Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to open Klabin Day. Welcome. I am Gabriela Vogt, Corporate Finance and IR Officer, and I will be your MC today. This event is being broadcast online via YouTube, and we are broadcasting from our unit, Piracicaba II, known as Figueira Project. The event is being translated into English. I'd like to thank all of you for coming to visit, and I'd like to thank everyone joining us online. 2024 was an impactful year for Klabin. We celebrated many achievements, reinforcing the resilience and efficacy of our business model, which is integrated, diversified, and flexible. We will start today's agenda with the opening by our CEO, Cristiano Teixeira, who will bring you an idea of our strategic planning in the current moment of Klabin.
Then, Marcos Ivo, our CFO and IRO, will be presenting the financial performance of the company and our process of Capital Allocation, also providing some of our financial forecasts. Marcos will be followed by our Packaging Officer, Douglas Dalmasi, who will speak about corrugated boxes, its performance, and will give you more detail on Piracicaba II, unit known as Figueira Project. At the end of the presentations, our executives will be available for a Q&A session. We have receptionists with a microphone if you want to ask questions live. If you're online and you want to ask a question, you just need to use the QR code on the screen. Please identify yourselves when you ask questions. Now, to officially open our agenda, I'd like to invite our CEO, Cristiano Teixeira.
Good morning.
I would like to greet you all, and it is a privilege, and it's a privilege for me to welcome all of you here, and I hope it is a privilege for you to get to know our facilities, and I'd like to greet everyone who is online because putting together those who are here, who are following the event, and those that can watch this event later, this event will reach out to thousands of people. These events can be communicated to a lot more people. I would like to start with the first slide, presenting to you the process of development since we began and how we got this far, starting in 2018 when we had our first Vision Charter, and I would like to present and discuss our process, how we at the management and the board of directors approve and execute on the plan.
This is a seven-year period. My term started in 2017. My year one was 2018. And back then, Klabin already had a strategic planning process at the company, but we kind of changed the format with the management. So back in 2017, we had our first version of what we call a Vision Charter. What is a Vision Charter? That's the strategic planning of the company, always looking at the next 10 years of the company, what we expect to realize. This discussion involves a number of themes which you will have an opportunity to understand, from Capital Allocation to the main consumption trends. Where can our market go? What are the strengths of our business? What sets us apart from the other players? What do we want with the controlling shareholders and the board of directors? What we want to realize, what we expect for the coming years?
Do we want stability? Do we want to generate cash as fast as possible? So all of these are questions that I answered during the strategic planning process. And back in 2017, when we started this process, the idea was that we would have one year with the help of a consulting firm, one year without it. So every other year. Why not every year? Because data don't change in such a relevant way. Sometimes we need consulting about macroeconomic data, and that's the kind of consulting we use every year. But we had 20 consulting sessions for each one of these works. So back in 2017, at the management level, when we started discussing the points I mentioned, the attributes I mentioned, what drew our attention was a piece of data that was actually confirmed later. So back then, there was a difference between the value of the fibers.
I quite remember some events that I attended. I attended the event, and then some companies were speaking about a phenomenon which we call fiber-to-fiber. That's the term that is used in Portuguese as well. We use the English term is when you replace a fiber by another, and I always remember this. Klabin was a pioneer in the fiber-to-fiber process when people didn't even use this terminology. In the beginning of the 1980s, Klabin got a product containerboard, which at the time was prepared from long fiber pine, and this product needed a structure. It's a product for the Nordics and the Americans. And at the time, Klabin started adding a little bit of eucalyptus, so short fiber. So we started that fiber-to-fiber process, and we did that until we got to a product that was patented, and you probably know, which is Eukaliner.
It is a product manufactured 100% with eucalyptus, so we don't deny the fiber-to-fiber process. On the contrary, Klabin is a pioneer in this process. When we got to this product in paper machine 27, we didn't exactly know the performance of this product. In the corrugator, this plant was made to have two corrugators and using the paper of this machine made of 100% eucalyptus, so what's the property of this paper? Well, the paper makes the corrugator work with less energy, with less chemicals, so printability is improved. The cost of this paper converted here at the machine, mainly due to the structure of the paper, have less fiber per square meter, less timber, less trees per square meter of paper. All of these attributes made Klabin study this paper back in the 1980s, and here we are.
We were very disruptive with this paper, which is 100% made of eucalyptus, and now other companies are following in our footsteps. Will all boxes be made of eucalyptus? No, and that's where we have the great attributes that Klabin can offer. Klabin understands this market thoroughly. The biggest producer of red, white protein, Brazil eggs. We know about fruit exports, and all of these players are Klabin's clients in the world. There are Klabin competitors which are Klabin customers outside Brazil, and when our paper was tested, the fiber-to-fiber, when it was not even called fiber-to-fiber, when we adopted that process, we sent samples to be tested in several countries of the world, and how did we come to manufacture this paper? We manufactured it in the state of Pernambuco in a plant that we have in the Goiana Municipality, a super technological machine.
We got fiber from Paraná State, brought it to the site, produced this paper, got some reels, sent it all over the world to test it and to prove that the fiber-to-fiber process for this segment was successful. And it was. And now we gain, in terms of amount of wood I use for square meter in the corrugator, I use 10% less wood than I would use in a normal process. So that improves the ROIC, fewer trees per square meter of boxes. So we are a pioneering company. We invest, we study a lot, we have a technology center, and we're always keeping our eyes and ears open. Why is this important? And I'm coming back to my initial point because back in 2017, when we started studying this, we came to the conclusion that long fiber, soft wood, given the value of eucalyptus, well, we know eucalyptus.
We operate well with it. But what sets Klabin apart from any other company in the southern hemisphere, perhaps not in the northern hemisphere because in the northern hemisphere, they have pine. But in the southern hemisphere, with the quantity and the embedded technology in long fiber, Klabin, in my point of view, is a big star globally. When we identified that our differential was that one that we would have long fiber in a tropical country, the most competitive long fiber in a tropical country and in the world, we said, "No, let's devote ourselves to increase the capacity of using long fiber." And back then, we had one piece of information, important data point. Remember, I said we use on average 20 consulting sessions. We have data such as the average age of the Recovery Boiler.
If you don't know the recovery boiler, when we talk about pulp and paper plant, the heart of the factory is cooking the fiber in the recovery boiler that recovers all the liquid biomass, quote unquote, which is recovered in the boiler. And with that, you generate power. That's the heart of a paper plant. When you want to measure the technological age of a facility, you look at the age of this piece of equipment and we'll speak about it. We are investing in one in Monte Alegre. They will speak about that. But back in 2017, well, this was known information, and we realized that most of these pieces of equipment that were old and about to be replaced were for long fiber. And what were Klabin's attributes back then?
We had pine in a tropical country, any product which in the following years will sell more than short fiber. So let me give you another piece of data. From 2020 to 2024, on average, we had 900,000 tons of long fiber from plants around the world, 900,000 tons. When we look at short fiber on average in that same period, 160,000 tons. Now, you do the math. How many long fiber plants came to the market in these five years, and how many short fiber plants came to the market in the last five years? Short fiber, millions of tons came to the market, much higher volume coming in than going out. And long fiber, we didn't have practically anything coming to the market. So at the time, we thought there is a premium, and this premium will increase from long and short fiber.
This is one of the first points that we valued in 2027. We thought, "Let's value pine at Klabin." When we designed this map in these 20 consulting sessions, well, what did we study with those? Consumption trends. I was talking to a Klabin investor just now, and he asked me, "Listen, I heard that so-and-so is going to invest in sugarcane and bagasse fiber to make paper." I said, "Yes, Klabin did that in the 1970s in the Goiana unit, that same unit in the state of Pernambuco. We have tested this product. There is one manufacturer in São Paulo using part of your sugar cane or bagasse." So we follow all pulp fibers. We follow everything up close in our technology center. So we look not only at consumption and behavior trends. What's the likelihood of having single-use plastic being reduced in per capita consumption?
How much will consumer be paying in terms of a premium payment if we have a product that is recycled? So we wondered about these things. We understood and translated that into products. So those boxes you saw outside, those are boxes for global brands. And we looked at the trends of consumption for those beer, milk, cereal, and 70% of the packaging produced by Klabin go for food, foodstuff. So we study trends. That's number one. I spoke about our strengths, long fiber technology. So everything is analyzed by the consulting guys. And we understood, yes, we understand that these are our strengths. We took those to the board of directors for the first time in 2017 in the new format.
And the board got back to us and said, "What they wanted out of the company, what they expected from the company." They said, "We want a company with multiple premium compared to the others, or do we want a company that has cash generation and EBITDA to ensure a certain percentage of fixed dividends?" So there were several attributes that the board of directors and the controlling shareholders gave us as a feedback based on a database that we put together, the risks, our strengths, etc. So we submit things, we got the feedback from them, and we produced the first Vision Charter. And thinking about Long Fiber, as I mentioned, some of you who attend the earnings call, you know that back in 2017, 2018, perhaps that information was not taken as seriously as we thought it should back then. So we do this process every year.
In that first Vision Charter, that's what we did. Here I bring you just the big achievements, but introducing paper and pulp, you know that in addition to manufacturing facilities, there is investment in infrastructure. For example, a port, highways, roads, and other investments in addition to investments at the manufacturing facilities. We bring you the main achievements. Of course, the peripheral ones are part of this 10-year vision. Back then, we knew that we needed to strengthen our packaging capability. We needed to have more packaging to support our paper capacity. The second machine, PM28, you will remember that the coated board market is relatively small compared to other markets in the world. The whole pulp and paper market have 400 million tons. The corrugated box market, the paper used for those boxes is what we call containerboard market.
It is a market of 50% of these 400 million, 190 million of container board, which is kraft paper or recycled paper. We needed more conversion capacity. We went to Ceará State. We built this unit where we are. We have PM27. In PM27, I'm going to tell you something about it. These paper machines, we look at them by their shape. This is how we are compelled to think about the future. Here we have three big paper reels in this machine. These are three big paper reels produced in Paraná State. They are compatible with the two pieces of equipment we have here. We have two corrugators, 280. In the future, this plant can accommodate a third corrugator of 250. We call this closing the machine. That means the machine would be totally converted and integrated with the unit.
All of that has to be considered because there are a lot of risks, market risks. We sell the paper to the global market, as I mentioned, but in certain periods where consumption increases due to government policy, every administration has a different characteristic. When that happens, we need to look at the domestic market, and we have to shut down the machine or close the machine. We have to consider that. In this other machine, I said that this market is very small. In the first years, this machine works with containerboard, kraft paper. Only later will it start producing coated board, which is more sophisticated. It's the high end of the sector. The high end is the most sophisticated technological paper. That's what we are going to manufacture here. It's called LPB. This whole concept, I spoke a little about the process.
I spoke a little about the merit of each one of the investments, how we deliver that. We knew about the value of long fiber for all that. Please remember that this whole machine, this long fiber, only a small percentage is short fiber. This is eucalyptus and here pine. And we had already mapped regions and areas that we wanted to acquire long fiber in Paraná. There is no other company in Brazil. And not in South America, not in the southern hemisphere. There is no other company in the world with the volume of pine that we have today, with the differential that we have today, given our portfolio of products. Because long and short fiber, it's important to have a portfolio. You have to manufacture product that needs long fiber. And I mentioned LPB, the product for beer packaging. And I mentioned fruit, several refrigerated packaging.
All of these are products that need long fiber. Where we can use short fiber, through a research and development process, we insert the fiber-to-fiber process. We also do that. We knew that we would need pine. The pine market in the south of Brazil, starting in the south of São Paulo up to the north of Rio Grande do Sul, has a lot of pine. These are smaller properties. We knew that in the beginning, we could purchase this wood from third parties that were far away. We know that at some moment, we were able to purchase a large area. This is what happened now. Then we would be able to bring in this forestry to this machine. I'm telling you all the story because the strategic planning process at Klabin has deep and long debates.
You will understand beyond the merit and obviously the process itself, which are what is the math that is done. Because you know that when we add this, well, sometimes it seems too much. Yes, we are asking ourselves if we rather buy back the shares or reinvest. You will understand that this is not a taboo for us. This is what we do all the time. This was a very enriching process and very fruitful. We just produced now. I have one piece here so that you see how it looks like. I do value a lot of this document among the different chapters. You can check it if you want. I have a few copies here. We have here capital allocation. We have this 10-year map.
Everything that we have been doing since 2017 with a lot of work, a lot of debate, and also with a lot of consulting services helping the decisions of the board and also of the management of the company. So all of this that we have designed in the past had the objective of bringing one million tons in the company. We live to 3.5 million-4.5 million tons in this portfolio that in a not very organized way, I tried to bring to you just so that you could have a material idea. And we did have a purpose here, which was to have. And now, remember, we had just invested in short fiber, eucalyptus, and Puma I.
The objective there, what the board told us was, "I want a company that is as sound as we have always been and discussing the company, but we want a company that is more stable. The next cycle, which is this one, is going to deliver us a stable company." We designed a company, and some of you will remember that. We have been talking about this for a few years. We wanted one-third of fiber, one-third of paper, one-third of packaging. This is the company that we are delivering after seven years. We had a roadmap of 10 years. We have been able to do it in seven. Now we have a more resilient company, a more flexible company. We can talk a little bit about this as well. Especially a company that is protecting the companies, ROIC.
This is a discussion, and it's something that we've been talking, have been saying, and it looks like we are being heard. We have a forestry base of 460,000 hectares that are useful. If you do the math and you check how much land is worth in Brazil and how much forest is worth in Brazil, you will come to the conclusion that Klabin's asset of forest and land is more valuable than the company itself. But what is the use of having that? And I've been following this topic for over 30 years. I'm working in this industry for 30 years. So there is no use having the land with forest in Brazil with no industrial assets on top of it. And it's not for a discussion here today, but I've been following this topic for many years. As I mentioned, we have forest for energy and so on.
So these assets are still not remunerated. You do not have ROIC. So with the standing trees, you do not meet your ROIC, not with any other company other than pulp and paper. This land in Brazil would have turned into agriculture if we did not have all this technology associated. So this is an agribusiness sector, of course. But in fact, this is the area, the sector of the agribusiness that is greatly integrated in Brazil. You obviously know the upstream and downstream concept that is more associated to the oil and gas industry, but let's understand it. Most of my assets are here. A large part of my assets are here in the forests. And then we have a lot of machinery here in the middle of the process. And then we have less machinery in the conversion. And what is the good thing about the conversion?
The thing is that when I invest in fibers to improve the return of my forest asset, I am then exposed to a commodity, and the result of this business, and this is exactly in the right order here, it then has a sinusoidal profile that is very steep. As you deliver products that are closer to consumption up to the downstream stage, you then reach a price level that is more stable. For instance, all of these prices here, in the last six or seven years, we have been able to increase the volume, and you see that in Douglas' presentation. We improved the volume in a rate higher than the Brazilian GDP, so we have increased the volume higher than the Brazilian GDP, and the price is higher than inflation.
We are in the seventh year in which, in this final block here, we have been able to define prices that are above inflation. This is a stability. When we turn to paper products, here we also have niche products, as I mentioned in the beginning, more sophisticated products. These are three- to four-year contracts. Just as the same, these are stable products because we have a fixed price for those four years. Again, stability. That's why we talk about our product portfolio. Why do we have that? Long fiber. Now, when we turn to fibers, remember that our capacity here is 1.6 million tons. 1.1 million tons is eucalyptus pulp that goes to the tissue market or personal hygiene market. But 550 million of this 1.6 million, one-third of Klabin's one-third, is done with long fiber fluff. You have seen it outside. We have elderly diapers.
When I look at studies of consumption trends, remember the consulting services that I mentioned, the elderly diapers, that is, the adult diapers, that is increasing in two digits. The population is becoming older, and that is increasing the consumption of adult diapers. That's why you're focusing on long fiber. We cannot manufacture that product with short fiber. But didn't you manufacture container board with short fiber in the past? Yes, we did. We were pioneers. You used that to a market that we know very, very well for short fiber. But here, we know that, and we are making sure that long fiber is the right product for elderly diapers, especially for high-income population. That's why this stability improves and maintains our ROIC. It is protecting the ROIC of our forests.
I could eventually, if I did not have this area, I could have, from time to time, I talked about the curve, we could have better periods of time of ROIC. But in the long term, Klabin has always understood that. We see in this integration, in this conversion, the whole business. So that's how we will be thinking about this business. From time to time, we'll be investing in non-integrated or non-converted products. Yes. In the strategic process, yes. But to do what the board of directors asked us to do and what we delivered is bring one million tons. Okay, we want Klabin to divide that into three-thirds and to try to use or try to always have a competitive advantage in the long fiber. So long fiber, stability, and to balance prices to protect the company's ROIC. This is our history.
This was the seven-year process that we have been able to convert. Once we delivered this strategic planning, we started designing a new one that's being submitted to the board for the next 10 years. For the next 10 years, I will tell you just about the two next years. Okay? For the two next years, we want, yes, to show the cash creation capacity of the company. We have been talking about this for a long time, and it shows that we have been very assertive in choosing machines and products. Now we have to come up with Free Cash Flow. The bottom line will be free for a while because we want to leverage the company. We want to reduce gross debt, and the company's leverage and Marcos will go over that and bring you the figures.
But I'm telling you about my responsibility and how we are operating the company with the same discipline that we had over the past seven years that I just talked to you about and the strategic plan that was highly debated. So now we want to deleverage the company. We could go over the reasons. And obviously, my time is up already. I'm not going to go into the details. But I think no one here has any questions that there are uncertainties in the world. This is a moment when we have to look at our abilities, capacities, efficiencies, and we are going into an in-between seasons here. We are sure about the studies and about what has been done in terms of product portfolio choices, not because it's a dogma. We are not dogmatic at all.
But since 2017, when we started, and the products that we wanted to deliver, those three-thirds, there have been no changes. Maybe a slight change, one degree to the left or to the right, but we made no mistakes in the major decisions of the company. So I believe, and I wanted to stress that to you, that right now we are not going to be talking too much about the company's future, but I would like to ensure you that the company's DNA is still of a growing company. And its history in these 125 years of Klabin, that's how it has been. But in the past few years, strong growth that we have seen. But yes, because of the circumstances, we are in a more conservative approach, focusing on the free cash flow of the company and also in reducing our leverage.
I think that's what I had to bring to you. Did I go over my time way too much? Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Cristiano, for your presentation. So now to move on with our agenda, I would like to bring to the floor our CFO and IR Officer, Marcos Ivo. Marcos, please.
Good morning. Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to have you here at Figueira. A special good morning for those of you that are with us online. I have two main messages to share with you today. This is always a very special, important day for us, a Klabin day, because I see in it a single opportunity in our yearly agenda to go over how we see the company, what we think for the company. Cristiano was already very thorough in that.
Also to reduce information asymmetry between the company and the capital market. This is a constant challenge. We have been investing a lot of our energy in that in the past few years. We'll just move on in this talk today. I will talk about two topics. The first is about the capital allocation process, very much related to what Cristiano already said. Second, I will be touching upon the projections for 2025, which is something that the market always expects us to do. Now, talking about the process for capital allocation, it is routine and very common in our talks to get answers about this. So here you have a structure of what we constantly tell you. And this is exactly what Klabin does. The difference is that we have this in a chart today. Maybe it makes it easier for us.
All the cash generation from the company, and that can be applied to Klabin or any other company or aspect, you know, that can be used basically in three main ways. We can break those down into other ones. It has to do here to start with the capital structure. Cristiano well said it. We are now in the harvesting time. Klabin, for the next two years, will be concluding the ramp-up of its projects and synergies of Caetê and so on. We'll be generating cash based on everything that you already know and public information. For that cash generation, part of that is going to be directed to pay debt. When the market asks us, what is the size of the debt that Klabin wishes to have, what type of leverage, considering that this is a very important element in the capital allocation process?
And exactly because of this effort and this journey that we are on to reduce asymmetry between the market and ourselves about our capital allocation process, in 2020, we approved for the first time a financial indebtedness policy, which has been recently reviewed, and I'll go over it shortly. But the idea here is that there is full disclosure. Klabin has a policy. The policy determines the parameters, and we'll be operating according to them. Just as the same proceeds, which is another important topic in terms of capital allocation. Just as we talk about financial indebtedness in the same period in 2020, with the objective of communicating in a very assertive fashion with the capital market, we also have approved a proceeds policy, which has been reviewed now in October.
Therefore, in these two elements, debt and proceeds, we have specific policies, and for the last four years, we are operating according to these policies. And that's how we intend to keep on doing. So let's move on for something that usually we get more questions on: growth and shares buyback. This whole process has two very important guiding principles. The strategic planning process explained by Cristiano and second, financial discipline. We'll only speak about growth if the leverage level is according to what is defined in the policy. If growth is aligned with the strategic plan of Klabin, every now and then, an opportunity arises to invest in something that looks very profitable, but it's not Klabin's business. And Klabin is very disciplined. We recognize where we enjoy competitive advantages, where we know how to operate: manufacturing, operating, delivering, and when we see good opportunities.
And that entails a lot less risk than companies that look for diversification. Not our case. We like our business model. We like to operate in the sector which offers good opportunities. So growth, is it aligned with the strategic planning? Yes. So let's look at the return. And here we ask ourselves frequently the same question: what is the minimum IRR of a project for Klabin so that it can be discussed, submitted for approval, and actual implementation? We have a minimum internal rate of return. The cost of the company's capital WACC plus 4 percentage points, a deleveraged internal rate of return. And it is important to stress a deleveraged IRR of WACC plus 4 percentage points. If I look at the average WACC of what I normally speak to you about, you estimate an average WACC of Klabin at around 10-10.5.
We are talking about a deleveraged IRR between 14%-15%. If we increase the leverage, given Klabin's capital structure, we have a target capital structure of 60% owned capital, 40% debt. If we get that target capital structure and we leverage it, we are going to find a nominal IRR of around 20%. This is quite well established at the company. There's a project aligned with strategic planning, delivers the minimum IRR. Does it mean it's going to be actually executed? Not really. We have to have a low leverage at the company, and we can compare. We should compare with other alternatives we have. Share buyback is always an available alternative.
At these moments, when we have to make a decision of making a big investment for the company, we compare the IRR of the project and the IRR of the project with the IRR of share buyback. We always do that calculation. And at this moment, we look at strategic points. Let's suppose that the project has a leveraged IRR of 25. Share buyback will give us 26, 27. And then we wonder, okay, but if I don't implement this project now, I will miss some market opportunities, market windows. I will not serve some customers. So these are things related to the strategy and positioning, and they are also taken into account. So this is a very well-established process at Klabin. I stress the company's effort of showing this and giving the market total clarity regarding the way in which we work. That's why we approved these two policies.
We are now looking at this bottom part of the slide. I spoke about the guiding principles, strategic planning, and financial discipline. What is the ultimate goal? What is the focus? To have a lot of clarity in terms of maximizing value creation to our shareholders. We don't get distracted regarding that point. We have to know what path will create more value to our shareholders based on what we are seeing at any given time. Moving forward, this is just to remind you of these financial policies. I mentioned the history. They were approved in June 2020, exactly so precisely so that we could communicate with you with more clarity. These were revisited in the month of October. This revisiting is very consistent with the moment of the company, this moment of reaping the fruits or harvesting moment, as we call it.
Basically, what did we do when we reviewed the policies? In the financial indebtedness policy, we didn't change the leverage level measured by target net debt over EBITDA, which is at 2.5-3.5 times, but we reduced the maximum leverage in periods of investment cycle, which increased to 4.5 times, and now they are down to 3.9. Likewise, we updated a CapEx that puts the company into an investment cycle. These are big, big projects. We reduced the time frame in which we could stay at this net debt over EBITDA of 3.9 times. We tightened the metrics of our indebtedness policy. In terms of dividend policy, we made a change. Our policy was to pay 15%-25% of adjusted EBITDA. Now it is 10%-20% of adjusted EBITDA for dividend distribution.
On the slide, we have here 12 years broken down by quarter, and we can see the leverage curve of Klabin in the last 12 years measured by net debt over EBITDA in U.S. dollars. In 12 years, of course, the company changed a lot. We lived through many projects: Puma I, Puma II, Figueira, acquisition of Caetê assets. It's a whole new company now, but my take-home message with this slide is the great part of the slide. That's the period of this first financial indebtedness policy that was approved in June 2020. The world in June of 2020 to date? Well, the world underwent a lot of volatility. We faced a pandemic. The pandemic was just starting. We had all the effects of the COVID pandemic, an impact on inflation, on interest rates, on the exchange rate.
There was an opportunity such as the acquisition of the Arauco asset. That was a big investment. And Klabin remained within the established metrics of the financial policy. So my take-home message to you is we will continue being disciplined. We had discipline in the last four years, and we will continue to be so. On the slide, we move to the second topic of my presentation, which is the forecasting for 2025 for Klabin.
The year of 2025 will benefit from a higher production volume. This greater production volume results from four factors. First, the ramp-up of the Puma II project, a theme that is well known and followed by you. PM27, PM28 will bring an incremental production in 2025 compared to 2024 of about 88,000 tons, additional tons. In addition to this, which is a structural factor, there is a factor linked to general shutdown calendar.
Our paper and pulp facilities have a general maintenance stoppage every 15 months. So for five years, the company didn't have a general downtime. But this will happen with Monte Alegre in 2025. The Monte Alegre facility will not have a general stoppage. If you get the capacity of the plant divided by days, and if you find a period of 10 to 11 days, that's the general downtime, you will find between 30 and 35,000 tons of incremental production in Monte Alegre in 2025. In addition, as reported in the earnings releases, we had two non-recurring events in Ortigueira this year, which brought us a pulp production loss, particularly short fiber pulp production. But this has been totally resolved. The plant is working normally.
We don't expect to have this kind of loss next year that will bring us an incremental volume of short fiber pulp to be sold in the market.
Lastly, with Klabin's flexibility, and that's another theme that we try to explain to you and show the value of the kind of flexibility that we have. In the last three years, we lived through very different scenarios in the kraftliner world, 2021, 2022, with very high demand and very high prices. 2023 was a very difficult year, a very challenging year. Then in 2024, a recovery. Klabin is reacting to that. In 2023, we stopped the production of recycled and kraft papers. We integrated more paper in our boxes. As the kraft market resumes momentum, we do the inverse movement. We start working with recycled paper. We convert it into corrugated boxes, and that's what kraft.
So we've been reporting this over and over in our earnings releases. But sometimes when we are modeling for the following year, we don't remember that. In January of this year, we turned on, we started up the kraftliner Monte Alegre machine, machine one. And in the second half of 2024, we resumed the production of machine 17 in Goiana. So next year, it will have a full year. This year, it worked for only six months. And given the market conditions we have now, our budget for next year, demand for corrugated box and kraftliner, and the price curve for these two products, we are starting the process of resuming production at Paulínia, which was the last recycled paper unit that was stopped. The expectation is that by mid-second quarter of the year, we'll start production again. So you put it all together.
Everything I'm seeing here is data disclosed to the market. If you do the math, you will find an incremental production slightly over 200,000 tons in 2025 compared to 2024. This will naturally convert into or will be translated into higher sales. Now moving to my last two slides, and I'm still talking about the forecasting for 2025. I am happy to show you this cash cost. Since the mid-Puma II project, we started PM27, the cash cost of Klabin increased. We had intense conversations with you explaining the learning curve that the cash curve would drop. Now we start seeing that in our numbers. Klabin has a cash cost per ton, total cash cost. By the way, total cash cost, including downtime costs. Several of you said, is this with or without the downtime? This is total cash cost, including downtime and stoppages.
This nominal cost has been flat in the last three years, and we expect this to remain unchanged in 2025, so this was filed with CVM, just like we did last year. You can easily see that we are absorbing the inflation rate of this period. In other words, the reduction of total cash cost per ton actual is happening, and this results from synergies of Caetê project, which have been fully included in the company's results. This comes from the benefit of a higher production volume in addition to several other actions that were taken, particularly in the year of 2023, so here are some brief comments on 2025. We have maritime freight charges under pressure for freight using containers.
If it weren't for this external factor, the cash cost would be lower, just like the price of OCC, which is much higher today than in the beginning of the year, and we maintain this expectation for next year, which, by the way, is very positive for Klabin because my competitors of corrugated boxes are substantially producers of recycled fiber. Klabin is the opposite, so this is good. This creates good conditions for the corrugated boxes business and reinforces our commitment with this number, just like we had last year, and we're showing it to you today. This does not depend on any special action by the company. This is simply maintenance of what is already done. Last but not least, we have our CapEx forecast. Again, I want to link this with what was presented last year.
This is the first time that Klabin provided a CapEx guidance to the market. This was done formally. This was filed in our reference form. Compared to last year, we spent BRL 200 million below the forecast. And this was a carryover. In 2024, we will spend exactly what we forecast. But these BRL 200 million that were not spent in 2023 were carried over to 2024 and part of it to 2025. When we add these three years, 2023, 2024, 2025, we are exactly on the target that we had projected. I'd like to remind you that approximately 25% of the maintenance CapEx of Klabin's maintenance means operational continuity of our plants plus the forestry spending. Approximately 25% of that is dollar denominated. So there is some impact of the exchange rate fluctuation.
But my take-home message on this slide is that we are committed and we're disciplined in having our CapEx, our capital expenditures in line with our forecast, given that this is an important variable for the free cash flow generation that the company is pursuing, the deleveraging that we are pursuing, and in keeping with everything that we have communicated to you. So I'll stop here. I went just one minute beyond the time allotted to me. I did better than Cristiano. Thank you.
Thank you, Marcos. Before we continue, I'd like to remind you that all of you who are following us on YouTube, that you can send questions. Now we'll watch a video of the Piracicaba Cup.
So now moving on with our agenda, I would like to bring to the floor Douglas Dalmasi, our packaging officer, and he's going to talk more about the project and the packaging market.
Good morning. I'm very happy to be here with you today. This is the nicest presentation of the day. It's to have clients with us. Without clients, we would not be here today. When I look at the project, the first thing that I would like to tell you is to stress Klabin's ability to deliver projects on time and on budget. Now, if you analyze the project, the first stake that we added here was April of 2023. The startup was April 24. In a year, we were able to execute and deliver the project. I have three objectives in my presentation. I will talk about clients, as I said in the beginning.
I will talk about the importance of conversion and integration because it protects our ROIC, as has been said. And I also will talk about the project's delivery. We always said that those that want to know more about Klabin, that want to learn more about Klabin, you just have to go to the supermarket. I love going to the cash and carries because that's where we see Klabin's packages. We package products that get to the point of sale or the products that are at the shelves, the displays, and the products that are in the shelves themselves. Our products are in all of the aisles, all of the areas, all the sectors, all of the shelves. If you see yourselves in a supermarket, in a grocery store, you look at Klabin, what Klabin is delivering today. But also, there are a number of possibilities ahead.
How many more materials we still have in the supermarket, and we will go into a changing process, and all those materials will be turned into paper. Now, going through the supermarket, for instance, if we go to the food area, chocolates, cookies, chocolate powder, among other products, we have clients such as Nestlé. Nestlé is our client for a long time. We provide them packages. I would say around 90% of Nestlé's boxes are from Klabin. If we look at pasta in the supermarket, we will see clients such as Adria's pasta, which is M. Dias Branco. Also, they are our client. We have a high stake with our packages there. Now, turning to refrigerated products, proteins, we will find a large protein producer and proteins to get to the supermarket. We have BRF, Seara, JBS. JBS is the largest packaging buyer in Brazil. They are a great client.
We have 50% share of JBS packaging. Proteins draw my attention not only because we have a supply to the domestic market, but also to the foreign market. Because we have virgin fiber, we provide 100% virgin fiber packaging to clients such as Minerva and Marfrig that export that protein all over the world. They're still in the supermarket in the refrigerated areas. BRF and Perdigão Sadia, we also sell them packages. We have a great stake there. And also Coated Board that we also sell to a printing company that will supply to these clients. So the Klabin twice in the point of sale now is to moving on to the grocery store. Drinks and beverages, we have 70% stake at Ambev with a lot of resilience for food and beverages. Now, hygiene and cleaning products, we have OMO also twice. That is a washing powder.
We have the box that is transporting the product up to the supermarket. So we also have Dove, the soap. We have another type of soap, dishwasher soap. Also Ypê, another type of soap for dishes. And all clients, Raymundo da Fonte in the northeast with all of their brands, we provide our packages, and we have a high stake at the client as well. Now, moving to electronics. Okay, we have TVs. There are plants in Manaus, and we have to develop a very sophisticated machine. We take our reels and paper to Manaus. We have two factories in Manaus to manufacture the packaging to transport the TVs, the brown line, air conditioning. We have clients such as Samsung, Semp, LG. So it's a huge diversity. Manaus bikes, they are assembled there. They are also our clients. Now, in the northeast, fruits and vegetables in the supermarket.
Fruits and vegetables as well. Fruits, vegetables. We provide virgin fiber packages for the northeast of the country, corrugated boxes to Vale do São Francisco for melons, grapes, mangoes, also Rio Grande do Norte, melons there. We do have a hard market share in that market because we have the virgin fiber, Kraftliner and Eukaliner. And both for the domestic market and the domestic market in the supermarkets, as well as in the foreign market, our fruits, especially in the northeast, they are increasing market share in the international market. They reach a number of countries, and we have our technology, our plants in the region following up the growth of this market. Also, Espírito Santo papaya, that also has our packaging, fruits and vegetables for the Midwest, apples in Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.
We package those as well, and they are then sent to the domestic and international markets whenever possible, and a number of other areas: white line, Brastemp, and Consul. We have 80% of market share at Whirlpool, so we are supplying all the sectors, all the industries. If you walk in the supermarket, you understand our resilience, our strength, and we are very close to the consumer market, and in the past few years, e-commerce is improving and also increasing in retail. E-commerce in Brazil already represents 10%-15% of the market. It's growing on a yearly basis. We have clients such as Amazon with half of market share there of the packages that Amazon buys here, Mercado Livre, 80% of stake there, and then I can tell you, clients: we have 5,000 clients in corrugated boxes.
I just mentioned a few when you go over the grocery store. 20,000 products. This is what we always mention in terms of diversification and our ability to be in different sectors and follow up a strong growth, stronger than what the Brazilian economy is and the GDP in Brazil is. And where does this capacity come from? We have a penetration, as we usually say. This is the map here. To the right, you see where our plants are. They are in all of the regions in the country, and that allows us to cater to large clients that are present all over the country, Nestlé, for instance, JBS, and others that are throughout all the country, so we can negotiate with them and cater them in different regions.
Also, local clients that are present just in the single region, and also the seasonality products where we have the fruit in the northeast, the fruits in the south, in Manaus. We have the free trade area, so we are able to cater to all of these markets that I mentioned, and we are following a growing path, as Cristiano and Marcus just said. It's one in every five corrugated boxes in Brazil is from Klabin, and we are moving towards one in each four. We are gaining market share. We had a market share of 17%, and we are now at 22%. And the sector is consolidating itself, and Klabin is leading. If you consider Puma II, Machine 27, paper availability, there was an opportunity of generating more value with the acquisition of the International Paper plants in Brazil. We did the acquisition, and we grew.
Other players are also consolidating, therefore reducing the number of players in the corrugated box market. This slide has a few messages that we have already brought to you, and here I can talk about the industry's performance and ourselves. In the blue line, we have the GDP, in the green line, we have the performance of corrugated boxes, and the black line shows our growth over the years, so we have the CAGR, the average growth, and also the year to date. This industry is growing higher than the GDP. If we check the history way back, the rationale won't change. It is growing at one percentage point higher than the GDP.
All this diversification that I talked about, the e-commerce and everything that you see in the supermarket, Klabin has grown in average 8%, considering our acquisitions, our capillarity, and our national footprint, and we can grow higher than the market. What about prices? Well, for the same reason, here you see inflation in blue, the growth. Here in the last seven years, way higher than the inflation, the average growth of IPCA or inflation. How was the sector this year? In green. And Klabin's growth over the years. So we have grown 18%, average CAGR, from 2019 to 2024 with an inflation of 6% in that period. Of course, that is thanks to price transfer.
And also because we have all fibers and we have a footprint in all of the sectors, we have a high share in sectors, not only because we have the virgin fiber or a product that they need the packaging, or because it's an exporting sector, because technically they need the virgin fiber packaging, and then we can add more value and add price to the packaging. So we can transfer price above the inflation. And I'll spend some time on this slide. And this is a model that we have developed over the years in the company. And we improved it with consulting services that helped us to turn it more robust and also with a constant progress. And it shows us the integration or conversion value creation. In grain, we have Klabin today. We get all our containerboard production, kraftliner, Eukaliner, recycled paper.
Today we convert 70%, and we produce corrugated boxes with this paper. To the other side here, it is as if we did not have corrugated boxes. It is as if we were to sell commodities. That is to be subjected to the volatility of the paper market. Here we have two important pieces of information. The width of the bar shows how large the volatility is in a scenario with no corrugated boxes. With corrugated boxes, the volatility is much lower. It goes from 0.7% to 5% of standard deviation. There is another important information here, which is ROIC. Here we have a WACC, and here we have the average ROIC of this projection exactly here if we did not have this conversion. We have here the current scenario with the conversion, the ROIC.
So, that conversion, that ROIC protection is exactly this: lower volatility. This is an economic mathematical model with deep details developed over years. We were improving it year after year with the help of other companies. That's what we use in our short, mid, and long-term planning. There are different levels of conversion here that we have simulated to come to this current model. We always ask ourselves, we always analyze it so that that is to prove that this conversion, this integration really creates value for the company. Finally, I have here some information about the project, and you will see it in person. I'm very happy to be able to show you a project that is now ready with its operation. In the first stage, it was in April of 2023. Startup, it was April 2024. The pieces of equipment started arriving.
We started with a corrugator and a printer in April of 2024, and then we received the other pieces of equipment, and we will be reaching 100% at the end of 2025 and beginning of 2026 a year ahead of our feasibility study of the project. The project would reach 100% just by the end of 2027, actually by the end of 2026, and we will be reaching it by the end of 2025. That will be the total capacity for this project. This was thanks to the excellent work of our project team, of course, but especially because we dedicated a lot of time to bring in experienced, prepared people to this factory. This is a new factory. We had an internal recruitment in the company. We have other 15 factories in the company.
If we got the most important positions like operators and so on, 95% of the operators came from the company itself. These were people with great experience, and they came to the project ahead of time. We had new people in the current operations, and let's say old operations, but they were persons that were already running. We brought these people here six months ahead of time so that we could prepare them for the new equipment in order to get the best ramp up possible for this factory. Some of the operators here went to France to learn how to operate. They went to Japan, to Germany, and that these are the origins of our equipment so that they could operate here. This is a factory of 240,000 tons, 421 million square meters. We are delivering another product.
We are very proud about it, and it's being delivered on time and on budget. This is a state-of-the-art plant. Its yield is 2.5 times higher. It is 2.5 times higher in terms of productivity when compared to any other factory. So our most productive factory in São Paulo, if we compare that, this factory here is 2.5 times more productive. It's the most modern and productive in Brazil because we do not know all of them in the world, but I would dare to say that this is the most productive factory in the world. But it is Brazil, for sure. It is fully focused in operating efficiency, and it has a very low conversion cost. The cash cost for conversion, the fixed or conversion cost, it is over 50% lower than our best conversion cost of our best corrugated box factory.
We can get our best factory for a corrugated box. This is 50% lower in conversion cost. It's fully automated. You will see. You will understand what I'm talking about. That allows us to be very competitive, and also it brings results and return. This is what I had to bring to you. Now I have a spoiler of what you will be seeing as a productive process since the corrugator up to the final packaging process. From Puma II, the two corrugating machines with the 280 width. This is where we have the corrugated boxes and also the folder, the capacity of 420 million square meters. This is pioneering. This is vertical inventory. A number of positions here. We have the printers, the nine printers. Five of them are flexos of four colors. Fully automated. Nobody touches the packages. Here you see them folding and cutting.
Very high level of automation. It's fully robotized at the end of the process. So the package leaves the factory ready to our end client. You see that everything's automated. This is a factory that was designed to have a high productivity process. These are the shipping docks. That's what I had to bring to you.
Thank you, Douglas. We are very proud to see this beautiful project materialized. Now, with the presentations made, we'll try to catch up, recover some time. We'll start the Q&A session. I'd like to remind you that our online attendees, if you haven't asked any questions yet, you can use the QR code and we'll get your questions here. Please identify yourselves before you ask your question. For those of you here on site, you just raise your hand and somebody will take you a microphone. I can see some raised hands already.
We'll give you the mic soon. Now, I would like to invite on stage the officers that will be participating: Cristiano Teixeira, Marcos Ivo, Douglas Dalmasi. You've heard them already, and I'd like to invite Sandro Ávila, our Forestry Officer, Alexandre Nicolini, Pulp Officer, José Soares, Paper Officer, and Ricardo, Industrial Officer. Welcome. We begin. First question. Hello.
Good morning. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Congratulations on the event. I have a couple of questions for you, Cristiano. More long-term questions. The first is regarding internationalization. I know that this has been a big topic of one of your competitors. Clearly, this is not a discussion for you, but I'd like to hear your take on this. What do you think of an eventual internationalization process of the company, given Klabin's size and when you deplete growth options in Brazil?
My second question is, you spoke about one-third fiber, one-third paper, and one-third packaging, and that you delivered this plan over the last 10 years. Now, thinking about the next 10 years, how do you see this mix of product? How do you see this?
Well, thank you. Now, start with the future portfolio of products, and then I'll speak about your first question, internationalization, because the product portfolio needs some explanation. In this 10-year vision, like I said, we are looking at this post-leverage period. What paths to follow will continue on the path of long fiber? We have looked mainly at opportunities in the south of the country, opportunities to expand our plantation work in that region. And there's a product for which we see a great differential, which is fluff. This is a six million ton market.
There is one global manufacturer with 35% global market share for this product, and the cash cost of this manufacturer is high, which sets a lower threshold of price. And with this level of pricing, Klabin can have extremely profitable results. So undoubtedly, the next investment should come. And of course, we should never be dogmatic. This number will be revisited every year. But today, the investment would probably come in fluff and long fiber. So this would be the portfolio for the future post-deleveraging period. Regarding internationalization, we see, at least in an important period in Brazil, some opportunities to grow our planted area. I speak a lot about a shortage of wood in Brazil. But this shortage of wood means that we are not planting because if we plant in seven years, we have eucalyptus. In 14 years, we have pine. We do have land available in Brazil.
I always mention we have 180 million hectares of pastures in Brazil. We have very low productivity of pastures, below one cattle head, and Brazil has less than 10 million planted hectares. Brazil has the potential to have double that, at least two times that. So there's room for organic growth in Brazil. We can create a lot of value in Brazil based on this. There's consumption. There's the organic growth for tissue and for packaging, a global demand, and going to the Northern Hemisphere or internationalizing the company, if this will interfere in my cash cost ability, we want to offer the lowest cash cost in the world in our core business, so Klabin will not go international when we still have opportunities in Brazil, so not if this is going to impact our cash cost. Our investment in forestry, in pulp, in paper will be in Brazil.
Now, in the future, there are two possibilities. One possibility is conversion: corrugated box, plant, industrial bag, plant. This can be done in the future. Eventually, this can happen. And another internationalization possibility would be through merger and acquisition. This we need to take into account all of the benefits that Klabin has in terms of competitiveness now and in the future, considering a premium. And we need to consider the discount that some northern hemisphere producers will need to have. So Leo, I don't envision this opportunity for Klabin in the next five to six years. I don't see Klabin considering that.
Anybody else? Yes?
Hello? I am Marcela with Itaú BBA. My question is, I'd like to understand what the company is thinking now that you have the projects being executed. I think that it became very clear in the presentation.
What do you think about the kraftliner market in 2025 and the packaging market next year?
I think that José and Douglas can address your question. Let's start with José.
Speaking about kraftliner, what we have seen, and this was mentioned in the presentation, we had a 2023 that was very, very hard. The company was overstocked because of the pandemic. Everyone was consuming a lot, and that was over. So for 2023, we corrected these inventories. The clients practically zeroed their inventories. And along 2024, we saw the client buying again, the economies of the world kind of reacting and kicking back, except for Europe. Europe is growing very little, and Europe continues with low growth. But we see some reaction in the U.S. market. The whole Latin America recovered. In Asia, well, up until recently, they were doing well.
China, and the fact that Russia left the international market was quite helpful. Russia was concentrated in offering kraftliner to China. That opened an opportunity for Brazilian kraftliner. And with this, we had an opportunity to recover prices. We sold prices at $450. Now it's close to $600. So that was a very important recovery. And now we see some stability. The market is quite stable. The market underwent this correction, a quick correction, and we see demand for next year being stable in Latin American countries. Of course, there's the Trump administration. What's going to happen with the tariffs? There's a question mark regarding how trade will change if he does half of what he's claiming he'll do. And there might be some opportunities for us given this geopolitical change that is about to happen. Here in Brazil, we see clients quite optimistic.
As Douglas mentioned, normally we run 1% above the Brazilian GDP. So if we expect a GDP of 2.5%, we'll be growing 3.5% in paper. So it's quite favorable for us. In corrugated boxes and industrial bags, this was mentioned. If the economy remains as it is, low unemployment, good income, social incentives continuing, we envision growing above the GDP this year. It was a very strong growth. Corrugated boxes growing more than 5% year to date. We saw industrial bags in the civil construction market posting great recovery in the second half of the year. So this is what we're envisioning for next year. If the economy remains as it is, we'll grow above GDP for both.
Thank you. Any other questions?
I am a captive shareholder of Klabin. I purchased shares when the company democratized its capital.
I have been very lucky because all over these 50 years, I did see that Klabin expanded. It grew. Nevertheless, I was surprised to see that you projected a future far from what I am foreseeing. My feeling is that the world is no longer growing as it is growing. Brazil is not growing. China is not growing that much. Argentina is not growing. Most of the countries are not growing. And what I see is that the purchasing power is leaving the pockets of the population. So my question to you is, even with this type of scenario, kind of drastic, do you still see room to grow? And do you think that the growth could be at the same speed as we have been seeing it? And why am I asking you that?
Because I want to keep on purchasing Klabin's share, and I also want the shares to be appreciated. So I would like to hear from you. This growth perspective, can it be real? I am not so sure because of the reasons I just mentioned. So that's what I would like to hear from you.
Thank you, Mr. Luis. It's an honor to have you with us. You are greatly respected by us and the top management and also by the board and the shareholders. We do have a lot of opportunities, and I will start talking about Brazil. Brazil has a per capita dollar denominated income that is very low. Brazilians' purchasing power is still very low. So I think we should foresee that if we had Brazil with 50% of the per capita dollar denominated income of Europe, this would be a different country.
This can be applied to the whole Latin America. We have a per capita consumption considering a dollar denominated per capita income that is higher. Obviously, that we have to have a number of social policies, public investment, private investment. This is a whole deep discussion, but I have to believe that Brazil, when we look 10 to 15 years ahead, Brazil will have a higher per capita in dollar denominated per capita higher. Yes, the per capita consumption of a number of items in Brazil is very low. How much Brazilians use of toilet paper, milk, coffee, beer, shoes, everything, all of that is very low. That can be applied also for Latin America. When we talk about the mainstream countries, the large economies in the world, the consumption base is already strong.
And in that consumption base, any percentage over a larger base, you also get a larger number. But what happens is that because of competitiveness, a lot of manufacturers of the mainstream countries, the Northern Hemisphere specifically, they are reducing production. That opens up opportunities for us. And finally, what is most important to me is that if we look, if we run a global analysis, we have a number of countries in the world with a very low per capita consumption, either because of income or infrastructure. And I could mention today, Vietnam that is growing at an accelerated pace, our pace for the '80s. Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, there are great expectations about India. There are dozens of countries in the Southeast Asia that also represent great opportunities. They are peripheral to China, but they have strong growth. Not to mention Africa.
The north of Africa is starting to come out, especially Nigeria. So we have a lot of opportunities there. So you may remain optimistic.
Thank you. So now let's turn to Rafael.
Rafael Barcellos, Bradesco BBI. Thank you to the top management of Klabin and for the IRR team, for this opportunity to visit Figueira. This has been a very much debated project, and it has proven to be very important to the company's strategy, maybe even needed, if I could say that. So congratulations on this decision of moving on with this project. Having said that, one question, one thing that we debate among investors is that either to have acquisitions or greenfields. Klabin decided to go with greenfield. Of course, it's not easy to find interesting assets such as IP. It's different to replicate those. But the packaging market, the corrugated box market, it has a huge competition.
We realized that there is no use of having an acquisition at every 10 years. The market is fragmented. It's difficult. So Cristiano, I would like to understand your understanding. What is your diagnosis about the corrugated box market in the last 10 years? We know that the demand is strong, but we would like to understand what is the way to go, what is the path here, concentration, future projects, and if the way to go is consolidation, when will we see Klabin being more aggressive in the market in terms of M&A for corrugated boxes?
Thank you for your question, Rafael. May I start with a comment? When I started my career, I used to hear that the turnaround executive, the turnaround officer, the M&A officer, we had different profiles for officers or executive top management.
So I would like to say that all employees at Klabin, and here we represent 18,000 employees. We purchased companies and we kept the market share. And the acquisition, such as International Paper, and nobody is arguing about the value that we paid because it was very competitive. And we acquired it and we kept the market share. Usually, when you acquire a company, you lose a little bit of market share. And we kept market share. In addition to International Paper, we acquired two small companies, one in Manaus and another one in Paraná. And all of them, we were able to keep market share. So this is an acquisition company with a very competitive value, important assets, and we were able to maintain, to keep the market share. We now acquired Caetê, which I consider to be considering the value of land in Brazil.
This is to be a brilliant negotiation, a brilliant acquisition. So this is a company that knows how to purchase, to acquire, and to keep what it acquires. But also, we have made a number of organic investments, such as Puma, which started from scratch. Also, this project, I remember Douglas coming in, and people say that Douglas has a jeep in the Faria Lima. So he brought me over to this piece of land with his jeep. We could barely drive by. So we built it from scratch. So this is a company that also knows how to grow organically. We have experience with M&A and we also have experience with organic growth. But I would like to draw your attention to turnaround cost. Last year, we focused on costs in order to gain efficiency.
And we obtained a significant result, and this is represented in the cash cost, as they have showed here. So I think it's important to acknowledge that this is a company that can work in different ways, in different fashions. About an M&A opportunity, well, it does have to be an opportunity. I will analyze the cost for investment in times, and I will analyze if I buy a competition. So here, we hit the bull's eye because we started with the project thinking about machine 27, and we still thought that in this region of the southeastern Brazil, we had to have a lot of competitiveness. And yes, we are lucky because there was an explosion in consumption in Brazil right now. So we can also say that we were lucky. We had the investment done at the right time as well.
This investment, considering the complexity and the technology, I think it was much better than an M&A. I don't think we had a competition here in the region with the competitiveness that we needed. In other regions in Brazil, M&As might be interesting when we compare tons and investments, but it's a matter of opportunity. We will have to analyze the situation when it arises and do what's best for the company.
William Salonta has said, "Spectacular opportunity to be here and great presentations." A question to Douglas. I'd like to know about competitiveness of corrugated boxes compared to plastic because in a small amount of data, we see some e-commerce players going back to using plastics. I'd like to understand how you're seeing this.
The sector where we overlap the most with plastic is coated board and bags, and they're very competitive. In corrugated box, it's not different, but we don't talk to clients just looking at the packaging. We include other points. We take into account productivity, and we offer not just packaging, but also the machine. For some customers, we even do the calculation of their carbon footprint, so we look at the whole chain, and we deliver a business case to our customers. We talk about how their productivity can improve if they use plastic because we have a machine with a better closure that is faster, that can condition their product better, and as customers need more technology in their packaging, more barriers, we can be more competitive with our packaging, so if it's a very simple packaging, single use, it is hard, yes, because of price.
But as the customer's needs get more sophisticated, as other points come into play, productivity, carbon footprint, etc., if everything is considered, all considered, we can prove to customers that we are more competitive.
All right? Another question in the back of the room. Hello? Henrique Leite with Goldman Sachs.
I'd like you to elaborate on the impact of the exchange rate. You spoke about your forecast for cash cost and the CapEx. And according to the reference form, you used a foreign exchange of 5.4, if I'm not mistaken. I'd like to know, are you impacted by these numbers because now the exchange rate is at 6, or did you stress your CapEx and your cash cost considering an exchange rate of 6 BRL per dollar?
Okay.
First, a clarification. In everything we do not control, we work with an external price source.
Per PwC, a consulting firm, and we use Focus for the exchange rate. Our budget had a cutoff on November 4, and that's why you have that exchange rate provided by Focus. But I'm going to give you some more specifics because that's the best way for you to do your math. Of the total cash cost, 15% is linked, is pegged to the dollar. Of the maintenance CapEx of the company, plants plus forestry activities, about 25% is pegged to the dollar. And if we look at the EBITDA, for every $0.10 change in the foreign exchange, that represents about BRL 160 million in the EBITDA. So I guess with these three numbers, you can do the calculation of how sensitive we are. But I'd like to remind you that Klabin exports. So a weak BRL increases EBITDA and the cash generation of the company.
I'm Rodolfo with JP Morgan. Thank you for the invitation. Congratulations on your investor day. My question is, we have seen a number of new projects in short fiber. The budgets are getting bigger, and we have a reference of how much that costs and so on and so forth. But we have little knowledge and data and information about new long fiber and fluff projects. So could you elaborate? Well, fine, you deliver project, you have the leveraging, you start looking at new opportunities. How big is this? Can you share anything with us?
Thank you for the question. In terms of size, indeed, these short fiber projects, I would say, have a different level, 3.5 million. As we know, three drying or pulp drying machines, one big boiler, and if I'm not mistaken, two fiber lines.
These are projects whose radius of operation is going to be 400 km, right? Yes, for us to harvest and plant. These projects bring with them the benefit of a fixed cost dilution for the investment as well as for the operation. But it brings also lower risk in the management. We discussed this. It has much to do. This kind of project has much to do with risk management. If we think about benefit in terms of cash cost, that's fine, but we are talking about equipment, and that entails risks. I guess that this is the dilemma in the sector now, the radius of action. There are regions in Brazil where the initial productivity of the forest from planting to growth. Consider what was expected in the beginning of the project and what was actually harvested. The productivity was much lower.
Brazil, given climate change, the greater the radius, the more you're exposed to rainfall, weather, etc. If Klabin analyzes this kind of project in the future, all of that has to be put and included in the equation. Regarding long fiber projects, they're much smaller, particularly for fluff. Perhaps Klabin has the biggest fluff factory in the world, 460,000 tons. A fluff machine does not require engineering solution or does not have an engineering solution for a machine of 800,000 tons. If Klabin thinks about making this investment two to three years from now, there must be some kind of technology change. It would be a plant of 6, 7, 800,000 tons. It cannot be much more than that. There's not going to be a dilution of the fixed cost and the effect on the OpEx.
But there are other benefits: price stability and a more resilient market.
Would you like to comment on that?
Yes, the price is very relevant compared to other fibers. By the way, good morning. But the most relevant point in terms of growing long fiber capacity, the first point is availability of wood, pine, except for the south of the United States where they have wood availability. But over there, the American territory and society does not foster growth and consumption of this kind of wood as it happens in Canada. For example, if you go to Nordic countries, it's 50-60 years to grow that kind of wood. But Klabin, the fact that we acquired Caetê project with the "last biggest reserve of pine in South America," we don't see any rules where new long fiber projects could materialize, except through conversion of long fiber plants into bales.
Nico spoke about something, and I remembered something. We should speak about the Monte Alegre boiler. Let me take a moment to speak about this, given your question. I don't remember an investment or greenfield investment in the United States of a recovery boiler in the last 20 years. I don't remember that. I cannot recall. We hear that there are some brownfield investments, meaning an existing boiler being revamped. But it is what Nico mentioned, the competitive wood in the south of the United States. There are a number of other factors that hinder the process. For example, labor to build and run the plant, environmental licensing. The community needs to want that kind of investment. If you go to Finland or Sweden or even Canada, and even here in the Santa Catarina state, people think wood-based.
A lot of states, municipalities, people are born, and then somebody in the family has worked with timber. If you go to southern USA, this is no longer a reality. So you have to have the community thinking. You have to have environmental feasibility studies, and that means listening to the community. So I don't see or haven't seen for more than 20 years any greenfield investments in the United States. And Klabin has just announced an investment, and I'm going to quickly mention this investment. We announced that we are going to exchange the recovery boiler at the Monte Alegre unit. The Monte Alegre unit was built in 1934, started operating in 1939. It produces one million tons. Ricardo is the industrial officer of that plant.
And we decided to exchange the heart of the plant, as I mentioned in my presentation, which will make this plant survive for another 50 years. All the peripheral equipment will be revamped as well in the future. So I'm just talking about this because of investment. The Monte Alegre unit started in the end of the 1930s, beginning of the 1940s. It started with 40,000 tons of capacity, right? Today, with machine one, when we had that market stoppage, now it manufactures one million tons with machine nine, seven, one, and six. All of these machines are up and running, state-of-the-art peripheral equipment, and we are replacing the heart of the plant to have another 50 years. Sorry for the advertisement. I just wanted to take this moment.
Thank you very much, Chris. There is a question coming from the online audience from Ricardo Monegaglia from Safra.
Can we expect other levers, in addition to the internal cash generation, to accelerate the deleveraging process?
Marcos will talk about that, maybe.
Basically, two levers. The cash creation that will come from the operation, considering everything we mentioned, especially the greater production volume coming from projects. In addition to that, we have a mix improvement because Figueira project is improving. Klabin's mix is not increasing the total volume of sales. The mix of machine 28, that's very important, is starting to produce and sell white-coated paper. That's a very relevant segment. That's why this team is working on, as well as replacing kraft by coated board as we had in our original project. All of that in line to the cost, as we showed today in our presentation. This will bring us the operating cash generation. This will be added by the Project Plateau.
It has been announced in a material fact published in October. There was an important transaction with TIMO. This process now is under the Antitrust Agency's analysis, and this will be analyzed over the next weeks, and we expect that the first closing of this transaction will happen in the first quarter of 2025, so this transaction of the Project Plateau that is not in the operating cash generation will decrease leverage over 2025.
The microphone there, please.
This is Guilherme from MaxB. I have two questions, and my first question is still on pulp. I would like to hear about what you expect for 2025 in terms of supply and demand and pulp prices, considering that we have projects ramp up both in market pulp as well as integrated China projects. This is my first question, more dedicated to short fiber, and second question is for fluff.
We have seen some players in the American market close capacity recently. And I would like to know if that is generating opportunity for you to look at assets abroad or to bring forward the project in Brazil, considering that the capacity has been closed there and also the level of profitability that you've seen a project here. Thank you.
Thank you, Guilherme, for your question about the short fiber market. We understand that this is a challenging market still, considering the ramp-up of two large projects, the Cerrado Project and Mato Grosso, and also Liansheng in China. We do expect to have a short-term scenario that is more difficult, more challenging. Chinese prices have established between $540 and $550. You are following the rates that are more or less stable for the last two to three months. We also had another adjustment in Europe.
I mentioned that in an investors meeting that we had, that we would see an adjustment in prices in Europe that was going to happen in the two last months, and it did happen, and so now we have a smaller gap between Europe and China in terms of price, which is around $40-$50. We understand that we are at the lower limit in these geographies, but in the first quarter, the expectation is to at least maintain the price levels, the current ones. Demand-wise, China is doing very well. Recovery much higher than expectations demand-wise, and two main drivers explain that. First one is a process of restocking, considering the pipeline was not that high in the last few months.
And second, the recovery in the occupancy rates for machines, at least in China, we see in the specialty segments, printing and writing papers, and also packaging. There is an increased production. Therefore, this is translated in a higher fiber consumption. This recovery has been positive because it removes the pressure that we have seen happening in Europe. European demand is slightly low because in terms of the contracted volumes for 2024, consumption is there, is happening, but we do not see a demand higher than what is considered normal. Now, in the mid and the long-term scenario, the expectation is still positive. As you know, we do not have new projects ahead, at least not for 2025 and the midst of 2028. So there is a good expectation. We are in a market in a growing industry.
The demand grows between one million and 1.4 million tons a year. So we have a good expectation in the medium term. About investments according to opportunities, no, we are not going to distract ourselves now from the deleveraging period. So unfortunately, we are reaching the end of our event. We only have time for another question, for one other question, either in person or online. So I'll bring an online question then. Felipe Favretto is asking us, how the deleveraging in the next years will with the deleveraging for next years, will the company go back to the policy of dividends? No, this policy is here to stay, except if the board discusses the topic. But from what we have discussed, this policy is to pay at the center of our target, and that's the policy that we will keep. So I thank you all very much.
I thank our audience that sent questions. So now we are turning to the end of our event. If your question was not answered, please send an email to our investor relations team, and we will be glad to take your questions and answer them. Thanks to our officers that replied and answered all the questions. I just would like to ask Cristiano to remain with us and on the stage, please. Marcos, if you want to join us, please. So now it's time to acknowledge our commitment with the market. Klabin has been awarded once again with the APIMEC Platinum Seal 2024, given by APIMEC Investment Professionals Analyst Association. And for the official delivery of the seal, I would like to bring Lucy Sousa. She is the chairman of the board of APIMEC Brasil. Lucy, please.
Good afternoon, everyone. Analysts and other investment professionals, it is a pleasure.
Also, it's great to be here with the whole Klabin team. I am very glad to give to you 23 years of meetings. Many of these, I have been with you, and I have been in this meeting. I would like to thank you for the excellence of these meetings and now visiting this new installation. Congratulations. It's great to see companies investing, increasing the production capacity of the country. That's what we need. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Lucy. Our events always have you at the end, right? Now we conclude the transmission of our Klabin Day 2024. Thank you very much. Thank you on behalf of everyone that has been with us up to now.
It was great to be able to share with you all the progress that Klabin has done in 2024, in addition to stressing our commitment with value generation to our shareholders. Thank you all very much for your partnership and your trust, and I wish you all a great afternoon.