and we have R&D. So we analyze the clones, how to manage this in the best way, so we can have the best yield of that planted area. Lastly, just how far is the loan? This removes 11 million tons of CO₂. Just by existing, they're removing 11 million tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere, just by existing. Still on the environmental, speak about greenhouse gas management. Very soon, we'll start talking about environmental declarations of the products. What does this mean? It's a certificate that goes with our product. It says, "In production, this rebar, I don't know, this beam section produced a number of tons of CO₂." So we are going to start disclosing this to clients who are interested and with reliable data that is audited every year.
Here we have the efficiency of using scrap metal and using charcoal, all the benefits of those for our business. In the circular economy, we work with tailings. In 2022, we used 106%, of the tailings that we generated. We work with 97% of recirculation of water in our process. Just to conclude, to give you an idea of South America and Argentina, the election process is to be decided in November. We expect a challenging GDP with a 4% reduction and a sustained demand for domestic products. Argentina does not have import-- a flow of imported products because they don't have a strong currency to pay for exports, so it's sustained by domestic products. Uruguay, moderate GDP growth, domestic demand at the current levels.
The challenge there is the potential arrival of imported products and mainly a strong currency. The currency there is a little stronger. And in Peru, we had the start of the year, which was challenging from the political standpoint and from the climate standpoint as well. The expectation is that in the second half, the political scenario is planning to greater stability, but we are still concerned about the phenomenon of El Niño in the second half of the year in Peru. And with that, I'll close the presentation about Brazil. I'll turn the floor to Renata. I will invite Renata, and then we'll come back for the questions.
Thank you, Rubens. To continue, we are going to show you the video about community Gerdau Transforms, seek to insert socially vulnerable people in the labor market.
For more than 121 years, Gerdau has been shaping the future. I could have looked at myself as a woman, as a mother, as entrepreneur, as a professional. My name is Daniela Cristine. I come from Porto Alegre, in the south of Brazil. At 17, I was accepted in the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. During that period, when I was in college, I learned to prepare tacoid truffles to sell. That's the activity, the hobby that I had. My family, my mom, grandma, they always baked cakes to sell. I never gave up. As a woman and as a mother, we have to adapt, and we have to face any challenge. I'm Janaína Reis. I'm CEO of Reis Denim , a company that was born during the pandemic.
Because of it, after an anxiety attack I had, I thought I was having a heart attack. I talked to other women, and I learned that I wasn't alone. Gerdau Transforms made me believe that I was a lot more than I could see in myself. They believed in me a lot more than I, myself, believed in me. So that Gerdau Transforms transformed my life. Now, I can overcome all challenges, knowing that I'm making the right choice, regardless of the choice I make, because it will be the right thing for myself and my family. Being dependent is priceless. I got there, and you can do it, too. These are some of many stories among 665,000 lives positively impacted by Gerdau. In this way, we empower people to build the future.
All right, I'd like to invite the leader of our North American operation, Wang. He will be joining us online to make his presentation, and then he will be with us also at the end, during the Q&A. We cannot hear Mr. Wang. Not yet. We apol
ogize. We are not getting the sound of Mr. Wang yet. All right, we produce, we emit less CO2. We are contributing to improve the environment and driving circular economy. Most of the scrap comes from vehicles, machinery, household appliances that are obsolete. These are collected in our network of yards and scrap metal suppliers. It's all melted and turned into products that supply many consumer products and housing. When a lot of products of our products use scrap in our production, our journey started in 2018, when a new management took over the operation to potentialize the results of the division, pursuing better performance and better returns for all stakeholders.
We made the decision to prioritize some markets, such as, beams and sections, and we divested from some lower profitability products, and we dedicated ourselves to new products. This gave us clarity to develop our commercial strategy and operational strategy focused on serving segments of clients that can bring us better margins, allowing us to create value all across the chain where we operate. Approximately 15% of our installed capacity is dedicated to the production of rebar. We reduced or increased the shipments of this product according to market conditions.
This allowed us to improve our investment strategy and to focus on internal improvement, focused on better serving the clients, which resulted in a wider offering of products, more productivity and efficiency in our main assets, which are the operations in Midlothian, Cartersville, Jackson, Petersburg, and Ontario, Canada. With this, we provide better services to our clients, reducing our costs and increasing the utilization of our assets. During this period, reinvestment in the main assets was significantly higher when compared to historical levels of investment. We have executed essential projects in our roadmap. Investments in Petersburg, Virginia, strengthening our presence in that market, improving Cartersville, Georgia, to increase the array of products and metal beams, improving productivity in all of the products manufactured there. The steel mill in Whitby, Ontario, increasing capacity to maximize production of hot-rolled products.
In Jackson, Tennessee, we have investments to increase the current offering of products aligned to our commercial strategy and to better serve the regional market. We want to be a one-stop shop for our clients. We reinforce our commitment to reinvest in our assets, strengthening our commercial strategy and improving our productivity and reducing costs. Next, let's speak about our main mill, Midlothian. In the coming years, we'll invest to modernize the mill, to improve efficiency, contributing to reduce costs. In this way, we will improve the competitiveness of our biggest asset in North America, allowing us to enjoy market opportunities in enjoying the opportunity and the incentives given by the government. Significant changes continue to happen in the scrap market, as the production of steel that is scrap-based, it replaces production, which is iron ore-based.
Although we see that the biggest impact is in an area where we don't participate, we know that there will be greater competition in some regions. As part of our roadmap, we will continue to invest to ensure access to the necessary scrap metal to ensure growth of our business in a sustainable fashion. Although the economic activity is not at the same level of 2022 North America, some sectors are showing to be resilient. Based on recent analysis, we anticipate a growth of 550 gigawatts of renewable power in by 2030. We're well-positioned to supply this market by making unprecedented investments, all supported by the IRA, Inflation Reduction Act.
That's the most significant investment in the history of the United States to reduce the impact of climate change by offering financing, funding, and incentives to accelerate the transition to renewable sources of energy. IRA has additional incentives for steel manufactured in the United States, including on metal plates, that support photovoltaic panels, which should drive demand for steel coming from our mills. In addition, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, IIJA, directed a lot of investments to new infrastructure in the U.S. The consensus of the industry is that demand for steel will increase by more than 20 tons during the program, impacting the rebar market and the market of other products geared to construction. In August of 2022, the CHIPS Act brought incentives to strengthen the production chain of semiconductors to drive competitiveness, innovation, and safe supply in the U.S.
The impact on demand is already being felt and should continue as the projects are executed. Our assets are strategically positioned to supply the growing demand generated by the production of renewable power. From 2018 to 2022, Texas, in the southeast of the United States, has saw an increase in renewable power. Our Midlothian mill will continue to be modernized and expanded to meet the needs. Cartersville also is well-positioned to supply the southeast of the USA. Cartersville is also well-positioned, organizationally speaking, to benefit from fiscal programs that positively impact the demand for long steel. Our go-to-market strategy, coupled with our constant focus on the business, allowed Gerdau to develop close relationships with the main players and to deeply understand our clients' needs.
In the non-residential construction and renewable segments, Gerdau is uniquely positioned to support the U.S. transition to a more sustainable energy matrix. We are very proud to produce very ecological steel and with the lowest carbon grade in the U.S. We will continue our efforts to reduce carbon emissions as the U.S. energy matrix moves forward in its transition phase. In this last month of July, our mill next to Midlothian started to generate clean energy with installed capacity of 80 MW and more than 70,000 solar panels. This initiative reflects Gerdau's view to increase the production of renewable energy in all of the geographies where we operate. This is part of our commitment to reduce all the GHG emissions.
The solar farm will reduce carbon emissions in Midlothian in more than 60,000 tons of CO2 every year, approximately 10% of all of the emissions by the industry or by the mill. We also believe that the current portfolio of products of Gerdau North America, focused on structurals and profiles, will remain relevant. Gerdau's roadmap in North America goes beyond the organic growth of our current assets, including the presence in segments of upstream and downstream, optimizing the cost structure to be able to offer a better value proposition to our customers. Our focus in the execution of the roadmap and in our cultural transformation, allied with our commitment to serve customers better, will s trengthen our division, and we will be able to post more significant results in the coming years. With that, I conclude my presentation, and I'll see you again during the Q&A session. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Wang. Well, some of you will be with us on Monday in Midlothian, Texas. You will be able to see everything that Wang said during his presentation. I think it will be a very interesting visit. Now, I would like to play a video where we show the process and how Gerdau is part of society. I will show you Gerdau's process. As the largest scrap recycler in Latin America, there are more than one million people involved in the process, contributing to the recycling of metallic scrap, and I'm talking about co-ops, pickers, et cetera, and all of those that are part of our circular chain.
For more than 121 years, Gerdau has been molding the future. My name is Ezekiel Escobar. I am from Santa Fe, Argentina. I am 42 years old. My business started some 20 years ago. I was a truck driver, and I traveled all over the country. And then there was a time, after eight or 10 years on the road, that I decided to set myself into a fixed location, and that's when Gerdau came about, and this is how we started working together. For four years, I've been part of the program of metallic providers, and then with that, I was able to leave the informal job and I developed myself. With Gerdau, I learned to develop and to work as a small company.
I learned how to work with various scrap, how to select it, cut it, separate it, clean it, process until it is delivered. So it was like a child riding a bicycle with a small metal bag all the way to a company with a truck fully loaded. And this has a great impact on low-income people because this is one way that they have to survive. For four years, I mean, Gerdau has been my family, and I hope that we continue being together for much longer.
Gerdau has never let me go has never let me down, and a company like Gerdau next to you, makes you feel strong and like a giant. With the help of scrap pickers, Gerdau was able to accomplish many things, and it became the largest scrap recycler in Latin America. These are just some of the many stories of scrap pickers that we have, and then we empower people to build a future.
Now, I would like to call Aldo Tapia and Rodrigo Belloc, who will join us online, and they will talk about the special steels operation, both in Brazil and in North America.
Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Aldo Tapia. I come from Peru, so for the last 15 years, I work in several leadership positions in Peru, but for the last five to six months, I came to lead the special steels operation in Brazil. For me, it's a great pleasure to be with you, and this presentation will be a joint presentation with Rodrigo Belloc, who will talk about the special steels operation in the U.S. Okay, so what is a special steel? Well, maybe it's important that we think about, you know, the importance of a special steel. A special steel is a type of steel that has some features and properties that are very unique, and these properties are ideal for very specific applications.
These are processes that require advanced manufacturing processes. These are very sophisticated steels that require great technical knowledge. One of these applications, and a very important application of a special steel, is in the automotive industry. A truck uses approximately 1,500 kilograms of special steels. A vehicle, a car, 150 kilograms, a motorcycle, 15 kilograms, and agricultural machinery, 500 kilograms. And all the products we manufacture are transformed into steering wheel systems, suspension systems, and engine components, you know, car body parts, and many products that add value to the entire automotive chain.
For me, to produce a special steel is something that is very much aligned to our purpose, because the special steel empowers the industries, and certainly, they are building a better future to all of us. So how are we structured? We have 6,000 employees working in approximately seven productive facilities, four of them in the U.S. and three in Brazil. Our production capacity is over 2.4 million tons of crude steel, 100% based on scrap. And this is very important because this allows us to reduce our CO2 emissions. We have commercial operations all over the world with independent management, but with a global reach and scope.
75% of our business is focused in the automotive market and 25% in other industries that are also really crucial to the development of mankind, like energy, agriculture, civil construction, and mining. Our plants are located in two countries that are very strategic. And why do I say this? Because the U.S. is the second-largest automobile producer, and Brazil is the eighth-largest automobile producer. Our plants, two of them are located in Michigan, one of them is in Indiana, the other in Arkansas. They are very close to the largest consumer market in the world. And in Brazil, we have three plants, Mogi and Pindamonhangaba, in the state of São Paulo, and Charqueadas in Porto Alegre. And from these plants, we export our, our products, adding value in Europe and in the U.S., and we are also exporting to Latin America, to Chile, Argentina, and Peru.
So it's also important that between these two plants, there are important synergies in what concerns research and development of new products, new business solutions to our customers. So how are we positioned in Brazil? In Brazil, Gerdau is a leader of SBQ market, so we have a very important participation, and we have an important impact in Brazil. The share per category is pretty much like this: 25% is for the production of light vehicles, 23% is earmarked to heavy vehicles, 13% aftermarket, and that is the production and the sale of automotive parts. Then 12% earmarked to the production of auto parts, and approximately 75% is very much focused in the automotive industry. The rest goes to oil and gas and wind power.
This year, in terms of automotive production, Brazil went through several problems, but it's also very important if we look at the growth outlook from this year onwards, and we are referring to approximately 40% growth in automotive production. In terms of hybrid, electric, and battery-run vehicles, this segment will grow, but still in a very conservative way. All of that accounts for approximately 40% growth in the demand for SBQ.
So we are ready to comply with the new demands of the automotive market, manufacturing high added-value products, more resistant and lighter products with low carbon emission, and certainly with global competitiveness, competitive level. I mean, we have the new continuous casting machine in Pindamonhangaba. That's a state-of-the-art investment. In fact, this allows us to manufacture very clean steel, highly pure steel that complies with the new demands from the automotive market. So with that, I now give the floor to Rodrigo Belloc. So, Rodrigo, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Aldo. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a privilege for me to be part of this stakeholder day. I am Rodrigo Belloc. I'm the leader for the special steel operation in North America. I am from São Paulo, but my heart is in the Midwest of the U.S. This slide is very similar to the one that you saw previously. So we are leaders in special steels in North America through our four plants in that country. Our market in 2023 was quite positive. The automotive market is in a continuous recovery phase, reaching 15.5 million units produced, with a very good positive growth outlook, going back to levels pre-pandemic, with 16.5 million vehicles produced.
In 2023, electric and battery-run vehicles accounted for 8%, and hybrid vehicles accounted for approximately 16% of that total production. It's also important to say that there are different projections when it comes to the production of electric vehicles. We are not here taking into account, in these figures, the impact that will come through all of these onshore and localization efforts that we see both in the U.S. and Mexico. On the right-hand side of the slide, you see our shipments. Great part of these shipments were earmarked for the automotive industry. We use the distribution channel, 5% goes to industry and 5% heavy vehicles. We are also well prepared to support the growth of the market. The slide that shows our investment, in fact, shows an investment plan that has been in place for quite some time.
$250 million were invested. Much of that amount was invested in the Monroe plant, and Monroe is a powerhouse of SBQ. It is the best SBQ plant that we have in North America, and we have very clear objectives, and one is to raise the bar in terms of the quality of our products. All the products that come out of that plant are for, you know, very, very high demanding market. It's a very competitive plant. We want to improve our competitive indicators in terms of CO2 emissions and water consumption, and obviously, we want to increase our capacity to produce special steels in the U.S. Originally, the capacity of the plant was 500,000 tons a year, and today, the plant has the capacity of 750,000 tons.
All of that is associated to our, associated with our strategic roadmap, which is based in some very important pillars. The first is operating excellence and assets. We have a strong discipline when it comes to capital allocation, and this constant search for technological advancement of our equipment, you know, and a very good operating efficiency. All of our plants, both in Brazil and North America, operate 100% on, with scrap. Our emissions KPIs are the best in the industry, and we are also working with robust ESG practices in our search for a B certification. You know, in terms of Gerdau as a whole, in our special steel operation, we put a lot of focus on our culture and the environment where we operate.
We try to give people, you know, the opportunity to, to enhance and to work hard on the development path, and we work also hard to develop new products. We have R&D teams, both in the U.S. and Brazil, supporting the development of pro- projects. We have more than 50 projects in the different areas where we operate. We have projects earmarked for clean steel, steel with a very low carbon footprint, products with higher added value. We are also working on diversifying, you know, the automotive deliveries and electric vehicles. In terms of electric vehicles, Gerdau is very well structured to support this evolution that takes place in a very robust way in the U.S. Special steel operations has a very robust operation, both in terms of noise and vibration.
These parts and components have become more robust in order to support heavier electric vehicles, basically due to the weight of the batteries. What we have noticed is that electric vehicles that started, you know, as a four-passenger car, now we see a higher share of larger vehicles, like SUVs, pickup trucks, and these vehicles also require a larger amount of special steels. So we worked on several projects, and all of them were aimed at supporting different parts of vehicles, like semi-axis and axis of electric vehicles.
As part of our sustainability journey, it's also important that I take this opportunity to share with you some of our trajectory in search for certification. As you know, Gerdau is the first and the only steel-producing company to have this certification, and we obtained that certification in Peru, with our operation in Peru, and then with our Summit operation. By the end of this year, both of our special and long steel operation will also be certified. All of that reinstates our commitment to sustainability and our commitment with all of our stakeholders.
We are certain that this positioning can be translated into more value to our society and also to our company, and we are very proud of our journey. Coincidentally, this week, we were visited by the auditors, and by the end of the year, we will be able to tell you more about this certification. So this is what I had for you, and then I will be available to talk to you again during the Q&A session at the end of the event. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Rodrigo. Now, we will play another video about one of our clusters, Gerdau Next, and Juliano will tell you more about Gerdau Next during his presentation. I will say that this construction model gave us two major predictability. One is the timing, and the second thing is cost. Once I know what I want to buy, Brasil ao Cubo knew what he would deliver to me, so there shouldn't be any financial variation.
We are a construction company that decided to innovate very clearly. It's just to have a factory of construction site. It's just like to get a big cake and slice the cake, put it in a plant, transport things, and just integrate all of the modules, so at the end of the day, you have a full building. We had to look for something innovative in the market, because the traditional constructive model using concrete and steel wouldn't be the most adequate model because of time and construction, because agility was what mattered, you know, delivery time. The second thing, we wanted to have a very clean construction site. The third important aspect is that we wanted something that would not impact the everyday operation of the hospital. 0%. The
The final result was really awesome in terms of quality. It serves all of our needs 10 I mean, the steel is part of the entire structure, starting with the molds and all of the ceiling and walls. It's part of the, you know, the facade structure. Therefore, we use steel in the entire manufacturing process. Therefore, steel is the heart of our construction. It's really surprising. Today, when you pass by the hospital, you would think that it's it was not made that way, that it was just a brick-and-mortar operation.
Good afternoon, everyone. Well, your good afternoon was not so exciting. Well, my name is Juliano Prado. I am in charge of Gerdau Next, and if I want Let me hear your next good afternoon. Well, my parents are from Minas. My father is from Mangias, my mother is from Itaúna, my grandparents are from Minas as well, so I carry Minas in my heart. So good afternoon. Well, much better now. Excellent. Thank you so much. I will start talking about the previous video. This is a very important cas
e. If you look at what happened to the Einstein Hospital, for those of you who are familiar with the Einstein Hospital in São Paulo, you know that the Einstein Hospital is one of the best and largest hospital in São Paulo. We won the bid to build the extension of the Einstein Hospital, and the entire construction took only five months. Imagine, when you talk about agility, agility didn't appear to be such a major thing, but all the competitors that follow a non-metallic and non-off-site or traditional construction, they talk about 20 months. Imagine building something, I mean, four times faster, having a B2B business, and you put the revenue, net profit and the EBITDA much before that time.
I can tell you that what they paid for that, that construction is what they, they gained in terms of the timing, vis-a-vis other competitors. That means that you have to think differently. That's why Gerdau Next is here. It's not because we're going to verticalize or we're going to get into products or services or new solutions, as, you know, it was clearly stated in our expectation, but we have to do things differently. And that's why Gerdau is here, to mold the future. During my presentation, I will talk about three things. One, I will tell you about what we are doing in logistics. Also, Japur talked about how we are working with logistics and renewable energy. So I'll start with these two topics, and then, then I will conclude by saying what that means for Gerdau and how we do we put everything together.
So first of all, for those of you who cannot recall, on 8 December 2022, during our APIMEC meeting, we talked about what would be our joint venture together with Randoncorp. At the time, it was just Randon Companies, because we wanted to put together a business to rent heavy equipment and heavy vehicles. That was at the end of December. On 3 February , we were already putting our commercial operation, you know, in place. And what was the major objective behind that? I can tell you that maybe this is like a tripod. First is sustainability. Why do we do that? About a month ago, Gerdau made all the headlines and the news on television, saying that we changed 140 trucks that were over 20 years old.
Now, you take a traditional truck from an independent company, we are talking about 23 years. So imagine driving a car that is 23 years old. I mean, there are enormous security risks and all of the emissions that the car, you know, releases. And that represents a risk not only to our families, but the families of others. So Gerdau is fully committed to the renewable, the renewal of our national fleet. Secondly, we saw that there was an opportunity to look for further productivity and more opportunities. This is one of the most profitable businesses that we have, and this is totally complementary to our steel business. I'll show you how it works, and then you will have some of the figures on the screen.
Gerdau, as a steel supplier, I mean, you just heard from my colleagues, we supply steel to the vast majority of companies that produce semi-trucks, let's say. And we do the same thing with the, the OMS. Like, you know, the thing that really carries the truck. And with that steel and that semi-truck ready, we utilize the entire infrastructure available. Randon has more than 83 dealerships scattered all over the country. So then we said: Okay, let's rent these trucks, because we believe today that, unfortunately, a, you know, a family truck driver or, you know, a small company has a difficult time to buy a truck or to renew the fleet. So what have we done so far? I don't think this remote thing is working. We already signed 949 deals until last September, until September.
So when we look at all of the competitors in the market, it's very hard to say that maybe we are the second company, that in the first year of operation, I think we are the second company that rented the most vehicles in 2023. You know, with such a short lifespan, this is when we look at, at the business plan that was communicated to the market. That means 2.6 times. And then you are seeing the numbers, 76% in inputs and, and 24% trucks. And this is the synergy that means that we are, in fact, working together, one of the major suppliers. Okay, but you are only talking about, you know, the semi-trucks from Randon. No. Just 70% is Randon, and the other 30%, it means that in terms of trucks, we work with all the brands.
The average tenure is five years. We have, you know, from three and a half years up to ten years. So this considers also the EBITDA that we'll have during this contract, and this is a business that gives us 91% EBITDA margin. This is already considering our full structure during that period. Do you understand where we are getting to? I would like to show you a very quick video. It's only a minute long, and you will see that there are several brands in there, and this is one of the characteristics of Addiante, because we work with several partners so that we could arrive at the lowest possible cost when it comes to the final user or the final decision maker. What makes you start? Where do you wanna go?
The answer to all of these questions is right around the corner, right ahead of you, Addiante, an opportunity, a dream, a new road. You always have a choice before you. We are here so that you can choose to move ahead, to move Addiante. And so this is a very intelligent option to rent heavy vehicles. Addiante, in two Ds from the word add in English, because we are here to add more things to your everyday life, to add new alternatives, new possibilities, to add, you know, new pathways for you to move on. It's not here where we are today, it's there, right there, Addiante, where you find availability and quick service, understanding and customized solutions catered to your needs. Technology and innovation that will follow you wherever you go.
Ahead of competitors, ahead of local setbacks, and in the future of mobility, intelligence and experience at the right time, with the most suitable solution, so that you can go, you can arrive, and you can continue, Addiante. Well, if you have a chance, this company is headquartered in Curitiba, and I guarantee you that we have one of the most technological control towers in the market. So when it comes now to investment, we also presented some figures in our APIMEC meeting, and we have a transporting company that was developed three years ago, because at the time, people talked about Gerdau's outbound for some specific areas, and we put great focus in this process, turning ourselves into a logistic operator.
This logistics operator today works with more than 70% of our outbound businesses, and about 80% of the inbound or the search for metallics, and it serves 40 customers. We were very proud, because in 2022, our revenue reached more than BRL 1 billion with that transport company, so we grew over 60%. We are also very proud to say that sustainability is present in all our businesses. Sustainability is with us and Randon, because we have vehicles with batteries that also can, you know, make the engine of the truck move forward. When we have our semi-trailers, all, you know, very state-of-the-art, and we also have electric trucks. So sustainability permeates all of our business. We are no longer
We are not only solving an infrastructure problem with the country, but we are also helping the company. Talking about emissions, I would like to tell you a little bit about New Wave Energia. For those of you who were not with us in our last event, in November of last year, we signed a deal, and in March of this year, the final closing of this deal occurred with New Wave Energia. It's a company. It's a transaction that also gathers XP Investimentos. In this partnership, Gerdau holds 33% of the company, and we are entitled to 33% of energy offtake. What do I mean by that? We have a proprietary model of six wind and solar farms. Many of them are in the state of Minas Gerais.
I mean, that's where most of our load is, and we have 30% offtake. Juliano, why is it so important to have this offtake? Is it because it's cheaper? No. We try to look for what is the best for us. In Brazil, we have self-production. Let's say, when a company is the same one that produces and consumes, you have, you know, tax reductions, and that tax reduction is about 33%. We are looking for higher efficiencies for the company and higher competitiveness in terms of the cost of the steel that gets to you. And the bottom line is that this is a cleaner, renewable energy. If you look at the share of New Wave, we are talking about 35%-40% of Gerdau's consumption in Brazil that is now being served by New Wave Energia. That's a lot.
Today, this is about 15-20, so we are close to reaching 60% of our, of self-production, meaning that our own energy is being produced by Gerdau, and this. It's a great benefit to the environment, because the reduction is of approximately 10% of our Scope Two emissions, so this is quite relevant to the company. Now, we go back to the tripod. So we are seeking for efficiency, productivity, but again, we want to have sustainability in everything we do in terms of our partnerships, and everything has to have total synergy with our steel business. And my last slide, just to conclude, these are the companies that are part of our portfolio. Well, obviously, this is a very dynamic portfolio management. We are constantly evaluating the best combinations, bringing strategic partners that will add value to our business.
Companies that, in fact, want to add up to one plus one being greater than three. Ubiratan is a recently launched company that is also working with us, not only in Brazil, Minas, in São Paulo, but also in the U.S. They are working in AI together with Gustavo França and his team. When they talk about digital, you'll learn more about it. And why are we doing this? And what is our ultimate objective? Number one, diversification. We are a steel company that begins to look at other segments. Segments that somehow have ups and downs, but not necessarily are the same. When steel is up, maybe other businesses are up, so we look at the best integrated profitability for the company. Well, synergy. Everything we do has synergies with Gerdau. Everything we do has synergies with our partners. Everything here is related to co-construction.
We are not controllers. We look for joint ventures. We add up our forces so that we can have a more robust business. Profitability, as I said, sustainability in 100% of our business, we want to be a reference. And finally, people. We are very proud to see that we are increasingly attracting and developing talent in a very differentiated way, so we understand that this company will be even greater moving forward. So I will be available during the Q&A. Thank you so much. I'd like to invite my dear colleague, Gustavo França.
Good afternoon, everyone. This is Gustavo França, Technology and Digital Head of Gerdau. For starters, I'd like to join my colleagues and say how happy I am to speak about the transformation journey that Gerdau is going through. Japur talked about how we shape the future, and I can tell you that the future is also shaped by digital. A lot of digital capacities implemented at Gerdau aim to bring greater productivity, greater safety for our people, and the best experience for our clients. Today, about 50% of everything we have in the technological environment of Gerdau runs in the famous cloud. 50% of what we have in our plants and mills run in the cloud model. We have the first 5G private network in our operations in Minas Gerais, in the Ouro Branco mill.
It's already enabled, allowing us to bring hyperconnectivity and allowing us to connect more than 1,000 assets, creating value in terms of safety, security, competitiveness, efficiency, which are crucial in our business model. This is all enabled by our people. Here, with the continuous work of transformation, education, and change management, either in the work model, in terms of new competencies that the digital world is bringing to the company. With that, we enable new ways to deliver value in the business. With new people, new careers, new roles, new tasks, all inherent in this transformation journey of our business through digital. It's not about digital for the sake of digital. It's about transformation driven by the new normal we're living. As mentioned by our business colleagues, it's all connected to our steel. Our steel is digital.
Gerdau is a digital company, and we use this potential to deliver greater value to our clients, to drive competitiveness in our operations. Speaking a little about the cases that we've been working with, Rubens spoke about this. Security. We have more than 1,400 portable and fixed detectors monitoring gas leaks in our plants. So by using artificial intelligence models, we can identify undesirable situations and take immediate action. In addition, a number of data sources are used so that we can anticipate incidents or severe accidents in our plants and mills. It's the power of technology unlocking a new business context, allowing us to have better forecasting and prediction in terms of management.
We have more than 85% assertiveness in our AI models applied to safety analytics, all associated to our management model, which is quite robust in operation in our plants. From the standpoint of industrial competitiveness, again, we have AI being used in the context of our operations. We are talking about a concept that we call digital twins, which allows us to mirror and simulate our whole operation through data. This allows us to make faster decisions. We can simulate scenarios much faster and using technology in our favor. So it's less tech for the sake of tech. It's a lot more about technology unlocking the business. In the last couple of years, we have invested massively. Rubens mentioned BRL 400 million invested in Industry 4.0.
A good part of that investment is geared to artificial intelligence, which aims to bring us this predictability, greater ease in the way in which we operate our business day-to-day. More than 1,000 pieces of equipment and sensors connected in our plants. 86%, 86% precision in digital recognition of scrap metal. So it's, it's what we're, we're doing in terms of transformation, and that leads to customer experience and what kind of experience we deliver to our customers. We understand that every customer is unique. We want to give them an incredible experience in the physical world, in, in the offline world, through the relationship with our sales rep, but in, in the online environment, unlocking better services, a, a unique level of service. Gerdau. Gerdau Mais is a digital platform to offer incredible customer experience, reconciling on and offline worlds.
Our customers are very important in our business context, and that's why digital has to be used to improve customer experience. Gerdau Mais brings this to the forefront and this improved customer experience, creating value. On average, about 40% of our segments already fully use our digital channels, and that is a continuous journey. We are working nonstop to improve even more customer experience through digital. In the U.S., in civil construction, about 70% of our clients already use our digital channels, and that is very important because it creates value, it drives productivity. For many of you who are joining us online and who are joining us here, more than 10 million transactions go through our supply chain optimizer, which means we are using advanced AI models to deliver value at the end of the day to our clients and our customers.
Our every customer is unique. We are using technology to get to that level of detail, understanding who our customer is and how we can provide them with the best level of service. On the right of my slide, we have a set of technologies. I'm not gonna get to the techniques here, but we have a lot of technologies that we are using. Regenerative AI, machine learning, and all of these terms that we use that, and that we hear about in technology meetings. But this is about delivering business, using technology as a lever. I spoke a lot about data, spoke a lot about people, and this is possible because we have a great database. We collect the data, and we can model based on the data. More than 120 TB of stored data.
I'm not gonna explain what this is, but I can tell you it's a lot of data that is being stored globally. It allows us to do all kinds of analysis. So again, let's focus on people, not the technical. On the social side, we are also paying a lot of attention because we are part of the solutions to society's challenges. So we are keen to train labor, basically technological, technical labor, which is, which is lacking. So we have a program, Data for All. This is a digital inclusion and data analytics program for youth interested in, in joining the labor market, focusing on data, data analytics. So Data for All is just one example of technology, driving experience in the business model, as well as delivering value to society. And we have a number of other programs that are in line with the same rationale.
We have in-house, in-house programs like GData that helps us train our employees, because now we're seeing a lot of career moves in this more digital world. So Gerdau is more and more data-oriented. Our steel is digital, and we are using this capacity again to unlock this experience in terms of delivery, in terms of industrial competitiveness, safety, security, and delivering value to our customers. And now, since we're talking about customers, we have a video. We'll give you an example of one of our customers that I would like to share with you. Let's play the video.
Açovisa is a company that distributes steel products in Brazil. We have 25 years of history, and I lived this history with Gerdau since we established the company. That's the kind of partnering that we do. It's a strategic partnership for the business. Also Visa is a company that has always worked, aiming to be perennial, aiming at the long term, and Gerdau was always a company that gives us the safety, so that our investment would work, so that our investment would continue. It was the first company to provide not only credit, but also credit for life.
All of the market development work where Gerdau does not get, that's where also Visa goes with Gerdau products, providing service with partnerships. If you ask me, "What is your company going to be like in the future? What is Gerdau going to be in the future?" What I can tell you is that our will to change, to keep up with change, will continue to exist in Gerdau and in my company. This is one of the many stories of customers who were positively impacted by Gerdau. That's how we empower people to change the future.
That was it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now, I'd like to invite my colleague to continue.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Flavia Francimede, and I'm Global Head of Procurement, and in Brazil, also handle the energy part. I'll follow the protocol of my colleagues. You probably realize I come from Rio. My accent cannot be denied, but I'm very happy to be here in Minas to speak about the supply chain, which is something we've been discussing so much in recent years. The COVID pandemic and then Russia-Ukraine war showed us how important it is to care for our supply chain and our suppliers. Looking at the chain of suppliers brings a competitive edge to any business, any business, there's no doubt about it, and that's what we're gonna be talking about.
I just want to share with you the complexity that our suppliers live with us. We are present in nine countries, more than 35 sites, more than 12,000 suppliers, active suppliers, and we are talking about BRL 5 billion annual expenditure between OpEx and CapEx. Variables that bring significant complexity to our day-to-day. Now, how do we handle that? In our strategy to manage, to do chain management, we break this down into 4 pillars. Competitiveness, it's the most traditional pillar in the market. We look at all of the links in the chain, seeking improved efficiency and process improvement. The digital innovation pillar was very much mentioned, how I can bring innovation to my suppliers, how I can automate the digitalized work with data, work in a predictive way with trends. It's a lot of work that we do in this pillar.
The third pillar is risk management. That's the pillar that has demanded the most. Looking at risk in our chain is fundamental, as mentioned, and I'm going to detail this later. The last pillar, it's kind of a recent pillar my companies have been working with, and I'm very proud of what we are doing here at Gerdau. How can I engage with our partners and suppliers to move forward on the ESG agenda? How can I tell them that this is important, as important to them as it is for Gerdau? We'll speak about these two. I speak about risk. I'm not just talking about rupture risks in the chain. That's what we hear about in the media or the press, discussing the restructuring the supply chain. No, here we talk about any type of risk linked to our chain.
Disruption risk, compliance risk, reputation risk. We are so keen to care for our Gerdau reputation. Who am I partnering with? Who am I buying from? Does this bring me any risk? So, so we use a risk matrix that identifies the probability of any mapped event happening. This is very dynamic. We have kind of weekly discussions. The market is very volatile. We have news from the world every day, so it's something we should never lose sight of. Two examples here to speak about the kind of work that we do in the area of supply, looking at risk. Here we're talking about chain rupture. We can have many reasons for that. This is just one example. Sea freight. You will remember that traditional photo that you all saw of all those vessels and ships that were jammed in the port of China.
You will remember how chaotic that was. We didn't have the vessels for sea freight. We didn't have containers to bring goods. There was a collapse internationally. It led to a chain rupture. Another theme in supply is how we observe all the ESG restrictions that our suppliers are facing in many countries. ESG rules and, and requirements are much stricter. We have some suppliers that are facing problems. Their plants are being closed down. Operating permits are being more difficult to be obtained. This is something that we can see happening with many companies abroad. Third topic, material availability. I need to know the suppliers of my suppliers, particularly for critical items. So we had a classical case here. The raw material of our supplier was coming from Russia. When the war started, the supplier raised his hand and asked us for help.
How could they bring the raw material to prepare the raw material that we would buy from, from them? So we have to work together with the whole supply chain. Things that did not happen before, but they're happening now, particularly now with greater geopolitical tensions. So more and more, knowing where our materials are coming from needs to be more monitored. And the last item, protectionist barriers. More and more, we see it, and here I bring you a chart. I am not sure whether the pointer will show, but here it shows exactly what we see in the market. We can see this, this alligator mouth. It is the protectionist measures that are happening in different places. This leads to a reorganization of the supply chains, it leads to financial impacts and so on and so forth.
So that's the kind of monitoring that we do and how this is being redesigned. This effect of Nearshoring, Friendly Shoring, all the shoring things that we hear about. So we need to keep up with this. This cannot bring a chain rupture for us because it would impact our whole business. And I think that this becomes very visual. This is a category map, as we call it. This helps us see exactly where we have a concentration of procurement of a certain, a certain category. So this is quite well distributed, so my risk is mitigated. But in certain categories, we have concentration in some regions, so we have to work to develop new suppliers, new partnerships, to broaden my portfolio and diversify the risk. So that's just examples of risks that we monitor in our supply chain, risks that could impact us.
Second example is linked to CapEx. Labor. Here, we bring the example of Brazil and the example of the state of Minas Gerais in yellow. When we read about investments, it's super positive for the country and for the region. But we, from the risk perspective, the question is: Will I have the capacity to execute all the works? Are my suppliers prepared to execute all that? Will that region have qualified labor to supply that demand? So we start working together with our suppliers from the pre-qualification process onward, to see which are the companies that have capacity, size, and ability to execute some projects. Then we implemented a tool which is super useful, it's what we call histogram and histogram monitoring. In blue, we see how many companies are mobilized and people mobilized. In yellow, people whom I will need to mobilize in the future.
So that, that gives me visibility of which supplier has qualified, mobilized people per region. So when I'm bidding a project to see who, who I'm going to choose, I know exactly who has highly skilled labor that can be mobilized to the project. That ensures the operation for us, that we'll have the labor available. This brings us predictability of mobilization, predictability of cost, and to our suppliers, it is good as well. It mitigates their risk. And on the social front, people in that construction site, they know that they're working there now, and that they can be re-mobilized or relocated to another construction site, so they'll continue to have income. And again, new contracts, innovation, what we can do in terms of modeling to deal with this extremely complex market in terms of CapEx. So this will continue in the coming years.
The provocation in this example is, here we mitigate the risk, we work on a number of actions to prevent rupture. But what else can we do? How can we train this, this labor? How can we help the country train the labor to supply the demand of the CapEx? So here I'm talking about a private initiative. This question is answered when we talk about ESG. ESG. Well, Gerdau has clear ambitions and actions related to the ESG agenda. This is on our desks every day. So we wondered: How can we contribute more? How can we go beyond our Gerdau walls? How can we reach out to our whole supply chain? What can we do beyond our walls and the potential of that? We talked about 12,500 suppliers involved, more than 1 million people involved. So that's when we had the idea.
One of the first important things we implemented was, when I sign a contract with my supplier, I need to tell my supplier that this is an important agenda for me. So we included in our contracts a provision that talks about ESG. It's a formal document that I use to relate with the market, and I tell them what I would like to do in terms of ESG. So here are some examples. We go beyond that contract provision. The contract was not enough to motivate and engage the whole supply chain. So with time, what can we do beyond including a provision in the contract to help the suppliers? And there came some initiatives. One of them is called Inspire. That's the S of the ESG, the social, social element. How can we help suppliers move forward in the D&I agenda?
How can we help them create DE&I policies, KPIs? And that's how Inspire Gerdau was born. This is a training in supplier training and development in the DE&I, diversity and inclusion agenda. 70% of the companies that joined the program had significant advance and progress in the DE&I agenda of the 200 companies that signed the DE&I compact. So now we are working with smaller companies in the different locations where we operate. Now, these need a lot of help from us, and the Inspire Gerdau program is here to help. Second example, still on the S of ESG, again, on the social front. Very proud of this project. It's quite recent, really. We included a social investment clause for some of our suppliers. Some of them are here. They know it because they participate.
This provision includes 0.9% of the 0.09% of the value of the contract to be invested in social projects. It's not a compulsory provision, but no one denied it, because our suppliers also want to help. We have captured BRL 1.7 million during that period. I had a number of social projects. We had some examples here in Minas Gerais that were very gratifying, and we understood that it was not just about encouraging them to have the commitment and leave the suppliers free to invest. We thought we could help them target that investment. So here we link with labor and CapEx, because we did work together with SENAI. We created a project called Aprimorar, which means perfect, improve, to improve labor.
So this social investment amount can be invested in the skill building program to improve the skills of labor and use this labor in contracts with Gerdau. With this, we closed, we go full circle. The first wave was very gratifying because in this model, with the financial input of the suppliers we were training, we were able to train 450 people in the three benefited cities, Ouro Branco, Conselheiro Lafaiete, and Congonhas. So they are being trained, they're being allocated in contracts, providing support and service to Gerdau or to any other company, for that matter. So it's a gratifying way of developing the local community, and the next waves will be spread all over Brazil. My last example that I would like to share with you, this is related to the E of ESG. We talk about CO2 emissions.
Scope One was very much mentioned by my colleagues. How can suppliers help us? How do they understand our challenge? How can they be present in our mills with a critical eye to seek energy efficiencies with a critical eye of bringing innovation to our processes? Scope Two was mentioned by Juliano. We are trying more and more to have renewable sources of energy. We have our self-production challenge to eventually reach 100% of renewable energy. And Scope Three, I'll show you an example of programs we work with. This was recently launched. It's a program called Ecoar. It's a partnership with CDP, where we help our supply chains to start monitoring their own emissions, establishing plans and targets. Ecoar program was very much talked about. It's quite innovative.
We are the first steel company in Latin America to have a structured program of Scope Three Emissions with our suppliers, and we're very proud of it. So these are three examples that corroborate the importance of looking at our supply chain, not only in terms of risk, competitiveness, and innovation, but also focusing on ESG, and to what extent this is the potential to scale up the results and leave a true legacy for our society and the communities around us. Well, this was it. Thank you very much. Now I'll call the video of our suppliers, showing a little bit of all this.
My name is João Antônio Gilvan. Our company is called Metalúrgica Jopa Limite d. It was founded in 1983. We supply to Gerdau all types of replacement parts that they need, all of them. So our core business for over 40 years has always been focused in Gerdau. It's a very correct and honest partnership, and this has been working until today. If we didn't have Gerdau, we wouldn't have a company. Because of Gerdau, we put together a company, and we managed to survive until today. We employed several families.
Therefore, Gerdau has always been, and it will be, the most important company in the world. But many things we learned with them. They never called people employees, they call them my collaborators, and they try to teach us something. So Gerdau represents everything for us. The future of Gerdau is also our future. So if Gerdau is investing or developing something new, this will also reflect in the work we do. So I have an endless gratitude for the company. We empower people who build the future.
Now I would like to call Gustavo back again.
Now, heading towards the end of our event, I'm very, very pleased because I t his was a very good opportunity for us to interact, and I know that even though we just had a short spirit of time, a short period of time, you had the opportunity to, to interact with those that work with us. During my entire professional journey, I worked with several people and several teams, but I've never worked with, with such an amazing team, like the team that is currently working with me, all of you. In this everyday relationship you have with Gerdau, please spend more time with the team.
Challenge them to go forward and to look beyond the status quo, because I know that the more you challenge them, the more they will grow, and they will develop further, and they will have more answers that will allow us to strengthen our long-term relationship. So very briefly, I would like to mention some topics that I think are relevant for this wrap-up session. In addition to this wonderful team, I mean, in, in all the presentations that I do in different venues, I think some of you have heard me talk about it.
What is the role of a CEO? I, I usually say that a CEO is not the Chief Executive Officer. Is the for me, is the Chief Enabling Officer. So I will be like a facilitator. CEO is, is someone that makes things work. And when you have a team like this, because since they are people much better than I am, so first thing you have to do is please do not get on their way. So I'm very careful not to get on their way and let them, you know, work by themselves.
We spend a lot of time together, we work a lot together, we have a lot of fun together. Therefore, my role is to expand the boundaries, because behind everything they do, there are people behind it. There are dreams behind everything they do. So this is my role. In every decision we make, we have to stretch it a bit more because there is always a dream behind it, and, and we have to build things together with all of you. So I spend a lot of my time trying to humanize our company, and in the past years, we've been thinking about ways of looking at the future and, and how we could put together our strategy.
We are a traditional company with over 120 years of history, and as many other traditional companies, you know, we sometimes spend months at the end of the year trying to plan the budget for the following year or to draw up a strategic plan, as though, come January first, everything that was in the plan could happen like magic or the way we envisioned. But you know what happens? Nothing. Come January, and everything you planned for and everything you budget for, you know, the world changed, and so much of what you planned never happens, never materializes. But you can never let go of our long-term view. Because, I mean, just like we abandoned some strategic plans, because sometimes they don't lead you anywhere. But it's important that you have a clear view of your long-term strategy.
So we usually summarize in one sentence: In 10 years, we will be one of the safest and most admired steel companies in the world, and one of the most relevant in the Americas. That is clear, because we will not going to go back to Asia or EURpe. Our future is in the Americas. We want to strengthen our positions in Brazil and mainly in North America. So our long-term view is summarized in beliefs like that. So it's up to us and the way we work now in a concept of a strategy as a journey.
So we have to have a very strong focus in what is happening in the short term, more specifically in the quarter, so that in that particular quarter, not only we will be able to deliver maximum value to Gerdau, but also we want to, to deliver the best possible value to all of you, our stakeholders. So this is our view for the next coming years, and we will work diligently so, so that, you know, a bit of what you saw during the presentations, you will know that in the next ten years, we will be a company that is less concerned with its own size, but much more concerned with our profitability, our capacity to generate value to our shareholders and investors, and, and add value to society as a whole.
As part of this concept, that not getting in the way, of course, that I have to be mindful of our everyday activity. Some of the topics have been mentioned here, and some other topics are listed here, and these are areas where I spend a lot of my time. I will show you some slides that illustrate how I spend my days. But to help illustrate what I'm saying, one relevant thing and a topic that people talked a lot about is the issue of health and safety. I know that we still have a long way to go in Brazil if we want to humanize companies. We should never forget that behind everything we do, all the relationships we have, there is an individual that wants to advance, move forward, and there are dreams that they want to see coming true.
Health and safety is something very important to our everyday lives. Safety is a very sensitive topic in a country like ours. Just to give you an idea, last year in 2022, according to official statistics from the Labor Ministry, there were 600,000, you know, work-related accidents in Brazil, not considering other accidents related to informal activities. Out of those 600,000 labor incidents, there were 3,200 deaths, people who died while performing a job. Two Brazilian families received a call from their company saying that the father, the mother, the son, or the daughter will no longer go back home because he or she was involved in a work-related accident or was killed while at work. So, I mean, we cannot afford to talk about, you know, evolving the company or advancing the company if we don't have our people in mind.
Therefore, health and safety is a very, very big topic for us, and I spend a lot of time working in this topic. Our accident rate is very low. We are a reference today amongst all global steel producers because the low accident rate, but at the same time, I carry great responsibility, and I have to motivate my team so that the kids that are visiting the museum today and in the future, one day when they go into the labor market, that they carry health and safety, you know, along their journey as well. It's important that we have a country where people are certain that they will have a future, they will have some income, and they will have a possibility to see their dreams come true.
Another topic that is related to the topic of health, and a lot of people who work with me every day, they come and ask me, "Why did I go to Bhutan?" I just wanted to learn more about something that they call happiness. Happiness for us in Portuguese, it's a word that does not really reflect what we want to do, because happiness can be translated as a short-term pleasure. Like when I leave here, if I eat a flan or a condensed milk flan, that will give me a short-term happiness or a short-term pleasure. But how do you create companies when people can in fact feel that they are respected? It's very sad. When we hear things like what happened to Val. Val was a major athlete from Minas. She played for our dear tennis club.
She's a very young person, and she took her own life. This is very shocking for me, and in the last few years, we are paying a lot of attention... to try to understand this very silent disease that is present in all of our companies, which is depression, sadness, solitude. And so I ask you, in your own businesses, do you have any idea of how many people or how many family members of people who work with you, they suffer from depression right now? How many people thought about taking their own lives in this past year? More and more at Gerdau, we are trying to install a culture where people feel comfortable to talk about things like that, to look for help or to be appreciated.
Today, we can understand through a series of programs that we have what is happening to the families of our employees. In our own employees, we have some help programs that talk about, you know, financial issues. Many Brazilian families do not know how to manage their own income. They get into a lot of debt, and from this debt, they get depressed, they have mental problems. These are all topics that have really drawn my attention, because this is a very silent disease that is contaminating all of us, our sons and daughters. I'm saying all of this because I also want to count on you and all of our partnerships, because it's important that we take a closer look at what is happening to the human beings that work with you, because that's when it's worthwhile building the next hundred years.
I really like to talk to Dr. Jorge. Jorge Gerdau is now 86 years old. I mean, he will turn 87 in December. We were together in an event, and we were there, you know, drinking a glass of wine, and Jorge likes to tell stories, and maybe it's a bit old-fashioned, but he was telling me that when he was 13 years old, in November, he was very anxious because he was waiting for his next summer vacations because he wanted to go surfing with his friends. And Mr. Kurt, his father, wouldn't let him go to the beach with his friends. Because according to, you know, his own words, he had to go to the nail factory.
He had to get a sweeper and sweep the plant during his vacations, and that was because he, his father wanted him to understand what were the problems and difficulties of the people working in the plant, in the factory. This culture still remains among us, even today. I'm dedicating a lot of my time to look at problems that we all face. Do you think that this is relevant? That is my question to you. Maybe we could share best practices, and this is an opportunity for us to exchange ideas about this. Our company is very open. We are open to discuss any topic that is part of your everyday professional life, especially if we want to humanize our organizations. Now, I would also like to talk about the cultural transformation.
Of course, throughout your professional careers, you found inspiration with other people. Big thinkers, academics, and there is a well-known professor called Peter Drucker, especially if you study engineer. Peter Drucker was the father of administration and management. He died a few years back, and he had some very important statements. One of the statements is, "The only source of income is the client." Another thing that he used to say is that, "We cannot predict the future, but we can create the future." And Peter Drucker is known for something he said, that, "Culture eats strategy every day for breakfast." So as I was saying, I mean, it's of no use if you work a lot in the strategy, things will change the next day.
That's why we are dedicating a lot of our time to create a culture that is absolutely focused on building this value with you. A culture totally focused on understanding the problems of our customers, focused on understanding the difficulties that they encounter every day and how we can add value. A culture that can be absolutely adaptable. A major example of that is what happened during the pandemic. During the pandemic, that culture that had been amongst us for a few years helped us to mobilize our company very quickly, and we built hospitals very quickly, as Juliano said. Flavia, that was here before me. I mean, while many companies were trying to stretch payment terms to be able to hold their working capital and reduce their cash flow, we made urgent decisions to help companies that were with us all every day.
So we paid them cash because there was a chance for these small companies to survive; it would be through us paying them cash immediately. So our culture is absolutely focusing on, focused on creating value every day, because in the future, we can be a more agile company. Our ego could be reduced. We have to focus on your needs more and more, and I dedicate a lot of my time to that. And again, I urge you to challenge us, to stretch the boundaries of what we can do. Please be demanding of us so we can get better every day. One day, we get to the future, and we will get to situations like this. This year, we were the recipient of many awards.
This year, we were the recipient of the Valor 1000 award by Valor Econômico three weeks ago. We were voted by the Exame Magazine the best company of 2023 in our industry. We are also very close to being the first Latin American company to be certified as a B Corp. Época Negócios. Last week, no, this past Monday, we were voted. Well, we received two awards. One, the best company in the industry, and also we were voted the best sustainable company in Brazil. This is just a result of everything that we said here before about recycling. But I always look at these awards as, you know, as a big award, where when you become a pumpkin after the ball, but we always have a customer waiting to be served.
There are people waiting to see their dreams come true. So every award is just a motivation for us to be better every day. I don't wanna talk about the business because my colleagues already said it all, but I just have this request for you. The closer we are, the more we challenge ourselves, the better we will be able to build the next 100 years of our history. As you all brought a video after the presentations, I also have my own. This is a video that depicts our partnership with Formula One. We are the special steel Formula One. But behind the video, I would like to tell you a little bit about how we operate our culture every day. In our culture, we never kill an idea. In our culture, everybody, it doesn't matter whether you are an intern.
just joined the company yesterday, or a leader that has been with the company 30 years, the intellectual capacity of people are the same. So we install the culture where people are who they are. A culture where people are safe to say what they think and to be who they are. It's a culture that does not kill any idea. We will only kill an idea after an extensive debate. So Pedro did not speak today, I think. Pedro, Pedro is our Officer of Corporate Communication and Institutional Relations. Last month, Pedro and his team came to me and said, "Gustavo, we will enter Rock in Rio." I thought, "Hmm, that's weird." We are not Heineken, we are not Coca-Cola, we are not TikTok. So you should also follow Gerdau on TikTok, TikTok.
We are present in all social media, so we are a reference in terms of having followers. But I said: Okay, we cannot kill the idea. But traditional companies say, Rock in Rio? It has nothing to do with our core business. Let's do something else. But at, I mean, at the end, what Pedro wanted, it's not that we would sell more steel, but there are 1 million Brazilian, Brazilians that live out of picking things. So take a look at the streets where you live. How many people are carrying a cart every day, picking things, picking packages that you no longer use, or picking an old bicycle that you were about to throw away, or picking a refrigerator that you do not use anymore? There's one million t here are one million people doing that. So thank God I didn't kill that idea.
We just wanted to give some protagonism to these people and to show how important they are to our Brazilian economy. So we joined Rock in Rio, and so we built the largest stage in the world. That was last year. We built a steel, totally recycled, 100% recycled stage. So if one day, Rock in Rio no longer wants to use that stage, that steel can be used in a construction site to build a building, it could be on a spaceship or whatever. So after Rock in Rio, we took another step forward, and we were the official steel at the The Town, which is the São Paulo Rock in Rio. So that was the first time they did that. But in addition to steel, we also wanted to do something else together with the mayor of São Paulo and the Medina family.
They are in charge of organizing all of these festivals. So together with the leader from Gerando Falcões, we wanted to work on the Haiti favela. We are making a profound change in that slum. We are making a profound change in that slum, in that community, using the methodology of Gerando Falcões, the name of that NGO, led by Eduardo. And this is the first example of a project that can be really transformational, and it can transform the lives of several families that live in communities like that. And so we did the stage of The Town in the district of Interlagos. Interlagos, it's a racing track that has been there for 80 years, and it needs some refurbishing. So right after the event called The Town, we identified another opportunity to be the official steel for the Formula One in São Paulo.
Then we signed this partnership recently, and the video that I chose to bring to you today is this video that depicts our partnership with Formula One. And Renata is telling me that we will then draw two tickets to the next Formula One race. So please, you know, follow my lead. Never kill an idea. Allow people to speak their minds and allow them to express their intellectual potential. I think this is something that companies still have to exploit, because in a world where raising capital is easy, because the world is liquid, it's very easy for you to raise capital, to build a plant, to buy technology, hire people, then the plant starts to operate, and it's, and it operates in an environment where it didn't exist before. So culture, leadership, and people.
We haven't even touched the immense cultural potential of the people that wake up every day and want to align their individual purposes to the purpose of an organization. So this is just an example of how a small idea can become a large project, and these projects can be really transformational to all of the families that live in this slum of Haiti. It's called Haiti, Favela Haiti. So let's play the video.
In the internet. So now, just to break the ice, we will draw two tickets to the Formula One Grand Prix in Interlagos, but this will only be valid for those that are either here with us today in person or those that are connected via Zoom. So we go to all of your names, people online, and then we will do the drawing. All of your names will appear on the screen.
If somebody online will win, you have to send me a WhatsApp message or something. In case you're not online, we will have to draw another ticket. We'll draw it again. We have a winner. Is he here? He's here! Pedro, our Director, will be delivering the tickets for you. We are very glad, and you're welcome to live this moment with us. Congratulations. Welcome to the Formula One Grand Prix in Interlagos race track. Let's have a photo, and then we'll give you the tickets. Congratulations.
Now we are going to have just a two-minute break so we can set up the stage, so we can have the Q&A session. Okay? Just two minutes for this to set up the chairs. All right, let us begin the Q&A. Okay, so let's begin the Q&A session now. I'd like to remind you that if you're watching us online, you can also ask your questions via the chat. You can write your question in the Q&A. So let's see questions. Please, somebody take them. Oh, you got the microphone. Okay. Go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you very much to the whole team. Renata, video with sound, without sound, it's all wonderful. It's an intense program, so congratulations to you and to the whole management team. I'm Leonardo Correa with BTG Pactual. Werneck , I'd like to focus a little on Brazil. This last week has been very intense regarding speeches, Brazilian Congress, a lot of comments in the press, and you were asking the government for an additional tariff. The global context is different now than it was a year ago. We are monitoring steel imports from China that changed completely, and this has an impact on the domestic market, an impact on price and market share, impact on volume, and the whole profitability of the whole industry is dropping.
So I'd like to hear from you, how are you building your case with the government? We understand that around the world, the prices are increasing in all of the countries, so Brazil is also entitled to ask for that. In Mexico, there was a recent price increase, in the U.S. as well. So I'd like to hear about what you think in Brazil and what you're requesting to increase the import duties. Congratulations on the events that will spend until money.
Leo, thank you very much for complimenting Renata, because this will help her not feel tense afterwards. Because it's the dedication of people like her that moves Gerdau. This event is incredible, so I told her, Renata, everything's super cool. Don't worry about the sound that is not working. So congratulations, and thank you for congratulating Renata, because that's what I did, too. I congratulated Renata for the dedication with which she works. So I second Leo's words. Renata, congratulations one more time. Congratulations to everybody, because I haven't done this alone. It's up to all of us, and this is a stakeholders event, so congratulations to you through the whole team and to all of you attending. Without you, we would have no event. So thank you to those who are here and to those joining us online.
All right, Leo, normally, I would ask Rubens to answer this question, but I will try to answer it. Because this became even more vocal yesterday after what I said about the Brazilian steel. So I'll answer this question because of what I said yesterday, but Rubens knows this better than I. Okay, Leo? So, Rubens, if I forget anything, please add. And Faraco, who's our VP of Strategy Advisor o f Aços Brasil , and if I leave any relevant points out, please help me out, guys. So Leo, I went to China many times in recent years.
When I lived in India in 2013, 2014, I used to go to China a lot. That was so close. We had some business there, supplying equipment, and last time I went to China. Just before the pandemic, COVID pandemic in 2019, André Gerdau was executive president of the World Steel Association, and we attended the meeting of the WSA in China. And André and I, we went to many state-owned companies producing steel in China. We visited many private companies. And what he wrote in your report of closing production capacity in China, of induction furnaces, I saw induction furnaces being shut down. I followed that they closed, and at the time, I was quite convinced that China was putting continuous efforts, structural, sufficient efforts for China to balance their supply and demand.
I really believed in that when I left there. I don't believe in that anymore. I'm quite convinced that with changes that happened in the world in recent years, that China will continue to export steel. They will not shut down capacity to balance the supply and demand. So it is imperative, it is very necessary that all countries impose some kind of trade defense to create equal competition conditions in the local markets. Believe it or not, Turkey is an expert of long steel, particularly rebar. Turkey imposing trade barriers against China is something that is not common sense. So the countries are closing against this or defending themselves from this predatory competition. Steel produced in China by state-owned companies is highly subsidized.
It does not compete on equal footing according to the World Trade Organization, and sometimes that steel arrives in the destination countries at prices that are lower than their production costs. So the countries are responding to that. They're being effective to fight this predatory policy by China. You mentioned Mexico. Their economy is somewhat similar to ours, and Mexico imposed a 25% import duty for Chinese steel. In our case, it should be even higher because the Brazilian cost is higher than the Mexican cost. Our inefficiency here is greater, but we understand that a 25% import tariff is adequate to fight, in the short term, the arrival of Chinese products. For many years, we didn't see so much Chinese imported steel. Of all the steel that is imported to Brazil, 50% comes from China.
So we're very optimistic that the Brazilian government will adopt the right measures. A small step was given when they resumed the import tax. The tariff was going to come back in December, and this was brought forward. It's a small step, but it is a sign that this theme became a priority at the federal government in Brasília. So this is what I can tell you. Rubens, Fracas, do you want to say anything?
No, I think, I think you answered this quite well.
Okay, Leo. All right. Next question.
Good afternoon. I'm Frederico, Warren Investimentos. I'd like to congratulate on the event. It's a pleasure to be here. My question is more related to the U.S. market. I think that we had some positive surprises, at least in my view. We had a previous perception that the U.S. market was going to slow down faster, and we had some positive surprises, but still, we have a concern, particularly because of the interest rates that we're seeing. I think that is a general concern, not just for Gerdau. It affects the whole world and the risk assets in emerging markets.
And I would like to understand, you commented on governmental programs. We know that this has been driving demand, but I would like to understand, looking forward, given the expectation that interest rates will remain high at this level for a sufficiently long time, I would like to understand to what extent this demand that is driven by government programs can offset this countercyclical moment in the United States. My second question that I would like you to elaborate on, and perhaps this question is geared to Rafael, in line with what he presented in the beginning, right?
In the stakeholder day. I would like to understand, because that slide you brought, Rafael, about the CapEx agenda and how this will generate additional EBITDA per project. This kind of breakdown is really nice to see, but I would like to understand the timing of that, because that is not very clear to me. We have a CapEx agenda until 2026, and then an EBITDA growth that will take about 10 years. So I'd like to understand the timing. What is the timing for us to get to that level of EBITDA, and how does this CapEx talk with this? We have a five year horizon for the CapEx and a 10-year horizon for the EBITDA.
And my third and last question is more related to what we have at Gerdau Next. So this question is addressed to Juliano. Juliano, I'd like you to perhaps give us some color on what are the fundamentals of these contracts. You mentioned that the contracts are long-term, five-year contracts. I'd like to understand the clauses, if you can elaborate on maintenance, if you offer this kind of service, if you have an exit provision for clients and customers. Just like to understand what are the protection measures in these five-year contracts to get to that EBITDA margin, which is quite attractive.
All right, so let's organize this in the following way. I'll, I'll make the introduction, then I'll turn the floor to Wang to talk about government incentives, and then Rafa can answer the second question, and we'll give the floor to Juliano. Just as an introduction, we are very happy with the decision we made many years ago of having an adequate balance between our footprint here and in the United States. Over the years, both economies faced difficulties.
In recent years, both economies were doing great, leading us to extraordinary results. But sometimes one country is facing more difficulty and the other one is doing really well, and this is what is giving us this perennial result. So we're very happy with that balance. Our investments for Gerdau as a whole will be significant in Brazil and in the United States. Today, we have a lot of peace of mind. We might face some difficulties in the short run in Brazil, but this is going to be resolved for next year, and then we're going to have a very positive cycle in North America.
So when we look at all of the programs, they will bring us a midterm demand, which more than offsets the risk of a hard landing of the U.S. economy. So when we look at Gerdau as a whole. To make an introduction, Wang is going to detail this, but we have peace of mind regarding our ability to be cash flow positive, and Wang can give us perhaps some color regarding the incentive programs in the United States, so that we can give some peace of mind for our investors. Well, good afternoon to all. In the first place, I think that a possible recession in the United States is something that has been talked about in the last 12 months. On one hand, it shows the resilience of the U.S. economy.
When you speak about steel production, of course, we had some peaks in 2022, beginning of 2023, and still we are at a very positive level. If we look at the government initiatives for infrastructure, IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act, and other initiatives, there is a huge potential, and the effects of which have not been felt yet. We would have loved to see the effects already, because it would have helped us. On the other hand, it shows that the potential improvement is about to come. So we're very hopeful that these measures for infrastructure alone, of $550 billion, and this can result in 20 million tons of steel in the coming years.
The impact is going to be huge, and it can possibly offset and even create an upside in consumption, even if we have a recession. Of course, when we talk about a recession, it will all depend on the speed with which inflation will fall, the Fed policies, how long they'll keep the interest rates high. But when we talk to our customers and we think about the backlogs, they're still at a very positive level, and all of this can, can offset problems and give us a lot of stability. I also want to mention two important aspects. One has to do with the portfolio of Gerdau. We are not that dependent on rebar. We have structural beams and, merchant bars, beams and sections, and we have limited players for that. There's a good balance between supply and demand.
Two, three, two that should also remain in the coming years. So this shows that we are doing quite well in terms of our positioning in this market. And lastly, as Gustavo mentioned, we have taken measures to invest and in the commercial side, and it shows that we are competing differently compared to five years ago, and we're competing at profitability levels that are very relevant, if not the best, if compared to our direct competitors in North America. For that reason, we're very optimistic. This is a cyclical industry. Recession can come. It will probably come as a soft landing. This is a consensus now, but if we take all that into account, we feel very confident that we'll be able to surf this wave well. Even if a soft landing come, we'll be able to overcome it. We do not have sound. Please hold.
Unfortunately, we do not have sound at the moment. We have investments in the forestry focused in, on Minas Gerais. This is going to happen over time, and we have given details such as the casting of coiled hot rolled strips and investments in mining, the most significant ones. It's always important to highlight a substantial part of our investment portfolio will happen here in the state of Minas Gerais, as we have highlighted, and it will take place over time. In terms of the time to capture these projects, it takes into account the maturity, that portfolio, and the ramp-up time. Different projects will have different ramp-up times. In the case of the trees and the forests, they have a lead time. And when we start harvesting and enjoying the economics and. Two points.
With a healthier balance, we go back to our historical philosophy of maintaining investments in the moments when the economy is not doing that well, so that we can enjoy the benefits of these investments later on, and we are maintaining this same approach. The short-term situation is slightly more complex, but we're maintaining our investment plan. Since we have suppliers and partners here, I'd like to draw your attention to what Flavia said, the importance of building long-term relationships. We have a program that goes beyond 2023. We want to encourage our suppliers. We are encouraging our suppliers to have a long-term vision. We can help you understand that there's this construction here, it will end, but there's another opportunity, another construction in Minas Gerais, in another municipality. We can, in this way, create a long-term vision.
We'll give us peace of mind, and on our end, we can count on your support and the support of our suppliers, and our suppliers can have peace of mind that we'll have this long-term relationship, that we'll have investments for the long run. More and more, I want to leave behind that short-term relationship, when we have a project, it ends, and we can start over from scratch. I understand that you, as business people, we have the duty, the commitment to give you a long-term view so that you can plan for it, so that you can better structure your cash flow. And we always talk about that, right, Flavia? So talk to Flavia in procurement so that we can build a long-term winning strategy.
Thank you for the question. As regards, at the end, these are five-year contracts on average. These contracts are adjusted annually. These contracts, we're supposing, in the case of a return of payment for the whole period contractors. So if they return something in three years, the customer has an obligation to pay for the, for the full life of the contract. All of these contracts go through a detailed credit analysis. We work with AB customers. In addition to Randon Bank, they do all the credit analysis, and ABRADIST, the network of dealers, also has a natural relationship with these customers. And we have credit bureaus that help us have a specific credit policy of Addiante, and that gives us a lot of safety.
An important point, unlike other rental companies, that we monitor the way in which they use the truck or that implement, and we do that daily. In our control tower, we see the speed, fatigue, things that we can work on with the end customer to say: Look, you're about to have a problem. You're about to have a claim. You're about to have a problem. And we also have a combo. It's not compulsory, a combo of preventive and corrective maintenance using the AD3 dealers that we have all over Brazil. But that's not compulsory, but it's an offering that we have.
Thank you for the question. I am Gabrielle from Goldman Sachs. I have two questions. First of all, I would like to learn more about the US. My question is to Wang. We do agree that you have an interesting incremental demand coming from these new, you know, government programs, and you're assuring, but I would like to hear from you about the competition. How is the competition dealing with the subject? So what is the view of the competitors about that, and how do you, how do you arrive at the ideal configuration for Gerdau in North America? You have additional capacity still to come. You have downstream that maybe you want to get in stronger on the down, downstream side. And, you know, in case competitors also agree with that incremental demand that we will have. My second question is about CapEx.
In general, there are many investments now being done to increase the efficiency of the company in the past few years, and also you're investing to grow capacity, like you're investing in the mining, on the mining side. What will be the offset of these investments, and how does that impact CapEx? What about maintenance CapEx for Gerdau in the next coming years, or maybe in the longer term, once all of these assets are already more mature?
Well, thank you for the question. In regards to our strategy here, I would say that certainly the demand could drop a bit, but Gerdau in North America changed a lot in the last five years. First of all, we made investments that straightened the company in terms of the range of the portfolio of products that we offer. Like, we minimize. I mean, this still represents an important part of what we do, you know, distribution, but we are now more focused on the manufacturing. And this opens up opportunities to reach markets that we didn't have access before, and this will minimize our share in rebars.
Another point that I will highlight in terms of the IRA, the Infrastructure Act, is related to solar energy, renewable energies. We didn't have that market before. I mean, in the past, we had 0 tons being sold of solar energy. But today, we sell, I mean, we ship a significant amount because we have Midlothian in Texas, our plant in Texas, that is very well located and can serve areas that are growing, that will continue to grow in terms of solar power. So despite the growing demand ahead, today, we are operating different segments.
We have different products to offer. My last comment is that looking at our competitiveness today, we are in much better shape to keep our assets operating at higher levels than before, and this helps us to dilute our fixed costs and to get better margins, to increase our profitability. In the St. Paul's plant, we didn't lose our total volume. We maintained the volume. We migrated the market share also to other plants, and with that, we are better suited to serve the market with a better cost structure, always seeking new markets, markets that we didn't serve before, like data center, you know, solar and wind power and manufacturing. These are all areas where we were not present in the past. The competition of longs in the U.S. is very flat when we talk about investment.
The main debates are more related to the flat steel. They are talking about a possible consolidation, and that takes the focus out of what we are doing now, which is longs. They're not new added capacities. I think the market is very balanced, very flat. So no matter where you look, in terms of shipments, we, there will be a lot of stability going forward, the same thing with the spreads. Therefore, our level of concern today in North America is more related to how we can maintain our plants up to speed in terms of, you know, a technological update and being state-of-the-art. I think we will operate at very high levels. Well, I think, about CapEx, I have to make a distinction. In our industrial park, we have blast furnaces and mini mills.
Mini mills have more recurrent maintenance events, and so we have to have longer campaigns and better refurbishings. One good way to think about Gerdau's main maintenance CapEx is to think about it as a recurring CapEx at a potential, I mean, at a level of $200 million. But we must also take into account in the short run, I mean, in the next three to four years, we have to look at the information and the charts that Rubens showed us in terms of the main maintenance schedules and the maintenance of the blast furnaces in Ouro Branco and also in the coke plants. So we will certainly arrive at a right composition. Also, as we are in the market, we are constantly looking at the health of the blast furnaces, the coke plants, and the melting shops.
I mean, it's very easy to maintain a scrap mill because it's done regularly, but there are some pieces of equipment that are quite complex. So when we look at the entire manufacturing park in Brazil, I mean, there are many complexities, and these questions have become more recurring. What about the coke plant? What about the blast furnaces? I mean, the slide that Rubens showed of all of the downtime or the maintenance stoppages, what is our long-term timeline? What about the health of the machines and our maintenance schedule? So I know that your questions are related to everything that is happening in Brazil in the past two or three years.
Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Vernon, Japur, and all of the other managers. Also, Renata, it's always a pleasure to be with you. I think it was very nice to hear the other managers and to get all of the new information. I will start my question. I, I don't think I introduced myself. I'm Edgar from BBA. I would like to start with special steels. We've noticed that the strike situation in the U.S. is being aggravated, so what is your view? What are the risks of this strike?
Are you thinking about interrupting production somehow? Is this affecting demand? And what is your conversation with the OEMs? And now thinking about Special Steels Brazil, how do you see the demand dynamic performing next year? I mean, I know that this year was quite challenging with some shutdowns of plants and whether you see some more optimistic conversations for next year. Do you think that next year we will still be it's still be very challenging?
My second question may be addressed to Juliano and Werneck, but it's still talking about Next, Gerdau Next. I recall that two or three APIMEC ago, you said that the ideal thing would be that Next would one day account for 20%-30% of Gerdau's revenue, but the revenue level was quite different than the level of revenue that the company has today. So what is your view in the long run for Gerdau Next, in regards to, you know, business representation, and how significant that could be for Gerdau's overall sales? I know that this is a low-hanging fruit, and a lot of people factor that in when they do the modeling of the company. Okay, Rodrigo, you answer the question about the strike in the U.S., and then Aldo can talk about Brazil, okay?
Okay. Well, well, thank you so much for your question. I think I have here some interesting information. If you look at the beginning of the years 2000 all the way to today, there was a significant reduction in the big three share in the production of vehicles in North America. 65% yesterday, accounts for almost 40% today. And, Rodrigo, can you w hat are the Big Three?
Yeah. General Motors, Ford, and I think one other company that at the moment are on strike. So in general, the U.S. market changed a lot in the last few years, and we also have a growing exposure. We are exposed to other companies like Honda and Nissan, basically the Japanese and the Koreans. Having said that, at the closing of September, we are not seeing in September any impact on our shipments, but certainly, if that strike persists, we may see some impact in the coming quarter.
It's hard to tell right now, and our customers are not feeling a heavy impact, but in case this strike persists, there may be an impact. Any shipment that may be impacted at the end of the year will generate an additional volume the coming year in terms of what has to be recovered. Another interesting issue is the inventory. The U.S. vehicle production chain is, you know, recovering or repositioning their inventory in the following months. And eventually, it's important to make adjustments, knowing that what we miss in terms of volume will reflect additional volumes next year.
Thank you, Good afternoon, and thank you for your question. In relation to the automotive market in Brazil, as you all know, this year, there were three variables that impacted the Brazilian market. The first one, and the most important one for me, has to do with the technological changes that started occurring last year. They changed the methodology from EUR 5 to EUR 6, and this had a significant impact in the manufacturing and sales of trucks.
As you could tell from the presentation, a truck uses 1,500 kilograms of special steels. The second important factor is the spike in interest rates. The third important factor was the restriction to credit for the acquisition of vehicles. For next year, we see the improvement of this landscape because there has been a reduction in interest rates, and we also see a very conservative, you know, growth. We see vehicle demand growing between 6%-7%, and we also expect to increase our exports. Thank you.
I would like to take this opportunity to say something about Aldo. Aldo is the expert in Brazil special steels. Well, he's been in Brazil for only two months, and he managed to say juros, which is interest, instead of interés in Spanish. So I'm really amazed at what you have accomplished. This issue that I said that in up to 10 years, we will have new revenues coming from new businesses, but I never, you know, demanded this from Juliano. So we believe that with time, we will be able to evolve, and we will reach a good level of additional revenues that will allow us to deal with seasonalities and market, you know, oscillations. We just want to have a better stability in terms of revenue generation throughout the year.
But this is not a target, because soon we could start doing bad businesses just because we have to comply with a target or to reach a target. This has been an aspiration, but it's not a target that Juliano has to reach. I think that this process involves a lot of learning. Ever since we announced Gerdau Next. I mean, think about it, you have a target where the denominator is the volume of your core company. Well, that wouldn't make any sense, because if Gerdau reached 82, everything we want, also as next, as we want that 82 to become 160, 320 or whatever, so the denominator has to increase, so that comparison shouldn't go in that direction.
The question is: how do you become relevant, and how do you make the best businesses for the company, the society and the shareholders? That's the question. And maybe the best deal is to exit out or maybe to have an IPO and put the business in the market. Therefore, we started to learn how to do things better, because you have to manage the portfolio of certain companies that are correlated to the steel business. So if I were to give you a more direct answer about what we want, we want to be relevant in all of the sectors where we operate as Next.
So you look, you just saw logistics as being one relevant topic. We want to be among the top three companies in logistics because we want Gerdau to be seen as a relevant player in logistics. So why not, you know, fight to be number one or number two? New Wave is another example we showed you. We want to build, if not the largest, but one of the largest platforms of renewable energy, wind and solar energy in Brazil. We are dreaming big, or certainly, you know, we have to, to grow step by step. And as we grow, we will make the best possible decisions along the way. We will continue to bet on our growth.
We will bring maybe other partners, reduce our stake, or maybe we will seek for an IPO. I don't have the right answer. The right answer for you today is: we will be relevant in all the business that Next operates. This is Gerdau's, you know, view. We want to dream big as we do with the steel business. I know that we have a schedule that we're trying to meet, but I would also like to mention a question that we received via chat.
Renato Antunes asks: Could you please elaborate on the alternatives considered for the Ouro Branco mill after the cycle of refurbishments of the current blast furnaces between 2029 and 2034? What can you share with us regarding the technological possibilities studied?
Thank you for the question. Well, there are a number of alternatives and diverse economic conditions that will lead us to choose different options. You have alternatives that people call the blue furnace, where you maintain a blast furnace structure, but you work with the recovery of hydrogen gas. If you have the availability of affordable natural gas, you can move to a DRI line with an electric oven. You can work with bio coke injection instead of coal injection. So there are a number of technologies that are being considered.
In that timing of 2029, 2034, is a good timing for us to see which one of these technologies will mature so that we can make a more illustrative choice. There are technologies to capture and use of CO2 that is emitted. So it's a, there are a number of options, really. We are considering many. We believe that the timing is very appropriate for us to have an illustrative choice.
Oh, I have to add to that, and building on what you asked before we are suffering the China element. On one hand, with imported product that we have here, on the other hand, they are making it difficult to export the capacity that we built in Brazil over time, our ability to export. And this strategy started many years ago. Now, we have a Rubens. We have a capacity that's about 28% that is directed to the foreign market. We built this in a strategy that in oscillations in the domestic market, we should have a buffer to meet the needs of our customers in the short term. We could never leave the domestic market unattended.
So when we have these oscillations, the natural path would be the ability to export. Right now, this capacity is blocked because we cannot export with the current level of profitability comparing with the Chinese steel. But this is a reflection we've been making over the years. 20% are adequate for the current reality. Our response was that over time, we should reduce this capacity and create other internal alternatives via many mills, maybe to serve the market in these moments of oscillation.
There's an interesting journey of turning the old Açominas or Gerdau Ouro Branco, turning into a mill focused on producing higher added value products than exporting and producing semi-finished goods. Rubens showed this in his slide. Perhaps you didn't capture the message, or perhaps we didn't explain this really well, but we can stress that we've been reducing the share of semi-finished products. This important investment in mining that we are making aims to assure all stakeholders that we're going to have low cost, high iron content, iron ore, to meet the transformation of Ouro Branco in the next 40 years. Because steel producers in Brazil that did not have their own supply of ore will be facing a lot of difficulties in the future.
Most of us are from Minas, and in the state of Minas Gerais, we live, and we know that the famous iron quarter, and a good part of it is the story is told in this museum. It has been losing the capacity to produce and the content of iron. So in the coming years, if we have iron ore, it belongs to us at adequate cost, with adequate profitability, with no dams, sustainable mining, so that we can supply this ore to Ouro Branco in the midterm. That's a fundamental decision for us. It was not by chance that we did a detailed analysis recently, for us to translate what we oftentimes call reserve. What we call reserve and now we call reserve. Not what was called resource, we call reserve.
In other words, we have our ore certified with a guarantee of thousands of studies. We know that the iron ore is there. And then we justify these huge investments that Rubens is making, so that in 40 years, this will be available to us. In the coming years, we will be able to make additional investments in Ouro Branco, so that we can have more and more finished products. When we have, for example, the hot rolls, the coil, the hot rolled strips, we should have this additional capacity of coiled hot rolled strips. And a part of this product, semi-finished, that was going to exports, will be supplying the domestic market.
So our vision, in addition to everything that Rubens is saying, is that Ouro Branco is going to be a very important platform to serve the market with higher the value product, as is the case of beams and sections. Here in Brazil, we have only one rolling facility here and one in Mexico. So we are going to be investing in growing our production of beams and sections, also using the semi-finished product capacity in Ouro Branco. And let me add to one of the points about ore. We recently had a group at INSEAD that made a study with us.
Brazil, given the amount of infrastructure and economic development that we still need to have, and given the amount of scrap that is generated and the time it takes to be recycled and get back in the process, Brazil will need primary steel, in other words, steel that comes from ore, for at least 60-70 years. We will need it, and that's what Gustavo said is important. We have to ensure ore in the short term, but also in the midterm.
Brazil will continue to have primary steel manufacturing to sustain its economic development. For those of you who can stay tomorrow, one of the visits will be to get to know a little better the investment in mining, you'll learn what sustainable mining is with no tailings dam, and Rubens will be with us. So if you can stay, and if you're willing to learn more about mining in Ouro Branco, we'll be available tomorrow.
Very well. Unfortunately, we are running out of time. I know we have a lot of questions. We received some questions in the Q&A, and I know that you have some more questions. Please come to the Investor Relations department. We can answer all of your questions. We can even schedule a meeting. I apologize, but we need to follow our agenda. Before that, I'd like to invite [inaudible] I just want to say that if you still have questions, we'll be around. Yeah, I was going to say this. 'Cause, you know, we can answer your questions informally after we end the event. And if you have questions, you also can send them to Renata.
You see, we want to be more and more transparent. We want to give you more and more detailed information so that you can understand what we are thinking. This is not ending here, and we are going to have a cocktail. The executives will be with us during the cocktail so that you can talk to them. Tomorrow, we'll visit Ouro Branco. We'll visit the Miguel Burnier mine, and on Monday, if you can be with us, Midlothian and Wang will be with us to welcome you. I'd like to turn the floor to Renata. She's going to give, on behalf of Gerdau, the APIMEC prize for the 28th consecutive year.
Congratulations. I'd like to congratulate you on this fantastic event. We have massive attendance from capital market agents, and if I can give you a spoiler, in the IR magazine next month, we're going to be talking about the importance of this visit to company, to what extent this enriches the knowledge of our analysts. So congratulations for this event, which was wonderful. Congratulations for this open conversation with our investors. And this APIMEC seal represents the 28 years of APIMEC and Gerdau together. This is the Emerald Seal. Very few companies got to the Emerald level, only three or four. And you, these are the most precious gems in the APIMEC collection. Congratulations on the partnership, and thank you. Well, we would like to thank APIMEC for this long-term narrative. I normally say that I have a lot more perspiration than inspiration.
This kind of event is born from the kind of stimulus that you give us. You, APIMEC, and the capital market, and our friends here. You know, we have this culture of being very open, very transparent, and this continuous improvement idea. Today, tomorrow's event is an advance, and we're open to improve even more next year. We have to get the lessons learned from this event to have an even better event next year for all of the stakeholders that have a relationship with us. You, in your partnership with us, APIMEC and Gerdau, you stimulate us to improve every day. Thank you.
Please fill out the survey, the satisfaction survey for this event, so that we can improve even further next year. Before we move to the part that you'll like the most, the cocktail party with our executives, I'd like to make some announcements if you're going to participate tomorrow in the visit to Ouro Branco and Miguel Burnier. We have to leave at 6:00 A.M., punctually. If we're late, we won't be able to get back in time for you to get your flights back to São Paulo, Rio. I know that some people will remain in Belo Horizonte, others will go directly to Confins Airport. So please, let's be punctual. I'll see you tomorrow and just in front of the museum. Please arrive 15 minutes earlier, we have to leave at 6:00 A.M. Wear trousers, jeans, preferably. se.
Women, don't wear earrings, necklaces, this kind of thing, and clothes and the shoes, plea Again, thank you very much to all our executives, employees, the whole IR team that participated to put together this event. Communication teams, the press, everyone attending, and I'd like to invite you for our cocktail and for a cheese tasting that is offered by the Reference Center of Craft Cheese. A project also supported by Gerdau Minas Gerais. So nothing better than try the delicacies of the region. Thank you very much to those joining us online. We are closing now. For those who are here present, let's go to the cheese tasting. Thank you.