Welcome here, and great to see you back. Thanks a lot for really a great evening yesterday. Many of our team really enjoyed speaking with you and having good conversations. Heine and I come many times back talking about the investors and the analysts, but they yesterday see that there are human beings behind these words. That was really great. Thanks a lot for that, really appreciate it. Well, I said to a few of you yesterday, and I don't know whether that's the right disclaimer for today, but we don't have new news for you today. That doesn't mean that you should leave now. There is, let's say, a teeing up of SAIL 2027, which we did on the third of February. I will do that again.
At the very end of the day, Heine will capture, let's say, the same more or less presentation as I do, but then a bit more from the angle of how we are going to finance this. In between, you hear a lot of details from our colleagues. I guess the depth of SAIL 2027, rather than only seeing this picture and having the headings, will be the value of today. Separate from that, of course, all your questions are extremely welcome. We will go through these levers. When we talk about SAIL 2027 , it's also good to basically look back. If you want to understand the future, it's good to understand also the history.
We take you back to 2015, 2016, when we started SAIL 2022, and very much looked at the first phase funding the journey by just cutting costs and making sure that we were able, indeed, with the ambitions we had at that moment of time, to pay for that. We made these investments in 2018 and started to shift gears for growth. The themes you see there were the themes that we had in that year in the company. 2018 was after two years cutting costs, shifting gears to growth. We did.
With a very good 2018, we said in 2019, we're going to accelerate this growth and moving much more into the execution mode of SAIL 2022. Early 2020, as you know, we needed to navigate a storm, and now we are two years later, and we need to navigate three storms. However, despite the storms at the end of the seven years of our strategic period, we can say that we had strong results for SAIL 2022 priorities. At the moment that you look at craft and specialty, an 11% CAGR from 2016 to 2021. AFB, 14%.
Core beer, a gross brand contribution that improved, which was very different from 2017 onwards than before 2017. Funding the journey, 320 basis points of SG&A that we saved and very much in the DNA rather than the SG&A, so to say. Not to forget the stellar improvement in Asia, where especially China made a huge impact on Carlsberg over the last couple of years. That meant also that we were able to transform our portfolio from a 7% share of beer volume to 10% when we talk about craft, specialty and alcohol-free brews. That translated into revenue from 13% to 19%. We are shifting our portfolio.
What you hear as a theme today, 50% of the value of SAIL 2027 needs to come from that, is about premiumization. That's where the value for the new program mainly will come from. When you see this is then the result of SAIL 2022, and when we look at organic revenue growth, operating profit improvement, adjusted EPS improvement, high free cash flow, a significant improvement of the ROIC, and leverage, which improved significantly and the total shareholder returns step up vis-à-vis the years before. I think this is by all means a good testimony that at least SAIL 2022 worked. For that, of course, and with that as a base, we want to keep the momentum towards the future.
What we said on the third of February is that we're really talking about an evolution, and not a revolution. It should not be only incremental. That's what you will hear today. I hope that the presentations of my colleagues will show you proof points why we think it will not be incremental. It's a kind of from two stories, so to say, and two is growing beer, but also going beyond, accelerating the sales growth, expanding our footprint in large profit pools like India, Vietnam, and today you hear CK talking about China. Don't forget China, and I'm sure you don't forget, in 2015 made 5% operating margin. We are now in the mid-20s%.
CK and his predecessor are the ones that really made that happen over the last seven years. Last but not least, scaling successful models rapidly. That's where especially Søren will show you the kind of models we have and what we can scale. When we look at this, you could argue that in 2015, 2016, when we were launching SAIL 2022 , we had an ambition. SAIL 2027 is more a plan because we have proven that the approach, the way we work, the assets we have, that these work, and hence we are confident about our future. When we looked at SAIL 2027, we went through the same three pillars. The why, the what, and the how.
When you look at our ambition, we remain focused that we want to be successful, we want to be professional, we want to be attractive in the countries where we are. When anybody of ExCom travels to a country, we ask these three questions to them. We want to be number one in the market or improve the market share. We want to be professional in terms of delivering the highest standards in everything we do, and be the preferred supplier of our customer. Also we want to be attractive for you, for our people, but also for the society. Therefore, we continue to look at our business through different lenses. The organizational health, the financial health, the environmental health, and the strategic health.
We continue with our purpose, so the why doesn't change. Knowing that brewing for a better tomorrow gets much more emphasis than in the past. We also understand that in order to reach the future, we really need to perform today. I think we get the right balance for brewing for a better today and tomorrow. Based on, let's say, an unchanged ambition, an unchanged purpose, we sharpened our priorities towards SAIL 2027. Soon after that, only two-three weeks after that, we got another storm, and that was the war in Ukraine. Lars will give you the latest update about what happened afterwards, both in the Ukraine and in Russia, and how will it impact our group. Carving out Russia, by the way, is carving out 5% of our EBIT.
2013, the EBIT of Russia was 40%. If that would, let's say, still be the case today, we would have, probably we would not have an, capital market day today. We would be in other meetings. We're talking about, COVID, and the aftermath of COVID. We're talking about the war in Ukraine, and obviously, as you know, a significantly different future with regards or near future with regards to, inflation. Of course, at the moment that that happens, these kind of storms, you look back and say, well, over, let's say the last year, 2021, 2022, we were very much focusing on preparing ourselves for SAIL 2027, and we had some assumptions. Do these assumptions still fit? Are they still, the right assumptions? Obviously, a few changed.
When we talk about the GDP growth assumption we had and the consumer spending power, they will not be in line with what we assumed for our plan. Especially not in 2023, and probably also it will impact a few years longer. The forecasted CPI of 2.5% as a CAGR, we feel that is, of course, also at the low side, as we see it now. However, the other assumptions, as you can read, these remained to be more or less the same. Especially when we look at our geographical priorities or our portfolio choices, we think that everything remains to be as we assumed, except maybe for premiumization. That could be a bit more under pressure.
Søren will also show you that we are under-indexing in that segment. By that, we still feel that we have an enormous potential for stepping up in that segment. The key question for today is that we remain to be very confident about our SAIL 2027 choices, priorities, but also our ability to accelerate the growth and creating by that value for the shareholders. Why is that? Because we really think, and therefore we said we go for ambition towards plan, because many of these brands, we did not frankly maybe understand ourselves in 2015, 2016, that these brands potentially could be so strong.
Take, for example, Blanc was very strong in France, but with a very specific marketing mix, we saw that at the moment that we started to introduce it in other countries, it was almost immediately a success, and we're now rolling these out. If you talk about super premium international lager, local premium, local core beer, that's the kind of portfolio we have. By that, we also play the full piano in a maybe new era where we have high inflation, less purchasing power. That means that we have the full portfolio for any wish that a consumer might have, including mini luxury in difficult circumstances. We couple that with a portfolio that is extended towards alcohol-free, especially in Western Europe. That's a success.
In Asia, it's still limited. But basically, we do believe that alcohol-free brews will grow further, especially in Europe. I was last week in Laos. Also there you can see over time, but that's not over the coming two, three, four years, but over time, definitely alcohol-free will be the also part of the portfolio. New to our priority, but different, if you like, from or no different from some of the brands we have already is brands beyond beer. We will talk about it more. Brands beyond beer has a bit of a danger that suddenly everything beyond beer is possible. We really need to make sure that we remain to be disciplined in this.
Therefore, we focus very much on Somersby and Garage, and one or two other opportunities that we will talk about, today. We will not expand this into a proliferation of opportunities. We have a diversified regional footprint with 21 number one and number two positions. As you know, in beer, the number one and number two positions are extremely important. These positions make money, and if you're lower in the rank, it becomes much more difficult. Of course, we have a slightly different balance now because of the carve-out of Russia. We also have the right sales execution tools.
Whether we talk about fit, value management, or custom management, these are, if you like, capabilities that we have built, and that we roll out in all the countries so that we have a consistent approach to the market. Especially, I must say, fit is a tool that at the moment that we apply it well, we immediately see the consequences in the positive consequences in the market. It's nice to have a strategy, but people get a bit bored at a certain moment if you have a strategy over seven years because they have the feel at a certain moment that they know it all, that there is a wear out effect.
Therefore, we every year optimize, if you like, the knowledge about a strategy by focusing very much about what are we going to do this year to implement our strategy well. We call that the nine grid. I guess many of you maybe are able to do that, but many of us are not able to do that, to recall nine different priorities. Therefore, we have three buckets, 3x3 priorities, and that works very well because people can remind that. In the middle of that is the must-win battle. Basically, what are the must-win battles for this year in order to basically win in the market? A must-win battle in our culture is a must win.
Basically, this is what we continuously every month focus on at the moment that we look at our performance management, whether it's in Western Europe, Asia, or Central and Eastern Europe. Behind all these, if you like, activities are KPIs that we follow up on. The left side, you see the growth accelerations, so that we are not only focusing on our Golden Triangle and how will we make sure that we deliver this year, but also make sure that we focus on what are, let's say, the seeds we need to seed in order to grow in the future, whether it's winning in premium or strengthening mainstream core or accelerate AFB, for example, for this year. At the right side, to make sure that we as a company continue to become stronger, also more professional.
Every year, these nine grids change based on the analysis that we have on the past year and to see what do we need to make sure that we deliver on our strategic intents. This is then what we do monthly. At the nine grid, we have the regional annual planning. At the right side, you see our Golden Triangle. At the top, all about growth and the net revenue per hectoliter. The left side down, about the GPOL and the GPOL margin. At the right side, the EBIT delivery. Region by region, but we also have it country by country. Each country basically has the nine grid and the right side, the Golden Triangle. In the middle, what's the consequences of all this is cash.
This is what we continue to focus on as a rhythm every month again in a meeting of six, seven hours. In the beginning, I guess many of our colleagues felt that it was a kind of grilling session. Basically now it's a very transparent session about how are we moving, what do we need to correct, how can we close the gaps if we have gaps. If one region is not able to live up to the promises, then as we say, call a friend, and a friend is then around the table. Can anybody of us chip in and compensate for that? Of course it helps then that everybody is also on the same remuneration and STI and LTI.
This entire approach of programmatic implementation of our strategy leads to opportunities that at the moment we have an unforeseen issue that we can dive into that and use our metaphor to communicate this around the group. Let's say just after the Ukrainian War and at the moment that we saw the inflation coming up, we really talked about Wind Force Twelve. Wind Force Twelve is basically programmatic approach that we make sure that all the costs that increase, that we're starting to try to cover that by price increases. You see that here, what is the program then? We give full transparency to all our operators. That means the managing directors in our countries. The mitigation actions are all about taking price.
The inflation factors include an excise rate, commodity prices, supply chain, inflation. You see then at the very right side, all these kind of cost elements, Forex rates, salary increases, and so on and so forth. That means that our operators have a full focus not only on the costs, but all the potential cost price increases that they might encounter. The other part then is the price increase. What kind of a discount list price increases can they take? What kind of discounts can they, if you like, play with in order to ensure that the net revenue per hectoliter goes up?
We have translated that, and Lars came up with that in his region because he was a bit earlier in the misery, so to say, with a price increase inflation coverage model. That's nothing more or less than say how much of the price inflation, the cost inflation is being covered by price increases. That means that if you have 100, that means that all the cost inflation is covered by price increases. If it's 80, we understand that we still need to do something. That's how we run at this moment of time. Every month, again, region by region, country by country, what is your PIIC? Doing that, we also should remain focused on the priorities for the future. We have a fixed drum beat, so to say.
In the first half of the year, we check in on the strategic priorities and whether they are still moving into the right direction and what we need to course correct. In the second half of the year, we then focus very much more on the business plan, implementing some of the issues that we discovered in the first half year, taking that into account in the planning cycle for the business plan, and the budget. It's all nice to have that, but at the end of the day, we need to have the right people to implement it.
I think I can say this with a lot of confidence that the top 80, and these are the people that are running our countries or our functions, these are the people that are now handpicked. We really feel comfortable with that, and with them. There are always one or two changes you want to make, of course, but by and large, we feel very confident with our team. We also have the right capabilities in order to execute SAIL 2027. As you know, with our balance sheet and the way we run the business, we have the funds to invest.
That means also that going forward, we remain to focus on funding the journey as a principle, as a way of how we run our business, as something that comes back every month again, and making sure that by that we are able to fund our plans for the future. Creating value then for shareholders, and that focuses on, as we promised on the third of February, organic revenue growth of 3%-5%. Well, you find that now low of course. Heini will come back on that, how we see that. Organic operating profit growth above revenue growth, continued work, focus, disciplined capital allocation and ambitious sustainability targets. Also there, no changes over the last couple of months.
I hope by that you will see from the presentations that there are a lot of proof points, and why also to show you why we are confident and why we think that with the program we have, we can really achieve our ambitions. With that, I hand over to Søren .
Thank you, Cees 't. All right, I'm here to talk to you about our commercial levers, basically. In this, it will be about our portfolio choices and then also about the commercial part of how we actually execute. Before I go into that, I'll also just talk you through a few key points on the category dynamics that we're facing. As you're probably all aware, beer is a very large category within the world of beverages. It is 12% of total beverages. I have to say, the numbers that I'm presenting now is basically representing our footprint, so it's not global data. It's really data that represents our footprint. Where we have our main businesses. 12%, but if you look at value, it's actually 18%.
It is not only a big category, but it's also a very variable category. If you look within the beer category, then 60% of the category is what we call core mainstream beer. Those are the big mainstream brands. The ones that are basically most commonly seen in all markets. That will be a lot of them are local, big local brands. They represent 60% of the value. 36% are what we would call premium beers. That's how we define that is price index 120 and above.
We are a little bit flexible on the price index 120 because in certain markets when you have very high duties, it could be that a brand that's actually priced at 110 is actually operating at a premium level. We are a little bit flexible, but the general definition is price index 120 and above. We have alcohol-free beers with 6%. So 60%, 36%, and 4%. If you look at the growth numbers, you'll see the mainstream core beer when we look at the way we see the data is that that's you know, slightly growing.
It's basically driven by an almost flat volume in mainstream core beer, but there's a small value increase in mainstream core beer, mainly driven by, you know, some pricing, but also some work on the price pack configurations. In premium beer, you see 4% value growth year-on-year. You know, a good growth in premium and then 6% in alcohol-free. If you look at premium beer, it's really still driven by, you know, growing middle classes and just the general premiumization trend you see. If you see alcohol-free brews, it's really driven by, you know, changing lifestyles. They are actually, you know, consumers are looking for more alcohol-free choices.
Then also we can just see that the fact that we are getting much better brews, alcohol-free brews out, is also driving a lot of more excitement around the category. That is also driving the growth. This is the chart that Cees 't was referring to because this is about the premiumization trend. If you look at the chart on the left-hand side, it basically shows you the year-on-year volume development for the different price tiers, all the way from discount to super premium. You'll see the year-on-year changes again in our footprint. This is for all channels, so off-trade and on-trade, everything included. What you actually see is, and we've covered here the three most recent crises, you know, shocks to the economy that we've been through.
It's the dot-com bubble first, then it's financial crisis, and then it's most recently COVID. This is just to show you how resilient the beer category actually is. If you combine all the lines, of course, then you have the total volume development. As you can see when you look at it, remember also the super premium category, which is the yellow one, is by far the smallest one in terms of volume. If you look at it over all the years, actually the beer category has been very resilient. It has actually grown every single year during the period. Even through the first two financial crises, we actually saw growth in the beer category. We did not see growth in the last crisis, which is COVID.
That is because COVID was different from a normal financial crisis in the sense that we lost a lot of consumption locations. On-trade closed down. A lot of social locations disappeared, which also meant that consumption of beer in that period went down. We see that it's rebounding now and is coming back, you know, ahead of, you know, back to 2019 levels and ahead again. We are seeing that we are rebounding back to previous trends also.
With this chart in mind, you know, there's definitely a lot to be optimistic about in terms of the beer category when you look at how resilient it is from a volume perspective, but also when you look at the premiumization trends, because if you look at the blue line and the yellow line, they have basically been growing over all the years. Even though you saw, for instance, the yellow line, which is super premium dipping during the financial crisis, you also see that in the next two years, it actually already caught up what it lost during the financial crisis. Generally, the premiumization trends, when we look at it for a full strategic period, they are very robust, and they're at least in the data that we have, we cannot see any bigger concern for why that wouldn't be the case going forward.
In the current crisis, we're not really also seeing there are limited signs of down trading now, it's very early, but we don't see anything yet in the data that suggests that it will be very different from this. Of course, it's still early days also. Just again, a couple of reminders on premium, because premium will be a theme that you'll hear that is very recurring in everything you hear on the commercial side today, because premium really is the biggest growth lever that we see in our business. 25% of the total beer market is actually, from a volume perspective, is premium. 36% in value, as you saw. 65%, so almost two-thirds of the growth in our footprint is going to come from premium in our estimate in the strategy period.
A surprising fact might be that actually 90% of that premium growth is coming from more accessible beer styles like lager. This is not driven by an explosion of craft and very inaccessible beer styles. It's actually driven by consumers simply trading up either in lager or beer styles that are very close to lager. One more point also in terms of what we're seeing, which is also good news to us, is that we're also seeing very strong growth in AFB, but also in what we call Beyond Beer. We see that indulgence and experience, consumers are simply they're looking for more varied, you know, taste experiences.
We see, for instance, that the demand for fruity and sweet variants, whether it's within beer or outside of beer, is increasing a lot. We also see a big focus on health and wellness. It's also driven by different lifestyles. People are still interested in having beer experiences, but maybe without the alcohol, at different points in time. We see a lot of consumers are looking for convenience. They're looking for choice, based on also having changed their lifestyles. When we look forward, we're basically looking at an AFB category, also in high territory. 6% is what we've seen in recent years. When we look at beyond beer, it's actually been growing 8%.
Also things that are underpinning that those are interesting growth areas. When we then look at our portfolio choices, we have made a choice on these four. Stepping up in premium. Stepping up in premium, and the reason why we call it stepping up in premium is because there's tailwind in the sense that the market is growing, but we have a gap to fair share still. We are below fair share in premium, so we have some catch-up to do on this, which is obviously good news for us because we have two growth opportunities. One is to catch up on market share, the other one is to grow with the market. Here it's really all about international premium brands, but also local premium brands. We also have strength in our mainstream core.
Here it's a lot about doing more of the same. We've actually done a lot of good work on this during SAIL 2022. It's about doing a lot more of the same on our mainstream core beer brands. I'll get back to that. It's about accelerating our alcohol-free brews, and it's about growing beyond beer. If we just look at the relative contribution in our 3%-5% growth ambition, then actually half of the growth will come from premium. This is really the biggest growth bet that we have. We also have a significant contribution still coming from mainstream core beer. That's because it is simply such a big category and there's still some underlying growth, and we also still think we can do a bit better than the market.
That will simply due to the scale of the segment, will still deliver good growth for us. Then we have actually significant growth ambitions on alcohol-free brews, but also on beyond beer. Stepping up in premium. Around 25% of our beer revenue today is from premium. Premium is a different definition from what you're used to when we've been talking our craft and specialty. Because with craft and specialty, we had you know as both a more narrow but also wider definition than what we have now. Because for instance, we included Somersby in craft and specialty, and then we excluded some of the local premium brands. Now we are going with a more clean definition, where we're saying, if it's not beer, it's in beyond beer.
Somersby, in Garage, you will find in Beyond Beer. If it is beer, but above that price index 120 roughly, and again, it will differ a little bit in a few markets, but if it's that, then it is in premium. With that, we have around 25% of our revenue in premium. You saw that in our market footprint, around 36% of the market value sits here. There's obviously a pretty significant gap to close for us. That we will do via three main levers. One is accelerating what we call super premium. Within super premium, we have the Blanc as our biggest growth asset, so we have a lot of belief in really scaling Blanc.
As Cees also said, when we went into SAIL 2022, we were more in exploration mode around what this portfolio would be. We had a much weaker footprint in premium back then. We also didn't really have many proven growth assets. We think we have that now, so with Blanc, it's really about scaling it and scaling it everywhere. The same will be. It's a little bit different story on Brooklyn, because Brooklyn, we are a little bit more exploring, but we think we found a very good growth model on Brooklyn now, and we're seeing good initial proof points on that, and Steve will also come back to that. We have our premium international lagers, which is what you know, Carlsberg and Tuborg. We also have good growth ambitions for both of those brands.
We have a big area of local premium, which is actually a significant part of the premium market is still local premium brands. In every market you go, in addition to international premium brands, you will also see local premium brands. For us in our portfolio, this is also a major priority to identify what is that local premium bit. What I'll do now is I'll hand over to Steve, who will talk you through Blanc and Brooklyn. Blanc being the must-do scale initiative that we have. Brooklyn being the brand where we have a lot of hope that we have cracked a growth model now that can actually deliver great growth on this brand also going forward. Here you go, Steve.
Thank you, Søren. Morning, everyone. I'm gonna be taking you through two of our kind of premium brands, the first one being Brooklyn, and this is our accelerator in our step up to premium growth agenda. Just starting with really a simple vision for Brooklyn. Really, this is just to become a leader in the international craft section. This just can be built on accessible, taste-led brews for the many. Most importantly, we'll be sourcing from the biggest value pool in the category, which is premium lager. Just looking back to why we acquired the rights to this amazing brand.
In large part, it was due to the great stories and the great assets that Steve Hindy and his team had built, and all the great activations that are going on in markets. There is a huge back catalog of brews built by Garrett Oliver. When we actually started to lift the box or open the marketing box of this amazing brand, it was actually a little bit on the empty side. We've got all this kind of latent equity. What have we done to scale this and to access all that value in premium lager? Well, quite simply, we've just prioritized. We've built a clear brand architecture around a few scale brews.
We have taken a unified approach to building the brand proposition, and we've crafted a creative platform of which we have built freshly consistent brand experiences. We've also gone back and looked at what the Brooklyn team have done, and we've codified all the great work that they have done. If we just kinda look at our simplified approach to the brews, we've got the new pilsner and the updated lager. This is how we're looking to win and target premium lager drinkers. We're also looking to bring in sessionable brews to build a winning share with the growing IPA section. We're focusing on a taste-led or a superior taste-led approach to build a winning position in AFBs.
What we'd just like to do now is just kinda give you a quick kind of run-through of the approach that we've took and how we've kind of reinvigorated this Brooklyn icon, how we've taken it from what Steve Hindy and his team have built, and how we've kind of created this unique and unified approach to the brand. Play the video. Okay, so that's how we renovated all the variants of the icon that we've brought. This is our scalable play into premium lager. Really it's Brooklyn's view on pilsner. What we've done is we've taken its layers of clean malts and its bright citrusy hops, and that kind of culminates in this beautiful, fresh, clean finish.
Hopefully, some of you were able to taste a few of those kind of democratically clean, crisp, fresh, pilsners last night, among some of the other, amazing brands. As I said, when we opened the box, it was a little on the empty side. Brand experience, this was effectively what we've had to build from scratch. What we've done is we've kind of invested heavily in building hopefully what you'll see is a very kind of, standout brand visual identity system, which we have built across all the touchpoints, across all channels for both consumer and shopper and customer.
What we've done is we've built a campaign for all of the variants, where we've got in excess of 200 assets across each of the variants, which across kind of eCom, social eCom, as well as all the kind of traditional media touchpoints. This should show us the 30-second film, which you may have seen earlier.
This is Brooklyn, New York. Where we live, walk, and talk like no one else. You gotta love the place that made you. Every little moment of inspiration. We've made this pilsner for you. Crisp, bright, and refreshing. Inspired by Brooklyn and brewed for all. Introducing Brooklyn Pilsner.
What we're trying to do across all the variants is just bring to life the Brooklyn, whether that be the borough, the brand, and most importantly, the people. We're just trying to get across that kind of grit and the energy that is both evident and lives every day in the borough and in the brand. That's all the marketing, which sounds all very good, but actually, what's actually happening? Well, at the moment, the early signs are very positive on Brooklyn. As you can see, that's kind of giving us a very strong 44% growth in H1.
That's driven off two things really, that we've got that huge investment in the scale play, which I've talked about, which is looking at how we can get a disproportionate amount of revenue from that largest segment, that largest profit pool in the industry being in lager. We can see there in the U.K., they're driving heavily on Brooklyn, and that has been predominantly in the on trade. We've got some lovely stats coming out. Some of the pubs in London are selling up to 1,000 pints a week in pilsner. That's, I think that's testament to the success of that democratic brew winning out. We're just launching this month in all the modern off-trade. There's a lot of distribution coming online in the U.K..
Likewise, with Poland, they're the kind of the newest member of the family that's coming in. In the last two months, they've actually just opened 9,000 distribution points in modern and traditional off-trade. They're really getting behind our scale play. In France, they've got the full portfolio, and they're just continually building year-on-year strong double-digit growth through new launches and huge media support. Likewise, we shouldn't forget our oldest, well it's actually the first market that introduced Brooklyn in the Carlsberg franchise. Again, considering it's been with us so long, we're still getting very strong double-digit growth. Again, that's testament to the reinvigoration of the brews. Just wrapping up on Brooklyn. Hopefully, you saw the lady in the ad.
I will leave the last word to her in a very visual way on Brooklyn before we step in to Blanc. Obviously, she's covered to keep her modesty at bay. Blanc. Moving from Brooklyn and that lovely lady to our what we recall internally as our premiumization engine. It's the premiumization engine for one simple fact: every year-on-year, we get value growth. Despite the kind of challenges that we've had in COVID that everyone is very, very aware of, we're still seeing some amazing growth. Really what's kind of giving us the confidence, which Kees talked about and Søren alluded to, what's allowing us to kind of take this amazing brand through to more and more markets is the equity that underlies this value growth, and it's growing across all key markets.
That's actually allowing us to double the top-line volume growth every two to three years. I'm now going to take you through in a, again, similar to Brooklyn, very simplified, very kind of focused approach. We have five growth pillars which we apply in every single market that we go to. Again, it's the repeatable models that Kees alluded to earlier. The first one is our amazing brew. It's the brew that just drives preference, wherever it goes. Really, the playfulness of the brew, where it meets the elegance, this is our elegant take on a, on a Belgian wit. As you can see, when it comes to preference, and this is global competitors, I'm not gonna name them, but you can, you're probably all very familiar with them, the preference just stands out.
When you put brand in hand and liquid on lips, this brand is a winner. Talking of kind of brand in hand, probably arguably our most distinctive brand asset. When you align this with pillar one, and you put that brand in hand and liquid on lips, we get a huge translation from trial to usage, up to 75% conversion from trial to usage. Really when you've got all that equity, you've got these distinctive brand assets, and you put liquid on lips and brand in hands, you get the conversion. You can see why we're so strongly believing this is a repeatable commercial model. Our third pillar, which is our creative platform, good taste with a twist. We're now in our second articulation.
We're just rolling out to all the markets of the Good Taste with a Twist campaign, and we've got hundreds of assets which are evident across all the different touch points, whether they be traditional touch points, e-com touch points, social, or when we're in Asia, obviously social e-com. We're looking at all the investment we have in social. We're trying to drive it through to transactions. If we just look at the 30-second TVC that we'll play.
Enjoy the wheat beer with a hint of citrus. 1664 Blanc, good taste with a twist.
Rue 1664 is our brand world where good taste with a twist comes to life. You'll always see playfully elegant twists happening in life just to make you think a little bit more and obviously try and create that kind of affinity standout and cut through. In terms of our fourth pillar, this really is around just driving kind of consistency across all of our touch points. We're bringing that kind of brand experience, whether it's for shoppers, for consumers, and again, we're just trying to drive a very freshly consistent articulation, and it doesn't matter what the touch points are. We just want to make sure that that brand creative platform, the essence of the brand, is coming through. This is for literally all of our consumers across all touch points.
We've also kind of building on the fifth one, which is for our key opinion leaders, which is our experiential platforms. Here what we're looking to do is how do we build affinity and usage with those key opinion leaders? Because if people see that the brand has adoration, affinity and usage with those, then the many will follow. It's seriously important that we keep kind of building that affinity with our key opinion leaders. Whether that's kind of innovative fashion shows across some of our European capitals, or whether it's a 1,000 m2 L'Atelier brand home pop-ups in Shanghai or Paris, or whether it's design and artist collaborations with celebrity chefs or celebrity artists.
We always try and make sure then that leads into a limited edition pack that will actually turn into transactions on either on shelf or on e-com. Again, we will be using our brand ambassadors to sell those through. In summary, whatever we do with Blanc is always done in a very playfully elegant fashion, and we look to continue building the repeatable model with Blanc. Thank you. Merci. Sorry. My faux pas.
All right. Thank you, Steve. I hope that this also does demonstrate that from a brand asset perspective, we are in a very different place today than we were actually at the outset of SAIL 2022. We really have a very strong belief that we have excellent assets that we can also scale, which is also why we actually have an ambition to close the gap to premium or to first tier within premium. If we go into core mainstream or core beer, this is still a very large part of our business, right? With also, of course, us under-indexing in premium. This is 70% of the business. This is a part of a business that is also a big strength for us, we believe.
This gives us a very local rooting, a very local footing in all of our markets. It gives, you know, it gets us close, very close to consumers, because we have brands with a long history and a long heritage in a number of markets. This again, remember that from the first one, we believe that this part of the market will grow, you know, low single digits or around 1%. What we want to do in this area is really to do three main things. One is really continue to drive the equity on each of the brands. Then also look at, you know, can we exploit more occasions for these brands? Then it's all about what we call BPPC. So that's brand, price, pack, and channel architecture.
That is really what we call value management, others call revenue management. That is how do we, you know, by playing around with prices and pack sizes, how do we continuously move up the value sold per liter on our brands? That's one big lever. Another big lever is that within this area, there's also an opportunity for premiumizing local brands. Having line extensions that actually add value, so that actually meet new consumer needs. That is also a major focus for us, launching that. The last but not least, this is about execution excellence also. These brands are when you go to markets, these are the ones that will take up a lot of the space when you're in outlets.
These really need to be executed well, and I'll get a little bit back to later how we are thinking and driving execution, but this is absolutely a key lever for these brands. On the localness on equity, I mean, what the starting point that has been presented to you before, also is that we are working with what we call demand spaces. Demand spaces basically represent different, you know, consumer segments that are basically the motivations that what drives consumers into the beer category. We choose for each of our brands the demand space that we position our brands against to make sure that we have a very clear and distinct positioning in the market, so we can create a very clear identity for the brand.
Part of what we then also do, especially on the local, on the mainstream core beer brands, is we make sure that they're very connected to, also the local consumers. Here are three examples of that. There's Dali in China where it's really around owning certain occasions. There's Huda, which is all about the pride of being from Central. It's all about Huda actually coming from the Central part of Vietnam, connecting with the consumers in that part of the country. There's Chongqing, which is really about recruitment of young consumers, especially through relevant music activation. On other examples of.
On the equity side, on brand relevance, there's also an example from Bulgaria with Pirinsko, which is the leading brand in Bulgaria, where the positioning is all about refreshment, so it's about being fresh from the mountains. In Bulgaria the team then launched an unpasteurized beer, which was even fresher than the original beer, also very successfully. There's another example on brand. There was doubling down on the freshness you can say. Then there's another example from Germany, which is the Astra brand, which has a very distinct and clear profile that is very appealing to especially younger consumer groups.
If you're outside of the core territory of Hamburg, there's a lot of younger consumers that find the rebellious nature of Astra and everything that's associated to it also becomes it comes from St. Pauli as very attractive. Another example on how to increase brand relevance. Then a couple of examples on premium brews. Premium brews is something that we are investigating in a number of markets, and we're also looking for what are some repeatable models. Are there things in, you know, are there premiumization trends that can travel across markets? We definitely are starting to see that, so we're also working with how we can codify that. Part of it could be, for instance, the example from Germany, which
or from Switzerland on Feldschlösschen, which is a more, you know, premium darker variant that plays with the heritage of the brand. Then you also have an example from Poland, which is moving into a more accessible territory in terms of a lower ABV on Žatecký, the Czech-origin brand in Poland. On AFB, we basically in a lot of our markets in Western Europe, in six out of nine we're the market leader. In more or less all of our markets, we tend to overtrade in AFB versus our beer market share average. If not so, then that is certainly the ambition.
We are very strong generally in AFB, especially in Western Europe, but also in Central and Eastern Europe. For alcohol-free beers, we really have three main growth levers that we're following. One is winning with beer. So that is basically for people that are looking for beer, but just without the alcohol. So you're looking for the same type of drinking experience in typically also the same occasions, but you just don't want the alcohol. So on that, what we're doing there is making sure that on all of the local, both on the core mainstream brands, that we actually have AFB propositions, but we're also rolling out the alcohol-free propositions on our premium brands. Then there's beer mixes.
That's a little bit different because those are typically more refreshment related than the beer ones. Here it's mainly about Radler. These they're these juice mixes in beer, which is also showing very strong growth in a number of markets. Originally, of course, Radler came out as lower ABV, but in recent years also they have come out as zero zero versions, and they're showing very strong growth. This part of the segment is where we see that there's some interaction also with the soft drinks category. It's also recruiting consumers into beer from outside of beer. The last one is we have a few examples also on standalone brands where we have some very good cases.
For instance, on Tourtel Twist in France that Graham will come back to later. It's not a strategy for us as such to launch standalone brands across all markets, but if there are unique opportunities to do so where we have existing brand assets that we can leverage, then we'll do it. We don't have a plan to launch more brands. We believe that we have a wide enough portfolio to actually cover all the different consumer needs. A few examples on AFB also, and just to give you an idea also that this is also from a value perspective, very interesting. Of course, because there's no excise duty paid on alcohol-free variants. The way we define alcohol-free brews is basically 0.0 and 0.5, so it's 0.5 and below.
This is also the typical definition by the authorities in terms of when you pay excise tax or not. If you take Carlsberg as an example, rolling out in multiple markets, growing revenue this year 25%, and it's at 1.6 x the average of the brand in terms of net revenue per hectoliter. It's a 60% premiumization, you can say, on the net revenue per hectoliter, so our value, not necessarily on the consumer price, because again, there's the tax benefit. On Brooklyn, also very strong growth on the AFB variants. Here, Brooklyn as a brand actually delivers 3 x the average of all of our AFBs.
In our AFB pyramid, you'll have the core mainstream typically at the bottom, then you'll have international brands in the middle, and then you'll have brands like Brooklyn at the top of the pyramid from a net revenue per hectoliter perspective, but three times the average. Very strong premiumization also. We're actually also have launched 0.0 on Somersby, which is also showing very good growth. This again is also pulling more consumers into the brand and is representing up to 10% of the brand already. In grow beyond beer, this is a segment that's roughly the same size for us today as AFB, so it's around 5% of our revenue.
5% of the beer revenue is what we call beyond beer. We have launched Somersby in many markets, so it's in more than 70 markets now. On Somersby, we're in the position where we are in the same place as we are on Blanc. This is really a proven asset that works everywhere where we do it well. We see great results coming from Somersby. Priority number one in this for us is really to scale Somersby fully. We still have more opportunities, especially in Asia, which I will also talk about later, but definitely in Asia is the biggest opportunity. We have rolled out Somersby in most markets. In other places, we still see more growth opportunities for Somersby outside of Asia also, but Asia is a big opportunity.
Priority number two is Garage. Garage is more of an RTD-type brand, and actually started out originally in Finland, but then also in Eastern Europe and has had very strong success and is being rolled out in CE now and with very encouraging results, has also moved into Poland recently. This is a brand that we also think has potential to be scaled. Priority number three, which is actually a lower priority versus the two other ones. The two other ones are, one is a proven brand asset, the other one is an asset that we have seen very strong results coming out of all the first markets, and we think we can scale. The third one is more exploration.
That is more around looking at, for instance, pre-mixed cocktails, and is that something that is attractive for us. Here we are more in a test mode than we are necessarily in a scaling mode. Again, Somersby very strong results already. You know, double-digit growth in more than 15 markets. We still have a lot of markets that are onboarding and potentially in Asia. AFB, more than 10% of the brand already. And then Garage in the markets, you know, 30% growth across all markets. In all the markets it's been launched, it has had very strong initial results. Definitely also an interesting brand to scale.
Pre-mixed cocktails is one of the things that we're exploring, both on draft and potentially also in packaged, but it is much more exploratory. The focus is really on the three ones on the left, or the two ones, Somersby and Garage. That was basically a walkthrough of the portfolio choices. To talk through about our execution levers, the first big one we have is basically the sales programs we're running for sales. Program number one is what we call FIT. FIT stands for Focus, Implement, Track. Focus is really about saying when you have a very channel landscape out there, and also our portfolio, of course, over time has grown in complexity.
What is the right assortment, pricing, and activation that we should actually do in each of the channels? This is defining what we call the picture of success or PICOS for short. That is really what focus is all about. That is about sales, you know, cross-functional effort between sales and marketing in really nailing that both from a brand perspective, but also from a profit perspective, what is the right assortment and how do we, you know, merchandise it in store and how do we activate it also? That's focus. Implementing is getting it out. You know, that's basically getting all of our salespeople to do it every day, getting them trained, making sure that they have everything available.
Tracking is really all the performance management routines that are around reporting it and then also putting it into weekly and monthly operating routines that are all about focusing on whether we're driving the right activities to deliver the outputs. This is really what FIT is all about on the left-hand side. What we're doing there also is also digitizing it. You know, using, for instance, image recognition to make sure that we collect data on our execution in the outlets that we can then also leverage from an analytics perspective. It can also put in front of the sales rep real-time, so they take pictures, and they also get immediate feedback on what their sales priorities are in that outlet.
On value management, value management is really about pricing, it's about promo effectiveness, it's about trade terms, and then it's about our assortment. These are really the four big things that are in. Part of it is captured in what we call BPPC, which then again is translated into PICOS at the end of the day. Value management, that's really a capability that's not widespread in the organization. This is a smaller population of people that really need to be skilled in this because it's definitely it's your key account teams in both off and on-trade, but then it's also the specialists that are supporting them, whether it's the value management team or people in marketing that need to have good knowledge on this.
This is a capability program targeted at that population to make sure that we lift the level but also that we roll out the right tools, whether it's on the elasticity modeling on the pricing side, whether it's promo effectiveness, whether it's assortment optimization tools, or whether it's also our approach to making sure that we have proper counterparts and a good pay-for-performance structure in place for our trade terms. This is again an area where obviously a lot of things are happening now around data and analytics, so an area where there's you know a lot of ongoing development in terms of what we are actually able to do with data.
Also an area where we are exploring quite a few new things in terms of how we use data analytics better to actually drive also our decision-making to the next level in this area. Third one is around customer management because this is absolutely a key one in a lot of our markets where we have big modern off-trade, either it is established or it's growing. This is really around how do we you know manage the customer discussions in a good and constructive way so we also get our both our brand priorities but also our financial priorities implemented together with the customers and always with a win-win mindset. How do we you know have category discussions with the customers where we end up with win-win solutions for both of us?
This is also very much a capability program, it's set ways of working. You know, how do you do the routines for when you set up the plans with the key accounts every year and how do you also negotiate and make sure that you build joint plans with the customers? One big initiative we also have is on digitizing our route to market. We've launched Carl's Shop. We are now present in 11 markets with Carl's Shop. Carl's Shop for us started out in Western Europe, so it is mainly in Western Europe. It's targeted on-trade because we don't really have traditional trade in Western Europe.
I know that maybe when you talk to others, they initially started out in markets where there was a lot of traditional trade. We really started out in markets that were very heavy on on-trade. That has been the initial focus, and now we're moving into Asia where we are adding on markets also that cover more channels, so it covers both on-trade but also traditional trade, and typically via distributors. In Europe when we started out, we also started out with DSD markets. Current numbers are that we have around. It's basically, if you look at our e-commerce, there are three directions within e-commerce. You have business-to-business e-commerce, that is Carl's Shop.
You have business-to-consumer, that's where we go through a retailer to reach an end consumer, so they could either be pure players or brick-and-mortar players. Then you have direct-to-consumers. We have in the SAIL 2027, we have decided not to focus on direct-to-consumers. We're putting all of our bets on business-to-business and then also on business-to-consumer. This is the business-to-business one. So right now we have around 40,000 active users, so that's actually users that are buying via the platform in on-trade. And then, you know, we have around 15 minutes of engagement per week. It roughly breaks into. We would probably want to get that above 20 minutes. That's where best practice currently is. So this is also an area that we are all the time learning and developing.
This is not a bad number, but it's not where best in class is still, so we want to push it up. This actually breaks in two. You have the customers that are coming in spending only four minutes per week to, you know, quickly get their purchase done, and then you have others that are sitting and browsing on a Saturday evening, which is good for us because it typically means that opens up for more opportunities for cross-selling new categories into customers. We have a conversion rate of around 38%.
That means that from people that actually sign up to actually becoming active, ongoing buyers, and again here also, you know, in a good place but also a number that we think we can get up to best in class which would be around 50, for this. If you look at the result, I think the two numbers in the middle here on the right are probably the key ones. We do see that when we move someone from an offline ordering, which typically means telesales or manuals, or order taking via sales sales reps, we see a 2% volume uplift when we look at against the control group, and we see actually a 5% premiumization also.
We definitely see that this is a great tool for both actually driving overall business but also for premiumizing our business further. We have, you know, good satisfaction scores actually above four out of five. If we look at what we're doing on Carl's Shop for 2022 and beyond, we are expanding to more markets, so we'll be rolling out to even more markets and also outside of Europe next year. Then there's a big focus on rolling out loyalty programs. We've tested it in a few markets now. It's working very well. This will drive more engagement, so this is one of the big levers to move the around 15 minutes weekly engagement up to around 20 minutes.
We're also looking at, you know, how can we take the next step on Carl's Shop in terms of adding more capabilities in. One thing that we're looking at is marketplace functionality. That's also opening up the platform for others than our own, you know, brands and products. That's of course especially relevant in wholesaler markets. We're also looking at how can we again also apply more analytics to drive sales. The last thing is that we're connecting also Carl's Shop even better into the rest of the digital tools that we have also on field execution and in other parts of the business.
This is also an initiative that is getting good traction and is supporting generally the execution objectives that we have. Right. Key messages, again for me, the beer category is large. It is a profitable category. It is very resilient and actually the premiumization that we think is going to take place. When we look at the past data, it's quite a robust trend in spite of adverse economic downturns. We have made four clear portfolio choices. Within each of those, we have zoomed in on a few things that we wanna really double down on and scale. It is really in premium, it is really about scaling now. It is really scaling what we know is proven.
In core mainstream, it's more of the same, to be honest. I mean, we've done very well on core mainstream in the last years. It's really doing more of the same because that has worked very well. In AFB, it is more about unleashing the potential. We think there's a lot more to go for than what we've seen so far, also because we think it can expand even further. In beyond beer, it's really also about scaling, especially Somersby and Garage, which we think will deliver also accelerated growth. Then on the execution side, we have also identified a few very clear programs where we will also roll them out and they're very clearly defined.
We have clear technologies that will support them, and there's a lot of focus on really getting them embedded through regular routines, and training of course of the relevant population that is targeting. That's it.
Good morning, everybody. People are key assets for any organization, so also for ours. In today's continuously changing business world, it's human assets, not the fixed or tangible assets, that differentiate an organization from its competitors. Our people are our ambassadors. They are the most essential contributors towards profits and shareholder value. They're the face of Carlsberg, and they are driven by performance and are led by our purpose. I would like to briefly share some insights on our people, priorities, how we engage our employees and our leaders, reward and develop them, and how we see diversity, equity, and inclusion as a core element of Carlsberg's culture and also a integral part of the SAIL 2027 strategy. Under the umbrella of our strategic HR framework, the leadership expectations, we identified emerging internal and external themes that are increasingly relevant to Carlsberg.
Leadership expectations encapsulates our HR and people priorities, and they help clarifying what Carlsberg expects of all its leaders across the group. As a leader, regardless of where you are in the world, we ask them to reflect on what you can do differently to help drive the three core elements of the leadership principles in the Carlsberg Group. Drive high performance, build healthy and thriving organizations, and develop our people. High performance in itself will never create a high-performance culture. We want and we believe that these three elements of high performance, its organization, and the development of the people will create a successful high-performance culture. The leadership expectations have several building blocks. DE&I will come to that. Talent development, well-being, smart objective setting and follow-up, continuous feedback, performance and reward, and various other elements like safety and compliance.
It's an anchor for our leaders, but at the same time, it evolves and matures as we as an organization move ahead. This has been the basis for the people agenda under SAIL 2027. Brewing for a better day or tomorrow, our purpose was and is an integral element in everything we do. It illustrates how we focus on betterment, how we are curious and innovative, aim to give back to society and communities, and how diverse as we are as a company and our colleagues. It also underlines how we are made up from many different cultures, markets, brands, and that we jointly share a strong pride in everything we do. Lastly, but not unimportantly, it also emphasizes performance.
Going the extra mile commercially and financially is part of our core, and that, again, we believe is part of the Carlsberg winning culture and our performance culture. Our purpose is illustrated and explained in our employer value proposition, which you see on the screen. It's our promise to our employees, current and future, internal and external, and it is the backbone of our leadership expectations. When we look a little bit further and we go in depth and look at our performance, we also see that rewards, recognition, and celebration are part of the leadership expectations. Over the years, we have been successful and congruent in making congruent global incentive plans that are cascading the strategy and are driving our performance. The annual incentive plan ensures aligned targets, both financially and strategic, cascaded from the global strategy via business plans right through to our colleagues who execute the plans.
The SDI applies for all employees. To reinforce that, this alignment, we also have a global long-term incentive plan which connects the global top 150, including all MDs, leadership teams of the largest markets, and our group and regional management around the world, all around four core global KPIs. I would like to share an example of how we've been able to integrate diversity, talent development, and also strategy building. As part of SAIL 2027, we identified together with 138 young strategists from all over the world to get bottom-up feedback on what is today the SAIL 2027 strategy. This was then overseen by the extended leadership colleagues of these strategists. It was not just a top-down or the top-only leadership and group strategy that built SAIL 2027.
It has been truly an integrating diverse perspective with now, as we see, a broad ownership and broad stakeholder management. We also see that it has helped and shaped the development of our strategic thinking and the strategic thinking of our employees. It has created new and engaging networks, and it has also for everybody who was participating, a much fuller insight in the full value chain of the company. This learning exercise is one of the examples of how we want to nourish and use our talents not only in their daily work, but to bring them together to build and grow the company. With that is a nice bridge for me to talk with you about a cornerstone of the culture and our commitment to DE&I, diversity, equity, and inclusion, which sits at the heart of our purpose.
It's part of our founder's mentality, and it sits as a cornerstone in SAIL 2027. As said, it's in our DNA. We work in more than 150 markets. We own operations in more than 30 countries. We work roughly with 40,000 passionate colleagues. We have a strong local and group presence, local roots, and we are stronger together, global strength. Equity asks us to acknowledge that everyone has different needs, experiences, and opportunities. Equality is about sameness. Equity is about fairness. Creating a diverse and inclusive workforce is a proven catalyst for delivering increased company performance, innovation, and actually exceeding financial targets and achieving better business outcomes. We want our employees to belong, to feel safe and treated fairly at work, and overall, to bring their own best version to work.
Our approach to DE&I is anchored, of course, in all the things that we do in a strategic programmatic approach. That's why you can see in this four-dimensional roadmap. It illustrates that we acknowledge that one will not work without the other. Focusing only on one element will not bring us the success that we're looking for. As you will see from the left, business priority. It means that we hold ourselves accountable. It is a leader-led initiative and accountability. We use assessment surveys and reporting on our progress. When we talk about diverse representation, this year, we introduced time-bound targets, and I will come to that in a minute. We will achieve our ambition by focusing on equity, fairness, and transparency in our processes.
We have to think about promotion, recruitment, development, and by continuing to nurture the inclusive culture that our employees confirm we have. That also means that we have now requirements to the gender split in shortlisting for vacancies and in our appointment and recruitment panels. We apply different tools to de-bias job ads as well as the interview process. We train leaders in building an inclusive environment, build experience profiles for career development, and we focus on the sponsorship and sponsorship programs of female talents. On equity, we aim to build fair and transparent policies that accommodate the personal life choices of different employee groups, flexible workplace guidelines, parental leave. We educate and train leaders to foster an equitable environment and take consequences when needed. As part of this, we have implemented a zero tolerance for discrimination and any form of harassment.
On inclusive culture, the fourth pillar, inclusion is at the core. To have an inclusive culture, you must have inclusive leaders. Therefore, we train, educate, and coach our senior leaders in the meaning and the implementation of inclusion in a lot of different ways. The intensified journey started in 2021 when we implemented what we call the pyramid, which is a measurement tool to actually understand where we are today in terms of gender parity, to understand more deeply, within our senior management bands one to seven what is the promotion rate and the outflow attrition rates of males and females in Carlsberg. This tool, which is currently automated, is available for every market, every region, every function, and at global level, and it has become a core instrument to steer our ambition.
The next year, 2022, as part of SAIL 2027, we have set time-bound targets, as mentioned. Research and best practice insights indicate that it's a high impact and effective way to drive change. It also allows us, as a performance-driven company, to measure progress and hold leaders accountable. Having said that, it's also essential that the targets are realistic and achievable. Besides this, targets are a way of helping us to mature and improve our people processes. Our long-term ambition remains unchanged. We aim for at least 40% women in our senior leadership bands. From 2022, we have set a target of 30% by 2024, and 35% by 2027, and these are global targets.
Next to that, from 2023, we will see, due to implementation of new Danish legislation, that there will be a new requirement to be set and a target to be set for the top two leadership layers in Danish companies. We are awaiting details on what that will mean, and that will be shared in 2023. As you hopefully can see, and also will understand, Carlsberg is on a journey, if it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion. However, there are no quick fixes when it comes to this topic. It takes time and effort, commitment and perseverance. Carlsberg doesn't claim to be leading edge in DE&I, but we are strongly committed to this agenda and are challenging ourselves to do better today and tomorrow.
We learn from what we see outside, and we engage our people, the total population behind the ambition of DE&I and our people agenda. It has to be said, with our programmatic approach and the change management tools that we have, we do see the first and promising results coming forward in the appointments that we do, in the engagement scores that we see, and the awareness that we want to create amongst our people and the engagement. Thank you very much. That's it.
Hello, everyone. What I will present after Joris's great presentation on people and leadership expectations is the ESG agenda. It is also my pleasure to, for the first time, stand in front of you and present our new ESG program, Together Towards ZERO and Beyond, which was launched in connection with the half-year results just earlier in August this year. Basically, today, I will focus on two main things. First of all, just to introduce the program, and secondly, to show you concrete examples of how our colleagues across the world in different functions, across cultures, are implementing the ESG agenda, striving towards our targets every single day. To begin with, I will start with introducing the program and really where it's coming from and why we have created Together Towards ZERO and Beyond.
First of all the things we do within ESG is based on our material issues, meaning where do we have the biggest negative impact and where can we have the biggest positive? A lot of you in the room have been challenging us over the past months and years on our agenda, and it's really great to see the level of knowledge among both investors, analysts and others on this topic. Basically, as long as we maintain a focus on material issues, we believe we are making the right actions, we have the right targets that will both satisfy you as a stakeholder audience, but also the much wider array of different stakeholders that we are facing as a business operating in the world. Secondly, our ESG program, as you can also see from today, is integrated into SAIL 2027.
It's a part of how we do business strategy. It is not standing on the side. It is really something that we're looking at as an integrated activity in everything we do. Lastly, we are also, of course, looking to the world's most material issues, which is basically how I like to view the Sustainable Development Goals, which is basically an overview of all those issues and topics that we as people on this planet really need to solve by the year 2030. Our strategy and our material issues are also aligned to those material issues that are outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals. This is the really starting point for our program. I'll also say that it is building, as the name also suggests, on our previous program, Together Towards ZERO, which I hope all of you are familiar with.
This was launched in 2017. It was part of the previous strategy, SAIL 2022. Basically, we are really happy that we have been able to deliver on our promises in Together Towards ZERO. We have seen a lot of engagement across the world from our colleagues in really helping us achieve, I would say, quite strong results across our zeros. A 40% relative carbon reduction since our baseline year in 2015 is really a really great step on the way towards zero carbon footprint. A very significant reduction in water consumption across our breweries, led by our colleagues in supply chain, is really also a monumental effort. The growth in alcohol-free brews, which we do not see as the key driver in our sustainability program, but more as an amazing product development opportunity that also has an aspect of responsibility.
Now you can have a beer at the Friday bar and still drive home. As long as it's an alcohol-free brew, we can help eliminate some of those risk situations by offering the consumers wider choice. As you have seen in the previous presentations, we have seen amazing growth within this category, which is also helping us alleviate some of those risk situations. Lastly, in terms of safety, we have seen some good progress on reductions of our lost time accidents, but there is still much more work to do within this space in order to achieve a zero accidents culture. Our new program is definitely building on Together Towards ZERO and the strong progress we made since 2017 alongside the rest of the business performance.
In Together Towards ZERO and Beyond, one of the kind of newsworthy aspects is definitely the addition of two new zeros that I'll also introduce in a bit more detail. I'd just like to highlight the importance of the two new zeros. Firstly, zero farming footprint, and secondly, the zero packaging waste. Basically, these two aspects are absolutely key in achieving our new net-zero 2040 target and our overall ambition of achieving zero-carbon footprint. The reason for that is really listed in the value chain slide you can see here, which shows you that approximately 65% of our total Scope 3 emissions comes from those two aspects.
This also tells you that without concrete action within these two areas towards 2030 and 2040, we will not be able to truly decarbonize our value chain in cooperation with our suppliers and our colleagues. This is one of the important points in our new program that these two areas are singled out more. We have more specific time-bound targets and obviously also actions to support the progress within this. Now I would just like to show you a short video. Instead of me introducing everything, now I will let you see a short three-minute introduction to Together Towards ZERO and Beyond.
Our ESG program, Together Towards ZERO and Beyond, consists of our ambitions on the environmental, social, and governance topics that are most material to our business and to wider society. The climate crisis is more pressing than ever. To decarbonize our total business, we're moving to zero carbon emissions at our breweries by 2030 and a net zero value chain by 2040. We rely on healthy ecosystems to brew our beers. To help protect and improve the biodiversity and farmlands where our ingredients are grown, we will source 100% of our raw materials using regenerative practices by 2040. Our packaging protects our products but can have negative impacts if not handled properly. To drive a circular economy, 100% of our packaging will be reusable, recyclable, or renewable, and we will increase the collection and recycling rates for our bottles and cans to 90% by 2030.
Water is essential to brewing beer, and it's becoming more precious. To protect water both in and outside of our breweries, we aim at world-leading efficiency with even more ambitious targets for our high-risk areas. In these areas, we will also work with partners and communities to replenish 100% of our water consumption. We want to encourage responsible consumption and to enable positive beer experiences anytime, anywhere. To achieve this, we will provide consumers with information that enables responsible behavior. We will grow our low-alcohol and alcohol-free offerings significantly to enable more consumer choice. We will also continue encouraging responsible choices on our packaging and through our brands while working with partners to prevent harmful alcohol consumption. The health and safety of our employees will always be a top priority. We will accelerate our efforts towards zero accidents by 2030 and target reductions every year.
In addressing our most material issues, we also focus on sourcing responsibly, promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, protecting human rights, living by our compass, and engaging our communities. Through partnerships with our colleagues, global experts, suppliers, and civil society, we continue our journey towards zero and beyond to deliver our vision for a better tomorrow together.
This is the overall program, and these are some of the key targets that we're aiming towards in 2030 and in 2040. Today, I will not be going through all of the areas in detail as I was not permitted to have 1.5 hours to present to you or more. Luckily, you will only have 20 minutes with me. What I will be focusing on is really the top part. I'll be focusing on the six zeros. Also because Joris, for example, has just been introducing the DE&I agenda and our time-bound targets, so I'll not be spending a lot of time on that today.
Basically, what I will do is I will give you the short introduction to the overall targets within each of our areas and give you concrete examples of how we're working towards it from the past that will also inform the future. When we're looking at a zero carbon footprint as an ambition, we have two different levels of targets. The targets that are really aimed at our own operations and our breweries, which we have an aim for zero carbon footprint by 2030 and an ambition to source our renewable electricity from sources of additionality. We also have a target towards our full value chain or what you call Scope 3 for those who are Greenhouse Gas Protocol geeks. However, when we're looking at the concrete actions that we need to do, it is very different within these two different aspects.
Just to give you some examples, first of all, within our breweries, we need to convert them to renewable thermal sources like in Finland, where we're using renewable district heating and we have renewable electricity. We're proud to say we have carbon-neutral brewery operations in Finland. This is something that you're gonna see more of in the coming years as we move towards 2030. Another example of actions that we're gonna take and have been taking can be found in Switzerland, where we have purchased and are operating 26 heavy-duty trucks to deliver our beers to our customers and to our consumers. This might seem like two small examples, but basically these are the types of examples that you're gonna see more of.
It's in those type of occasions in our logistics operation at our breweries that we are going to be step changing towards zero carbon footprint. In terms of the value chain emissions, they are actually more important to talk about when we are looking at the two areas that I alluded to that make up 65% of our total value chain emissions. Basically, when you look at our targets towards 2030 and 2040, of course, within zero farming footprint, there is a very big carbon part in terms of sequestering of carbon into the soils by using regenerative practices.
There is also a lot of other aspects that are very important for this particular area, and that includes improving the biodiversity of the fields and the surroundings where our raw materials are grown, but also creating more resilience in our supply chain, which is something that we're seeing encouraging signs of on fields with regenerative practices. There is higher water retention in the soils, and that higher water retention might give you a better resilience towards years of drought, for example. These are some of the signs that we're seeing that can really contribute positively both to the bottom line but also to society and the fight against climate change and the nature crisis that we're seeing. This is one of the absolute key areas that we're looking to explore.
It is also an area that is fairly immature at this point, so there's a lot of work for us to do in defining and implementing this, working with our suppliers to explore how we can make it happen. We already have some examples of this in France, where our brand 1664 is really taking the first steps towards regenerative practices and has committed to source 100% of the barley in 1664 in France from sustainable and regenerative sources by 2027. In Finland, where Sinebrychoff has been brewing a regeneratively grown barley or been using that in their Christmas beer. It is not just ideas and dreams, it is happenin g. Of course we need to scale it. We need to find solutions that can be used across markets with our suppliers in the coming years.
A really exciting area and also an area that our colleagues in marketing can really use to talk about something that is beyond the brew itself, about it being refreshing or great. We also have a very strong societal aspect that we can use. Zero farming footprint is definitely an area that we're seeing a lot of promise in, but there is also a lot of work to do to achieve our targets. The next area is also new, and this is our target or our aim to achieve zero packaging waste. Within this, we actually have four new areas that we've introduced as specific targets.
You know, number one being that we want to make all of our packaging recyclable, reusable or renewable. Number two being that we want to really make sure that our bottles are collected, that our bottles and cans are collected in our markets. Something that we're looking to really emphasize by supporting efficient deposit return schemes where this is the right viable market model. Also, we're looking to reduce the amount of virgin fossil-based plastics with 50% against our baseline. What we will do to achieve this is by introducing more renewable or bio-based material, more recycled material, and in general, lead a reduction of virgin fossil-based plastics in the coming years and replace it with other alternatives.
Lastly, in general, driving up the amount of recycled content in our primary packaging in particular, because this is where we see a very, very big carbon footprint benefit lying by basically providing the feedstock for this recycled material from efficient collection systems and that being able to then be sourced back into our packaging, which again, can be a source of resilience in our supply chain, in particular in years of scarcity of packaging or materials. That is the overall ambition within zero packaging waste. As said, zero farming footprint and zero packaging waste are really two key levers in our journey towards a net zero value chain by 2040. When you're looking at specific examples, we both have kind of breakthrough innovative examples like the fiber bottle.
You might have seen that in this summer we have been testing the fiber bottle in a very small research scale, so only 8,000 bottles across seven different European markets. Nonetheless, it has really helped us to get some consumer insights as to how much do the consumers actually like this bottle. It is totally different. It is a very different occasion. It's a very different experience to have your lips against a fiber bottle. Really getting some experience on this and seeing whether there is consumer acceptance has been a truly exciting journey over this summer. There is still a long way to go to commercialize this bottle, and last night a lot of you had questions on this. Basically, we are relying on innovations within our value chain in order to make it happen.
For example, our partner Avantium, who is building a plant to create an inner liner called PEF, we're relying on that going live and being produced at scale until we can scale this product. If we don't try, we're never gonna change anything. That's one example. Another example is in the U.K. where we trialed a bottle with 90% lower carbon footprint than traditional glass bottles, which was basically driven by renewable thermal heat and an almost 100% recycled content in these glass bottles. Still trials. It is a sign of things to come on how we can really decarbonize our value chain. Within zero water waste, now we also have two different types of trials. Number one is really driven by our supply chain colleagues in the breweries every day doing excellence in terms of reducing our water consumption.
Here we have two different targets in Together Towards ZERO and Beyond. One is a global target of achieving 2.0 hl per hectoliter by 2030, and the other is to achieve 1.7 hl in the areas that we designate as breweries situated within high risk of either water quality or scarcity issues, as defined by the Water Risk Filter tool from WWF that we are using. Within efficiency, amazing targets, but also we have done really well on performance, really driven by our supply chain colleagues being excellent at driving best practice and implementing whatever small effort we can across the entire production chain to really reduce water usage at the brewery. Secondly, we have introduced a new target to replenish 100% of the water intake consumption at our breweries in areas of high risk.
Basically conducting projects outside of the breweries that will replenish the aquifers and the basins in those particular areas where we operate. Proof points again have come from a country like Vietnam, where we have been providing clean water to the central and really making that a brand benefit and a proposition that is also driving consumer engagement. You know, the number speaks for itself. Providing clean water to more than 27,000 people, I think is an amazing societal, but also a very strong feat in terms of our engagement with the local society in Vietnam.
Our example on efficiency, which is not driven by best practice and culture, but more by an actual investment, is really coming from Denmark, where we have been able to achieve an absolute world-class performance of 1.4 hl of water per hectoliter of beer through an amazing system of technologies that enable us to use 90% of the recycled water again at the breweries for service purposes. Again, two proof points that we're not just talking the talk, we're also walking the talk in terms of Together Towards ZERO and Beyond. When we're looking at the penultimate zero, the zero irresponsible drinking. Here there has been a lot of talk about the alcohol-free brews and their effects, so I will not be spending a lot of time on that.
Obviously, really emphasizing beer as the low alcohol choice within moderate consumption is really a key driver of our target of 35% share by 2030 of no and low. Below 3.5 and between 0 and 0.5, as Søren alluded to earlier. At the same time, doing the things that really drive moderation campaigns, creating partnerships, making sure we have the right information on our packs, on our brews to drive responsible and moderate consumption throughout our markets. Here we have examples that are marketing driven, where we really try to reach the consumers with particular messaging like a local campaign from Sweden, where, you know, apparently there's a lot of sailing going around in the summertime.
Here we really immersed a bar to the bottom of the Swedish Skagerrak in order to highlight that you should not drink and boat. A slightly different situation than what many people face, but still it's about creating awareness and encourage responsible behavior with our products. Secondly, Malaysia, who has really been performing well over the years on really emphasizing the need for moderation, providing free taxi rides home from events where our products have been sold, and really encouraging responsible consumption in general. Again, two very strong examples from our businesses. Lastly, the last zero, which is to achieve a zero accidents culture. Here I think we have the only target that anyone should have, which is a target of zero accidents. That will of course be incredibly difficult to reach.
Nonetheless, the focus from our top management, from any colleague in the supply chain organization, in logistics, whoever is responsible for safety across our company has really been amazing since the launch of SAIL 2022. This focus continues with SAIL 2027 to really keep driving down the accident rate, but also to ensure that our culture changes and sometimes training is really needed. For example, in 2021 we had 3,300 employees in China going through training in safe behavior, in particular also in driving two-wheel vehicles or in kind of a global approach we have been focusing on the really basic things at the breweries.
Doing safety walks consistently in our breweries to ensure we identify risk areas and to really ensure that the observations we see are also channeled into action that prevents accidents from happening. In the end, of course, the worst type of accident, which is a fatality. A lot of concrete work going on Together Towards ZERO and Beyond. I'm truly excited for the coming program and also for the expansion of the program, which no longer has four focus areas but eleven focus areas. This is also a testament to a much more complex world, a world where you are imposing also a lot of requirements and expectations to us, but that also goes for society in general. Without being successful within the ESG sphere, we will not have a successful business. That is really the approach that we're taking.
Obviously it is not something that we can do alone as Carlsberg. We really need to do it together with civil society, with our suppliers, with our colleagues, and with all of those people that have a stake in our business. That is why it is called Together Towards ZERO and Beyond, and not just Towards Zero and Beyond. Thank you very much for listening, and I hope that you will enjoy our new program and all of the actions that we will be implementing in the coming years. With that, I will hand over to Victor, who will take you through some more details on our supply chain work. Thank you.
Good morning. Simon, I think did a quite a good introduction for supply chain. Mentioning a lot of good work we are doing in supply chain, and it's actually a good work. Supply chain in Carlsberg. It's about over 95% of the assets company have physical assets, equipment, breweries vehicles. A little bit or more than 50% of people working in supply chain and almost over 70% of the various costs we are controlling or spending through the supply chain, starting from procurement, manufacturing, logistics and delivery. Supply chain was on a very successful journey over the past 10 years. Why I'm talking 10 years? Supply chain in Carlsberg as a central and global function was established back in 2012.
The function is relatively young as a global function, but we deliver very good and strong results already. Moving step by step from establishing function, delivering basic standards or as we call it, Carlsberg Operating Manual in 2012. In 2016, we move together with launching of the SAIL 2022 program to more advanced standards. We also established a much stronger governance between the central function and the three regions to make sure that they all synchronize and working on the same or relevant priorities. In 2016, we launch a program which calls Carlsberg Excellence. It's a set of the best practices and or you can call it philosophy, how to run supply chain within the Carlsberg.
How to operate our breweries, how to ride our lines, how to drive efficiency. Moving towards SAIL 2027, we will continue develop supply chain, start moving from, for instance, Carlsberg Excellence from the pilots to end-to-end implementation of the common program across all the steps of the supply chain, across all sub functions of the supply chain. We will implement several end-to-end programs and tools, like one of the biggest of them is called One Plan is end-to-end planning, starting from the demand planning to inventory planning, including production and line scheduling. We definitely will focus on the Together Towards ZERO priorities, which Simon has mentioned. As I said, we deliver so far strong results.
Despite all the storms which Cees 't was talking earlier today, we were able to improve year-over-year non-material cost per hectoliter. We deliver strong increase of our assets or especially production lines improvement, efficiency improvement. That gives us. That was a pilots of the Carlsberg Excellence program that gave us in Asia, for instance, almost 6 million hl or over 6 million hl of free capacity in mostly in China, supporting the growth over the last six years. You saw that China was growing fast. There were not so many investments into new assets, new breweries, new lines, but they were behind this in a lot of investments in the capability of our people into reliability of our equipment.
I think from this standpoint of view, talking about Carlsberg Excellence, there is no better analogy like sailing to supply chain. If you see our SAIL 2022, SAIL 2027 program, analogy is like the boat in the ocean. Supply chain, if you are in the ocean, you don't want to have your engine broken in the middle of the ocean. Equipment reliability and efficiency is important. You want to have well trained and capable crew, again, related to us, develop capability and professionalism of our people. In the middle of the ocean, you don't want to end up without resources. You have to be focused on the resources, losses reduction, and multiple savings. Altogether, again, moving to labor efficiency, deliver strong performance.
You can see almost directly with line efficiency improvement. CO2 and water consumption reduction or CO2 emission. Again, there were a couple of projects which we were running as a test, like, Denmark water recycling project, but most of the improvements delivered through just improving our efficiency of our processes, eliminating various losses on the production line, outside of production line, on the warehouse, backyards, etc. Moving forward, in SAIL 2027, again, it's not revolution and evolution. Having the new targets or more sharper targets and keeping in mind that most of the low-hanging fruits already are collected, we need to reorganize supply chain in order to be better prepared for continued journey on the improvements on our performance and also strengthening service provided by supply chain to our commercial organization.
We are talking about two ways of integration of the supply chain, vertical from the group, region and country, in order to make sure we drive efficiency, technical efficiency of supply chain, and horizontal between supply chain and commercial function to make sure that we are not losing either information or losing anything between supply chain and commercial when we are collecting demand data and producing relevant products. For this purposes, we already reorganized the supply chain function at the group level and also at the regional level. They are corresponding each other and we are almost eliminated duplications in terms of different levels of organization. They are working together complementing each other rather than working on the same activities in parallel.
At the same time, we are strengthening our focus on the linkage between supply chain organization at the market and the regional level with the commercial and finance functions in order to be able to drive those efficiencies which I mentioned earlier. The next, that would be our pivotal program for the next six years, and I believe beyond than six years. It calls Carlsberg Excellence. To many of you, it would be similar to Lean TPM, but through the pilots, through the SAIL 2022 program, we did several pilots, and we identify clearly what kind of best practices, industrial best practices or within the Carlsberg best practices are relevant to all of our breweries, to all of our lines.
They really delivering benefits and efficiency and what kind of activities are not delivering what is expected. We reshaped the Carlsberg Excellence program, and we will relaunch it starting from 2023 in a more organized and more structured way. There are four levels starting from foundation, basic standards and advanced standards, very clearly defined purpose of each layer, level, and also very clearly defined responsibility. Who is responsible within supply chain organization for implementation, and who is responsible for development of those standards. I believe that would be the next step. We already, again, as I mentioned, delivered strong results. In some cases, they are best in industry results.
For instance, using China again as an example, on any canning lines, we don't have any canning lines running below 80% equipment efficiency in China through this methodology, and we will expand it forward. Water savings, again, a lot of best practices. They are part of the Carlsberg Excellence program. From Carlsberg Excellence to which as I said, helping us to strengthen the vertical integration of supply chain to horizontal integration. We are launching the One Plan. We already starting the pilot of the One Plan project.
In fact, this is the planning tool which starts from the customer or consumer demands and through all the transfer in the same set of data, same principles through all the value chain to making sure that at the end, at the warehouse, we have right inventory and right quantity in the right time. Two things we are expecting from this. Improvement of the service level and also improvement of our financial KPIs because we would be able to optimize inventory even further. I wouldn't say it's bad today, but the next level of improvement will come through this horizontal integration of the supply chain. We implemented strong and at the same time, rather simple asset stewardship program.
The Carlsberg supply chain, it's over 250 manufacturing lines and also brewing, and all supporting equipment. I would say, we are operating the equipment which is produced in two centuries, last century and the current century. There's some high-tech equipment recently installed and also equipment installed 10, 15, 20 years ago. We need to have a strong set of capabilities to run all this equipment. We need to have clear visibility when and how we will replace or maintain, overhaul this asset base. Before integrated supply chain, we didn't have this visibility. Starting from this year, this visibility is very clear and we know also helping us to balance and have a strong discipline on the CapEx investments because we know when and what we will replace, when and what we will refurbish.
Finally, we will continue look for the efficiency improvement and not only efficiency improvement in terms of existing equipment, but also new technologies available on the market. We are working pretty closely with our suppliers. There is just a few examples of the lightweighting of the glass bottles. There's technology coming from suppliers. Recyclable cardboards, energy efficient manufacturing, logistics equipment. On the other side, we're also developing some Carlsberg proprietary technologies, which is developed in collaboration between supply chain, new technology department and also Carlsberg research lab, which you were visiting yesterday.
There are also three examples that come as a joint efforts like special fermentation tanks, which allows us to improve the fermentation process, reduce the fermentation time, and therefore, with the same footprint of equipment to improve the output of our brewing department. New varieties of yeast you heard yesterday. There are more than 50,000 yeast strains available in our lab. Of course, we are not using all of them, but we're carefully selecting which will give us better results in terms of, again, either fermentation quality, speed of fermentation, or new products development like low or alcohol-free type of products. Water recycling, as I said, we already piloted one of the, I think, best in industry technology in Denmark. Why I say I think it is one of the best technology?
After we publish or announce about starting this project, like top five big beverage companies were reaching out to us asking about details of this technology because they found 1.4 L per liter consumption of water is extremely tough to deliver with their current technologies. In a short summary at the end, we have solid performance delivered by supply chain already and delivered through SAIL 2022 program. We will update our key standards and key programs based on the learnings from SAIL 2022 to be able to deliver next level of performance in order to deliver SAIL 2027 strategy requirements. New technologies, very strong performance coming from the new technologies, and they will support SAIL 2027 delivery.
Finally, in terms of Together Towards ZERO and Beyond, there are specific projects like on water recycling, will be implemented across many breweries, as already announced by Simon. We still continue to improve efficiency of our existing equipment, where we see still opportunities to either to reduce electricity consumption, heat consumption, or water recycling. Thank you. Peter, over to you.
Thank you. I'm the appetizer before the lunch, so bear with me for 20 minutes and the Q&A session will take place when we're done all three regions. You will get the chance to ask questions. This presentation is excluding Russia. All the slides excluding Russia, except the very last slide that gives you a little bit of an update on our business in Russia. A little bit more attention to the rest of Central and Eastern Europe. We got 12 business units, including Russia that we put up for sale and is not counting in the numbers doesn't mean that we don't spend time on Russia. We still got a very big business there. Eight breweries, 8,400 employees.
This year we're still going on there. On top of that, of course, we have a lot of work on the side, separating the business out, preparing it for sales. That's certainly part of the workload for the region. We got number one positions, a strong number two positions in seven markets. Baltics are counted like one market, even though it's in reality three different countries. We're also number one in Azerbaijan. Then we also got our export and license business, where we also got some good niche positions in a number of markets. For example, we are number one in Saudi Arabia, obviously in AFB. This is a little bit on the numbers, again, excluding Russia.
Just on the revenue side, the region last year did DKK 17 billion in revenue. Seven out of the DKK 17 billion were from Russia. What we're quite satisfied about is that despite all the turmoil in our region this year, the war in Ukraine, basically our two biggest markets being at war with each other. Then on top of that, also the tail of COVID in especially in markets like Italy and Greece beginning of the year before they bounced back after COVID, and then also it's hyperinflation. Despite that, we're still able to deliver growth in top and bottom line in the first half. We're pretty happy about that.
It's very much about pricing and mix. In the first half, we have an increase in revenue per hectoliter of 14% in the region, a combination of price and mix. We are also the region with the low beer prices. If you look at net revenue per hectoliter between the three regions, net revenue per hectoliter that is basically half in CE than it is in Western Europe and is also substantially below Asia. It's not because we're doing a bad job on pricing, or it's not because we're running our uneconomic business. It's just prices in especially Eastern Europe and the Balkans are very low. We have to run a very tight shop, and that's also what we're doing.
We have a lot of operational tools, some of the ones that was introduced both by Cees 't Hart and Søren Brinck, and we don't have any other options. You also see that we got a fairly low SG&A margin, and we also got, I would say, a lower than average marketing margin, but that's not because we're not investing. We just do it very efficiently. On top of that, some of our markets are also dry markets, so it's limited what you can do HCL-wise. Apart from running a tight shop on cost and efficiencies, we're also driving the whole mix, the product mix very hard. It is a combination of some of our.
The strategy we got for the whole company, that's already very much alive in Central and Eastern Europe. We had 26% of our revenue are now coming from what we call mixed driving brands, because it's not just premium beers, it's also very much beyond beer. Garage in particular is doing an excellent job as our kind of RTD, and it's beer based, but consumers see it as their ready to drink. We actually also launched a hardcore version of Garage. It's a hard lemonade, but it's 4.5%, the original variant, different flavors. But we also launched very successfully a hardcore variant that's 6%, which got black label look, etc., and playing very much in RTD.
We also got a big energy business. We got a branded energy brand that we own, so it's not a third-party brand. This is our own brand. It's called Flash Up, and that's also doing very well in especially the Eastern European part. We also got Battery for the Baltics. We're flying in all those mixed drink categories and beyond beer is key for driving our mix in the region. That was alluded to before. We got our SG&A margin around 12%. Of course, we reduced marketing during COVID and building that up again, but we're not going overboard on that. This is the reality of the region we're dealing with.
Of course, everyone is aware of the war in Ukraine, but we also got a lot of other crises in our part of the world. Everyone seems to be fighting everyone, or they at least do that in their own country if they're not doing with their neighbors, and that's just what we need to deal with. We are lucky to have very good management teams, very good organizations, and that are reacting very fast to the changes in the environment in a very organized way. I think we also got a lot of practice, and that also helps. That's how we get around all these challenges.
I think the best proof of that ability is probably also that both in Ukraine and in Russia this year, we actually make more money than we did in first half last year. It sounds a bit surprising maybe. FIT is one of the other tools that we're using very much in our region. It's fully embedded and been that for quite a long time. Also, the use of image recognition is also fully embedded across the region.
It's much more about just keep on doing sort of continuous improvement on the actual in-store execution and adjust what we call picture of success as we wanna drive more mix, and we wanna prioritize certain brands and do a bit of notching of space in the store, in the cooler, etc. This is a little bit of a sneak view into what we call Carlsberg Export & License or CEL. As we will eventually get our Russian business sold, we also need to double down on some of the other opportunities we got in our region, outside our region, and one of them is CEL. Just a little bit, we organize the business units, geographical business unit.
Canada got its own because we got our own Carlsberg Canada, which is a sales set up in Canada that's getting export products from Europe. In other markets we got license partners, or we got our own set up like we have in the Middle East as well, or we got importers. Different route to market sourcing models depending on where we are. Some of the key markets for our export and license, that is Turkey is one of the market, the license market where Tuborg Tuborg Gold is very big. Working with our strategic partner, the CBC Group from Israel, that's also our partner in Israel and Romania and Uzbekistan on top of Turkey. Ireland, we are partnering with the Carlsberg brand with Diageo.
We also have a quite good businesses in Australia and South Korea with CUB and Hite, respectively. Very much focusing on Somersby and 1664 Blanc in those markets. Here's a bit of a split of the brands we are selling in CEL in terms of volume. You see Tuborg is very big in volume, not least via some of the licenses in Turkey and Romania. One of the big opportunities going forward with CEL, that is to invest more in our own route to market in some of the key markets. Setting up our own sales organizations, and it's also adding more of our key international brands to the local partner portfolio.
In some of our markets, the partners have been more focused, we have been more focused over time on Carlsberg and Tuborg, and there's certainly big opportunities to roll out Blanc in much more markets and scale it up. Somersby is actually pretty well represented in scale markets, but Blanc is a big opportunity. AFB is historical. We got a strong link in the Middle East. You see that funny brown bottle there in there on the right called Moussy. But that's very much for what we call dry markets. Markets like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Libya, where you cannot buy alcohol. But we're also dialing up on the AFB versions of both Carlsberg and Tuborg and Somersby.
That's a big opportunity in some of these markets where we have not really moved that fast on AFB outside the Middle East and Blanc. That's big opportunities. This is Ukraine. You got the map there on the right, and the green regions, that's where we are back to more than 80% of pre-war level on active outlets that are buying our products. You'll see that there you can only see through the front line there. We're not doing business in the red areas. You can see now down that orange one that's down south, close to Kherson, so that's also a bit of a hotspot.
We're lucky that we got our three breweries in the Ukraine-controlled part of the country. Far west, we got Lviv Brewery, we got Kyiv in the middle, and then we got Zaporizhzhia, which is 40 km from the front line, but on the Ukrainian side. All three breweries are being operated and the Zaporizhzhia one was being reopened, restarted in June. We very quickly opened up the Lviv one, and as soon as the Russians were away from Kyiv, we also opened that one. That was one of the reasons why we have done very well, that we've been moving quite fast. It's not just about us moving.
We have to make sure that our supplier base is also able to deliver raw and packed materials and that's a bit of a headache in this environment, as you can imagine. We also need to have our distributors and customers that are operating, which is also a challenge. Just a little curiosity here. You see the Baltika brand up there, got different lagers. It got Baltika Seven, it got Baltika Märzen, and also got a big AFB brand, the Baltika Zero, that's also got fruity flavors. That used to be last year, 2021, it was an 850,000 hl brand in Ukraine, 6% market share, and the biggest premium brand in the country.
Roughly 30% of our profits came from the Baltika brand, and that was delisted on February 26. The decision from the team, which we fully supported that, they didn't want to sell a Russian brand in Ukraine after being invaded. We had to mitigate that. That's a good challenge. I think if anyone have worked with the marketing, you know that's not an easy one to do, and especially not in a war zone and having difficulty just getting supplies. We quite quickly moved in to mitigate that. Baltika Zero mitigated into Garage Zero Zero. The Baltika Märzen moved into Lvivske Märzen, was our big local power brand. Baltika Seven moved into Carlsberg Export.
By now, we managed to mitigate around 80% of the Baltika brand into these alternatives. That's a surprisingly successful mitigation. As mentioned, we're making more profits first half in Ukraine than we did last year, and we renegotiated all the trade terms during, especially during April and May, where the market was undersupplied. We took the opportunity there. Our competitor, ABI, Efes, has still not reopened their breweries that are close to the front line. That of course also helps. The market itself is down by 35%-40%. The GDP is down by 50%. It's a tough environment. We have a fantastic team, so that's all their contribution. Yeah.
This is just a little bit of a view into the other parts of CE. You can see how the split is on volumes, what is happening on profit development in the other parts of the business. You got Baltics in here, you got the Balkans, and that's our businesses in Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Hungary, and Croatia. Then we got Italy and Greece and the export and license. Greece, we got a good business, strong number two. Italy, we are a relatively weak number four, but it's an interesting market. That's also one market where we'd like to become bigger and stronger over time. Good.
Russia, of course a lot of interest from all of you about Russia, also got a lot of questions yesterday night. On the left side you got how we're actually performing this year, and that's not least also because we're sort of very boldly taking a 21% price increase end of March. At this point in time you might remember, the ruble devalued right after war started by around 40%. Later it's appreciated. Today it's sort of 32% stronger than Euro, Danish kroner versus last year. It's all of course artificially managed. Nevertheless, we decided to take a 21% price increase because we expected inflation would be probably around 20%-30%. It ended up being a lot lower.
Inflation Russia CPI today is around 14%-15%. That of course helped us, and we got a little bit ahead of competition and price increases, so we also needed to adjust that backwards a little bit from June, July to make sure we kept a decent market share around 26%-27%. That's a strong number too. The business is up for sale, so if anyone interested in here, just approach me in the lunch and then we sort that out. No. This is a very big business, and it's very much integrated with the rest of Eastern Europe, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and before that also Ukraine. Product supplies from. They have their own breweries in the other markets, but we're not doing all SKUs in all markets.
We have been building a model where we had a lot of synergies with our Russian breweries on certain products and SKUs, IT systems integrated, ownership, cross ownership from Baltika into Carlsberg Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, IP rights on the Baltika brand, Flash Up energy brand, Žatecký Gus, our Czech brand. All that we need to sort out in order to separate it and in order to sell the standalone business. That's a lot of work going on across both Baltika and other parts of Carlsberg to make that separation happen before we can sell the business. You have of course seen the communication. We expect to sell the business around mid-next year, but there's a lot of uncertainty in this process, as you might imagine.
It's not a normal divestment process. We are not in full control of neither who's buying and or what price. Of course, we would try to find a good friendly buyer, as we call it. We'll do our best to do that and also maximizing the value. Also finding a way of getting the money out of the business at the end of the day. It's all very challenging because this is a very unusual environment to sell a business in. You have to get a lot of permissions to both do the separation and do the actual sale. Good. These are the six big priorities for region. Of course, the number one, that's pricing. This is the mother of all must-win battles.
There's only one way to deal with inflation. That's to pass it on to as much as possible. Cees mentioned that in the Eastern Europe part of CEE, we already start to see the inflation, the high inflation around July, August last year. We had a bit more practice, and that's because we are not able to hedge to the same extent, the same length and the same percentage of our raw and pack as in Western Europe and Asia. We were seeing that hitting us a bit earlier and we implemented the PIIC tool which serves us well as a way of operationalizing how much of the inflation we're able to pass on. Of course, the whole portfolio all about driving mix.
Of course, the premium mix is of course getting some headwind from a consumer sentiment. Nevertheless, we still believe that consumers will look for sort of affordable luxury even in markets with low disposable income, and we still have opportunities to gain share in the premium segment. Beyond Beer, where we got very good momentum. Yes, there will be some headwinds, but it doesn't mean that we stop on that product mix drive. We're gonna do that also in bad times. We got the opportunity also to expand our business in some of the markets I mentioned in export and license, and also inside the region where, for example, Italy could be interesting to do increase our footprint there.
Ukraine, we are definitely betting on Ukraine. We're not sort of leaving our back to Ukraine. That has served us well so far, and we're gonna continue doing that. We need to get the sale of our Baltika breweries done the moment where we have also separated all the interdependencies, cut the cable, so to speak, so we can offload that. It will be a sad day, but that's what we have decided to do. It's the right thing to do. Thank you.
More slower grind than repairing the absolute profits and the per hectoliter rates, and that's because of the denominator and numerator effect you have when you're pricing up to cover input costs. By and large, very happy with how the region progressed through the COVID cycle. We're very happy with the sort of underlying shape of operations and how they evolved through the COVID cycle as well. Because despite the fall off of the on-trade, where it's typically easier selling premium and super premium brands, you can see that the premium share of our revenue grew very nicely. AFB also grew very nicely. We're certainly gaining value market share in eight out of ten of our markets. Within the footprint we have in Europe, we're gaining share.
Our premium innovations are contributing more and more to that premiumization story, and the average revenue per hectoliter is up 12% versus 2019. Some of that is the Marston's effect, but a lot of it isn't. A lot of it is underlying mix premiumization. We're also very happy with how the SG&A margins as a percent of revenue have improved, and that's no small achievement actually during COVID, because during COVID, the volumes really drop off in the on-trade, and it's very difficult taking out cost. There's so much fixed cost in the on-trade, it's been very difficult taking out costs at a pro rata rate. That SG&A story is good. It's really not just about cost though, it's also about complexity.
When I came back from Asia, I mean, I did find Western Europe a much harder ecosystem to navigate in, as part, partly 'cause what we call the P&L models. We've done a lot of work in the last year in sort of simplifying reporting, reducing span, reducing layers and increasing management span. I think the business is in pretty good shape structurally to take on the next sort of epoch. Then a lot of the savings we've had have been reinvested in marketing. I mean, I think we're doing pretty well. The objective was to restore pre-COVID levels of marketing by the end of this year, and we're very much on track to do that.
Whether it comes through as percentages of net sales, we're not sure, and that's obviously impacted by the fact we're taking a lot of price. The absolute spend should be ahead of 2019, the pre-COVID year. By and large, the underlying structure of the region is pretty good. That was talking about Western Europe as a homogeneous whole. It isn't a homogeneous whole. If you look at the nature of the markets, they're pretty asymmetric. They were certainly very asymmetric during COVID. The big on-trade markets like the U.K. and Switzerland had much bigger performance dips, as you'd expect. Some markets were actually big net beneficiaries of COVID.
In a market like Norway, where the Swedish borders were closed, so you basically captured a lot of sales at high prices in Norway that were previously lost to the Swedish border trade. That and generally across Northern Europe, the net travel was very favorable for us during COVID, 'cause people weren't, you know, you had a lot of 18- to 34-year-old men in particular, weren't spending their summers abroad. The COVID era was asymmetric. The forthcoming or current and forthcoming inflationary period will also not be symmetrical. It's a theme I'll pick up on the next slide. You can see here the profile of the markets. We basically indexed them with our market share against our operating margins.
As you expect in beer, the point Cees 't made earlier, that profits in beer are very often made in concentrated, you know, strong positions in concentrated markets. That's very much what we see, and it very much shapes the, you know, how those businesses are placed to tackle the next inflationary cycle. The strategic growth sort of opportunities for markets over the SAIL 2027 period, that as well does, you know, it will vary a lot with the nature of the archetype. Where we've got a very strong market leadership positions and we've got a lot of commercial and supply chain infrastructure in place, such as the Nordics and Switzerland, there are big opportunities to grow in adjacent categories.
Markets like the U.K., Germany, and Poland, where we are in challenger positions, we are typically like three, four, or five. We've got to be much more discerning in the bets we take. 'Cause what we can't do in those markets is go head to head in mainstream beer with much bigger competitors who've got much, you know, better economies of scale. In markets like Poland and Germany, U.K., it's about making highly differentiated choices. A lot of the growth, for example, in Germany is coming through big cities outside of our northern heartland, where we're selling Somersby, Carlsberg, and the Astra brand, which is a sort of quirky German semi-craft brand.
There's no point in going into, you know, big German states and trying to compete in mainstream beer in returnable bottles 'cause the economics just don't work for challengers there. France is really, I mean, I guess it'll be a market share and value play. We can talk about the differences between markets, but that said, there are still some very sizable common Pan-European opportunities. I mean, premium beer and beyond beer, you've heard about, you'll hear a bit more about in a minute. There, we typically under-index in Western Europe. AFB is a very big opportunity for us in Western Europe, and that's somewhere where we currently over-index.
We also think there's an enormous growth potential, and there's obviously quite a lot of opportunity in terms of our ways of working, how we manage portfolios, still a bit of opportunity on the supply chain network and then systems, process synergies, et cetera. There are both common European growth platforms, but you also need to look at it very much at a country by country level. We're not gonna give profit guidance today for reasons you all understand. Insofar as your models do need feeding tonight, some food for thought for them.
If you think about the nature of input cost inflation, the markets which are better placed to take it or they'll need lower percentage price increases or the price volume elasticity risks are gonna be typically smaller, will be markets where you know, you've got strong leadership position, higher priced markets, particularly markets with high excise duty, which is normally a curse for our industry. But when it comes to a high inflation period, excise duties at high excise can actually be an advantage 'cause it means the percentage the relative delta you need is smaller. Markets with a very strong premium mix at the moment should do better, and markets with better draft mix or can mix, and obviously markets with resilient currencies and richer consumers.
The markets where the challenge is gonna be stiffer, where you've got weaker positions in fragmented markets are very mainstream or lower price markets, particularly ones with big glass bottle segments because glass, as Victor's told you, is more prone to inflation through energy and obviously weaker currencies and poorer consumers. Our own Cees 't is touched on [at Heine]. We'll come back a little bit on it, but I'll talk a bit about how we're managing that process. I do think we're managing it pretty professionally. We've got the program Wind Force Twelve that Cees't alluded to. What we've been doing right from the start of the year and forward looking till the end of 2023, we've been aggregating each month as the input costs change.
I'm not just talking about the commodities that flow into COGS directly, but also energy and some of the more fungible costs which flow further down the P&L. We've been taking those in. We've got a wonderful BI tool for aggregating them up and turning them into COGS outlooks and logistics outlooks by market. You've got to obviously make volume assumptions in that period, but we've been projecting that forward and then that's been generating a PIC target, the amount we need to take price mix to cover that. We've been reviewing each month with the markets where they're doing in their PIC coverage. Most of the discussion is of course on gap closure in how to manage that.
It's, I mean, obviously OCM cost control, which is anyway a Carlsberg rhythm, but that remains especially important in this period that we're not, you know, letting the cost base slip in any way. Looking a bit further out, these are sort of risks and opportunities. They should all be very familiar to you. These are risks and opportunities over a longer timeframe. I mean, it's. I can gauge from sort of half the questions I got last night that the short term headwinds are a bit more tangible and newsworthy. So, you know, yeah, people are focusing at the moment on the supply chain challenges on the input cost inflation. But we are for Western Europe, over the timeframe of SAIL 2027, we are very upbeat about the tailwinds we've got to follow.
Particularly the resilience of branded core beer, even during the deepest recessions we've had in recent years within beer. Soft drinks is a little bit different, but within beer, private labels very rarely made a dent in the category. Certainly the premiumization trend, I mean, and the consumer interest in different beer types is very much set to continue. AFB is underpinned by long-term health and wellbeing trends, and we've seen great category growth. There are two elements to the AFB opportunity in Western Europe. One is a sort of beer substitute in occasions, you know, for existing beer drinkers on occasions like the lunch we've just had, where you don't want to drink alcohol. The other opportunity is quite different.
It's flavored alcohol-free beers that are more reaching out to consumers who are beer rejecters. It's opening up new consumers as well as new occasions for us, and you see the trajectory the brands have in those different opportunities can be quite different. For the beery AFBs, it's a sort of volume play and a margin play that, you know, there's an extra volume opportunity and it comes at higher margins. For the fruity AFBs that have a much bigger overlap with soft drinks, it's clearly a very big volume play 'cause the pool of occasions and consumers you're opening up to is transformational. If we can unlock it's huge.
The margin side of it, and at the moment they're margin enhancing, but obviously if you're overlapping with soft drinks a lot, then there's a degree to which your price elasticity versus soft drinks can't get totally dislocated. So that will be to be seen. I mean, none of these should be surprises to you. They broadly reflect the global ones, but I've got some of the European data points in there as well. AFB, we're already doing a good job on and our AFB's got a decently growing share of the mix of our business, and we're typically over-trading. We typically have much higher shares in AFB than we do as a business as a whole. Premium beer is a different story, where we under-trade reasonably heavily. These bars here are looking at beer pricing by segment.
It's Nielsen data from 2021, and you can see that we over-trade the economy and lower mainstream end of it, broadly on track in mainstream and we under-trade in sub-premium, premium and super premium. Don't get too hung up on the exact trajectory of the green line. I don't want to see or hear of people having to model away based on this. It's a little bit arbitrary, but it's just a metaphor for the anticipated change in shape of our portfolio. It's a journey we're already under, but our investment priorities are very much geared up around shifting the portfolio shape in this regard. A lot of economy in the certainly in the next year is gonna become loss-making anyway. We're certainly, unless we're able to price up a lot, that's for the industry, not for Carlsberg.
We're expecting to lose share in economy. We expect to lose a little bit of share in lower mainstream. We're expecting to hold mainstream share, and then grow quite significantly in sub-premium and then premium and super premium. I'll talk. The guys presenting earlier didn't have the distinction sub-premium, premium, super premium. I will build on that a little bit because for Western Europe in particular, there is an important distinction. Some of the big opportunities really are in sub-premium, and I'll talk about some of the brands we see unlocking that a bit later. That's broadly reflected in this slide, which is how we lay out our category priorities.
As you'd expect, we can't ignore the foundations of our business, which is about 60% of our current revenue, and it's, you know, just under a third of our anticipated revenue growth over the next five or six years. That's really about strengthening core beer, which is holding value share in mainstream, and then we're looking to increase gross brand contribution. That's a proxy for brand EBIT. I guess it's gross profit minus marketing costs within core beer, and then we're looking to continue winning in soft drinks, which is a very important part of our business in the Nordics and Switzerland, where we're looking to keep growing share and at least defend our GP per hectoliter margins during the inflationary period.
Most of the growth is gonna come from what we're calling the three growth levers, which are currently 25% of our revenue, but they're gonna be, need to be, you know, 2/3 or more of our profitable growth over the next cycle. That's stepping up in premium, where we're looking to get more than a 20% share of premium beer. There are three main legs to that. There are in sub-premium, we want to build ones, at least one, in some markets it may be two, but scalable brands that get to at least 10% of the local operating company's revenue. They're typically local premium brands, but they're brands that really can make a big difference. They can add proper scale to the business and they're being put through industrial breweries.
They're coming through with very attractive COGS and very attractive GP margins. We have Blanc, which is an opportunity everywhere. The U.K., obviously, we don't have the distribution rights to Blanc, so we'd leave that aside. Blanc will be a big priority everywhere else. Brooklyn has a big opportunity for us in the region. AFB, where we want to continue growing faster than the category, but also sort of keep leading and developing it. At the minimum threshold, we're looking to achieve there is to have at least 10 percentage points market share of AFB above the local company's market share. Growing beyond beer, which for us, will really be a matter of focusing on Somersby and Garage in the near term.
That's the theory of our category priorities. Of course, an audience like yourselves will be more interested in proof points that we're making sort of credible, or proof points that we're making momentum, and it's a credible opportunity. In strengthening core beer, as things currently stand, we're doing very well. I mean, over the last 18 months, and certainly true also year to date this year, we're gaining share in eight of the 10 markets. If you aggregate those markets together to form a sort of Western Europe, a Carlsberg footprint of Western Europe, we've gained 0.8% market share over the last year. I guess you could say that's 'cause we haven't taken enough price, but it's still good to have gained share. Soft drinks is extremely strong performance.
We're gaining share in four of the five markets where we're playing, and you can see soft drinks have been growing very steadily through the COVID cycle. Since 2019, up 14% on CSDs. A lot of that coming from the sugar-free colas, which is really the important playground in that area. Then energy drinks, which are the big premiumization play within soft drinks. There, we've grown our volumes 90%, and we've got some extremely strong brand franchises to play with. In step-up in premium, these are H1 numbers this year, but the scalable premium brands we've got are growing extremely nicely and really starting to make a difference. Frydenlund brand in Norway is now more, it's already beaten the sort of threshold target.
It's at about 11% of our revenue. Jacobsen in Denmark, some of you tasted last night. That's growing extremely fast. Valaisanne, the brand in Switzerland, doing very, very well. Blanc was up 10% this year, which we're okay with, but not super pleased with. I'd say Blanc are, we need to build the momentum. It's doing very, very well in the Nordics. One of the little acid tests in beer as to whether a brand's getting real serious consumer traction is when you have competitors' beer ties, you know, when they're tying up on-trade outlets, when they, the customer asks for an exemption for one of your brands, sometimes happens to us with Corona.
When the customers ask for an exemption to allow Blanc to be sold, that really is an acid test of a brand having very deep consumer traction. We are starting to see that across the Nordics. Then Brooklyn as well, the number you saw earlier from Steve, that's up 42% at a very significant price premium. We're very pleased with the progress in step up in premium. We're very pleased with the progress in AFB this year. We're still growing share nicely. Volume share is still up. It's slightly lower than the COVID era growth, which is partly the higher base, but it's also the channel mix because post-COVID, with the on-trade recovering, the off-trade's been softer and AFB does skew to the off-trade.
That's the sort of delta between AFB and core beer, even though the off-trade is down per se, is remaining very healthy. Then our two, well, two or three big brand priorities in there, Carlsberg 0.0, Brooklyn Special Effects, and then Tourtel Twist, which I'll come on and talk about, they're all doing extremely well. Beyond Beer is a bit more of a lukewarm performance so far. This we'd sort of probably give an amber, we do give an amber rating to, whereas we're giving a green rating to the others. We're quite early in that journey, outside Somersby in the Nordics. The overall volume and revenue growth's held back a little bit by the Polish market, which has been very tough for everybody.
We got good initiatives coming down the pipeline, and we're very confident that Beyond Beer is gonna be an important part of the region going forward. I'll talk a bit more specifically now about some of the individual opportunities. Frydenlund, that's an example of a brand that was a sort of local. There are various formulas for scaling up in premium with local brands. One formula is taking a high-priced craft brand and bringing it down to an accessible price point and moving the production to a full-scale brewery. Another formula is to take a brand with a very interesting regional story. I mean, Heineken have done a really wonderful job on this with Ichnusa in Sardinia, and we've got a few.
I guess, WuSu is an example of that in our business in China. We take a brand with a very idiosyncratic regional story, and then you take it to a national footprint at higher price points. Frydenlund is an example of a B-brand, you know, it was a more local brand in Norway that's grown very nicely. I mean, over the last decade, it's gone from a 1% share of our business to 11 this year. Price index 10. I wouldn't get too hung up on price indices 'cause a lot depends on the structure of the market to start with.
Norway is the most expensive beer market in the world, a 10% price premium in Norway is much bigger than a 20% or 30% price premium increase in a premium market, in another business. That's very margin accretive for us. Jacobsen was a craft brand in Denmark, where we brought the pricing down. It's still indexing very nicely versus the core of the business at 150, but we've brought the index down and we're really scaling it up. That's gaining us a lot of incremental share in Denmark. We have the Valaisanne brand in Switzerland. There's another example. That's a brand that was specific originally to one of the French-speaking cantons of the Valais in the south of Switzerland.
It built a certain cult appeal nationally in Switzerland as a craft brand, and then we've really taken it nationally. We had lots of proof points on the way. We had to make sure that you know, that it had a decent rate of sale in the German-speaking cantons before we started investing heavily behind it. We're now rolling out distribution, and that's a big and important part of our premiumization in Switzerland. I mean, Blanc, Brooklyn, and Somersby, I'll talk less about because you've had plenty of people talk about them already, and the data proof points are in the pre-read. One brand I'll dwell a little bit longer on is Tourtel Twist.
This really is a jewel because it's one of the first AFB brands globally that really is building a very substantial scale with a large amount of that scale being sourced from non-alcoholic beverages, so very low cannibalization of the beer business and really starting to reach into occasions and channels which aren't sort of overlapping with the beer business. 88% of the growth is coming from non-alcoholic beverages. It's well over 500,000 hl already, and it's still growing double digits. It's still growing double digits with a very significant volume base. That's a formula which, to tell the truth, the brand itself, we may not scale in other markets because it was a sort of French brand to start with. And the proposition.
Well, the brand name may not transfer, but the proposition really should. If you can start reapplying this idea in other markets, it could be becoming a very meaningful play in AFB. To wrap up any messages on Western Europe, it's really a diverse footprint of markets with very different risk profiles and very different opportunity profiles. At the same time, there are some common themes we can bind together. The performance through the COVID cycle and the momentum into this next sort of inflationary cycle is generally very strong. In the key segments that we really need to win in or key categories we need to win in, we've got very good momentum already.
The OCM cost control is in place, and we should have the funding for the increased marketing we need to win in premium, win in AFB, which, you know, will require incremental investment versus just scaling up soft drinks and mainstream core beer. The near-term outlook is challenging, but we've got, we think, very robust management disciplines and processes in place to manage that. Then if you're looking over both the short term and the midterm through the SAIL 2027 cycle, there's plenty of premiumization headroom. It's not just the overall category premiumization tailwinds we've got, but we've got very specific up-trading abilities within the bits, you know, just bits of the business that are discretionary control to manage. We're very upbeat about premiumization.
We're very upbeat about AFB and the underlying drivers of AFB. Beyond beer, its current momentum is solid but not spectacular, but we've got a good pipeline of activities coming through. That, I think in essence, is the Western Europe story.