I'd like to greet everybody with a very good morning. I thank each and every one of you who are here in the B32 Theater in São Paulo for Kepler Day 2024. And for those who are following us through the broadcast from unimaginable places, for us at Kepler, it is a privilege to see your interest in our company. I am from the communications area at Kepler Weber, and it is a pleasure to greet you for a day with a great deal of content. Kepler is a company that will be celebrating its centennial next year, so we will be attaining that centennial milestone that very few companies achieve. And we are here to strengthen our relationship so that you can be fully aware in terms of investments and what Kepler can offer the market.
I'm going to go very quickly through our agenda so that you can come to realize which is our content this morning. We're going to begin with a brief Luiz Tarquínio, the Chairman of the Board, followed by our CEO, Bernardo Nogueira, who will speak about our 100-year-old trajectory. And this will be separated into strategic pillars offered by Fabiano, Diego and Murilo, who is the co-founder of Procer, a company that is part of Kepler and a partner in terms of digitization. And showing this in number four, we will have a very enjoyable moment where we have invited executives. It's the agribusiness session.
We have Airton Galinari, Frederico Logemann, Geraldo Berger, and Pedro Palma, companies that work throughout the agribusiness chain, all the way from crops, the logistic part, the cooperative, which means you will be able to hear a bit about each stage of the process. And Kepler, of course, is involved in this entire chain. It will be a moment with a great deal of interaction where you can pose your questions. This panel will be moderated by Jean Oliveira, our Commercial Director. And ensuing this, we will speak about our financial indicators presented by Renato Arroyo, our CFO, and finally the Q&A. So prepare your questions. We would like to have you participate. And if you're interested in knowing something additional from Kepler, do participate in the Q&A session. At the end, Bernardo will do the closing, the closing remarks. Bernardo, our CEO, that is our event.
Of course, we have huge expectations for this day, and it is a privilege to host you. For those who are here live, the presentation is available both in English and Portuguese at our IR site. You can download it and check the content at your own convenience. Very well. For the opening of our event, I would like to invite Luiz Tarquínio, the Chairman of the Board.
Good morning, everybody. I would like to thank all of you for your attendance, and I'd like to praise Kepler. I have been part of the Board of Management. This is my first mandate, and I do like to praise the company. I'm going to address you very briefly with, of course, things that you are aware of, of course, because of this habit that I have of praising the company. As has already been mentioned, we're referring to a company that will celebrate its centennial. It's a resilient, strong company, and there are very few companies that reach that moment. Now, what draws attention from Kepler are the connections it has with agribusiness. Kepler is part of the chain, as we have mentioned, and has a very strong connection with logistics. Agribusiness is a benchmark, a reference for productivity, for food safety, for the generation of employment.
It is the lung of the Brazilian economy. Brazil has an enormous vocation to be successful in this area. This is what has been built throughout the years: competitiveness and productivity. What we are missing, perhaps, is competitiveness. We are highly competitive. However, we could do something better for our business, for the Brazilian economy. I have to refer to infrastructure and logistics. It is no novelty that we face problems. We have gaps when we speak about highways, when we speak about ports or railroads. This could aid and abet us a great deal. Along with that, in the logistics system, the problems with silos, the warehousing system. Silos are flagship. Despite these difficulties, Kepler has been working ever more with innovation, with technology, following a new path digitally.
We have created a company called Procer that supports remote sensing systems, which, of course, has been very helpful and has offered technological support for the customers. We're also developing a greater force in P&D. We want to move forward the research and development, not only for our products, but also to make sure that competitiveness will move forward. And of course, we have partnerships. Partnerships is part of our DNA. We do have a leadership position in the market when it comes to relationships. Everything is driven by the relationships that the company has created through its history with its own customers. And it's important to observe that the customers vary from rural agriculture, industries, and others. We're also investing in the rendering of services, support, and spare parts for our customers so that they can become more and more competitive. This is another growth vertical that we have.
It is important, and I'd like to refer to risk management because our customers oftentimes suffer because of the inability of managing the risks that they are submitted to. Speak about climate risk, financial risk, sanitary risks, as well as other situations where our customers tend to suffer because of their difficulty in management. And we are a solution to facilitate that management: Kepler with its products and systems. I would like to refer to another topic that refers to the stance of the Board of Management, a stance that already existed: the investments in corporate governance. This is of the utmost importance because it gives trust to the community of investors. Well, you're here because of that. This is our fourth Kepler Day. And corporate governance, well, the company went to the Novo Mercado with several demands that we had to comply with. And there is no turning back.
We create committees. We have strengthened the board to ensure that we have good communication, that we work with transparency, always working very closely with our customers, and consistent results that the company has been presenting for six years. For those who are aware of the story of Kepler, you know that we have faced difficulties through time, but for the last six years, the company has been generating very positive results. This is admirable even in situations where the customers are facing adversities, so Kepler is a company that is part of agribusiness, but it isn't only that. It has a connection with the logistics system. Later, we will have a panel with some distinguished guests who work in different segments of what we call agribusiness.
Now, to end, I like to speak about Kepler, and I like to praise Kepler because it works in these different segments of agribusiness. It is a logistics company working with its own system, and it is a company that merits the attention of the investor community. It pays out dividends. It has a governance group with a strategy that they are pursuing. And many companies do not have that momentum of building this type of situation: the strategy, the governance, the follow-up, a desire to work more closely with all of you and the entities that you represent.
Not that we have a lack of diligence in other entities, but we do want to work very closely with you, communicate with you to, of course, enhance your interest and not only work with entities, but other investors who are not very aware of this well-structured and capable company that is about to celebrate its centennial next year. So once again, I would like to thank all of you, and I hope that along with our team, you will have a very fruitful morning. I'm convinced that we will be very satisfied, and we do hope that you also will be quite satisfied with this opportunity. Once again, many thanks, and I will turn the floor to the rest of the team, those who will offer you all of the information that we would like to convey to you. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Luiz Tarquínio for the opening. Now, many of those aspects that Luiz Tarquínio has referred to will now be detailed further by our team. We're going to begin to speak about that trajectory, that centennial trajectory. We have very little time to speak about these 100 years, but we're going to speak about important factors and also refer to our future vision. What is it that we want for the coming 100 years? To do this, I would like to give the floor to our CEO, Bernardo Nogueira.
Good morning, everybody. It is a pleasure to be here with a full house. We have almost 500 people who are very interested in Kepler's history and are passionate about our history. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, but we do have one that is even wearing an orange shirt. People who are truly passionate with the company. Now, to set up this morning, we based ourselves on your feedback. We have held more than 100 conversations this year with analysts and investors based on three broad topics. All of this based on your feedback. First, a bit of history: how that DNA, that orange blood came about and what happened to it through time. We're going to understand this. Now, in doing this, we take a look at agribusiness.
We have a panel with four black belts in the business, and we're going to speak about what is different, why we haven't had a raw power causing a rupture in that cycle and showing resilience in the warehousing business. We're going to speak about our present-day results. And with this consolidation of positive results in the six years, we're going to begin looking forward. We are going to speak about the future and detect which are the opportunities until 2030. We're going to share with you our 2030 strategic plans. To begin with a little history, Olga and Adolfo Kepler met in Germany. They had the problem of losing their father. We had the crisis of the First World War, so they migrated to Brazil in the search for opportunities. Olga arrived in January.
As soon as she arrived in January, she lost her mother and other members of the family, and he came down too. They met in Porto Alegre, which is a German town. He worked as a blacksmith. They met at church. They began their relationship. They had their first child, Otto, who was one of our founders, and well, a great deal of resiliency, a great deal of work. Adolfo, who is a dreamer, decided he wanted to be a farmer. He heard that there was cheap land in Rio Grande do Sul, and so he convinced Dona Olga to move to Panambi. Well, Adolfo attempted to become a farmer. He was not successful in that. You did receive a book about the first 50 years. Now, the story that I'm sharing with you, Dona Olga tells us his story in the first chapter.
The house did not have walls during the first year. It took one year for the walls to be put in. Well, Olga was a German girl, 20 years or older. She came to Brazil, and she speaks about the noise in the forest. That's how it all started. Then Adolfo, after over a year trying to be a farmer, was unsuccessful. And his neighbors saw that he had excellent tools. And so he said, "I would like to order some equipment from you." And he melted an iron bed to produce the tools. He became an iron worker and an entrepreneur. I would think about Olga. I would love to have a statue of her because accepting to move there and have her husband melt the house, oh, it's hard to find someone like her, with all due respect.
But that's how this amazing story began. And then in 1925, in May next year, we're going to celebrate our centennial. But in 1925, they acquired this blacksmith shop, and the whole family started working there. So there are amazing stories in the book that you received about the first 50 years of the company. So 100 years is a lot. So we tried to break it down into three phases. The first phase is of the entrepreneurship. That's where the orange blood came about. And you'll see a major concern with quality from the start. Adolfo Kepler's cart could carry five tons. If he promised three tons, it could carry five tons. So there are things we still hear today. What Kepler promises is what Kepler does. This concern with quality has been there for 100 years.
Another thing that is present in our company is the care for people. We have three directors, Diego and Fabiano, who are the second generation at Kepler. Their parents worked at the company, and Marcos Schwarz, who has been at Kepler. He is the fourth generation. His great-grandfather was in the picture in 1925, and then his grandfather, his father, and now he is our supply chain director, so we care for people. Many people have been with us for a very long time and are proof of that, and then the second phase started in 1980 when the company went public. And then we went through hardship. We had some difficult years. Those of you who are alive at that point in time know what hyperinflation was all about. Brazil was an importer of food, so different times, but in spite of all the struggles, the company evolved.
It's important to highlight our long-lasting relationships. Airton was just saying that they had a dryer weeks after the founding of Coamo. The guys went to Panambi. They drove all the way there to buy a dryer. And the relationship started back then, you know, with the leaders of the Brazilian agribusiness. And then we started the third phase, which is the phase we are experiencing right now that started back in 2015, 2016. And a big milestone of this phase is operational excellence. On January 5, 2015, the SAP was installed. And then the Lean Manufacturing. Now I know more words in Japanese than in German because the Lean philosophy is now enrooted in our daily practices with lots of efficiency, working very close with our customers, with the opening of our distribution center for parts. We now have nine distribution centers working very close with our customers.
The icing on the cake, the integration with Procer. This IoT movement, technology connecting all of our units, which is something that adds a lot of value. This is our history. Now, going to the second pillar of our conversation. Many of you asked me, some of you experienced investors who have been with Kepler for over 10 years, and you're like, "Why aren't you having any sales drops in 2023 and 2024?" I brought some slides to give you some background information and to put everything that is happening in the Brazilian agribusiness in perspective, and especially in storage. Everyone knows the brilliant trajectory of our agribusiness: 5.7% CAGR evolving from less than 100 million tons to 330 million tons. An amazing growth. You all know these numbers. Let's see what lies behind all that.
If you think about the three phases of the history of our company or the history of agribusiness in Brazil, we had a production that was concentrated in the south of Brazil in the 1980s, 1990s, and beginning of the 2000s. Agriculture was concentrated in Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, and Santa Catarina. Everything was going well with good evolution. But then in the years 2000 and in the second half of the years 2000, we saw an evolution into the Cerrado biome. Coamo and Mato Grosso do Sul and farmers who went from Passo Fundo in Rio Grande do Sul to Sorriso. They left 30 hectares to develop 3,000 hectares in Sorriso and also Maranhão and Piauí. So agriculture moved to the north of Brazil. And it may seem quite obvious, but when you have this level of migration, you need to create schools, hospitals, roads.
You need to develop everything. So if you go to Lucas, Sorriso, Nova Mutum, the cities there are 30 years old. Everything is new there. Everything is being built right now. So you have this migration, and you need logistics to support that growth. And we're going to talk about Rumo and the evolution we saw in Primavera when we went there two weeks ago. And there is another interesting point. I had the opportunity to live for five years in the U.S. and work in the U.S. agribusiness. And if you go to Illinois, Nebraska, South Dakota, all the farmers are proud to say, "Oh, we've been here at this farm for three generations. We have corn and wheat, and we've been doing that since my great-grandfather." And that's not something that happens in Brazil. You know, we only have the first generation in the north of Brazil.
This is a young agriculture happening there in the north of Brazil. And this young agriculture, this young farming is interested in opening land, buying land. The obsession of Brazilian farmers in the first part of the 2000s was to acquire land and develop that land. And everyone who does that knows that this is very expensive and it takes time. So farmers were in debt, high leverage, you know, because you're leaving 30 hectares and buying a land of 3,000 hectares cannot happen overnight. It requires 20 years of work and investing all of your capital in that development. And as you develop, you need equipment. So you have to have 10 combines, 10 sprayers, and so on and so forth. So this whole agribusiness was focused on this expansion and migration into the Cerrado biome in the northeast and north of Brazil.
This is also the story of my father. In 1985, my father decided he wanted to be a farmer. He worked at Vigor at the time. We would spend our weekends looking for land in Goiás, Minas, São Paulo, Paraná. In 1988, he gave his car to buy a small piece of land in Goiás, in Cristalina. He acquired that farm in 1988, and he started to plant soybeans in 1994. Then in 2004, 10 years later, he did a Kepler style at the farm. Now he has irrigation. Now it's an irrigated land and has storage after he put his first Kepler silo in 1994. There has been this evolution of young farmers and this migration into the Cerrado. We have the Maslow pyramid.
You know, the basic needs were to acquire land and develop the land and the equipment for that. And once they can start breathing, they will invest in logistics to have their own truck, storage, irrigation. And Brazil doesn't have a third major frontier. We have Mato Grosso, Matopiba with Goiás, a little bit of Pará. But no, there's no major new frontier. Agriculture is growing in-house and adding value to its own production. And now with cooperatives also adding value, that has been the mission of Coamo from the beginning. And now we have this corn ethanol industry, once again adding value to its own region. This is what we've been seeing in terms of evolution in recent years. So we have migration and young farmers trying to add value to their production. And then they think, "Where can I add more value to the whole chain?
Where should I prioritize my investments?" And I really like this chart. I've heard from some of you experienced investors saying, "Well, Bernardo, the deficit has always existed." When we say that the deficit is bringing demand to the storage business, and some of you say, "Well, the deficit has always existed." But that's not that true. Back in 2009, there was no deficit in Brazil. The static capacity could meet the production needs. You had some bottlenecks in one state or another, but we had an appropriate supply of storage. The deficit started to come about in 2011 to 2015, but then we had a bad crop year in 2016, and Kepler grew. You know our history, but the deficit was very small.
What we see in the third phase of the company is this growing deficit that created a lot of inefficiencies and stress on the logistics chain, inflation on freight fees. This deficit scenario, combined with farmers that could invest more and this productive chain that could invest more, created favorable conditions for our third phase that was very productive. It's always important to look ahead. Sometimes I hear people saying, "What if everyone starts producing more silos? You have that pendulum and so on." Brazil is going to see growing production levels in the future. In the panel, we're going to ask you, when will Brazil reach 500 million tons? Some of you will say, "10 years, 15 years, five years." You will all have the opportunity to share your view. Brazil is going to 600 million tons.
When I was in college, we produced less than 100, and we have reached 300 million tons. So there's no question that yield will continue to grow, and the deficit will continue to grow as well. So even if Kepler and the whole market doubles capacity, we'll continue having the same situation of stress and demand, even in 10, 20 years' time. This is what the numbers have been showing us. And speaking about numbers, one of the issues of agriculture is its cycle. Agribusiness has a cycle. It's seasonal, especially for soybean growers. You look at the price of soybean. We are showing you the EBITDA of soybean growers. And we chose here the sales of machinery as well to compare. So we went to the Brazilian Association of Machinery Manufacturers, and we see here the sum of all machinery sales.
We can see this is something very interesting that matches Kepler's history. We've been through many ups and downs together with Brazilian agribusiness, going through all the cycles. What is different now? We see a low cycle in agribusiness. Some people are saying, "Well, this is just going back to normal." Actually, farmers are saying, "No, this is worse than normal." 2023 and 2024, the margins have been worse for soybean growers in the Cerrado region. We see a direct correlation with the sales of machinery. We're talking about tractors, combines, sprayers. Sales levels are back to the levels of 2019. These two seasonalities here are going hand in hand. Of course, we have a different situation now, and we would be going back to the same levels of 2019 and 2024 at Kepler, but this is not what we are experiencing.
Kepler is growing as compared to 2023. Our volume sold is actually above those of 2021, 2022, and 2023. So we see consistent demand for storage. There is a clear prioritization of storage happening here. So summing up, the market has been put in priority to storage. Storage has always been needed. I heard the other day from some of you that silo was a Greek word and that whenever human beings started producing, storage became a need. But storage has now become a priority. There is a demand that is here to stay, and it's growing. And there is another interesting factor in the market here, which is the industrialization of the agribusiness. You saw that article on Valor Econômico saying that there are BRL 20 billion in investment in ethanol coming in the coming years. So you have to store corn to make ethanol.
And this is what the market's like today, and this market has found Kepler ready to perform. We were doing our homework in Phase III. We implemented the SAP, L ean Manufacturing, and PDCA, which is paramount. Diego's responsibility, the development plan of Kepler's enterprises to meet the demands of our customers, our distribution centers and IoT with Procer, so we got a favorable market and a company that was ready to perform, and that gave us a comfortable position to have a future ambition, so we got organized. We aligned with the board of directors and the management to plan for the future, and with all the opportunities we have, everything that was being done, we established our 2030 plan that is broken down into three stages. The first strategy is to strengthen our leadership as part of our core business. We want to do what we do right.
This is about intelligence and market coverage, you know, making the most of opportunities and research and development. We've been investing more and more in R&D in recent years and will continue to do that. Customer needs are always changing, and we need to be updated to bring solutions to make our customers more efficient. Finally, service excellence. Last but not least, Diego has been conducting an analysis that shows that customers with a higher NPS when the construction is delivered will come back faster. 70% of our sales are for existing customers. Service excellence is key. They know the difference of buying a Kepler or buying from a competitor. The first strategy is to strengthen our leadership and grow one percentage point of market share by 2030. The second pillar of the strategy is to expand the market where we're active.
We have a very strong leadership, excellent relationship, and strong brand knowledge, but we know that there are segments that surround us that could also be explored in our market. There is an article in Valor Econômico two months ago referring to seeds and coffee, for example. We don't have equipment for the processing of coffee. This would represent the entrance into a new market, a mixture of organic growth and M&As, new business models, novel ways of adding value to our business, to our customers, and of course, Diego will be speaking about new business models with a lease of some silos, and the third refers to the streamlining of our units. Brazil has approximately 18,000 units, many of which, of course, require refurbishment either for greater efficiency or security, and this is an addressable market for us.
Now, the third point of the strategy, which we have left for the end, but that is important, is the connectivity through the agribusiness world. Now, the size of this circle is proportional to what we see nowadays because of that merger with Procer, which was very similar to Volkswagen that was selling Fusca, Pampa, Gol, Kombi. They were selling cars, no connection with the cars. They were selling 50,000 units in Brazil. With the appearance of Procer, we now have two units that are fully connected with the company. This enables us to understand what is happening. We can help our customers to preserve their grains, to better manage their units. And this opens up a completely new universe. Murilo will refer to this, but we are able to communicate with other players.
Now, with all of this data, we can bring about greater efficiency to agribusiness, connecting information that would be essential for strategies, for example, for Pedro or Airton here and other players in this chain. This is an extremely broad universe that we will analyze in detail, generating value with the data we already have at hand. We say that Procer is like the Apple Watch of silos. Through our Apple Watch, we have 120 billion pieces of information. We're speaking with financial institutions who would like to offer hedging to the farmers presently. Perhaps this would be half of the path, but we can extrapolate based on that data. Murilo knows how much soybeans we have in Brazil, the corn that we have in Brazil, thanks to that intelligence that we can use in the chain to generate greater value and increase efficiency. Very well.
What are we going to do now? We're going to speak about one point of each of these strategies, beginning with Fabiano, who will speak about research and development, product development, what we do in that field. We're going to speak about the lease of units through Diego, the market expansion based on new business model, and Murilo will speak to us about the connectivity of our units. I would like to give the floor to my colleague, Fabiano Schneider, therefore to continue with his presentation. Good morning . It's wonderful to be here with you to share with you our strategy to strengthen our market leadership. This is a strategy that is based on three very broad pillars that we have been working on.
The first one was mentioned by Bernardo, the market intelligence, the market opening, something that we're working on as part of our strategic planning for KW2030. Secondly, the excellence of services, and third, investigation and innovation in new products that I would like to refer to. I will give you a bird's eye view of what we're doing and how we have decided to position ourselves in that field. In terms of product development, all of this is based on four pillars. We listen to the market, we participate in events, we, of course, keep abreast of trends, bring them into the company to release better products that will make our customers' business more profitable. The first idea is optimizing labor. In any segment nowadays, labor has become a difficulty, and in the field, the situation is not different for our customer.
There's that need for automating the processes because of the scarcity of labor. The second pillar is the increase of capacity. And what do I mean by this? Bernardo mentioned the growth of our harvest throughout the last few years and in the shorter harvesting period. So we need to have larger equipment to be able to sustain that demand that comes from the field and have the right product for that. The third point is energy efficiency. Among other efficiencies, of course, having a product that is fully enhanced with an ESG footprint for a lower emission of CO2 and lower consumption, of course. And last and not least important, the safety of operations, having products that are ever more automated, that have greater safety so that we can operate them in our units and offer better services to our customers.
I bring information to back up what I am saying here. The decrease in the population working in the primary sector in the last 10 or 12 years. There has been a drop of almost 20%, which, of course, backs up what I said about the scarcity of labor, which is growing. Secondly, the larger equipment. This is our own data, and if we look at one of the main equipment in a storage unit, a grain dryer, we see the increase in the sale of dryers above 200 tons per hour in the last four or five years. We have had a threefold increase, and of course, this is a trend, perhaps a reality that we observe in the market.
Before we speak about further details, I will show you a typical storage unit so that you can understand the components better. Now, how does one of these units operate? In a very simplified way, the truck will come with a bulk grain in the hopper. They will discharge the hopper. It's a kind of a large cube where we store the grains. It will go through a conveyor that will take the grains to the cleaning and drying stage. After cleaning, it will go to the drying stage, and then we have the horizontal and vertical conveyors, after which all of this is stored in a silo. One of the main components of a storage unit is the grain dryer. Why am I referring to this? When we speak about automating units, a very short time ago, most of the units were working with conventional drying.
Conventional drying mostly had four people working around the equipment to be able to operate the unit and do it properly. Now, Kepler has been focusing on Lean Manufacturing, as mentioned by Bernardo. Since the end of 2019 and 2020, we put in place the Lean development of products in our engineering. Based on that, we have developed a series of new equipment that enhance that performance, enhance the efficiency and profitability of our customers. I'll show you an example, the BioCap, which is the equipment that you see to the far left. This is a biomass feeder for the dryer and heat generators that also feed into the dryer.
They allow for greater agility in the feed, a more robust system, along with a new line of dryers that we launched in 2021, with a consumption that is 30% less in terms of thermal energy and 25% less in power. Now, along with automation, this allows this operation with greater efficiency with a single person, with all of the controls that we have at present, along with the partnership with Procer, all of this in the palm of our customer. This is what we have been working on. The harvest is coming about with greater volumes and in lesser periods. Everything has to be faster so we can face the changes in the market. We have been working on this.
What has helped us a great deal are the virtual prototypes, the simulations that we carry out in research and in investigation to deliver our product faster and according to the true needs of our customers. This is a simulation of a new line of cleaning machines that are being developed. They will be launched in 2025, and the rotating structure and how it moves, and alongside with this, the air system inside of the chamber to vacuum the dust. In research and development, eight years ago, we would work with 30 simulations per year of this type. Nowadays, we're working with a considerable increase, 200, one a day, seven-fold more than we had eight years ago, so this increase in pace is necessary to be able to work properly with this process, and along with this, faster launches of products.
Kepler is the company with the largest number of patents in the segment. We have 27 that have been registered too, with a protocol for the time being, and we have very broad experience in this segment. Now, when we look at Phase II, Phase III mentioned by Bernardo, look at our launches until the beginning of 2008, 2009, on average, we would have one launch every four years for a new product line or a completely new product, and with the implementation of Lean Manufacturing, we have been able to significantly reduce this time in 2015 up to 2016. We would produce a product every two years.
Presently, we have been launching products every year and a half, working to have a launch that will be reduced to a year to have a new product, a novelty every year, something novel for our customer to be able to better service them. Now, which are the results of all of this for the company? We worked on an initial restructuring of research and development in the company in 2019. Ensuing this, we began to work on the Lean development of products, which has been the impact on our results. At the beginning of 2020, only 7.4% of our profit came from the products that were launched in a period of up to five years. Now, this process has been evolving, growing, and this year we stand at 46% of new products coming in five years. Our invoicing comes from that 46% of our invoicing.
Now, during this five-year window, we have worked on 94 different projects. I would like to underscore a resumption and growth of new products of 0.7%-11% of our revenues. And when I refer to new products, these are products that had not been manufactured in the past, had not been offered to the customers. Now, additionally to that, this exponential growth in the last two years of 18.6% of our revenue, reaching 46% because of these products. And besides the energy efficiency, the thermal efficiency, the reduction in the emission of CO2 coming from this new line of dryers that already represents 13,000 tons. And the forecast is that the coming year, this will become 27,000 tons that we will no longer be releasing into the environment. But also focused on developing better products, but with the innovation horizons in mind. We're working with our KW2030.
Now, Kepler was concentrated on enhancing what it was already doing and working on the market knowledge that we had. Our ambition for the coming years is to have a better balance, to work 18%, 15%, and 5% with the goal of having this goal of revenue coming from the products developed in the last five years. The goal is to reach 55%. We're also preparing our manufacturing unit to ensure that they can sustain all of these new developments. Our Campo Grande unit at present has 33,000 sq m, and 20%-25% of this area continues to be available for growth and for new products. It's this red fan that you see. We produce three brown products, dryers, channeling, and all of the part of safety, the yellow products, as we call them. Up to 2030, it will go on to seven products.
The BioCap is a product launched this year that is being produced there. We have an additional three broad family lines that will also be manufactured in this unit in Panambi. We will expand all of this, especially for services and spare parts. We're going to refer to this a little ahead. Our distribution centers and services are always closer to the customer, and we're preparing the plant so that it can grow in that segment. Another highly important segment that is part of our history refers to ports and terminal equipment with greater capacity to work with ships, logistic terminals. This is how we are preparing our units so that they can work with those products and service our customers properly. Panambi still has significant area for expansion, as well as Campo Grande, where we will have a new unit that will be fully used.
This is what I wanted to share with you in terms of research and development. I now give the floor to Diego, who will refer to our second strategy. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us this morning. It's a great pleasure to be able to share with you what we've been doing in our strategy to expand our market. Bernardo started this topic. We've been working on many topics. We have a great pipeline of opportunities to expand the market. A list of M&A under analysis. But today, I have chosen one of the cases that I really like, which is a thesis of unit rental. So we want to share with you our rationale and how we've been working on this opportunity. The goal is quite simple.
The strategy is to build storage units in strategic locations to rent to customers without having to invest in it. In order for this to become scalable, we would need investments from third parties. That's an important point, and there are many drivers for this. The top three drivers are to have Kepler as a main player in this area. We think Kepler can be a main player in this new solution and this model. We'll be able to create demand and expand the addressable market. We believe that units made within this model would be different from the traditional model, so that's a driver. A second driver is to capitalize on the unique position of the company in this market. This is a company that has 100 years of operation and know-how. We want to make the most of this to make this model work.
The third driver is to generate recurring revenue. We've been talking a lot about that with some of you. You know that this is one of our goals. This model would be able to deliver exactly that to us. When we talk about Kepler's unique position, what do we mean by that? We believe that Kepler knows as no one else all of the stages of building a storage unit. Almost 100 years of experience gives us the confidence to make this rental model work. Starting with the location where the unit can be installed, access to customers, project deployment, all the way through operations. We have a lot of expertise in all of these stages, and we want to make the most of this know-how to make the rental business model work as well.
Defining the location, we have a lot of intelligence with information about the production areas, storage deficits, logistics. We know exactly where the businesses are happening at all times. This is information we have access to. We believe that this knowledge helps us to define the best location to have rental units available. And this gives confidence to investors as well. They know that the units will be placed in locations with liquidity. That's one of our premises, to place our units in locations with good liquidity. And when we talk about customers, it's all about access. We have a great commercial footprint, over 100 people in our commercial team to serve the whole market. It's over 1,000 businesses happening a year. This coverage, this footprint, and access to customers is something that we have like no one else.
And this can help us make the most of the opportunities in this rental model as well. And we have a great relationship with our customers. 70% of our customers are recurring customers. So we have access to this customer base to create this new model together. And this has been helping us as well, as I will mention in a minute. And when we talk about projects, it's all about accuracy. Our engineering force is key here. We want to build the best project to all of our customers. And this makes perfect sense in this new business model as well. We have learned that the total cost of building a unit has to be very efficient for this new business model to work well. So with an engineering team helping us create the best solution, we can do that. We have over 100 engineers investing in technology.
This is an image of our BIM, an engineering system that we have been implementing that helps us greatly when we look at the new projects, and when it comes to deployment, this is what we call capacity. This is our daily work. It's part of our know-how to deploy the works in the field, so we manage over 250 simultaneous works. This is our day-to-day work, and this gives us confidence as well. In 2021, we had our first deployment with the 360 delivery model where Kepler delivers the unit from end to end. We find the land, we build the unit, and we deploy the unit to deliver it to the customer as a turnkey solution, so we have capacity to start working with the units from scratch in this rental model as well, so that's why we firmly believe in this new model.
Finally, our presence, our whole support and maintenance footprint, we'll be able to make the most of our footprint with nine development and distribution centers and will be able to monitor the rental units. With Procer's technology, we'll have control of all of the units in this new business model. This is what we call a unique position. It would be a waste not to make the most of this to create this new business model that we now have in mind, our rental business model. What does that mean in practice? We usually joke around saying that we're trying to make this egg stand still, but this structure is actually quite simple. The complexity is about finding balance, balance of these three pillars to make the model stand still. We've been working on this for two years now, and we're almost there.
The model is about structuring and connecting the stakeholders. Kepler will do this together with investors and customers. I'll tell you more about our rationale. Kepler is right at the center because with our know-how, we know that we can build units and get a percentage of the return on the operations. That's why Kepler is at the center, connecting the different stakeholders. On one side, we have investors. We are working hard on this because through a fund or through another mechanism, we believe that the financial market can fund these operations. This is a solution or an opportunity to allocate capital in agribusiness. We see a lot of interest in agribusiness, and this is yet another opportunity for you to invest money in agribusiness. Of course, you investors will be compensated, will get return on the rent as well.
Then on the other side, we have customers who use the units without having to invest or include the assets in their balance sheets. We talk to many customers, and all of them tell us that this is an interesting model that would make sense for their business. But of course, this has to make sense financially as well. This is what we've been working on because everyone already believes in this model. So it must be a win-win situation. That's why we've been creating this model at six hands, Kepler coordinating all of that, but together with investors and customers. And for customers, as I said earlier, the unit cost needs to be efficient because it's through the total cost of the unit that the rent will be based. Customers will pay rent based on the unit cost.
This needs to be a win-win situation for this new business model to work. Those who invest want satisfactory compensation. Kepler Weber will get a percentage for putting the pieces together, and the customer needs to have operational efficiency. They will pay rent, and of course, it will have to make sense from the business perspective for them as well. We are now connecting the dots and adjusting the model, and you'll see in a minute that we're getting there. At the bottom here, we included some observations. This is a very straightforward model, as I said earlier. What is complex here is to find the balance to make this egg stand still. The model also has indirect gains for all stakeholders. I included here Kepler Weber's gains in addition to the return percentage.
Each unit that will be built will sell equipment together, so more revenue and equipment sales come in for Kepler, and we also want to have maintenance contracts for those units because those units will be rented. They will belong to a fund or to some financial mechanism, but maintaining the units is paramount, and that's going to generate an opportunity for a maintenance contract for Kepler, and we have been focusing on first-line customers for this, robust players that have as part of their strategy not allocating new assets to their balance sheets as a way to accelerate their strategy. Most of our customers have a strategic plan for 2030, and with this model, they can accelerate their strategy. This is what some customers have been telling us, that they will be able to speed up their strategic plan.
Finally, I want to share with you the evolution of our journey. Entrepreneurs start thinking about a business, learn more about it, and adjust it. We've started talking about this last year. First, we had this business view. We started conducting benchmarking with companies in irrigation and tractor, companies that have this rental model in order to better understand the concept. We put together our thesis, our business plan, and we started working with partners, with construction companies to understand the model, and we learned more and more about this. This year, after the lessons learned from 2023, we realized we would have to adjust the concept somehow, adjust the model. We started having conversations with customers with a different model in mind. We worked with some investment funds to see if it made sense for them.
And so we realized that it made sense for all stakeholders. So we got really excited, and now we are almost there. In the second half of 2024, we finalized the model with the three stakeholders, and we have now presented a proposal for a unit in Mato Grosso. If confirmed, that's going to be the first in this model. And the first is always harder. It's like being an entrepreneur. Starting is harder, but we have great expectations because we believe this is a scalable model. So the goal here was to show you that we are very optimistic. There is only one final step for us to reach the ideal model, and we've been working on this opportunity with a customer in Mato Grosso. That was the last slide of my presentation. In a nutshell, this is a model that we intend to build without investments from Kepler.
Our goal is to create demand, expand the addressable market, and have more deliveries. We're very optimistic. We believe this is going to work. In the coming weeks, we hope to have news to share with you. Thank you very much. Now I'd like to invite Murilo Schneider to talk about digital. Thank you, Diego. Good morning, everyone. It's a great pleasure and satisfaction to take part in this event with Kepler and share a bit of our strategy. Bernardo talked about the overall scenario of Kepler's strategy and the agribusiness view in this amazing market. It's a great honor for me. Before I talk about revenue generation coming from data, I'm going to tell you a bit about Procer's history. Some of you might not know, but Procer was founded back in 2011 by myself and Tarcísio.
When we started to have contact with the after-harvest of grains and the storage business and comparing with other crops like tobacco and rice, we had this whole embedded technology and automation. So we looked at the grain after-harvest business, and we realized that after all the stages of increasing yield in the fields and machinery and after-harvest, once the grains reached the silos, we would often lose view on the quality of the product that was stored. We realized together with this technology 4.0, a concept that came about in Germany, we noticed we could create a digital sensor for grain storage that would give us visibility about the quality of the product stored. With an automation system, we would be able to access it from anywhere in the world and see the conditions of the grain storage.
And we could embed automation systems in another strong pillar that we identified since the founding of Procer was about the know-how related to labor. Because if we were to limit ourselves to providing only technology, we wouldn't know what the crop would need to be kept in high quality until it could be used. So from the first silo that Procer installed and the first customer we built, what we call customer success strategy. So we got that knowledge in order to help customers make decisions and identify risky situations. This is a very strong pillar for Procer, aligned with what Bernardo has already mentioned. And as a consequence to this opening to the market and this disruptive strategy, we started to connect the silos. We now have this information available to us and to customers in real time, and that was a major accomplishment.
Year- after- year, we are from Criciúma, Santa Catarina, but we expanded our commercial and technical operations. Today, we are present with over 1,500 active customers, over 2,000 storage units, and over 9,000 silos. Today, our platform is running around 60 million tons of product, which is worth BRL 120 billion. This has been a journey of resilience. Kepler is celebrating its centennial, and Procer is celebrating 13 years of operations. In 2011, the grain production was around 163 million tons, but we have doubled in size since then. Agribusiness is growing dramatically, and Procer has also been very disruptive. With our customer base, we have first-line customers. We're very happy to have SLC, Coamo, and Rumo as our customers. We are there and the main customers of the agribusiness area.
A thing that I'd like to share with you is where does this growth come from, this increase in our footprint and connectivity in the after-harvest business? It all comes from results. If we compare the situation of our customers before Procer and after Procer and with our technology and services we provide, we've been able to reach these amazing numbers. When it comes to reducing the after-harvest losses, we have gotten to BRL 1.5 billion that we have avoided in the harvest of grain. If we translate this into cultivated areas that were lost during the storage process, we can preserve 200,000 hectares through this truly spectacular work done through the equipment and on the field. Now, with this solution, we are reducing losses in the silos, and this has an impact on electric power, of course.
Now, to go back to what Fabiano said about development and the significant evolutions we have had, this is a way that shows you how technology 4.0 already has brought about significant impact in the after-harvest. Of course, Procer is playing a leading role in this process, and we're highly engaged in offering all of this to our customers and expanding that base of connection. Now, to share with you, despite all of these achievements during these years, Procer has not stood still and enjoyed its success. This year, we had the launch of a new software platform that we call Ceres Orion 2.0, a platform that was completely rebuilt because we are able to visualize all of that connectivity, the volume of data, the application.
On a mobile phone, you can receive warnings, notifications, and have a very broad vision of the management of units and the 3D volume measuring unit that enhances our speed and allows our stocks to be monitored. Now, we have launched a new unit with large players in mind, as some of our colleagues here, on a single screen, on a single dashboard. We can observe three pillars of the operation. First of all, the operational part to exercise risk control, to work with enhancements, a view on the product quality to make decisions, which are the grains that we should request again, which can remain in the silo longer, and another opportunity with enormous potential is that financial view. Based on this, the customer can see the product that he has stored, compare this with market data.
This enables us to show you how worthwhile it is to invest in technology with that comparison of how it was before and after, and how important it is to have a grain storage unit for the sake of this comparison. Therefore, this module, therefore, is available, especially geared to larger players. Now, this year, another significant achievement for us is our data warehouse, where we consolidate all of the storage data that we have with a real-time feed and comparisons with the market, with statistics, climate, the monetary cost of some of the products. This is a new vertical that we are building. Now, we have consolidated our experience in the construction of hardware silos, and now we have this new technical vertical that refers to data.
It's very interesting to share with you that in the part to the left, we have 16 million tons, BRL 120 billion in terms of products, of course, evidently respecting the confidentiality and the ownership of the data of our customers. But this enables us to have a full view of the agribusiness. This year, the peak of storage of soybeans in Brazil was in April. Last year, it had been in May. Now, this year, we had that difference as well in September and October in terms of storage peaks. Of course, because of exports, what is happening in industry, and so much more. So this enables us to have that singular and very broad vision through connectivity. The goal is, of course, to offer more results and solutions to generate added value for our customers, the owners of the silos and the storage units.
But Procer can also be a connectivity between the field and players that are working in agribusiness, which I will speak about in this last slide. Here we see the avenues for monetization. On the one hand, we're very focused on grain quality. We have strong developments when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence. This year, we embedded some solutions that have been very helpful in the management of units. Now, the pricing of units as well. We see that product quality will become more evident and remote sensing evolution in terms of the flow of units and the quality of products. Now, we have a consolidated vision, and we're working with data to manage the units, always focusing on optimizing the safety of units and the issue of labor, which has turned into a significant challenge. But we can nevertheless optimize the operations of our customers.
Now, one of these strong avenues for growth. In October, I visited several companies with Bernardo, and we have detected new monetization avenues. We can connect with market intelligence companies, with trading, offer them statistical information, information on the trading of products, and forecasts for the future. This is a very interesting field that we can work with. We have several visits that are underway. Another very promising vertical are the insurance companies. There were several products that existed in the past, but that have dropped out of the market because of insecurity of the operation, fermentation of grains, for example. Now, this product existed in the market, but was withdrawn with Procer, with the issue of safety. And as it is a digital link with the customers, it offers us an enormous potential. When operations are not well executed, they can pose significant risk.
With all of the operations we have shared with you, the drying operation is ever more safer. We have a dynamic stance when it comes to the storage situation and the product stored. Another vertical with enormous promise are the banks. We can connect producers, farmers with financial institutions, working with dynamic storage with a more assertive vision of credit, of course. We can offer optimized credit lines, more interesting credit lines for customers, and also take advantage of our technological security in this process. Finally, logistics companies, where we can offer a view on the efficiency of the operation. We can share the volume stored, the volume shipped, and we can also optimize the route. Very briefly, I have spoken about our new avenues for growth and about what we have called our journey. Now, Kepler has spoken about digitization and technology.
In 2022, we took a stance in that strategy. We carried out the acquisition of Procer, and we can now follow up on all of this evolution and see how technology has marked the difference when it comes to harvesting. This process is quite mature, and we see that we have been important players in this, and we're very confident about this journey. Thank you very much . Thank you, Murilo, and thank you, Diego, Fabiano, and Bernardo. Very well. We've spoken about the trajectory, the future vision of Kepler, and we have detailed our three strategies. I'm going to now ask our staff to organize the next part of our session. People who are different links in the agribusiness chain. We have called this the Giant Agribusiness Panel.
In practice, you will be able to see several of the aspects that were presented by our executives. For example, the use of data, the issues of logistics. That topic will be dealt with at length. Initially, our guests will have an interaction with our moderator. In doing that, all of you here will be able to pose your questions, including those who are accompanying us through the online broadcast. Very well. If you could, please bring some water for our guests. First of all, I would like to invite Jean Oliveira, our commercial officer. Let's greet him with a round of applause. Now, the guests who have very kindly accepted the invitation to be here with us, Geraldo Berger, from Bayer, Latin America.
I invite Frederico Logemann, the head of innovation and strategy for SLC Agrícola. Airton Galinari, the CEO of Coamo. Thank you very much for being here with us. Pedro, the CEO of Rumo. Please, feel at ease, take your seats, and we will give you the floor, Jean. Good morning, everybody. It's wonderful to be here with all this team. We were speaking outside and saying that if we could choose a team, we would have certainly these four people. We thank you so much for accepting the invitation. The goal of being here today is to offer broader knowledge. We spoke about production, technology, innovations, enhancements, production at cooperatives, how to verticalize this process, and how to move our grain.
That is to share a view of the entire grain chain. To begin this conversation, a question to Geraldo, once again, in the context of what we have just seen in the early part of this morning through the presentations, the incredible increase of production in the last few years. So, Geraldo, which are the factors that have leveraged this increase of productivity? How many soybean and maize varieties are launched every year? Well, first of all, thank you for the very kind invitation for Bayer to participate during this day. It is a privilege for us to see the trust and the energy that Kepler has to bring solutions to our farmers who do face that problem. They are producing more, and they have to do it ever more efficiently with quality.
If you look at the color of my hair, I think it is very telling of what I have seen in agriculture. It has become very obvious through the graph that Bernardo showed us of the growth of Brazilian production during the last years, but a piece of information was missing, Bernardo. Besides the increase in production, put the increase in area in the last 25 years. Since 2000, we have had an increase four or five-fold in production, and the area simply doubled, which shows you the importance of innovating in agriculture. My trajectory has always been in research and development, genetics, and technology, and I was privileged to observe, as some of you were, that where there is high productivity in soybeans, it was 100 bags per hectare. We now have producers reaching 100 bags once again.
That increase in productivity due to the use of innovation, technology, and adoption on the part of Brazilian producers is what has led to this efficiency. There are some relevant points that I would like to underscore. In the mid-1990s, Brazil set up legal frameworks that were fundamental for research and development, the patents, the law of production, and seeds, and an additional pillar. All of these guided investments in Brazil. Before that time, we had official institutions such as Embrapa, and we are aware of their importance, but there was no private sector in participation in innovation and genetic improvement after the introduction of biotechnology in Brazil. A highly concrete example are the maize crops. We have 2,000 kilos per hectare in average. Nowadays, the productivity is six tons per hectare in a very short period in the last decade. And this is due to innovation.
This is due to the productivity increases that have led to the deficit shown by Bernardo, 100 million tons that require storage and are left without. All of this thanks to innovation and the increase of productivity. To answer your question, as an illustration, in the last five years, over 1,000 varieties of corn have been launched in Brazil and hybrids as well. This shows you the drive, the trust in investment and investigation. Now, the use of technology in soybean, corn, and cotton has changed 100%. 100 hectares that we plant in Brazil with these three crops use this technology. This, of course, is a fundamental factor in the productivity increase in soybean, corn, and cotton. Now, to take advantage of your answer, now how do we look upon that technological gain that is here? And how can we fit this into the process of streamlining the foreign?
Which are the opportunities that we have presently for that? Thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be here representing SLC. One way I like to explain what's changing in farms is that we at SLC, with a large-scale production, we have always had gains of scale, but also difficulties of scale. So managing a farm with 50,000 hectares, 60,000 hectares was always hard to monitor everything that was happening in the farm with 50 km wide from end to end. It has always been hard to control everything that is happening in the farm. So digitization and technology have been helping us to control and visualize everything that is happening in the farm. So just like Murilo was showing about the silos that can now be monitored, we can now visualize what's happening within the silos.
We now can also visualize what's happening in our operations with the telemetrics from machines, digital rainfall monitors, satellite images. We are now able to create new indicators and track our whole operations. And there is a specificity of what's digital that is harder to disseminate to all farmers. So SLC and larger farmers are at the forefront in the adoption of these technologies, and we see a major effort of some startups to provide the solution to the mainstream. I think that biotechnology is a very efficient way for you to disseminate technology because it's within the seed, and farmers will only have to continue planting that seed to make the most of that benefit. Now, when it comes to digitalization, education is also needed for farmers to be able to make the most of that technology.
One of the things that we had to do at SLC, taking into account that famous tripod of people, processes, and technology, in that specific order: first, people, then processes, and then technology, in order to be able to deal with this new layer of software and hardware that we are now coordinating in our operations, we had to start working with the right people to create the right processes in order to make the most of the technologies. We now have a digital agriculture manager. This is a position that we didn't have in the past, but this is now a person that is controlling this new layer of hardware and software, which is something we didn't have eight to 10 years ago. Farmers are slowly acquiring seeds, fertilizers, crop protection, fuel, but they're also paying for digital services gradually.
This is now entering their production costs, and of course, the benefits are reduction in the cost of inputs or increase in yield. Another key element is connectivity. Without connectivity, there is no digital agriculture. Something else that we had to do was to connect all of our crops, all of our fields online. If you go to any of our fields, you will have cellular signal in order to benefit from this whole technology. That was all just to start off our conversation. Thank you. That's impressive. We have farms in Maranhão, in Xingu, in remote areas of Brazil, Querência, and having a digital farm in these locations is amazing because of the infrastructure difficulties in those remote locations, right?
Airton, considering what Frederico said with connected farms, connected farmers as well, and seed technology, then we look at a cooperative, and we know about the importance of cooperatives and the strength of Coamo in this landscape. The work that you do is paramount. How has the cooperative been working to lever the growth of your members and to add value to their production? Good morning, everyone. Thank you for this invitation and congratulations on this event. Unlike large companies that concentrate all of this in one single management, in the cooperative, we have the opposite. At Coamo, we have 32,000 members, and 70% of them are small and tiny farmers, you know, fewer than 50 hectares, and they're spread in 75 municipalities, and these are municipalities in which the infrastructure is very scarce.
It would be very hard to have anyone willing to invest in those locations to make the activity feasible because in many of these cases, it's just infeasible to plant soybean in Nova Tebas. Do any of you know Nova Tebas or Altamira do Paraná? It's a region with low area utilization, and farmers cannot buy inputs at competitive prices. They cannot sell their grains at competitive prices. They don't have logistics infrastructure to accommodate their production, so they don't have anything. It's unfeasible. The cooperative is there to supply all of this demand and make this activity feasible by providing technical support, first of all, and knowledge. Knowledge is the best input that cooperatives can provide farmers with, and that's what we do with technology dissemination programs with our partners.
Bayer is one of the main partners of Coamo, together with Kepler, and also providing infrastructure, you know, units to receive grains, to store grains, and farmers, for you, just so you know, they store their production, and in the case of Coamo, they have one year of storage included, and they can decide when to sell, and once they deliver their grains to the cooperative, the cooperative does not own their grains, and we don't speculate with the farmer's product. The farmer will define when to sell, and then the cooperative will just facilitate. So it's a different concept. The same happens when they buy inputs. They don't buy from the cooperative. They buy through, by means of the cooperative. So we have a group of 32,000 farmers to create a negotiation mass so that the cooperative can negotiate with the manufacturers.
So it's a great way to make all of that feasible. Another important point is verticalization, industrialization. We now have 12 plants for coffee, soybeans, refined oil, margarines, vegetable fat. We have wheat mills as well, so we produce flour for cakes and bread, cotton breeding. And now we're going to go into corn ethanol with the first corn ethanol plant that has been built. And these are businesses to which the farmer would not have access otherwise. And our largest farmer plants 35,000 hectares, but they don't have volume for a soybean oil plant. They would have to have 600,000, 700,000 tons of soybeans to crush, and that would be very hard for them. So through the cooperative, we can gather all of the farmers to have volume.
In the case of Coamo, we get 6 million tons of soybeans, and with three plants, we are not able to process half of that. And that makes new businesses feasible. So rather than selling grains, they sell oil, margarine, biodiesel, and same for wheat flour. It's not a wheat seller, but a flour seller, and they can access markets through the cooperative in ways that they wouldn't have been able to otherwise. And they benefit from the results because when we define the price that we pay to farmers, all of these businesses are considered. This year, the grain compensation was about 10% below the soybean crushing business. And this is definitive for the commodities market in which the margins are much lower.
In addition to concerns with succession and keeping the families in the farms, because these are small farms that could become unfeasible otherwise, all of the social work that the cooperative does, we have a different approach on the business. It's not only commercial, but also social. And this benefits farmers and makes it feasible for them to continue working as farmers. Thank you. It's impressive to see the work that Coamo does in these municipalities. And these are municipalities that lack investment. So you have a social impact on the whole region as well when you do that. Pedro, thank you once again for joining us. Well, we talked about production, and we've been to farms and industries, and in some cases here, we also talked about the need of having appropriate logistics, infrastructure, and efficient logistics.
In recent years, we saw the evolution of our logistics, especially when it comes to making Brazil competitive from the farm gates onward. So within this horizon, what do you expect in the logistics arena? Is there room for more logistics update? What is the technology like? Can you give us your take on this, Pedro? Thank you, Jean, for this invitation. Thank you, Bernardo and our Kepler colleagues, as well as panel members. It's a pleasure to talk about Brazilian agribusiness and the role of Rumo in logistics expansion in Brazil. From a practical perspective, we all look at the same numbers, you know, the trends of growth in Brazilian agribusiness, and it's unstoppable. We don't know whether we're going to reach 500 million tons by 2035 or 2040, but we'll definitely get there in our lifetimes, in our careers. From a practical perspective, it's unstoppable.
This relevant part of the world, you know, with Asia and the Middle East, with growing population and growing income, demanding protein, demanding food, and who in the world has this capacity to produce with technology, hard work, and resilience to advance? It's impressive to see the history of Kepler's founders. When you see all the sacrifices they made, this applies to all of the links in the agribusiness chain, and the increase in production we'll need will come from the Brazilian center-west region, from regions that are not necessarily close to the ports.
We already have strong agricultural production regions in Paraná. Airton could speak more about that agricultural potential and everything we can do to advance, but in some regions, we see the production being industrialized and automated, and in other areas, we see an increase in volumes and increasing volumes in the commodity segment in regions that are 700 km, 800 km, 2,000 km, 3,000 km away from a port, will require logistics infrastructure. There is no way out, and throughout time, and I can talk about what Rumo has been doing in this landscape as we've been creating a robust investment program since we were founded. Just a side comment, next year, we are going to celebrate 10 years of our rebirth. This is Rumo's rebirth in its current format as a railway operator.
Airton got to know us when we were being reborn, so to speak, taking over railway operations in March to April 2015. So we're going to celebrate 10 years next year, and we hope we'll be able to celebrate our centennial as Kepler is now celebrating theirs. But the journey throughout these last 10 years has been a journey of lots of investments. So let me give you an example of Mato Grosso, just so you understand the power of transformation and everything that is still ahead of us. When I took over the company, the old operator had moved 12-13 tons of grains from Mato Grosso to Santos. And in the last 12 months, we have, I'm rounding the numbers, but we have moved around 25,000 tons. So in less than 10 years, we more than doubled our transportation capacity.
This is an example of the Mato Grosso to Santos route. Did that happen overnight as a magic trick? No, that required a lot of investment. We invested approximately BRL 30 billion in recovering the railroad infrastructure, acquiring trains, locomotives, enhancing the port capacity, enhancing the operations capacity of the Paranaguá port, and improving the productive capacity of the whole railway, and we did that because that's a need of the agribusiness. There is a demand there, and we are the logistics provider who's there to support this growth, and when I talk about Mato Grosso, I told you we had this growth of 12-13 million by 2025, growing 12 million tons during this period of time, but if we look at IMEA growth projections for the coming years in Mato Grosso, and this is just an example, right?
I could give you examples of other states in Brazil, but anyway, Mato Grosso should go from a corn production of about 50 million tons in 2024 to 80 million tons by 2034. So 30 million tons in 10 years' time in corn alone. For soybeans, it would go from 45 million to 47 million tons to 65 million tons in the next 10 years. So another 20 million tons of soybeans. And this is just Mato Grosso, 50 million tons in 10 years' time. Think about the logistics capacity that you need, the number of silos that you have to sell, and the railway capacity that we need in order to absorb all of this growth. So it's not that Brazilian logistics is not growing.
It's been growing, but the logistics need is also growing at an accelerated pace, and we need to be able to catch up in order to get there, and of course, that's why we have projects of the new railway in Mato Grosso, 700 km of new railways that we are building now. As we speak, we have almost 5,000 people working to build this railway there, so we have projects happening right now as we speak in order to increase our logistics efficiency, and the logistics efficiency comes not only from the physical infrastructure, but also from technology and data usage. We have been advancing a lot in that as well, and you have to make the most of the assets you have in hand in order to increase your efficiency.
I love taking part in meetings like this with players of the industry because deep down, we are an integrated chain. The more integrated we are, the more knowledge we have about each other's pains and opportunities, the stronger we are. The competition in Brazil is not among ourselves. It's not me against other logistics providers or Coamo against SLC in production or Kepler against other suppliers of storage products. Our competition is against global traders. How can we become more competitive than the American market or the Argentine market? How can we get there with quality, efficiency, with a robust industry to win this battle of global trade? Because at the end of the day, agribusiness is not an individual game. It's not a domestic market game.
It's a game that requires us to be increasingly connected and working together in order to keep the growth wheel running and so that we don't stop in any link of the chain because growing without storage or transportation and without being able to process these products locally will make all of us lose in the short term, and the opposite is true. The more integrated we are, the better our future and the future to all of our companies. For our audience here, and of course, for those who are attending remotely, please send in your questions for the team, and I would like to speak about the productivity that you mentioned. Bernardo was joking that I would do that. What have you seen happening? How long did it take us to get to those 500 million tons in Brazil? Let me speak about rounded figures.
Using the graph offered by Bernardo, in 2010, we had 100 million tons. It took us another 20 years to produce an additional 100, and it took less than 10 years to then produce 100 million tons. So in the future, with the adoption of technology, with greater production efficiency, with that digital use in planting, I don't think it will take another 10 years to gain another 100 million tons to reach that 500 million goal. Now, I was looking at the figures and projections of 2015 and see what we would be producing in 2025. We reached that forecast three or four years before. When we look in the next 10 years, we should get to those 500 million tons, according to the official forecast. But I'm convinced we will still have positive surprises. In three to six years, we should get there.
So last week, we were speaking about a grain group, Grupo Grão, and the cooperative is now investing in storage capacity from 5 million to 7 million tons. Can you say about this scenario something needs to be taken into account, not only simple calculations when you speak about production? We have to have a market. Somebody has to consume at that speed. We had that significant growth, all that potential, because since 2000, China began its consumption. Formerly, nobody sold soybeans to China. They weren't part of the market. In these last 20 years, their growth was exponential since 2019 to present. We haven't stopped increasing our exports to China. The same volumes, they have been importing 98 million, 100 million, 102 million tons of soybeans, and the population has not increased. The per capita consumption of protein in China is higher than in Brazil.
A Chinese will eat more animal protein than a Brazilian citizen. And this is important. We don't have a new player. We have India with a large population, but they do not consume animal protein unless, of course, they change their custom going to change overnight. So is there an entrant that could absorb all that surplus of production that we have in an average horizon? That does not exist. If we say I'm going to double capacity, put another 100 million tons of grains in the market, that perhaps will not be that simple. Is there potential for that? Yes. Everybody refers to 40 million, 50 million hectares that could be replaced of degraded pasture. Once again, this is not the best land. We have to work on that. This will be costly to open up those areas. They have to be feasible.
If you don't have a high buying market or that market that grows at the speed that we're growing, there is a restriction in demand. We have to be cautious when analyzing data, not focus only on potential. Yes, potential if we have a market to outflow the production. We were doing well. There is no other area in the world that can open up 40 million hectares. Maybe Africa, but because of the problems there out in the United States, the area has not changed for some time. In Argentina, they tend to increase the soybean production or corn production. That's what there is. So the potential is o ur biofuel is an important way out for the agribusiness for biodiesel, corn ethanol. This could be a solution, and the growth will come from biofuels and perhaps not food themselves. It's an important new path.
Brazil will be able to do that. The United States does that, taking out products from the market, and what they will have is simply an organic growth of 1.5% a year. So there has to be that area expansion, and we have to be cautious and analyze where we are heading. The significant movement at present is that of biofuel. The United States is building plants focused on oil. Of course, this will decrease their supply to China, will decrease their supply to the market. There's a market rearrangement that we need. There's the payment issue. Opportunities for growth indeed, but without a market, there is no growth. We have to be cautious with this. Of course, this might take longer to happen because of this specific market, but I have no doubt whatsoever that that significant expansion will take place in Brazil.
We doubtlessly will get to those 500 million tons. We have the capacity for that, but let's be more careful. We do have world challenges that we have to surpass for the production to grow and to have a consumption that can pay back all of this production. Okay, Pedro, your thoughts? Well, a great deal has already been said. We look at the results and, well, what Airton has just mentioned. We have stability in the population growth in China, for example. When you look at projections for 2050, the world population will go from 8 billion people at present to approximately 10 billion. China with stability, perhaps dropping. Of course, there is still growth, which will drive consumption. And regions in Asia, the Middle East, and other areas that will demand a higher volume of agricultural products.
That is the journey in terms of what the world needs. As Airton said, that vision that we have to be more competitive than the rest of the world. We need to ensure that we are the prime supplier, the supplier of the first choice. If there's a drop in the market, if you are the best supplier, you will lose less volume. If you grow, you will grow more. And we need to guarantee the same. We have to guarantee the same for agriculture. There will be a demand for food throughout the world. We need to become more competitive. It's not simply thinking about how the geography benefits us. There's a great deal of work, a great deal of effort we have to deploy to become more competitive, to penetrate those markets that are necessary to allow for our opportunities to mature.
I'm also very enthusiastic with the industrialization process. When we think about corn ethanol, eight years ago, nobody would give a cent for that business, and now we see how thriving it is, the incentives that are given to farmers, incentives for all players to make investments to service that market. In that case, we don't depend on exports. We have an internal market that is truly a thriving market that will allow for the growth of several of the links in the chain, and the export of ethanol for supply of biofuel throughout the world is a future promise. It's the vocation that Brazil has that we have to make the most of with a great deal of work.
I don't doubt that Brazil is a place to be in when you speak about agribusiness, the capacity for generation, and the capacity to create logistic infrastructure to absorb all of that growth. I'm going to break a bit with your line of thinking. Diesel, methanol. Well, we say there will be a surplus of protein, of vegetable protein that will become animal protein. So the demand perhaps will not be only for the export of grains. I believe we will have an evolution. If Airton is correct, China will have stability in the future, but the other Asian countries have not reached that standard. This represents an opportunity for Brazil, well, to break with protocol once again. The issue we will face, perhaps a media problem, I would call it, those who are preparing the companies that are here is the issue of sustainability.
Nobody has soybean with the good carbon footprint that we have that has been proven. A few days ago, we saw the cancellation of the European rule for demand of having an origin that has no deforestation. We were prepared to prove what we had, to sell our product with a premium. So Brazil, Brazilian agriculture does have that opportunity, not only in the carbon credit market, but also in that market where we can prove our traceability. There are some factors that are a problem that will represent an advantage in the Brazilian market if we listen to each other. We have a great deal of topics for discussion. If we remain here, we will have questions going on forever. If we could please get to your closing remarks, and we will allow our audience to take the floor. Geraldo, your closing remarks.
Bayer is a company that lives and breathes innovation. Our purpose is science for a better life. So we want to continue to invest in investment and development in the businesses that we have at hand. I'm satisfied to see that our production will become ever more efficient. There is a new component of regenerative production, and Brazil will be a main player once again, producing with productivity and regenerating our soil and our production in a sustainable way. This will doubtlessly be an enormous differential for Brazil. Frederico, once again, thank you for accepting the invitation. We have a long-standing relationship with you, so thank you for your comments. If we go back to what Geraldo mentioned, we do have that revolution in the biologics, also part of that issue of regenerative production.
15% of our agricultural products include this idea, and we're quite enthusiastic with the possibilities of carbon credits, of selling the credits. We do have the methodologies for that, and we're exploring the gains of scale to do this. Now, in the Cerrado, we grow a great deal because of that. We have a farm of 20,000 hectares-30,000 hectares that we have taken on. We have become larger, and of course, we're enjoying the gain of scales of this new structure, and we will try to contribute to reach those 500 million, do our part in that. Airton, we spoke a great deal about production, growth. In your comments, I would like to hear about what's happening with Coamo. Well, the cooperative will celebrate 54 years the day after tomorrow, and during those 54 years, we have always been growing to service those that work with us.
The mission is to generate revenue for those who are part of the cooperative. This is how we launch all of our actions. It's a good moment. If it's the best of all our years, absolutely not. We had a reduction in invoicing because of the price. The average price of fixation of soybean was BRL 135 per bag. This year, it dropped to BRL 115. Of course, we had frustrations of somewhat lower summer harvest. It has been a challenging year. The growers are facing difficulties because of the two prior years that have caused financial problems for them. They have to renew their inventories. Now, this year, we have the lowest inventory. Therefore, we need rainfall for farmers to be able to recover, and it's a good year, a year with good results for the cooperative.
Very generally, the companies this year are doing better than they were last year. Growers don't like sudden fluctuations. We had years where soybean was 200 BRL, dropped to BRL 100 . Growers don't thrive in that environment. They do better in stable environments. We are presently in an environment of greater stability. So for the growers and for the companies, we will have better times going forward. Thank you, Pedro. What can you offer as your closing remark? I want to reinforce what we have already discussed here. Rumo believes in the growth of agribusiness and, of course, in the need of having a more professional, competitive agribusiness that uses technology. You can count upon Rumo in that process in the areas where we are active. Continue making investments, continue to demand our services because we consider ourselves as a link in a gigantic chain.
We need to work together to have coordinated and joint work. This is my final message. You can continue to trust Rumo because we will do our work. We are together. Very well, we offer you the floor for questions. Should there be any floor to the participants, any question, I'm sorry, for the participants? Bernardo , our shareholder, congratulations for the event, for the guests. An exceptional event in truth. As Pedro mentioned, there are several links in the chain. Many of them are very strong, and the chain is only as strong as its links. The weaknesses of the links is funding.
The weakest link in this chain, and what can we do to redress this, to reinforce it, and to ensure that all of the links are stronger so Brazil can be more competitive vis-à-vis Argentina and the United States? Well, we're not growing with China, but the need for protein of Asian countries and African countries should increase. Something we don't know about. Perhaps there will be potential from other Asian countries as well. Berger, would you like to respond to that? Well , t he farmer are the weakest link, and they are fearless to produce in a tropical environment in which weather instability has been increasing. The pressure of pests, diseases, and weeds is unlike any other in the temperate climate.
Farmers here are the heroes of this chain because they are brave enough to produce in this very unstable environment, and they are still the most efficient grain farmers in the world. Yes, I agree with Geraldo. Congratulations on this answer. You're completely right. They are the weakest link. They require support, financial support. No agriculture in the world can survive without government support. I think that the government has to help with crop insurance and a robust agricultural plan because in the worst-case scenario, farmers will have no harvest. That's the worst-case scenario because then you don't have products to negotiate. Having cheap product is one thing, but having no product at all is the worst-case scenario. They need support to use technology and not to give up.
This detail about tropical agriculture is a weakness that has made us strong because Brazilian farmers have learned to work with evolution at all times. They are forced to evolve constantly. In crop protection, you know, the products might not work in two years' time, so you need research. We had a problem recently with the corn hopper. In two years, it came, and in three years, it almost devastated the corn production. The following year, this problem had disappeared because the response of research creating tolerant varieties and inputs to control this problem was so fast. This is Brazil. Brazil has learned how to; it's the corn leafhopper. Brazil has learned with research, and this is not happening all around the world. The world is usually more traditional. The weakest link requires support. Everyone should work for farmers, logistics, industry, inputs.
We all depend on farmers. Without them, the whole chain is dead. So I think that we need to work together and focus on farmers. And speaking here as the weakest link in the chain, well, not SLC. SLC is not the weakest link. Yes, but anyway, we did create strategies to mitigate the risks that are inherent to agribusiness because indeed, it seems like everything has been designed to fail. But we started off diversifying geographically and then diversifying in crops. But farmers who are located in one single region, especially with all of these weather scares that we have had, the last crop year was scary in terms of climate. And compared to U.S. farmers, for example, that have no crop failure, they have an income protection system with financing, insurance, preventive planting, things that we do not have in Brazil.
SLC has been monitoring the industry for some time now, and in innovation, which is the area where I work, we have some interesting innovations from some startups because credit and insurance require data. In the era of digitalization, data has enabled credit to be granted to more farmers, and now insurance can be economically viable. At SLC, we have never had crop insurance because it's always been so expensive, but right now, we are assessing a data-based insurance that seems to be more interesting for some higher-risk regions, like in the state of Bahia. So we have a contribution of technology innovations that will strengthen the chain, and of course, farmers are the weakest link in the whole chain. Yes, definitely. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes? Congratulations, Kepler, on this event. Excellent information being shared, and I'd like to hear from you.
What's your take on the risks that lie ahead of us? Because we know that in the last five years, we need to congratulate the industry and farmers who have grown a lot, and the competence has been proven. And we don't even know everything that we produce and how we maintain the country with agriculture. But what are the main obstacles, in your point of view, for us to be able to balance our recurring lack of storage capacity or shipment of our products or institutional problems to make our work recognized nationally and internationally? Okay, I can get started. I think that international recognition and sometimes the criticism that Brazilian agriculture gets are deep-down fruits of its success because no one will attack those that are too weak and that do not represent a threat. So I said this earlier. Our competition is global.
We're not competing amongst ourselves. We should not get lost in this competition, so of course, we are attacked because we are a strength. We are a force, but where we still make mistakes is in communication, and I think we need better coordination, just like Airton said. The protocols not buying soybeans from areas of deforestation. Brazil doesn't need deforestation of any area in order to grow its agricultural production, but we still see some different voices coming up, and there's poor communication. And if the communication here is poor, of course, those who come from abroad will try to make the most of it. And it's hard to fight with competitors if you don't put your house in order. And that's our mission, to get organized, to put our house in order, and to have a more unique voice when it comes to this.
Our growth challenges, speaking here about logistics, you have a regular challenge of investment. It's not easy to create infrastructure. So going back to the example of the railway construction in Mato Grosso, 5,000 people today. Because of the heated agribusiness, we have been able to create jobs. So we train this labor to make this flow work with quality and safety. So yes, a major execution challenge to advancing processes and education in order to have a skilled labor available. That's key. And another important factor is, of course, in an environment with high interest rates, it's harder for you to make investments in the magnitude they are needed to absorb the yield growth. So interest rates of two digits. Of course, when you look at the whole chain, this is going to delay the execution of some investments.
Investments that could be made with the cash generation capacity with interest rates at 7% are unfeasible with an interest rate of 10%, 11%, or 12%. This is a challenge. It has been a challenge throughout the whole history of Brazil. I think that we have this agriculture lagging a bit behind because of this history of exceptionally high interest rates. As a society, we have to be able to revert this process to have interest rates that are helpful for a long-term logistics infrastructure building. This is just to mention two or three elements that are important in this growth journey. Thank you, Pedro. They're asking me to wrap up our panel. It's just that the conversation is so good that we lose track of time. Once again, thank you.
We usually go to your offices, and it's great to be able to have you here today. It's just a pleasure and a joy to welcome you. So thank you for coming. I think Bernardo has a souvenir for you. Let's give them a hand. Thank you. You're all hired. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. We would like to thank our guests once again for sharing a lot of knowledge with us, knowledge about the different links in the agribusiness chain. And you were able to see in practice many of the points that were mentioned earlier by Kepler executives. We are getting close to the end of our event. And now we would like to talk about the financial indicators that also translate into numbers all of our investment strategy that was mentioned today.
Now I'd like to invite our IR and financial director, Renato Arroyo, to the stage. Thank you, Luís. Good morning, everyone. It's a great pleasure to have our shareholders, analysts, as well as Kepler's team and board of directors here today. It's a pleasure to talk to all of you. It's hard to speak after a panel with great members. Brazil is no longer the soccer country, and it's now the agribusiness country. It was a pleasure to have the best players in the agribusiness game here today. I joined the company in the beginning of November. I've been at the company for 25 days only, but I have 25 years' experience in the financial industry. I worked in different sectors of the economy.
In the last 10 years, I've been working as a CFO and IRO in private and public companies, both in Brazil and abroad. It's a pleasure to be working at Kepler, considering all of the great things that the executives and the company have been doing and everything we still have to do. This is going to bring us with many growth avenues. It's great to be a part of this team and to participate in my first Kepler Day, such a special event, having all of you here with us. Let me continue with my presentation. The goal here today is not for me to tell you a lot about the numbers because many of you are aware of these numbers already. I want to tell you how the company is structured.
Our company is diversified, which brings robustness to our business and improves the management. The company is now broken down into farms, agro-industry, replacements and services, ports and terminals, and international businesses. And what matters the most is not only our management footprint that allows us to manage all of these businesses with efficiency and efficacy, but we see that all of these businesses are growing two digits in CAGR, replacement and services. One of our colleagues said we had almost 40% growth in the last five years. Agro-industry and farms growing around 25%. So this business modulation and diversification gives us consistency and confidence. If you have problems in any of those businesses, the other businesses will come to fill in the gap. And that's a common hedging that we have in our business.
In addition to that, we also have significant margins in these businesses of around 30%. And I'm talking about gross margins. So this shows that diversification brings us security and confidence. That's one of the reasons why, even in spite of the market challenges, we've been able to navigate these waters really well in spite of all of that. So moving on, here on my right-hand side, you can see the company's net revenue. When we compare 2019 to 2024, looking at the last 12 months, the company has grown threefold from BRL 583 million to BRL 1.649 billion. And that was leveraged by what I said in the previous slide, sustainable businesses.
When we establish a link with Bernardo's presentation, maybe we should be going back to a much lower level, considering that the levers that were considered important for Kepler's business, like farmer EBITDA, machinery sales, and grain prices, I mean, these levers had a decrease in recent years. But even so, Kepler's businesses have continued consistent, even in years that should be challenging for the company. And on the other side, you can see gross income and gross margin. In 2019, the company delivered BRL 145 million in absolute terms. And this year, in the last 12 months, we reached BRL 502 million . Excluding the outliers, we have a consistent gross margin of around 30%. This shows that the company has been growing year over year. And this has been leveraged by all of the businesses of the company that have all been growing consistently.
Here, on my right-hand side, you can see the EBITDA in absolute terms and percentage margins. As we said in the beginning of the presentation, we have had six consecutive years of positive margins. We are a profitable company that delivers return to its shareholders. And we have had a growing EBITDA, reaching 2022, the golden year at Kepler, like Bernardo said, with 30.2% of EBITDA margins. But even in more challenging years, we've been able to deliver in the last 12 months a 22% EBITDA margin and Q3 closed at 22% EBITDA margin as well. Of course, we do have challenges, but we've been able to overcome them. And we think that the margins will continue at this historical level that we've been showing you. Net income and net margin, we saw a mild decrease in the last 12 months against recent years.
Indeed, here we have a tax reason that prevented us from removing the tax incentives from the net base. We had this mild drop in 2024. We see that our net income has been growing significantly with a 15% net income when we look at the last months, or actually the last years. It is important to mention that from 2019 to 2024, in the last 12 months, we almost increased Kepler's numbers by 9x . Very relevant data. Not a very important point. It is important to have liquidity and a robust cash. In the last six years, we have had a negative net debt. This is something that has grown through the years. From 2022 to 2024, we have had net cash of BRL 160 million paying out dividends and shareholders' equity to the shareholders.
83% of our debts are in reais, which means we're not impacted by the devaluation of the real at present and a very long schedule with an average term for the debt of approximately four years. So we have had a good net cash during the years, which allows us to look at the enhancements that need to be made in the company. We look out for opportunities to grow in other areas and enables us, of course, to look outside of the company for this when it comes to CapEx. We are at 2.5%-3% of our net operating revenue. In 2024, we invested BRL 26.1 million in CapEx. Now, we should increase a bit in our fourth quarter simply to shed light in terms of what we're doing with CapEx and how we have qualified it.
35% of this year's CapEx was invested in new products, very much aligned with what Fabiano mentioned, that 46% of what we invoice are products that are based on innovation and that have been launched. So this is the restlessness that we have at the company of selling our new products. 46% of our CapEx is in new products. We also invest in the plant in other areas. The investments made in IT, in SAP, and servers do allow us a very important operational system. Now, the lean, the operational efficiency, and a better management besides the structural refurbishments that we have done allow us to share these results. Some examples of how we have used our CapEx: security, a very important point that the company, of course, requires to service its in-house customers as well as others.
Updates that we carry out in infrastructure: a new product, which is the BioCap, and the painting that we had in the second half of 2023. This enables us to have a more productive environment, and we have avoided any type of waste in our chain of production. When we speak about the growing return for our shareholders in the last 12 months, the company has paid out between shareholders' equity and dividends BRL 195 million. The yield, if you look at the last three years, is very good. We have been paying out resources to the shareholders. Of course, our growing EBITDA and net profit have also grown alongside working capital. When we look to the right, we see fluctuation between the third main line items, which are customers, stock, and others. These are fluctuations we see normally since 2022.
We have found a better situation in our working capital, and we see this in days of capital that range between 40 and 50 days. Now, why do we say that this is an equation that can be improved? Of course, working capital can be improved and revised, but this is an equation that has allowed us to have better customer service, less fluctuation of our costs, and growth when it comes to the recognition of this of customers. Customers have offered us better scores, which is very important. Certainly, we're going to try to optimize our working capital, but never in detriment of operational inefficiency or worse services offered to our customer. Now, to go to the end of the presentation, one of the main goals of Kepler Day is to come closer to our investors, our shareholders.
This is the fourth consecutive Kepler Day, which points to the fact that our intention is to proactively be close to our investors and shareholders. We have offered visits to our plants in Campo Grande and Panambi, and this invitation is standing for 2025. We would love to host you at our plants. In the last years, we have held more than 140 meetings or national conferences, and our shareholder base has grown from 1,300 to 76,000 at the end of 2024, a 20-fold growth. In 2024, our CEO was in New York to present the company, once again speaking to all of these companies. Together, they represent $500 million under management, and we have been sought out by international groups. Our levels have increased with foreign investment, which is important, and this, of course, perhaps is due to that greater exposure we have had internationally carried out by BTG.
Our first invitation, therefore, for investors, for those who want to cover the company, who want to understand our ideas, our investments, do come visit our plants. It will be a pleasure, and I am at your entire disposal for this. Thank you very much, and we will continue the event with Luís. Thank you, Renato. We're now going to go to the interactive part of Q&As. If they could please set up the chairs, and all of you will be able to pose your questions to the executives that have made presentations during the event. I would like to ask Bernardo, Diego, Fabiano, Murilo, and Renato, who was here with us, to please come to the stage. Luiz Tarquínio as well, Chairman of the Board. I invite all of you in the audience that if you have a question, please raise your hand.
We have a microphone. We already have two participants standing in line to pose questions. Very well, let us begin our Q&A. Well, there's a person who asked a question a few minutes ago. If you would like to repeat the question here, please feel at ease. Our microphones, therefore, have they already been given to those who would like to pose questions? Give us your name and the institution you represent here so that we can better know who you are . Julia Rizzo from Morgan Stanley. Thank you for this truly top event. Well, my question was from the other panel, but this is a follow-up in truth to continue on the topic of investment.
At what point of the cycle can we find ourselves in? If we look at farmers nowadays, and I'm going to speak about Frederico, as we know the plans of the company, if the farmers continue to invest, the buyer, Coamo, if they invest in technologies, in new business, in area expansion. At which point of the cycle do we find ourselves in presently? I can give you the outlook that we had observed until 2022. Investments in equipment, in streamlining technical training was truly phenomenal. When there was a change in the price of commodities, there was a reduction, of course. There is an issue of liquidity. They have become more selective when it comes to investing in technology. It's not that they're not investing. The investments are somewhat later, especially during this harvest. The decision of farmers has come somewhat late.
They're looking upon the market before making their investments, but they did purchase the crop protection that is necessary to ensure that the harvest will be positive. It's a momentary issue due to the market, but farmers have made the necessary investments to have a good harvest, and of course, Saint Peter will help with the rainfall. Very good answer. Rural producers, and we have two producers, those that are owners that have stable infrastructure and those that are working with leases that are opening an area. Their strength is not to invest in equipment, but in land. Now, the latter are more, I'm sorry, the former are more capitalized. One has a flat investment line. The others have a more variable line for the summer harvest. The investments were very good. We launched plans for the supply of inputs, and they have higher or lower investment levels.
More than 70% were high investments for the corn harvest. We supplied 15% above what we had expected. So yes, there is change in market share because of the funds that have faced problems because of judicial recovery. But the technology adopted by the grower is very good. And with the help of rainfall, we should have an excellent harvest for the summer harvest and for the second corn harvest. There's no doubt about that. We have a question. Your name, and if you would like to gear it to a specific person. This is Fernanda from XP. Congratulations for this extremely good event. Throughout the presentation, the strategy for development of new products and the allocation of silos became very clear. Recently, you have begun offering the bank solution, and this seems to go against the strategy of other companies that have metal silos.
So if you could mention your strategy of the entrance of silo bags, which is the potential of this with new customers. Thank you, Fernanda. I'm also very happy with this Kepler Day. We had a superb panel regarding the silo bag. It's an interesting situation. When you look from the outside, you will see that it's competing with one of our fixed structures. When we surveyed this more in depth, we said that none of our customers, Coamo, for example, that uses silo bags or farmers, nobody likes silo bags. They're a necessary evil. If you have fever, you will take an analgesic. If it doesn't go away, you will visit a physician. And this is what happens with a silo bag. Eventually, you will invest in a more permanent system. Now, why have we decided to sell the silo bag in our distribution center system?
Because of the cost we invoice for, we optimize that asset. It's a minor reason, but the main reason is because we're in contact with those people who are taking medication and are in contact with a physician. We worked with the second crop. We already have new customers that were not part of our base, and now we are in contact with them. So it's a strategy of being the first to reach the potential customer, then truly making money with a silo bag. Cila, from Trígono, congratulations for the event. I remember speaking about the lease of these, and now they have become a strategic pillar. My question is on the strategic environment. In the media, they showed that there was a change in the shareholding of one of your competitors. I'd like to understand what is happening with the competitive environment in the silo market for you.
Thank you for the question. Back to the lease. We were joking about making sure the egg could stand. We now have another analogy of a rocket moving backwards instead of forwards in terms of GSI. AGCO sold the GSI assets. Of course, we're following up on them. They're among the second or third player in Brazil with a market share of 10%-12%. They have 10%-12% of share, one third of what Kepler has. I was with them in the round in New York, and now they have to pay off their debt, which means they have to work properly. What does that mean? Add value, sell at good margins. I prefer competitive professional competitors like this one than the minor competitors that will work with different types of aggressiveness. I don't think the competitive environment will change because the company has changed.
We're very attentive to this. And the main thing is to strengthen our leadership, strengthen research and development, all of the IoT connectivity. And I can guarantee that to get to where they have gotten to, they're lagging behind three or five years. So we're doing our homework when it comes to the competition. What frightened me very much, perhaps in the last three years, especially during the last year, is the amount of Chinese cars in Brazil. They can arrive anywhere, including the area of storage. And when I reflected upon our business, we have a very significant entrance barrier for the Chinese, especially presently. We have 295 simultaneous works in more than 200 municipalities in Brazil and elsewhere, border areas. We have a work in Tailândia, in Pará. We have 55 contractors trained with 1,500 employees.
As Pedro mentioned, this is the collective support that we have and where we play very well. To have a Chinese competitor like BYD will be very difficult for us, and we have to work properly in this case. This is André Mazini from Citi. Thank you for your presentation. I have a few questions about the rental business. I think that to scale this rental business, you would require Fiagro. This real estate business, and it's hard to capture with these interest rates. In order to gain scale, would you need the interest rates to stop increasing or not? About the economics of the business, if you could talk about the entry cap rate for investors. Investors that are putting money in Fiagro, what can they expect?
What can Kepler expect if you have gross margins when you sell to Fiagro or to other investors? Is it similar to a conventional sales? And after sales, what is Kepler's role? Does Kepler have any role at all? If we compare this to the warehousing business or shopping mall business, you have the admin position. Do you have a fee income or a recurring income after the sales? Okay, I'll start. And just a correction. In Renato's presentation, he showed the roadshow we had in New York. He talked about BTG, but I also want to thank Citi and Morgan Stanley that helped us organize some of the meetings. Thank you for your question. So, I'll get started. And if I forget anything, please help me out. First, as I said, we're trying to make this egg stand.
We have had many conversations to get to the point we are now. Fiagro is a possibility, but we're also looking into real estate funds. The scheme is not that complicated, so we could have a real estate fund raising investments to go into this. The idea is to start small with a smaller raising of capital with more specific capital, fewer investors, so like a closed fund. This is not definitive yet, but this is the way we're planning to go. Then we expect to have this initial capital raising to go to the second and third and so on. There are many possibilities, and the real estate fund would be one of those possibilities because it's a simple structure. Now, about Kepler's margin, a sale to a fund or to a Fiagro would be like a sale to a farmer.
The idea is not to have a lower margin because it needs to be a win-win situation, so we want to practice similar margins. Of course, considering the discount policies we may have, but nothing way below that, so that was your second question. Now I remember another question you asked about the role of Kepler in the after-sales period, so let's think about a long-term contract, like a 10-20-year term contract for a unit who needs maintenance of the unit. The idea is preventive maintenance, and that's our role in the after-sales. We would use our distribution centers, renovations, and RS to maintain those units. The connected unit also gives us the possibility to manage the unit from a distance to see the status of the unit. There was another question I forgot about profitability.
Yeah, summarizing the idea, we have three sources of income: the sales of the equipment per se, which is similar to what we already do today, and a recurring revenue from this type of rebate from the fund because of the whole structuring we're providing. We know the locations, we know those who need the service, we have the know-how of the segment, and then also future recurring revenue from replacement and services. So, it's about 8%-10%. This is yet to be defined, but that would be the range, approximately. Yes, you know, having the egg stand is all about financials, returns for investors and farmers and Kepler. So, part of this requires you to have the best cost efficiency in building the units. This requires discipline from our side and shorter terms. It's like building a house.
You can spend one or 1.5 or five or even seven to build the same house, depending on whether you know what you're doing or not. So, we believe we know what we're doing, and we think that we will be able to achieve a cost that will make the egg stand still. Yes. This is Julia Rizzo from Morgan Stanley. Bernardo, I have a question for you. As far as I noticed, farmers continue investing, and we should have record crop seasons next year, and all of the links of the chain are still optimistic about this in Brazil. What is Kepler's take on this? You're probably one of the first cycles of the chain in terms of order backlog. Do you have any kind of visibility for the coming year, or do you think that any relevant investments are needed in 2025 in order to meet this demand?
Thank you. Well, Julia, some important things about Kepler. First, we are already selling for the second quarter of 2025. Where's Marcos? There he is. Jean and Marcos are struggling to try and fit things for March, but we're already focusing on the second quarter. So, thinking about a company that has Lean Manufacturing, this is a great advantage because any infrastructure adjustment that is needed can be foreseen in advance. Now, what is our portfolio like today? And Jean has a commitment to the board to have a portfolio in Brazilian reais very similar to that of the start of 2024. So, we don't see a drop in the volume of businesses. Half of my presentation when I talked about the market dynamics was to show you that it seems like we are at a different cycle now, considering what we saw in 2023 and 2024.
We did not have such a major drop like the agricultural machinery market did. And we always speak with full transparency. So, it's important to mention that, yes, we do see, and this was mentioned by Berger and Airton, that the farmers and the whole chain are under more stress, but they are prioritizing storage. So, the volume is there. You know, of course, everyone's trying to save here and there, so the margins are tighter than in the last three years, but within the levels of the last five to six years. So, still healthy margins and appropriate to this market time, but with a favorable volume once again. Okay, this is me again. Brazil has two crop seasons a year, and the second crop is now even larger than the first sometimes.
With the Mover Program, decarbonization, Fuel for the Future, and biofuels, I'd like to hear from Kepler and the other participants of the panel as well. You all have second crops. Is that an opportunity having two crops? You haven't harvested one, and you're already working on the next. Where do the silos come in? Will the silos come to address the bottlenecks? Will Coamo also absorb the excess crops? And what is Kepler's take on biofuels? Corn ethanol, biodiesel. We've seen 3tentos announcing investments in biomethane, which is a derivative of protein, also to close the loop in biomass with biomethane as well. There are many things happening. Where does Kepler go into all of this? Where does Kepler fit? And in order to strengthen one of these links that seems to be a weaker link, which is the logistics for this very long chain.
Sure, I will start. Berger, definitely what is happening with biofuels is favoring us greatly. Pedro himself mentioned that five-to-seven years ago, if you said, "Oh, Brazil is going to have 25% or 50% of ethanol being manufactured from corn," you know, people would laugh at you. That would be just unbelievable in considering the status now and the investment plans. Itaú Analysis said BRL 20 billion in total investments, and you have BRL 1.5 billion-BRL 2 billion being invested in equipment, corn storage, and conditioning so that the corn can be processed later. Yes, we see this clear production expansion. I personally believe that we're going to have food demand growing in the next 20 years, and another major growth driver for us is the industrialization of the Brazilian agribusiness.
When you stop exporting corn one to two months after harvest to start manufacturing ethanol, you have to store the corn for 12 months. It changes the game completely when it comes to storage. Now, the Brazilian safrinha has some side effects. One of them is the abundant yield. You need logistics, you need a competitive farmer. Another point that we see clearly, and we saw in the chart shown by Fabiano, is the speed in which things need to happen. If you ask Airton, 10 - 15 years ago, farmers would accept to wait in line. You know, they would get there and wait one to two hours in line with their trucks. Now they can't wait anymore. Every day that the corn production is delayed because of this line is 1% lower production.
One week is 7%, and then their profit is gone. They cannot delay planting of the second crop. That, of course, generated pressure for Coamo or the cooperatives and the whole chain. We see a modernization of the installed park as well. Fabiano's charts showed us that. Yeah, Bernardo, in addition to this industrialization process, I think that now the market also sees a Kepler that is completely prepared for this new phase of projects because it's a different type of project. We have farms, agribusiness, ports, and terminals. The parts of industry, ports, and terminals have a different complexity, and the demand of customers is very high as well. Kepler is fully prepared to do that. We have things happening in Porto Alegre do Norte, a very remote region.
The whole region is transforming with this 3tentos industry, and we have projects with Rumo. So, Kepler is fully prepared to implement these highly complex projects. Other questions from the audience? Yes, I have a question. This is Eduardo Bezerra over here. Today, I see family companies in agribusiness as an opportunity, but also a threat. What is Kepler's take on succession at companies, and can that help or hinder Kepler's businesses? I think I can answer your question, Eduardo. There is something very interesting about our business and succession. When our customers, you know, either cooperatives or farmers, when they come and decide to start a construction and get a Kepler equipment that will stay in the property for their kids and grandkids, it's not like a tractor that you buy and then you don't like it, you change the brand and get another one.
We have a sentimental relationship with our customers that get our units. They are there to stay 20-30 years in operations. Now, what we've been attempting to do, you probably saw this on Instagram and LinkedIn, are two things. First, we want to focus on communication. We want to have active and close communication. In 2022, we started with these communications and posts, you know, with short videos. We now have hundreds of them trying to engage with the customers. And now, an important step, Luís, if you want to add to my answer, which is to have management in the palm of your hands. And now, with Procer, we can help the customers manage their units through their cell phones, an app, or on the computer. This is something that connects to the newer generation. Right, looking at technology, that's what Procer does in the after harvest.
This newer generation coming in will bring people that are more open and more familiar with the digital world, like he said, having the unit connected to their cell phones. In the first years of Procer, we had this resilience to create this new approach of technology and scientific knowledge. But then, when this new audience came in, this newer generation that is open and willing to learn about this new scenario, we see greatest compliance. And also, labor, new generation of workers at the units increases this demand. The cooperatives have been facing great difficulty with operational labor as well. Workers working at silos and dryers, they want to be able to operate an automation software or an app for the management rather than having to be there in this manual work of operations. So, we think this is only natural, and we're fully prepared for this new moment.
I think there was another question over there. Hi, this is a question for Bernardo. This is Antônio from Tavola Capital. Bernardo, in your initial slide, you talked about the growth of the storage market and the storage deficit. And you said that in 2023 and 2024, everyone has been asking you, why is it that you haven't had any drops? So, a provocation here. Looking at 2021 and 2022, there was a positive cycle, and you showed the EBITDA margin of farmers that was twice as much as they were previously. Why is it that demand has not increased considerably for the deficit to be reduced? I just want to understand the dynamics ahead. Perfect, Antônio. Well, there has been a boost in demand. The soybean went from BRL 70 to BRL 180 in 2020, and it kept that level of price up to 2022.
A major boost in demand. Our lead time is around 70-90 days. That's a healthy one, and it went up to 250 days. We did everything we could. We have some elasticity of how much Kepler and the whole of the market can include in terms of capacity for a specific year. Piero said it's not just like manufacturing soap that you just press a button and you manufacture it. It's more complex. But the demand was indeed huge. Kepler and the whole market worked at full steam for sales in 2020, 2021, and 2022. We kept a very strong operational level. Then, when you see a mild drop in revenue from 2022, you know, that was the peak to 2024. When you see the volume of units delivered and customers served, we're actually at higher levels.
So, we continue with a very high volume. What we see is a drop in the steel prices from the peak there in the beginning of 2022, December 2021. It has dropped 50% to what it is today. And that's in line with the soybean prices. So, a drop in costs and also a struggle there, and then competitors' lower prices based on cost, and that reduced the value. But the volume is still very high. When are we going to resolve the deficit problem when production stops growing? And of course, we have this long-standing discussion when we will reach the 500 million tons. And in a pessimistic scenario, 10 years of deficit. In a positive scenario, 20 years of deficit. So, there is a great deal of work to do. Good day, everybody. João Daronco from Suno Research.
I would like to thank all of you for your attendance and your contribution. I would like to ask a question on the company cash, a question geared to Renato. The cash level is the highest historically. The company had cash of BRL 350 million. At present, we are at BRL 450 million. What underlies this? Are you prospecting for M&As, or is the company simply trying to preserve the capital for a longer cycle to enhance its longevity? Thank you for the question. A very pertinent one indeed. Considering that in the last three years, we had net cash of BRL 170 million. We ended the last quarter with BRL 450 million in cash and a debt of BRL 270 million-BRL 280 million. The question, of course, is very relevant. This allows us that comfort to look out for opportunities. And of course, we have invested in CapEx in new products.
This is the organic growth that we desire for the company, but we do look for opportunities outside of the company to grow outside of those three circles that we mentioned. We have a market that is BRL 6 billion, one of BRL 10 billion, and we have to be able to look at that with greater calmness because of our company cash. I cannot give you details, tell you how and when. The important thing is to look upon these opportunities with a great deal of comfort. Any further questions from the audience? We have some questions from our audience that is participating remotely, and based on content, I will gear the first question to Diego, who speaks about silo lease, the company's self-trading. If the leasing or the rent of silos will be a type of leasing, can the customer acquire the silo at the end of the contract?
And how will you work with the contract? Very good question. As I said, two years surveying this and assessing the idea of a lease. In the project that I showed you, well, initially, the lease is not there. As the question asks, you put this at the customer's unit, and then the customer is entitled to acquire the silo. We initially have built an independent unit with a contract ranging between 10 and 20 years. These are long-term contracts based on our initial focus. We haven't totally discarded the leasing idea. We believe that it could stand alone. We're working with independent units presently with long-term contracts. Thank you, Diego. More questions here from the Isabela Ramiro, an investor. She has not told us from which company. Which has been the share of Procer and Kepler's results, and which are the expectations for 2030?
Bernardo and Renato, well, enormous expectations, of course. We're in the budgeting period, and all we have at present are expectations. Now, Procer has been very positive for us. When we signed the MOU, the company was at around BRL 50 million this year. They're closing at BRL 100 million. The coming year, the expectation is 40%-50% growth. A very steep expectation, of course, and it's high because the foundation, the fundamentals are very good. Procer had 10 sellers under the leadership of Eduardo. We have 100-120 people at present boosting this process. We have two very successful teams, and they grew exponentially. Besides what we saw here, the generation of value through information, we have just organized the data. We had a round in October with all of the links of the production chain, and they all showed their interest.
We're working with an NDA, working with pilot projects. So our expectations, our steep expectations are well-founded. And of course, the team is absolutely very good. Now, details on the business. We have invested on development to increase the ticket per silo. We think about volume, CO2 flow, and the investment in technology allows us to resell the same silo. Disconnected base allows us the opportunity for new revenues. We have the dryers vertical with enormous potential as part of our planning. We would like to grow, and we want to digitize all of the units, all of the machines, and the machine flows should be connected and digitalized, reinforcing that idea that Procer has the growth potential mentioned by Bernardo. It will play a very important role not only in the present but also going forward. Thank you, Murilo and Bernardo.
Do we have any more questions from our audience? I continue, therefore, with our online audience. Rafael Araújo from Evolve Capital. He asks for a projection on the future, the amount of CapEx in following years for the KW2030. We showed you this briefly, and Renato mentioned it in the presentation, where between 2.5%-3% in terms of CapEx, and this is how it should continue in the coming years when we look at organic growth and the growth of share of approximately 1% that we will pursue with the KW2030. It could grow a bit because of the M&As that we mentioned and some expansions that could become necessary to grow more in specific segments, ports and terminals as an example, and spare parts and service.
If these two materialize, well, it could go beyond those levels, but generally 2.5%-3%, which is a healthy number for the company. We don't think there will be a sudden growth of this percentage mentioned. In 2023, we were slightly above that percentage. So it won't be an exacerbated growth of that percentage. We always keep it under control unless we have acquisition of an M&A or inorganic growth or an extraordinary CapEx. Very well, we're heading towards the end. A last question, and I request your understanding for those who are watching us. We have a long list of questions. I will then give the floor to Bernardo for closing remarks. Gustavo Bursztyn, investor. I hope I pronounced your surname correctly. Which is the plan of using Fiagro funding for the customers to acquire equipment from Kepler?
Everybody knows that this PCA, the plan that we have, is not achieving what we wanted it to achieve because of news given by the government, and we consider this to be an upside. We have maintained favorable selling conditions, and this could be an upside for our sales. I'm referring to the warehouse construction program. We already have sales of BRL 40 million for this product, and we do hope to grow. Once we find lower-cost fundings, we may be benefited, and Fiagro might lose some of its relevance. We have checked this and found other feasible alternatives for the company. Very well, before we turn the floor over to Bernardo for closing remarks after the Q&A, of course, we will adjourn the meeting and put up another QR code to hear about your satisfaction with the event.
For the audience here, we will give a prize for those who respond to this questionnaire. Thank you very much, Luís. We have a campaign. We have helped a school in Cruzeiro do Sul who was impacted because of the flooding. All of the revenues from these items will be donated to the school library. If you want to take home some of these products, please take a look at them when you leave. I began by saying that we had about 500 people here in person and online people that go from being very interested or passionate for Kepler. I hope that after this morning, we have changed the needle towards more passionate in terms of what we are doing. All of us here are suspects, that's obvious. We have followed up on this.
I had high expectations for the event, very high expectations for the panel, and both of our expectations in that case were surpassed. To hear from Pedro that Brazilian agribusiness is a collective sport, that we depend on all of our links, well, this simply strengthens everything that we believe and we are doing, and I can say very calmly that I am exactly where I would like to be. All of us here, I think, share that feeling. We are in the segment of food security. There is hunger in the world. The world will grow a great deal. There is still some room to go for the growth of the middle class, and we're in Brazil, where historically we have contributed a great deal. We are the star when it comes to the supply of food in a competitive and sustainable way.
And in that agribusiness world, storage and logistics and that relationship with farmers, well, the farmers are the weakest link of the chain. And in the crises that we have observed, we see that storage is, without a doubt, the greatest priority of the entire chain. Rumo is investing. Coamo is investing. Others are investing. We can see this. And Kepler, we told you only part of our history. You saw that from what our colleagues said. It's truly an extraordinary company with 100 years of leadership, of tradition and evolution in agribusiness. There is no better place to be in. And to get to our centennial, we have that injection of enthusiasm, such as Procer, that opens up a completely new chapter of expansion for the organization, for the relationship with our customers, and to add value. We're truly in a very privileged situation.
I can't say that we will only have growth going forward. We will have more difficult moments, better moments, but we are prepared. We do have something different in hand, a round of thanks, first of all, to the team who has organized this, who is here with us, the entire communication team under the leadership of Luís. And there is an important fact to mention to investors, Berger. We made great efforts to have this beautiful site, but to maintain the cost down. We have brought Luís here for the introduction. That was wonderful. Thank you very much. We will keep you for the next Kepler Day if we can. I would also like to thank our panel members who offered us a real show. If nothing else works out, you can hold that panel at other events and charge for it.
You truly did a spectacular job. Werner said we should bring in a financial agent to complement the team. Thank you for having come here to honor us. Special thanks to the entire Kepler team, some of which are present here. We have 1,970 people working day after day, working arduously to do all of the deliveries, the 270 simultaneous construction works, to load 45 carts per day in Panambi and Campo Grande. This is a highly engaged team. That orange blood is not simply something theoretical. They're a highly engaged team, and our special thanks to them and all of you who have remained until the end. Thank you very much once again.