Hello. Good morning. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for being here with us today. I am Rodrigo Caraca, Investor Relations Manager for Iochpe-Maxion. Welcome to our Investor Day. First of all, I'd like to introduce you to all of our panelists we're gonna have today. Marcos Oliveira, company's CEO. Elcio Ito, company's CFO. Luiz Abreu, Director of Strategy and Investor Relations. Renato Brighenti, Structural Components CEO. Pieter Klinkers, CEO for Maxion Wheels. I hope you enjoy our content today, everything we've prepared for you. With this, I will now give the floor to Marcos Oliveira.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome. Welcome to Cruzeiro. It is a pleasure to have you here with us, and I believe most of you who have had the opportunity to come here and visit us in Cruzeiro will get to know a little bit more of Maxion and our activities in regard to structural components and wheels. I would also like to use this opportunity to welcome everyone who is watching everything online, and those of you who are here with the opportunity to be able to see our presentations today. You're going to see everything we have been doing and what we are planning on doing in regard to products, processes, technologies, footprint, and I think this is an interesting opportunity. Presentations here today, during this morning, is going to be very focused.
We are going to give you an overview of what Iochpe-Maxion is all about, then Elcio Ito is going to talk a little bit more about the company on a broader perspective. Pieter Klinkers is going to talk about Maxion Wheels. Renato Brighenti will expose everything about the structural components, then we are going to have a Q&A moment at the end of this session. The presentations are all going to be in Portuguese except for the one given by Pieter Klinkers, who is going to be presenting in English. If you need simultaneous interpreting, you are going to be able to use the receivers that you get, that you have right scattered in the room for you to pick up. In the Q&A, we are also going to have the same. You can pose your questions in Portuguese or in English. All right?
Never mind. In general lines, what we have is the following: We have a strategy that is being focused on tax discipline, a concern regarding strengthening our balance continuously, but also looking ahead towards the future with growth, transformation, and the automotive industry. In general, the industry is undergoing a transformation not only concerning electrification, but also an increase in technology in vehicles, autonomous vehicles. They are becoming more and more a reality. This process is one that we have been facing for the last five to six years in a clearer way, but also still posing some uncertainties in regard to what technology is going to be prevalent, what is going to be really developed, and this is why we are inserted into this context of being able to positively impact this transformation in this industry of mobility.
Also, with the history of our own company, which is a history of growth, the business development, and this has made us resilient to this type of oscillations and technological transformations and changes in the last few years, and also demand variation that occur in different regions all over the world. Our business model is very much aligned to what the industry has. As part of our DNA, it is the innovation. This has been a concern, bringing solutions to our clients. This is even more important in this technological transition moment. We have a much clearer focus of what we have and we call advanced engineering, not only wheels, but also in structural components. We've been working towards this type of innovation. In general lines, we sell more than 50 million wheels all over the world, and we are the largest producer.
We are one of the leaders in the delivery of structural components in Americas, North and South. We have a very aligned strategy, aligned with this transformation in the sector and the focus not only on innovation, but also with developing with sustainability. We are going to mention a little bit of the innovations today with regard to sustainability, and you are going to get to see what we are doing with our product, with the technology, and the continuous expectations that the customers have with investors. How we can deliver products that are going to support all of the efforts towards making the planet a more friendly place to be in the future. We have 32 plants in 14 countries. More than 17,000 employees all over the world. We align technology in our processes.
We want to know where we can automate the processes, and we want to be able to demand a larger participation from employees who can actually have us deliver this diverse portfolio we have. At Maxion Wheels, our wheels division, we produce steel wheels for light and commercial vehicles. We also produce aluminum and light alloy wheels. For 2022, we are starting to build wheels in another plant, one for aluminum wheels for commercial vehicles. During the presentation, you're going to get to know about this a little bit deeper with Pieter Klinkers. Maxion Wheels represents 73% of all of the revenue for the group.
In regard to structural components, 27% of our revenue, we produce structural components for light vehicles and also commercial vehicles, with focus on commercial vehicles, with chassis, frames, and other components in South America and also in North America. We have a global presence. We have 32 plants all over the world. We are in every continent, main countries that are vehicle producers in the world, the production is more concentrated in Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, the Czech Republic and India, where we see that there is a demand for this due to the car production. We're also in Spain, Italy, Germany, in Thailand, China, the United States, Argentina. With this, our business model, it complements itself very well with a global presence, but at the same time, a local execution.
We talk about nearshoring, things that are happening in the business era and concerns with geopolitics, global concern, and how much this is aligned with our business model. This has been developed based on production that is close to our clients. This gives us a very interesting heading in our business in terms of currency, in terms of business conditions. We purchase raw material regionally. We use regional manpower. This is how we meet our clients' demands at the main regions we operate. One of the attributes that we have that is more prominent within the company is our ability of engineering. When we talk about serving vehicles producers, we are concerned about recalls, the vehicle durability, so it's very important.
Engineering is established with know-how and knowledge, and this is important to meet clients' needs with the best products, the more efficient products we can, more competitive, and also with good cost and durability. Maxion has become, well-renowned globally and has this credibility with clients as a result of this reengineering capacity, not only within the ones that work within the company, but also with the tools that we work with to develop products. Computers, special softwares, state-of-the-art equipment to be able to work with electronic modeling, simulations, and development of products to meet clients' needs. The know-how in regard to the sector is important because despite the technicalities of what we do and how they are consistent in the world, their needs are different. They have different, roads, different streets. You see in Brazil, it's...
Brazil is so different if you compare it to the United States or Germany, for example. Requirements are important, but the environmental conditions and the market conditions are different. You have to have that global awareness of what the market is, but the application of the product is going to be local in the region where they work with our products. Also considering the necessities, the needs of the market. We are following trends closely within the industry. Abreu, Pieter Klinkers, they're going to talk about the trend in regard to the products we work with and how the products are inserted into these trends. We've been observing this. There are processes that are there for production, for the productions of components and systems of high quality. Our products, one of the characteristics of our products, large scale in production.
If you need processes that are trustworthy and robust, we have them. At the same time, we are flexible and agile. In our industry, we see this a lot, especially in the last few years after the pandemic especially, we see the concerns that the pandemics have raised, logistics, the semiconductors, scarcity. Being flexible and being able to be agile to react is important. Whether the company is growing or not growing, you receive a call from your client and they say, "I have to stop producing because I'm not gonna have my semiconductors," you have to be able to react accordingly. You have to be able to adjust your plans for that moment, for that specific situation, that specific client need. Not necessarily this is going to be a need that you're going to see with another client at the same time.
The ability to be able to launch new products is also very important. Each new development, for example, of a steel or aluminum wheel, a new platform for a vehicle, they represent a new development. It's a wheel, yes, it is, but it's a whole new development to suit the client's needs. We have hundreds, dozens, hundreds of launches all over the world with wheels and structural components because they have to be adapted to the new platform, the new client, the new requirements, the new situation. Launches must be carried out with quality, and it's very important. There are hundreds of launches every year. Our relationship with our clients and with our suppliers and partners and the financial community are long-term relationships. We need them and they need us.
The credibility and our ability to be able to work with the clients the way we do, and suppliers and our partners is very important and it's very dear to us. We focus on transparency and ethics. The naming of new products are long-term. Depending on the life of that platform, especially with light vehicles, if you say for example, a product's going to last 5 years within a platform of a commercial vehicle, sometimes 8 or 10 years, usually when we are named for a product or a specific program, we remain in a relationship for at least that lifetime of a platform. Most of the times, we end up going to the second platform that's going to happen in substitution to that previous one. Now I would like to give the floor to Elcio.
He's going to talk about the financial aspects. He is our CFO.
Thank you, Marcos. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for being here with us, physically here, present. We know how hard it is for you to, you know, commute and go to places, and give a little bit of your time to be here with us, so I thank you very much, but I also thank everyone who's online. Let me talk about numbers now. I know you like the numbers, so let's talk about the market. This is a chart that we always present every trimester, every quarter. We have the predictions of two very important consultants for vehicle producers, IHS for light vehicles on the left, and LMC Automotive for commercial vehicles.
We really like showing the 2019 pre-pandemic numbers before we show our new numbers. There were two years of very difficult with the supply chain and the semiconductor situation all over the world. We see a growth for 2023 at around 3% globally. We also include a lower line, you see, it's the global production excluding China. Why do we do that? To us, China, of course, we are present over there. We have a steel wheel for commercial vehicles plant, and a recent joint venture, well, with aluminum production, and they're just starting. For our gross volume, we still don't see this as something that is really adding up to it. It is representative for the global market share, of course, we end up excluding this to eliminate distortions.
As Marcos said, our global footprint and our business is moved by volume in the operational performance. This is why we like following up volume. I know that this visibility important. You know the numbers from other consultancies. You follow the new projects. When we look at 2023 and you exclude China numbers, you see that there is a growth that is close to 5% globally for 2023. This is the last numbers that encompasses Brazil that is like this. If you look at into details for the market, Brazil represents 3%-4% of light vehicle production products. You have the North America with 5% in 2023. Europe growing at 5.2% at the same period. This is just a detail with this graph.
In order to get to 2019 levels, we are going to get the numbers close to 2024 or 2025 on all rate bases. It's important to emphasize that even though in 2023 with a 5%, let's see if Europe with 5.2 close to 5.3. The European market is still 20% lower than the numbers we had in 2019. We are under a recovery process with a lot of space to grow, we'll get to the levels that were close or similar to the pandemic. Pieter Klinkers is going to still talk about this when time comes, there's room for improvement. We're still recovering from the situation with the pandemic and the semiconductor situation. When we talk about commercial vehicles, the dynamics are different. For 2023, excluding China, we have really close to 0 minus 1%.
There's a combination of factors, of course, Brazil, due to the Euro VI transition, we knew and we expected that this reduction came for 2023 due to this anticipation of production that was carried out last year. You also have data that is growing. The numbers are stable in regard to comparisons year-over-year. Even though we have a Brazil with a more negative projection, we see all the results moving forward really well. North America and Europe moving fast. This is the scenario that we have for the next years and for 2023. Here are some of the highlights for 2022. We've disclosed this information in the last meeting. 24% in regard to last year is what you see in regard to the third semester, in regard to the net debt.
If you look for the whole year, you're going to see BRL 252.4 million, a little bit close to 9% of the debt. A lot of work was carried out during the year with cash generation, with stock reduction, the use of capital, cash in attraction with last year and commodity cycle, and very sudden stops from OEMs. Things are going strong for 2023, and it's really reflecting the leverage for next year. We've really it was 2.26 fold in 2022, getting to 2.33 fold in 2021. We are really recovering the numbers that were pre-pandemic. BRL 2.8 billion for liquidity and BRL 105 million in dividends and a very important ESG agenda. They are advancing very consistently.
We've been working towards that, and we notice that the speed is accelerating, especially in Europe. It's a very important theme in the industry. We are going to work towards all of these goals, getting to the expected for 2040 with neutrality. A little bit of historical view now. I would like to use the year, my moment today to bring you some of the important situations with Maxion. In regard to the net revenue, let's talk about a 8-year timeframe, starting in 2015 all the way to 2022. I would like to explain what Marcos said with numbers now. In 2022, we're going to have the division of revenue per region with Asia with 9% in others and South America 3.5%.
Along the process, the minimum and maximum range of this contribution per region during this 8 period time, so that you can see the geographic diversity can help us in supporting at a different moment in which one region is operating lower and one is higher, and they can really create this business heading along the line. You see Europe is close to 40%. They are going through hard times from 31%-40%. At the same time, South America, which is today at 30.5, maximum in history, if you compare to other years, they create this diversity. When you look at this per region, this is how it goes. When you look at this per segment, we'll have around 40% with commercial vehicles, but at the beginning it was 35.
You know, we get to see the geographical diversity, but also the diversion in regard to segment. This helps us operating with this revenue. This is going to help us in operational margin and profitability. What you have here is a margin of 8% here. Of course, 2020 is the COVID drop numbers. If you work on an average on a EBITDA for the company, you are going to see 10.4%. If you exclude the 20%, you are going to find 11.3%. This is what this graph shows, this diversity. During this period, if you remember, get back to 2015 or 2016 in Brazil, the automotive business in Brazil was dropping at 20% in 2016. Much more than that.
We got to finally balance and offset the economic cycles at regional level and commodity cycles. Of course, commodities vary up and down during this period. We managed to maintain on a EBITDA margin that was relatively stable.
You see a contribution of cost to 11%. Some of the financial highlights are in regard to our leverage. Just giving you guys a little spoiler 'cause I can't manage this. Become slow. Now I've done it too much. There is some delay. I apologize. I will keep talking. In regard to leverage, we got to 9, all during the pandemic. At the moment when EBITDA was just gonna disappear, numbers dropped at around 60%-70% in some markets and even more. This generated a very reduced EBITDA, and this generated that leverage. At the same time, market was recovering and we were working on the EBITDA in cash to deliver a leverage that is closer to what we had in 2019.
In regard to liquidity, if you look at the financial numbers we had before, we never had this robust liquidity before. This is going to be part of our financial strategy. There are some credit lines still in place and an elevated cash so that we can face crisis like this in time. Our indebtedness is at almost 84% in long term and short term, with an average term of about 4.2 years. We have worked in the last few years with capturing more funds and in extending times. You see that regard. Even with the pandemic, we have been progressing. This is an ongoing exercise. Here you have the growth step breakdown. We have that in various different currencies.
We try to mirror our cash flow in the different currencies and try to mirror that in our debts so we can have something that is more balanced. To finalize, Marcos Oliveira introduced a few topics, and you're going to follow the presentation of Pieter Klinkers, Renato Brighenti, Luis Fernando Abreu. We have many initiatives coming up. This is an old industry, but it's going through a transformation. It has been going through a transformation. Right now, we have a company with a global footprint, a global scale, and local execution. We feel that with electrification, we have no risks of our products not being there. Our products are going to be present but with different added value.
We are very excited with the process, but also maintaining our discipline and looking carefully at the financial side with an adequate liquidity position, and aiming at facing difficult moments the global economy may show, with a continuous liability management, currency matching, and sustainable net leverage targets with a more robust leverage, and a more better well discipline as we are, with better EBITDA, but with a higher cash. If you look at our long term, that we have some leverage that we are managing very carefully, especially regarding CapEx, prioritizing investments in man-maintenance, prioritizing our investments in new products that, and things we have to adjust to.
We have larger projects that involve expansion and growth that are going to be prioritized, while at the same time we remove bottlenecks in our positions, but always doing everything with great discipline to careful attention to our leverage, our working capital. These are items that are included in our compensation matrix for the company. Parallel to all the initiatives Luis is going to talk about in more detail. Thank you all very much. Luis, I gave a little bit of a spoiler of your slides.
Hello, everyone. Good morning, everyone. Once again, thank you for being here with us. Before moving on with the presentation, just a few messages for you.
When you came in, you have received a few wristbands with different colors. That is going to be used for our plant tour. For safety reasons and for a better enjoyment of the plant view, we're going to divide you into groups according to the color of your wristband. At the end of the Q&A session, we'll have a quick pre-presentation showing you a little bit of our plant layout, so you can have an idea of where you're going to walk through and what you're going to see. Another comment is, why have we chosen Cruzeiro for this Investors Day today? As Marcus mentioned in the beginning of our presentation, we have 32 plants in 14 countries. I guess it's a coincidence in terms of how the company has grown.
This is the only plant we have where we have simultaneously the production of wheels and structural components. All other plants are dedicated to either structural components or wheels. When we talk about wheels, it's easy to understand. Everybody knows what a wheel is. When you talk about structural components, that's a whole other ballgame, which is a bit harder to understand. This will give you an opportunity to see in person the chassis, the frame, the cross beams and other products we have, and which Renato is going to present to you further on. Moving on and closing the financial topics, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about CapEx. You hear always just talking about the CapEx forecast, how much it's going to be and everything.
Usually in the history we have since 2015, we always bring a reference regarding a % of EBITDA. It usually stays around 30%-35% of our EBITDA. If you look at one year or another, it may be a little bit higher or lower than that, but we usually have this average. When you talk about CapEx, we can divide it within some pillars. Maintenance, which is essential for the continuity of our business. We have versions related to legislation, environmental legislation in the 14 countries you're present in, that require changes in different places. Productivity, which extremely important for us to know the relationship we have with the OEMs, the productivity we need to deliver them. Investing in productivity is also very important for our business. Growth, expansion of our business.
Here we have a chart where we try to bring you the main investment and expansion we have done throughout this period. If you look at 2015 to 2016, during this period, we talked about producing aluminum wheels. We had a single plant in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne. At of this period, we increased the capacity of this plant, and we built a new aluminum wheel plant in Limeira, where we already had the steel wheel plant. In the same site, we now have both. From 2016 to 2017, we continued investing in aluminum with expansion of the plant in Thailand. In 2017, we started investing in a stamping plant in Mexico, located in Monterrey. It was very focused on the production of cross beams, we started investing also on stamping products. As of 2018 up to 2021, 2022, we go back to strong investment in aluminum.
We built a new aluminum plant in India. It's the country we work with at present in, but only with steel wheels, both for light and commercial vehicles. We have a partnership we mentioned with Dongfeng in China for the production of aluminum wheels for the Chinese market. We had a plant for the production of steel wheels, but only for export. This is our products we don't sell in the local market in China. Halfway through the second semester of last year, we announced investment in commercial vehicles, both for wheels and structural components. You're going to be able to observe an outsourcing process here. We have absorbed about 80% of the production of a specific OEM of their production. You will also see the expansion...
We had the expansion of wheel, steel wheels for trucks in Turkey. Mark talked about that. We have an investment in construction of a new plant in Turkey for a segmented averages steel wheels for trucks, and it should be operational somewhere between 2024. We have expansion of structural components in our plant in Mexico. Trends for the automobile sector. Our sector is going through a huge transformation with lot of questions and doubts. Here we have the main trends. Pieter and Renato is going to dive deeper into them. For their business specifically, wheels and structural components. When I look at it in general, we have an issue called shared mobility. What does that mean?
Historically, we have worked with the concept of owning our own vehicle, where the use in terms of hours that is very low, let's say 2-3 years. We talk a lot about sharing vehicles, and then you have a whole new concept where we might not even own the vehicle, and we would be sharing one. From that will give way to several different things. How this is going to affect the volume of production in the sector, if it's going to increase or reduce.
Some people say you have a reduction because you have less people buying, but then you will have another part of the market that says, "Well, when you share, the use is going to be higher for each vehicle, so that's going to increase the need for renewal." We have a lot of debate on that. Another issue, another trend is connectivity. Our vehicles have a lot of connectivity, receiving in all the vehicles. This is changing very quickly. Autonomous driving, this is another trend. I don't know where's the limit at. We already have some autonomous vehicles somewhere, but I think it's hard to imagine getting to a day where all the vehicles are autonomous driven. We have a sustainability issue that is very important in all sectors nowadays, and electrification.
This is a no return path in some of the sectors of the industries. They are going to have to reinvent themselves, many of you may be asking yourselves how this affects us. We have always said that electrification has a neutral impact or a positive one because our products are going to continue the same, whether you have a hybrid, a fuel engine, or an electrical vehicle. Structural components and wheels are going to be in any of them. When I talk about the positive impact, thinking of the company's strategy, we look at opportunities we may have to advance in the supply chain, bringing new products into our portfolio, keeping close to our knowledge, to the way we process raw materials, to the engineering area we act and operate in, and the knowledge we have of the automotive sector.
This trend that is very positive for us, and we want to show in this slide, is this partnership we have closed about two weeks ago with Forsee Power. This is a partnership made by the Structural Components division. This is a new European producer, specialized in integrated batteries. How is this partnership going to operate? To give you a little bit of a view of this, let's see if I can zoom in on that. Okay, I can, so let's keep on that. They produce the battery modules, and as we show in this box, we have the integration of the battery modules with stamped products. The names change a little bit, and Renato will talk about that. What we call here the battery cradle, and up to the frame of the vehicle focused on commercial vehicles.
The goal of this partnership is to provide our clients with an integrated solution, a customized solution. We have an example of the integration of our product with the Forsee Power product, products in trucks and buses, and electric trucks and buses. This could provide us a competitive advantage and provide this advantage to our clients. This is what I wanted to talk to you about. Now we have Pieter talking to you, then Renato, and they are going to talk a little bit more about the trends in our market.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Pieter Klinkers. I'm from the Netherlands, half Germany. I work in Germany and have worked there for 15 years. I speak different languages. In the last 5 to 6 weeks, I've been trying to learn a little bit
A little bit, very little bit of Portuguese.
I propose to you that we now change to English, otherwise I keep you busy 3 hours. I have a question for you, by the way. What's the most spoken language in the world, you think? Make a guess. Mandarin, English, Portuguese. It's bad English. I propose we continue with that. Let's have a look at the wheels. Don't wanna talk too much about the industry and what's all going on. I can just tell you that as a big supplier to the automotive industry, Maxion Wheels is of course involved in all of that Luis was talking about, that Marcos and Elcio were talking about.
My intent here is to give you a flavor of how we are involved in all of that new mobility stuff. I hope that at the end of the presentation you'll kind of agree with me that, if anything, you know, wheels matter, you see there. I hope, I believe, we believe that, you know, maybe they will matter even a little bit more in the future than they have been doing over the last couple of years. Luiz showed you this slide. I wanna focus for the sake of time a little bit on electrification and sustainability. You may say, you know, electrification, yeah, that's a big thing in the industry, but for wheels doesn't matter, right?
Because whether the car has an ICE or it has a battery, you know, it needs wheels anyway. That's right, and we're happy with that. That's good, huh? Still, there is a lot of impact on wheels because of electrification. One thing obvious, you know, batteries are kinda heavy. We need even more light weighting, huh? That, that's playing a role in the wheels. Also maybe not so obvious, wheels will be and are becoming more and more aerodynamic. If you google a new car in Europe, BMW 3 Series, and you google this wheel with that tire or that wheel with that tire, the range can differ between 30 and 35 kilometers just because of the aerodynamics of the wheel and the shape of the tire.
Very important for us to work on that. Wheels are becoming larger. They may also become narrower, yeah, to not have so much rolling resistance. Noise reduction. You know, in the past or today, you hear the engine in the car. You may like that or you may not like that, but you hear the engine. If there's batteries, you don't hear the engine anymore, but you hear some other things, right, that you may not like. From a wheel point of view, we are working very hard on eliminating those noises. We believe if anything, you know, there will be an increased need for expertise because of new mobility, because of electrification in particular. There will be an increased value add from wheels because of these trends.
The same for sustainability. You know, it's good, it's nice that we work on sustainability and it's a lot of hard work. Not so easy to get the CO2 out of the vehicle besides changing the engine from ICE to batteries. It's a lot of hard work and if anything, it requires a lot of expertise. As a global wheel manufacturer in the business for over 100 years, we believe we have a little bit of a competitive advantage there. Hard work, good work, but an increased need again for expertise in wheels. One thing that is also important, and you may think this is a wrong slide in this presentation. What does that have to do with mobility and wheels, you know?
If you think about wheels, you know, sometimes style also plays a large role, huh? You know, style many times comes from fashion, then it goes into appliances. That's what you see on this slide. This is one of the new fashions that you see more and more coming up. As a matter of fact, you also see it on cars, right? Also on, especially on grilles. They used to be there to cool the engine. It's not needed so much anymore in the future. You see this kind of styling coming up in cars. As a matter of fact, you see it coming up in wheels as well, huh? When we talk about wheels, we will always have this combination of function and styling.
You know, you see the lightweight needs to be there, the aerodynamics need to be there, the NVH, the noise, vibration, harshness, the noise elimination, connectivity, that all needs to be there. If the wheel does not look good, many customers don't wanna have it, right? There will always be this combination for style and function for wheels. If we believe our customers, you know, this is not us drawing this is our customers telling us these are our prototypes. This is what we will launch in the next coming years. I may be a little bit biased. I'm a wheels guy, right? Wheels and tires guy.
I may be biased, but I hope you agree with me that, you know, the wheels here, I mean they look to be rather more predominant on the vehicle, have a larger role on the vehicle than less, right? We believe in wheels in the future. Not only aluminum wheels. I mean, you look at this wheel. Here it's a wheel for Fisker. You know that brand? It's relaunched in Europe. We are going to sell hundreds of thousands of wheels, only supplier, but a lot of combination of functionality and styling in these wheels. Also for steel wheels, right? This combination of function and styling, it matters. You see on the left side there, that's a conventional wheel.
We have a VersaStyle wheel that allows a little bit more styling from a steel wheel point of view. A new VersaStyle kind of wheel, a styled wheel, semi full face we have it, and we have something pretty innovative, I would say, I come back to that later in the presentation, called Bionic. Also for steel wheels, you know, this combination of style and functionality plays a big role, huh? Where do we make all those wheels? Basically, we have three blocks in the world, right? The block in the middle called Europe. By the way, Marcos gave one forward-looking statement. He was talking about 50 million wheels. I agree with him. If you count these numbers, it's 46 million wheels.
We wanna make 50 million wheels, that's not enough. 20 million wheels out of the 46 million wheels in 2022 coming from Europe. We have 11 facilities there to make those wheels. We have the Americans kind of same size for us, fairly equal split between North America, South America, 9 million and 11 million. We have a BU called Asia. 10, 11 years ago, we only had 1.5 million wheels. Now we have 6 million wheels. I know it will grow to 10 million wheels. I don't know. We need a lot more money from you guys to grow to 20 million wheels.
That's an important business unit for us, and we are growing that area. Let's have a little bit of a deeper look in Asia. We have a plant in Thailand. Don't wanna talk about that too much right now. Focus on China and India. If we look on India, I think we all agree that's a growing market. You know, you can read many articles that this will be the third largest market in the world. 20-25 million vehicles, that's the far outlook for India. Same for truck. I mean, that market should triple over the next 10 years. I'm happy to say that Maxion Wheels has a very good presence in India.
We have a plant for passenger car steel wheels that made 2 million wheels. That's just to give you an indication. I'm not gonna talk about every plant. Two million wheels in 2019. We made 3 million wheels last year, and I'm pretty sure we will be around 4 million wheels in 1 or 2 years from now. At the same time, we built a new aluminum wheels plant only 4 or 5 years ago. I'm going there next month to celebrate, also to work a little bit, but also to celebrate the finishing of the first phase of the investment, 2 million wheels that is completely sold out.
We are intending to build as soon as we can, more capacity to keep on growing in this market, both on the passenger side as well as on the truck wheel side. We have a good truck wheel plant there as well. Some wheels that you see here, we are the largest producer of wheels for Tata, and that's not a type that you see there. On the bottom right, you see it's a steel wheel. That is the VersaStyle wheel that I showed you on the other slide. You know, it gives a lot of room for styling. That is actually a steel wheel that you see on the, on the vehicle. Going to China. Talked about it a little bit before.
That is a vast market, and we are very small still in that market. I think we can say, you know, the truck wheel plant, we struggled a little bit in the beginning, a wholly old facility, but we're getting some more traction now also because of new mobility and the need for fuel efficiency and the need for better wheels, stronger wheels. We're getting some traction, and we now have a decent plant in there that we are expanding mainly with equipment that we took out of the US when we restructured here in the Americas. On the passenger side, you've heard it before. You know, we have this joint venture with Dongfeng, which is one of the biggest automotive companies in China.
You know, if you look at that, I remember Marcos and me and a few other people cutting a ribbon, you know, opening, celebrating the buying of the land, et cetera, in November of 2019 in a place called Wuhan. My kids asked me, "Papa, what's Wuhan?" Right? They asked that in 2019. Nobody's asking any more today, "What is Wuhan?" or "Where is Wuhan?" We've not been there ever since. I'm going there now in June the first time. I have to believe, based on the pictures that I see, that, you know, the guys were able to build the plant, put in the equipment, and we are making wheels. Top wheel is for NIO. That's the premium electric vehicle brand in China.
The bottom is a wheel for Voyah, which is the electric branch of Dongfeng. They have their own vehicles. They also have joint ventures with Hyundai, Kia, Honda, Nissan, et cetera. Pretty amazing that we pull that off. More to come from us in China. Also from a truck side, you know, with the global OEMs going there, the Daimlers, the Volvos, the Scanias, I think we'll have a good chance to grow with them because they need, you know, more international-like wheels. Fuel efficiency is playing a bigger role for them. Going to Europe. Don't wanna talk about every plant, but I think when you keep in mind we have 11 plants, we created a very strong footprint in Europe. We can talk a lot about Europe.
We did a little bit yesterday with a few people during dinner. A lot has been going on in Europe. We see Europe coming back a little bit stronger than what we were hoping for. Right now, the market is pretty good for us in Europe, and that's mitigating some of the effects that we see, for instance, to a certain extent in Brazil. Good aluminum wheel plants. We have a plant in Italy that is supplying premium brands like Porsche, BMW, Range Rover. We have strong operations in the Czech. We have a fully loaded truck wheel plant in Germany, and we have world-class operations in Turkey. I believe our plants in Turkey are among the best wheel plants in the world, not Maxion wheel plants in the world, but wheel plants in the world.
Very strong operations in Europe, a good market right now. I think also a lot of focus in this region on sustainability, on innovation, on new mobility. Whatever we learn in Europe, of course, we use it in other parts of the world where this will also come up to the same extent as what is happening in Europe right now. 23 inch wheels, that's larger than a truck wheel. We're making those in Italy, and we're supplying millions of wheels to Volkswagen around the world, primarily in Europe.
Luis talked already about some of the expansions, but I can tell you that the new truck wheel plant that we opened end of last year, it's operating at full utilization because the market is good and demand for our wheels is very high. We hope to have the same for the aluminum truck wheel plant that we wanna launch in 2025. That's 2 more years to go, we expect good traction there as well. Customers are very much waiting for us to be operating that plant in 2 years from now. Nice wheel, I would say. I like wheels, but a nice truck wheel. Looks better than current wheels. If we look at North America, don't wanna talk too much about the market.
I think you know that market pretty well, but we have a good footprint there. We restructured a few years ago, but we have good plants in Mexico. We have a solar plant in the U.S. One thing I do wanna talk about, you know, we talked about VersaStyle wheels, those styling steel wheels. Here also, we are trying to launch this wheel with the fancy name Bionic. We're talking to customers about this wheel, and we get a lot of good traction. We like it ourselves. We think there is a future for this wheel. Also our customers, the initial reactions from them are very, very positive. They're very enthusiastic. This wheel is patented, that's why I can talk about it now.
We know how to make the wheel. We're in the process of internal homologation. Talking first in North America because we think that's the most obvious fit, but if it works out in North America, we can roll it out globally along our plants. Now, this is really a combination of sustainability. A steel wheel, you know, is more sustainable than an aluminum wheel. three, four times more sustainable, Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3 all together. It's of course cheaper than an aluminum wheel. It gives a lot of styling. I like the styling. Many customers seem to like this styling. So we get good... I mean, there's aerodynamics here, you see?
This is a flat face, gives the styling in there, we can print your name on it or the customer's name on it. A lot of features that tick the boxes and so we hope to launch this product in 2025. Get a customer order over the next 12 months and launch this wheel, for the first time in 2025. Let's see. A little bit less sexy, but still very important for us, we were not able to, supply wheels, in any meaningful way to what we call niche markets, like trailer, caravan, but that's a big, big market.
This was predominantly served by Asians, but both European governments as well as the U.S. government have put in place some measures, monetary measures, anti-dumping, but also technical measures, raising the specs for wheels that need to be supplied to their customers in these markets. That gives us some better opportunities to supply these wheels as well. That gives us some good opportunity to keep our steel wheel plants well-utilized. We're working on that as well. Last but not least, South America. You all know about the dip in the truck market that is happening right now. We knew that. That's not a big surprise for us.
Also for, at least from a wheels point of view, I can say we're mitigating that to a good extent, because when we ran out of capacity, which we did, we did invest here in Cruzeiro, in truck wheels, but before we had that new capacity, we, you know, we were selective in which customers to serve and which not. Now we are not so selective, we see some room. We also make agricultural wheels here in Brazil, in this plant, and that's a good market. That's a booming market and a very profitable market for us. We like the truck wheels in Brazil. We're doing good in pass cars as well. Our plants are increasing volume, so it seems that we're present on the right platform.
Overall, I cannot complain about Brazil, not even at this stage. Some of the wheels, you see this VersaStyle wheel. We're not only making it in India, we're making it in Europe, in India, in North America, and we're now also making it in Brazil. That's how the wheel looks on the top when we produce it, and then on the left side, you see how it looks on the vehicle. And then here you see the agriculture wheels. You will see them when you go into the plant, up to 42 inch. It's quite impressive. In a nutshell, wrapping it up, you know, I think we do have a very good global footprint, and we do have very good expansions that are going on, and so far, so good.
You know, we've never had a miss with our expansions. When we expand, the execution was successful and the market was there. We have cost competitiveness in our DNA, not Dutch, not just because I'm Dutch. That's in our DNA since 100 times. You know, we need to be. This is a very competitive industry. We need to be very competitive. We are sharing all the knowledge that, you know, we gain around the world. We're sharing that with all the regions. We do have strategic solutions. You know, I think innovation really became something very much more important. Like 10 years ago, we said we need to do more, and we have developed a certain DNA in doing that.
You know, I'm kind of most proud on having very engaged teams. When we did a survey, how long was that ago? 18 months. I mean, when the results came back, it was better than what we would've hoped for. We were in the top of the top 5% of companies in automotive industry. We were very pleased to see that. I noticed that when I, again, now travel around the world, I see that the people are very engaged. That's a very important asset in our company. Wrapping it up, we think much change has been going on regarding wheels, and there is more to come. In the middle there, on the below on the slide, that is a steel wheel. That is a Bionic wheel.
Now, we're talking with customers about new solutions that combine function and styling. You know, if you guys believe in industry, if you like global, then I think, you know, I hope you believe a little bit like we believe that wheels are there to stay. If anything, they will create more added value instead of less added value because of the new mobility that is going on. If you like industry, global, you like wheels, you even like wheels, then I hope you do like Maxion Wheels. We have the right products, we have the right teams, we have the right footprint. Then, you know, look at the last two points. We are committed to grow above industry averages this year.
The last one, you know, that's not an easy one, but it's a really necessary one. I know you guys know better than I that, you know, past performance doesn't guarantee future success, right? We do have a very strong track record in this company to recover total global costs. I'm committed, my whole team is very, very much committed to keep that track record. Okay? With that, thank you very much, and I pass the word to my colleague, Renato.
Thanks, Pieter. With your excuse, I will switch back to Portuguese.
Good morning to those who I haven't seen before. It's a privilege to see you here at Cruzeiro's plant. It's a special plant, the plant that started everything, started our company. I'm not gonna use a lot of your time with my slides, but I believe Luis has mentioned a lot about everything that I've presented, that you see in this slide. I believe most of you know the trends that you have here on the slide, as part of the industry and mainly as a user. These are words that are everywhere, in the news, in our conversations every day. I believe that what is important is the intention to develop this rationale behind it, the same way Pieter did. How can these trends impact our business, and how are we dealing with it?
I could say that there are threats, there are also opportunities in this modification and these trends. I think that there's one thing that's clear for sure. When you talk about threat, different from our sector or from different sectors and industries, we are going to really see a disruption changing the way towards electrification. Our specific industry, the segment we work with, you'll see cars will still take passengers around, trucks will move cargo, and they are still going to need the structural components. It's a matter of physics. It's a matter of mechanics. There's no running out. There's no way out to it. You see that in the last years, the characteristics of these products has been changing. The need for weight reduction, the application of new technologies, and the need to use new materials is crescent.
During this presentation, I am going to show you with examples so that you can get to understand a little bit more what we can do about this. In regard to opportunities, I can say that there are two main ones. First is OEMs that are traditionally working with us. They already use our components. When they migrate to the electric vehicles, they need to add additional structural components to be able to sustain those engines and batteries. They need to have a specific place for protection to sustain this is our opportunity. New players. If you look at the North American market, the number of startups and car producers that have emerged in the last three years, it's something out of reality. It is something we were unable to see in the past three years.
I've been here with Maxion for 23 years. I have never seen this. There is great opportunity. These companies are coming with very low know-how. They need suppliers like us, especially with structural components. They need our know-how. There's opportunity for us to increase our position within the market. To make this even clearer for you, of course, we are using paper. Of course, you're going to be able to see the products and the processes. You're going to see how clear this is going to be for you. I want to present what our division is all about and talk about our products. I think it's important. We are present mainly, as Marco said, in the Americas, mainly.
Okay, our revenue reached BRL 2.2 billion in North America and BRL 2.4 billion in South America. That you have an idea, today we have more than 10,000 different products in production. Each development, each client, each car needs one situation in a product. For specific OEMs, there are 10 plants and more than 7,000 employees in four countries. Let me just get into some of the details in regard to our products. There are mainly four segments. First, commercial vehicles, as Marco said. This is the main market. The main product would be, for example, what we call the frame rail or the side rail. This can be delivered in a full assembled product or just a piece.
Not only that, inside the truck or inside one bus, any company that is made of metal that is transformed, we work with. We are able to create, fabricate, manufacture. The participation in the market is very strong, especially with trucks. What you see here is a bumper assembly. You also see mudguard, bumper supports, cross blocks. You also see assembled cross blocks or parts of cross blocks. I just advanced this a little bit. I think this is an important slide, an interesting slide. You're going to be able to see this part in production, it's made a difference in the last three years. We are now offering ap parent item, a cabin items, we are now doing this. This was something inserted in the market. This is for Mercedes-Benz in Brazil, then they export it.
This is the first time we are creating items we call skins, ap parent items and service structure. In the car, you see the side, the external part. You have no idea how much material there is in there, what is behind the looks and what structures the car and makes the car safe and makes the car able to transport that weight. The amount of structural components there is much superior inside a vehicle than you see outside as a skin. Let's talk about opportunities within South America, and I am going to get back to you and explain if needed. The last time a new item you see, which is a side ladder to make it possible for a movement.
Of course, it's not that it's a beautiful or sexy design, just the wheels that we create, but you don't see this, you don't see beauty in it, but you see safety in it. A second segment, which is very important, are the pickups and SUVs. We don't work with buses and trucks. We also work with the pickups and SUVs. It is a pickup chassis that you hear here. It is an important structure. Why do they need this? Well, it's a car that transports cargo. But pickups and SUVs, they need chassis different from cars. We assemble everything and deliver it to the client in full. There are more than 250 items of structure inside a car like this. You will be able to see this during our visit, and this is, for example, an S10 GM pickup.
We also do this in Argentina. We create them. We have a stamping and assembly line especially for the chassis for pickups. For example, we also have the cross-car beam and the semi-frame, the rear bumper. This is what we offer for pickup trucks and SUVs. For light vehicles, we don't work with skin anymore, but we do provide today 100% of structural components for cars. You'll see a car down there, downstairs, where we provide 85% of the components. It's a Fiat car. Part of this is focused in our plant in Contagem. That plant is focused specifically on light vehicles. Here we have Magra Division.
For those of you who know the names, we have all kinds of supports, crossmembers, firewalls, frontal impact crossmember, headlight support, and the entire range of light vehicle components. Finally, another segment we have been aiming for, something that's very special to Brazilian culture. This is a business where you have a very pulverized market with very small, numerous smaller producers, but we already have a good presence in rails for harvesters also. Agricultural vehicles are another of our options. Moving back to what I was starting to talk to you about the rationale I started talking about when I started. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about our trends in the different regions, especially in North America and South America.
I'm going to start with South America. If you see look at the top on the right, you see the drop in the market, mainly because of Brazil, then you see a growth in 2026 there. I would not be concerned. Of course, interest rates are very important, especially when you're talking about financing for trucks.
This drop you have seen from 2022 to 2023, it has happened already. It happens in 2011 to 2012 when the legislation changed. Now with the change from the 5 to the 7, we already have the same movement. We're talking about moving to less expensive vehicles, moving on to more expensive, 15%-20% more expensive trucks. What the companies do is they anticipate the purchase, you increase the volume of purchase when you still have the lower prices, then the sales drop. If you monitor, the sales don't fall as much as production because things are going to be balanced in with time. Those of us who are familiar with the sector, we had time the entirety of last year to prepare for this smaller demand.
Another fact that I see as a great opportunity when we know this growth is going to happen and this variation is going to occur, we are taking the time to invest in capacity and do it even stronger the next year to prepare for the production. We were prepared for the drop, and we're taking the opportunity to invest in capacity. Our new investments in capacity take time to yield fruits. We are doing that. We have many opportunities in South America. I have shown you the cabin. We have 100% participation in Mercedes-Benz. They represent 25% of the market, and we have a potential of doubling our share of the market with a participation in other OEM. This is a very strong position considering other components we supply.
Another one regards the electric vehicles. I'm going to show you some interesting examples that are going to explain the rationale I mentioned in the beginning concerning threats and opportunities. Here, what you see is the famous bus battery rack. You're going to see that physically down when we go on the tour. Mercedes-Benz created a basic design, opened it for a bid to the market. With our engineering team, we have created a rack that is 64% lighter than their baseline and with 11% lower cost. This is a success case. We are already providing this product for electric buses. This is not a big volume market segment where the market is still low, but this is a segment that is going to bring us great impact in the future.
The second example, another traditional OEM truck you're going to see in the back. We have designed from scratch a frame for this electric vehicle. OEMs work in two ways. Either they take a vehicle with a combustion engine and adapt it to the electric. Sometimes it's what they do because development costs are very high. In this specific case, we have worked with Volkswagen from scratch to design this frame for this line of trucks. Finally, an example for South America that covers the second part of the opportunity I mentioned. This is Reborn. It today buys the chassis, the frame from combustion engines and adapt them to electric vehicles. They found out about us, they got to know our skills, and we have signed an agreement.
This is a frame we are designing and producing from scratch for this electric vehicle, as we did for Volkswagen. The job we did for Volkswagen allowed us to start this process. We found out about Reborn, sold the idea for them. Now we are going to produce this chassis, this frame from scratch for Reborn. Now, moving on to North America, that's a whole different market. If we talk about produced trucks, you can see that it is 3.5, 4 times bigger. Completely different market. Differently from what's happening in South America, you have a stable growth. In 2022, they had record production of trucks in the United States, people ask, "What about the recession in the States?" Marcos has participated in many meetings with us, we don't see that.
At least in commercial vehicles, we don't see a recession. We have had this year many requests for improvement in our volume productions and deliveries. You have 574. We have a small drop in 2024 that I think we're going to offset. We don't see 2025, but it already shows a growth, and this is the expectation of the market with a growth to 702 for 2026. This is a very competitive market, if you don't generate competitivity, you open room to lose part of your share. We are aiming at meeting that increased demand. Here I see 2 new opportunities. When I showed you the footprint, I don't know if you observed the participation, the share of structural components.
In South America, we have about 40%, and I do believe that thanks to the product and the amount of products we do provide, I think we can double the share of our structural components. We've made a recent investment with a heavier participation in structural components. We have finalized this investment, and this line is mostly sold out. This is an opportunity for us to leverage our business and grow even more in North America, and here, really mainly on electric vehicle. Differently from South American market, though I showed you 3 examples. In the United States, especially the amount of opportunities for electric vehicles is huge. This is an example I want to show you. This is a battery rack and housing similar to the one done in Brazil. Here it was for Mercedes. This is for AMC.
This is kind of similar to Daimler here. It's a process. We are still in the beginning. We are developing with the same characteristics in terms of technology we have implemented here, but this is very interesting. You develop a product for a client, allocation, and you scale that to other clients in other regions. Three new examples of new players in the market that we see mainly in North America. This is Rivian. Many of you may be familiar with that company. They have sold the last mile events, about 100,000 vehicles for Amazon, and we produced the front suspension support. It's an opportunity to build products we have the know-how to build for clients.
This piece has been produced since the beginning of last year, and we'll keep moving, producing it for the next couple of years until we reach the total amount of 100,000 pieces. Another example is Bollinger. It's another new player in the segment. This is a full electric vehicle. You see the differences in the chassis, with the preparation for the battery packs to run the electric engines. Here you have Harbinger with electric vehicles with different chassis, but with the same development process and rationale. As I mentioned, the work we have been preparing ourselves with advanced engineering for the last eight years don't bear short-term results, but we don't think about that only. If you look at our innovation development pipeline, we have short, medium-term projects because they do generate new business.
Innovation is important. We need to pay attention to our long-term pipeline. I'm going to show you some new players, some startups we have partnerships with. The first one is Ananam, where this is examples we've tried to bring functionality to our structures. When you've been in the sector or the industry for a long time, you start to get concerned that the structural components have structural functions. You start thinking, "What other functionalities can we add to our components?" This first work we have here is with composites. This is for specifically for a commercial vehicle, and the idea is to store small quantities of energy in the composite, so the truck can feed smaller electric systems such as light, head, back lights.
The other work also very interesting, which means installing micro- nano sensors in the structural components are allowing for real-time data collection for the OEM, they can understand what's happening on the structure depending on how the truck is used, you can continue developing on it. Last but not least, this is my last slide. I think this is one of the most interesting developments we have. We're talking about commercial vehicles, cars, this is a partnership with Embraer that is very interesting. We have many development projects with IPT and Associação dos Campos developing technologies with composites for structures for commercial vehicles and trucks. Embraer has huge knowledge on composites for airplanes. What did catch their attention regarding the work we did with IPT?
The work we're doing is based on the scale and volume of commercial vehicles in Brazil. We're talking about 160 to 180,000 trucks. Embraer did a spin-off to produce those drones. Their volume is much higher than the volume of airplanes they produce. The structure they have for composites are not adequate for the drones. Here we have one component. There are hundreds of them. This is an opportunity for us to develop new products, and it's a huge opportunity. I hope I have been able to tell you a little bit about what we do, how we are preparing for the changes in the industry. Someone said, "Well, we've been hearing people talk about electric vehicles for a long time." I've been in the area for 23 years.
This has come and gone. I have to tell you that in the last three or four years, it has grown so much that we cannot say this wave will pass. This is here to stay. In all regions we work with, in all clients we work with, all projects are gaining maturity, are becoming more robust. With this, thank you for listening. With this, I'm going to pass it forward on to Marcos Oliveira so he can conclude our presentation.
Thank you, Marcos Oliveira, Pieter Klinkers, Luis Fernando Abreu, Renato Brighenti. We try to condense in one and a half hours a lot of information of our products, our past developments, our future developments, the capacity and potential we have to offer the mobility industry. We have products and technologies that we have shown you last year.
We have smart wheels and other products and technologies that we have shown you before, we didn't want to repeat. We wanted to show you new concepts and new solutions to really put your Maxion in context according to the trends we talked about in terms of electrification and sustainability. Our strategy for business development and sustainability, this is a very important aspect in production process, administrative management processes. We have developed and are implementing many actions in all our global operations to become carbon neutral by 2024. Our strategy has defined a 30% reduce in Scope 1 and 2 that should be achieved by 2025. We aim for a reduction by 2030, we're aiming at a full neutrality for 2040.
In the end of last year, beginning of this year, we have signed agreements towards that. For the second year, we are in the ISE B3 Sustainability Index. Our sustainability scores are growing through CDP, EcoVadis. We are growing year after year. Our sustainability reports for the third year show a lot of what we have been doing regarding the different ESG aspects. We talk a lot about sustainability. We talk a lot about what we do in governance, social aspects. These are important. Our sustainability report reflects more and more, more externally what we have done and are doing to evolve in that sense. Among the efforts that you see in regard to ESG, the social aspect is one thing that has always been present within the concerns that we have as a company. We have an effort and corporate responsibility actions all over the world.
We have a video.
To show you some of the examples of everything that we do all over the world, and the engagement and involved of people within the social activity that we have is prominent. We wouldn't like to go without mentioning the program that we consider key and we have developed for over 30 years, which is called Formare. It's a teenage low-income development program to foment work for them in Brazil, and we have replicated this in Mexico, and we are now expanding the same program in other countries we operate. It's a nationally renowned program. It has more than 1,500 students in its history, and they were really taken into the market. A correction with more than 1,000 students. These students at the time became our professionals, and we have several examples.
Many teenagers who are now in the market, not only in Brazil, but all over the world, people in North America. Without this program, probably they wouldn't stand a chance, unfortunately, to be inserted in the market, to work, to go after their undergraduate courses in other areas to add to what they become as professionals. This is a little bit of what we have in the company DNA. It's not an effort that we started last year only. It's just something that is not there to cover for ESG goals. It's not for public visibility. It's really part of the DNA. It's older than 30 years. There is a video that we are now going to present you. It's sort of a collage. You're going to see. As I mentioned, this is within the company's DNA, locally and globally.
The idea here is to get our employees involved globally in the initiatives, and it's important. It's not everything we do as a company producing the products we do, but we have more than 17,000 employees all over the world, and they are engaged, supporting the local community, society, everything where we operate in the world. Globally, we have a qualified team, multicultural team of more than 40 nationalities. They come from everywhere. We have an internal talent program that is well-structured, well-developed, with the purpose of providing them with opportunities for growth, development, and it's a very strong relationship with the communities where we are with programs and initiatives that are pertinent to the needs of each city, each county, each state, each region we operate. We have a diversity program with about that was launched 2.5 years ago, and it's important.
It's a natural part of our operation. It has also the purpose of developing culture, understanding, raising awareness, and creating opportunities to use the human rotation at its best level, developing courses, developing people with them so that they can contribute with the company, contribute to society in the different countries we operate in. It's called Unique and United. This is our last formal presentation slide, and it shows everything in summary, what we've been doing, what is in our strategy, in our planning, and just to try to summarize to you, I think everything was very clear with Renato, Elcio, and Pieter in their presentation. Our strategy here is to expand the portfolio, especially with structural components.
I think Renato's presentation was very clear in the sense we do a lot of things now, you see, but we are also developing new things for the future clients. If we get to positioning, we are the leaders on commercial wheels and commercial vehicles and wheels, leader of structural components, and we want to keep doing this great job. We want to strengthen this, especially with aluminum wheel for commercial vehicles. There is a project that's very strong, and we are now building our plan for that capacity expansion in Brazil and Mexico, and we want still, moving forward, continuing with this strengthening, developing new strategies and new opportunities for existing customers and future customers in the segment of electrified vehicles. We believe this is a very good opportunity.
It's not a disruption for our business, but it is an opportunity for expansion and growth. Another thing that is important is to be able to create and to expand in Asia. We want to increase our participation. We want to generate revenue. We are now at 9%-10% a year. In Asia, of course, India and China and other countries, this is the most representative market at a global level. We want to grow in Asia. This is why the aluminum wheels plant in India is receiving a lot of attention, and also China. We are increasing capacity in this region to be able to grow. Launching of new products is continuous. This is to meet clients' demand and also to attract new ones.
Pieter said that during his presentation, and also Renato, they've mentioned some names you probably haven't heard of, but they are companies that are growing. For example, NIO, Fisker, Chinese companies. They are small. For example, Reborn, Bollinger, and other. They are growing in the segment. Rivian, which is now a well-established company in the US. This is important for us, to be able to launch products and attract these new clients to our clients' database. Use of technologies and advanced tooling to advance not only with product development but also to improve operational efficiency. How can we produce more lighter vehicles, more efficient vehicles with the products that we provide? We look into finding innovative solutions for the industry, and this really brings you a broad perspective of what Maxion can offer to clients. We now have.
the opportunity to clarify anything you may have as questions. Let's open up our Q&A. We also have a minute for APIMEC. APIMEC is going to speak today. I'll give you the floor.
Thank you, Marcos. Congratulations on today's presentation. Thank you very much for all of the analysts' presence. The reason I am here is the following: I would like to thank you and give you this as a representation of our partnership of over 23 years. This means the company is committed to us and to the market, committed to providing correct information, and we value this. We thank you very much for this partnership and all of the presentations you've thrown today to all of our consultants. Last night, I was just telling them, telling all of our consultants. I've been with APIMEC from their very beginning.
The company is going to turn 54 years old. It was very frequent in the past to receive visits on site at company's place, the company just really stopped that from happening. To all the professionals who are here, the young consultants, it was very important for them. It helps our work because they understand they can really grasp for the company. I would like to thank you for this opportunity because with this, you are making everything you can to improve this relationship. To the analysts, I have a message. You are going to receive an email with a short questionnaire in regard to this presentation. This is probably going to be in a competition to in regard to best company presentation for analysts. This conversation from today deserves a prize.
Thank you very much for the partnership.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here too. Thank you for attending, and vote for us. I think that now is the best opportunity for our questions and answers. We will try our best to clarify many of the points that can be of general interest, and it's important to be able to clarify anything you may need. One question here.
Hello, good morning. Lucas Laghi, XP. First of all, thank you for putting this event together and for the presentations. I have two points to address, and I would like to explore further with you. Everything related to the same point, which is product moving forward, especially with wheels, and of course, a little bit of the presentation with Pieter.
Ineos has gained its relevance with the aluminum production, especially with the acquisition of Ronal. From now on, we see the aluminum brings some aesthetics that is important. This is competitive advantage in this regard. Considering other things in regard to sustainability, steel is more prominent. I believe that also weight plays an important role, and it has been increasing, sorry, decreasing. With light vehicles, I would like to understand a little bit more, what do you see that's coming to the future in regard to this mix? Do you see more steel being used or more aluminum being used? What is going to sustain the relevance with aluminum in the next years? Do you think there is an advantage you see for aluminum that may sustain this relevance in the next decades?
To wrap, in considering commercial vehicles, we saw the recent announcement from the capacity for Turkey in aluminum wheels for commercial vehicles. I would like to know the size of this market you see for this niche. This capacity of 1.5 million is already addressing this ambition with Maxion, or do you think that there is a global opportunity for the forged wheels, or do you think this is something that is more for the European market? I would like to understand what you see in regard to aluminum for commercial vehicles. There are two things I know they can relate, the mix and the light vehicles and the commercial aspects of aluminum, please.
Pieter, would you like to answer?
In English. In bad English. Yes, thank you for the questions. Let's start with passenger car wheels, steel versus aluminum. We believe there's a good future for both of them. I think when you need aesthetics, when you want aesthetics, when you want to afford aesthetics, I think aluminum wheels will remain predominant. Many reasons for that. I gave a couple during dinner last night to a few of you. If you make a tooling for an aluminum wheel, it's about 15 times cheaper than for a steel wheel. Also, the development time is about 6, 7 times faster for aluminum. Baking cookies is faster than stamping metal, right? There is advantages for aluminum, not the weight anymore. Steel wheels can be competitive from a weight point of view.
We are able to give more styling to steel wheels, but not as much and as quick as with aluminum wheels. If you think about shared mobility, for instance, as an example to answer your question, you may say, okay, is that more steel wheels then or is that more aluminum wheels? I think, you know, even in that with that trend, there's a path for both. If you take a car and you only go from A to B, maybe you don't care so much how nice the wheels look, right? The car needs to be competitive price, it needs to be safe, it needs to have good quality, right? Maybe it's a steel wheel, right?
At the same time, you say shared mobility, you say, "I don't wanna pay EUR 50,000 for a BMW, but I will pay EUR 200 to have it for a weekend, and I wanna have a real good-looking car." I need aluminum wheels, right? Even with that kind of trend, there is a path forward for both. We are happy with having them both in the portfolio, and we will work on both product to be ready for the future and profit from the future. That's for passenger cars. On the truck side, I think your first question was what's the share, et cetera. In Europe, I mean, our venture here is primarily focused on Europe. I mean, there is very large competitors, good competitors in the United States.
There's not a lot of demand yet in places like India or, not even in China, or Brazil. Our emphasis is on Europe because that's where we see electrification for trucks coming up a little bit. That's why we believe that the usual share of aluminum wheels, which is 10%-15%, it may go up a little bit. It may go to 15%-20%. We believe there's very many reasons for steel wheels to remain predominant. Our customers tell us that. We believe in that as well. There may be a little bit more traction for aluminum wheels, and that's why we decided, hey, if that's the case, we also wanna be playing in that domain.
A little bit more traction for aluminum wheels, but the market will remain predominantly steel wheels.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Piieter.
You're welcome. Thank you, Pieter Klinkers.
I think that only for a final comment, I think that some of the materials we use and we believe the existence and everything we've mentioned, the use of usual and collective vehicles brings a sustainability topic to the discussion. This is much more user-friendly. That's why we believe that aluminum and steel is a mix that's going to be very beneficial in the present and in the future. Do you hear me? Gabriel Rezende from BBBI. Thank you for the presentation. It's a pleasure for us to be here in person. Two questions. Combining what Pieter and Renato have brought in terms of volume and maybe the United States being a positive perspective and a little bit of negative perspectives for Brazil, we seem to have positive perspective for Brazil.
How does that reflect on the company's leverage in terms of reflecting a margin in the next few quarters? Will we have gradual improvement? This is the first one. Also mention the improvement of the company regarding its history. The company has a policy of distributing about 37%, but it could be bigger if the company chose to bring the liquidity closer to its history. I want to understand how you think about that movement. I'll let Elcio answer your question. Thank you for the answer. I'm going to start from the last to the first. The company wants to be prepared for important market events. If in the past we carried a little bit less cash, geopolitical and market conditions around the world were different. We...
In the last few years, we have seen more typical occurrences that have required more flexibility from the company. We intend to maintain the levels we had at the end of the year, but it's important to maintain a level that bring us comfort and more security when meeting unforeseen events in the future. You are correct when you talk about the margin and everything. When we were elaborating our budget for 2023 at the end of last year, we had a very unsure scenario for Europe. Nobody knew what was going to happen, so we were very conservative regarding Europe. Brazil seemed to be in a more positive scenario.
Once we entered 2023, everything we had estimated in terms of volume, global volume has changed because of this diversity and the reality in the last few months. With regards to the margin, it's hard to talk about changes in the next few quarters and improvements here and there, but our historic levels are important. We have had changes regarding price of raw materials. If you look throughout the year, these forces are going to balance, and we'll be able to deliver on our margins. Gradually, through time, these projects and initiatives are maturing, and they will gradually bring our structural margin up for the future. Thank you, Elcio. Hello, good morning. Patricia from SVB. Thank you for the event.
My question is more for Renato in terms of structural components. We have seen nearshoring topic, domestic shoring as a trend in the automotive industry. My question is: How has lochpe benefit from this until now? How are you preparing for these changes? In looking at the numbers, I think structural components division's, its strength is in cross beams. How can you take advantage of these investments in Mexico? Okay, thank you for your question. During their explanation, when I talk about our geographic position in Mexico being that close to the U.S. border. That's a very positive advantage. We take advantage of the lower cost in Mexico when compared to the United States.
When we talk to our main clients in the United States, even if we were to analyze the possibility of investing in the U.S., it's hard to make that feasible because of cost, logistics. Thanks to the proximity of Mexico to that there, to the States, I think we are in a very good position. Our investments will continue, have continued and will continue to be in Mexico. I think that's it. I don't know if there's anything we can add. I think the opportunities Renato has mentioned in his presentation are going to be more evident in our investments. We have a new stamping plant in Mexico. We have invested with a view to the future, to the growth with all that Renato has mentioned.
Our new capacity has basically showed we are increasing production capacity in the Monclova plant also to meet the needs of that industry that go for those 700,000 trucks. This are according to the forecast of IHS and LMC, and also of the OEMs. This reflects the growth of the sector. We will have variations up and down, but the demand is growing, and we have been increasing our capacity to meet those demands in terms of structural components, but also in terms of wheels. We have expanded our complex wheels complex in San Luis Potosí. We have expanded to produce VersaStyle wheels, to produce more commercial vehicle wheels. Our complex in San Luis Potosí is growing to produce more wheels for commercial vehicles. We have a new cure process that's bringing greater capacity into our plant.
Our aluminum wheel plant in Chihuahua also has great potential. you see the potential of Mexico is great, especially when you consider nearshoring. We have a very interesting opportunity both for structural components and wheels. Just to add something, this nearshoring topic has really come into light in the recent years, but this has been one of our characteristics for a long time. If you look not only to South and North America, but look at Europe, we produce in Europe to deliver in Europe, we produce in Asia to deliver in Asia. This is one of our characteristics as a company, and we are very well-positioned to meet or to follow this new trend. Good morning, Victor from Bradesco. Congratulations on the event. I have a couple of questions. One regarding the potential of growth for China.
Marcos, you have mentioned about the great potential of that market. My question is: Can we compare what would be the farm market for Iaşii in this market? The timeframe for that, how Iaşii's market-marketing is going to work in Europe and the US? Connecting it to Renato's presentation, if you could comment, how you relate these products, the focus on this production. Would this be possible to... How can you think about that considering new materials, new OEMs, shared and urban mobility, the number of electric vehicles? Can this become affect the margin in the future? Do you think these changes in Iaşii can increase this margin? Victor, thank you for this question. Regarding Asia, we have operations in Thailand, as Pieter mentioned.
We are growing in China, but we do believe the greatest potential for growth for us, and I mean growth in terms of revenues, margin, is India. First of all, because they're in a very good position for steel and also for aluminum wheels. All our new products are bringing us better margins than our current projects. India is the market with the greatest growth potential in this next 10-15 years. The Chinese market is already established. India is a country where the population and size similar to China. India in the next 10-15 years will provide the greatest growth in the automotive industry. We like operating in India.
We have good results there. We believe we have good growth potential, not only thanks to the growth in volume, but the aluminum wheels market is going to grow a lot there in India. Market share depends on many factors, mix of growth and everything, but we clearly see representativeness in India that is much bigger than it had in the past. In the case of aluminum wheels, since we have entered the market in the beginning of this growth wave, we have an opportunity to be one of the biggest players in this market in the present, in the future. We like both markets. We believe India has a greater potential. China is still a market for us. It is an important market. We can establish a presence in terms of products and technologies in the local markets.
These vehicles can be produced and exported to other countries, produced by other Chinese producers who are producing in other countries. Being present there will make things easier for us. The capacity is still not that big in terms of aluminum wheels. 2 million wheels is a small capacity when compared to the Chinese established producers. We don't aim to be the largest producer of aluminum wheels in China, especially because this is a more competitive market, so economically it would not be the most efficiency. In steel wheels, we're increasing our capacity, and we do believe there's a great potential for growth. This established market with many players operating there already. Considering all this and looking at your second question, examining the results for our new projects, we have a growing margin.
When we launch a product in terms of technology of project, when we start a new plant, we aim things choosing the best possible moment in all aspects and aiming for better margins. We have achieved that really. When we look at the return on the investment on these projects, it's very interesting. It's also brings very good margins. Our expectations is to grow our margin as these projects become realities. I think for time reasons to allow us to conduct our plant tour, we want to once again thank you all for being with us. Thank you all those of you who will be able to watch our presentations online. We will have other opportunities during the tour and the lunch break to answer lots of your questions.
We are all going to be here. We will all be available to answer other questions. Once again, thank you all for being with us. We will have a very quick presentation regarding the plant tour. We have Luciano and Celso. Luciano is responsible for structural components.