Also a welcome from me. It's great that you've taken the time to come in and listen to what we have to tell you here. We will this year we'll cover the two of the four larger business units that we didn't cover last year, so there should be a lot of new material that you'll hear today. But before we dive into those, I will together with Trond try to give you a little bit the group angle. What I hope you go away from the day with are relatively or hopefully we'll be able to give you a clear understanding that we are as a group pursuing our long-term objectives.
I'll give some details on APM Terminals and Maersk Oil just to give you an update on where we are, but mainly actually to show you that we are following up on the things we told you last year. That we are performing well in the short term, and then that the two business units that you see present today both have good potential to develop. We have believed that we have in Maersk Line the opportunity to increase our profitability, but also in a sustainable way so that we reduce volatility. Having in mind, of course, that being in shipping, we prefer profitability to low volatility, but we will try to achieve both.
In Maersk Drilling, we'll try to give you a better understanding of the significance of the step this organization is taking at the moment, and also try to explain why starting up that number of rigs that we're starting up actually means that we will not see an immediate jump in the results in the line in the business here, but we are on the right track. Of course, once you've seen all the presentations and we've answered all your questions, I think the one thing we will have, we will go back and work with is of course creating future growth.
We believe that having weathered a very long and difficult financial crisis as a group in volatile businesses, we believe we are very fit for the future, and that's also why we have taken that headline today, and that we have a strong basis for profitable and healthy expansion, if and when the world starts to become a brighter place. That's also been a very important focus of the years of crisis. I'll just jump into it, and I'll start by talking about the short term, the short-term situation. We just delivered half-year result, and we are very pleased with the half-year result, at least we're very pleased with the development.
We had a decline in the reported profit, but the underlying profit was up by approximately $800 million in the year. The reason for the difference being that last year we had a profit, a one-off profit from a tax settlement in the oil business in Algeria. Underlying business is doing very well, and the cash flow from operation is also doing very well. Good progress coming from, of course, the improved result, but also the effort we're putting into reducing working capital and making our balance sheet more effective. Trond will talk more about the Project Fit later, but we do expect that to have a positive impact on our capital structure as we go forward.
That is basically what I want to say here. What pleases us also is that we have a good development in the absolute majority of the businesses. Of course, the result improvement was driven by the $1 billion turnaround in Maersk Line, and I don't need to tell you that we are very happy with that. We're also very proud of it, and the Maersk Line team are looking forward to presenting all the hard work that lies behind that later today. Maersk Oil declined and the decline was planned. That doesn't mean we couldn't have wished for less, but the decline was planned. The reasons were basically that we knew we were producing less this year.
The price of oil was $10 lower on average than it was the year before, and we also, in line with our strategy, have had a higher exploration cost level than we had before. Everything is under control in Maersk Oil, and we are seeing and expect to see in the second half this year that we have turned the corner, and we'll start to see increase in production from Maersk Oil going forward. This is in a way a very important point in time in Maersk Oil's development. APM Terminals continued good development. The market is not as dynamic and has not been as dynamic in Europe as we had hoped for and that many people had expected in the first half.
Nevertheless, APM Terminals is developing its bottom line well, and I'll come back to that in a minute, in more detail. Maersk Drilling, their best first half year ever, and you'll surely see Claus and his team being in top shape when they explain to you about that. Service and other shipping, which is our new fifth leg, also had a good development. The background for that was that Maersk Supply Service is seeing significantly better results this year than last year due to better rates and reduced costs. Also, Maersk Tankers, when you disregard impairments and the write downs on onerous contracts actually showed a small profit in the first half for the first time in quite a while.
Dansk Supermarked Group, our last big business, has with its new management team is well on the way. They are taking market share in most of the markets, in particular in Denmark, where they operate. They are getting better margins as well. Things look quite good in the Dansk Supermarked Group as well. All in all, a good development across the group with Maersk Oil being the only declining business unit to decline profit-wise, but we hope that picture will change as we go forward. If you recall what we talked about last year, we talked about what we wanted to do on a group level in order to become a premium conglomerate and deliver value to our shareholders and good development for the group as well.
Of course, active portfolio development is an important part of that. We have over the last five years, we've sold businesses and assets, non-core assets, worth more or less $10 billion, a little more if I'm not mistaken. The first half has been relatively quiet when you see it in this context. But we have realized around half a billion dollars in proceeds and $100 million in profits from sales of assets. When you look at the whole year, it will be something to the tune of $1.2 billion that we'll raise from selling non-core assets. We are working on this. I'll come back to the composition of our balance sheet in a minute.
In terms of ROIC, we have not delivered the 10% ROIC that we would like to deliver on a long-term basis. We are doing a lot, of course, and we have a number of businesses now above 10%. Three of the core businesses of the big core businesses are now above 10%. We still have some issue with Maersk Line, and we have some assets or some of the business units that are not delivering a profit outside the core business. We'll work on the balance sheet, and as said before, Trond will come back to that, and we'll of course work on improving profitability. 10% remains our target. Dividends, we have completed on what we said last year.
We basically just stated the policy of the supervisory board, which is that we will grow dividend when it's possible, and talking nominal dividends when the underlying results gives us the opportunity. This year we increased dividends from DKK 1000 per share up to DKK 1200 per share, or 20% increase. That is, I think, very respectable. We will also talk about or work very effectively or as well as we can, without perfect knowledge of the future, on the way we talk about capital allocation. As I'll show you in the next slide, I think we are working according to our strategy in this line as well. This chart shows you where which businesses had a positive and a negative development in the capital employed.
That is completely in line with the strategy in the sense that we've had APM Terminals and Maersk Drilling increasing their working capital or their capital employed. We also have some other businesses of course that grow, but these are the two that grows the most. At the bottom end, you have Maersk Tankers shrinking quite significantly. The shrinkage by Svitzer is caused by a write-down on goodwill, impairment of goodwill that we did at the end of last year. This capital allocation is in line with strategy.
It will, we will see a slight bit of a further drop here when we realize the gains from the last incoming sales proceeds from the sale of Handygas and VLGCs. That brings me to a refresher of the strategy. In 2011, we launched the four-leg strategy with our ambition of building four world-class businesses. If I start by the left side, Maersk Line. Here the objective was redefined in 2011-12 to be self-funded growth, to be growth in line with market, not taking market share, at least not if it is through price activities and so on, but growing with the market.
As you'll see later today, we've made significant progress on that. We also have, for the last five or last three quarters, overachieved on our ambition of delivering a margin, an EBIT margin, which is more than 5% higher than the competition. Performance-wise and competitiveness-wise, Maersk Line is doing a very good job. Maersk Oil, not much to say. It's exactly the same as last year. We will, we expect to start to see growth from Q2 this year, which is positive. We move slowly in that direction. APM Terminals, same objective as the last couple of years, being at a $1 billion profit delivered to the group in 2016. Maersk Drilling, the same $1 billion, it's easy to remember, in 2018.
The new thing here is that we've actually added the fifth leg, which is the smaller shipping and service businesses. It's Damco, it's Svitzer, it's Maersk Tankers, and it's Maersk Supply Service, saying that these businesses as well will now have a profit target, and the profit target is $ half a billion in 2016. The idea behind this division is that it will be self-funded, but we will make internal reallocation of funds. We've divested some tanker segments this year, and we will use those proceeds in order to build up more activity in the supply area where we'll go into more advanced offshore construction capacities. If I just turn to the two businesses that we will not cover in depth today, Maersk Oil, and Jakob is here to answer questions later.
I think the most important thing here is that we said we would deliver above 10% return during the turnaround, and we actually deliver 18% in the first half, and then the business is starting to grow, so that is positive. Just in the very short term, what will happen in Maersk Oil, I think the very positive thing is that we're actually seeing now the FDP 2012 working. We're seeing production being ramped up in Qatar. The investments we're making now will allow us to stay on the total production level of 300,000 barrels for a further few years, bringing us very close to 2017.
We saw El Merk coming on during Q1, it's in Algeria, Q1 this year, and production is now gradually ramping up. That's moving according to plan. We also had a restart of Griffin in the U.K., and some new wells coming on stream there. Things are also starting to pick up in the U.K. If we look into the slightly longer-term perspective, I'll not comment on at all, but we still have Golden Eagle to come on stream late 2014. This is operated by Nexen, as you may recall. We have the Jack field in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coming on stream also, expected late 2014, being operated by Chevron and therefore surely in very good hands.
Coming back to or continuing on Maersk Oil, here you have the bubble chart here, as we call it, from last year. The gray arrows that you see here moving, pointing in different directions. We have a few, actually one gas field pointing the wrong direction, so that's not so good, but most are moving in the right direction. Just showing that we are progressing on the different fields that Jacob and his team presented to you last year. We feel quite confident that the work that is being done here also reserve maturation and working systematically with the stage gate process is really a great help to understand how this business works. Maybe if I should point out one bubble, it would be the Chissonga.
You see it right in the middle here. Chissonga is in between select and define. We actually have selected a concept. We have agreed it with our partners down there as well. We have made a discovery, or something we believe is a discovery next to Chissonga. Now we just have to make sure that we can accommodate, hopefully more production. We'll see how much it is, but just making sure that works out. That's the most significant development we've seen this year. To APM Terminals, also in progress in line with our plans. The ROIC has dropped a little bit in the first half compared to last year. It is because we're investing quite heavily at the moment, and we have a number of terminals that are not on stream.
Among others, the projects up here. Most important is has been Santos, where we've invested large sum of money, and we've been delayed due to lack of permits, or delayed permits, and a number of upgrades, and commencing of construction. A lot of focus, as we've always been having in this, in this business, on developing markets. I know that developing markets are not at the moment the hottest word in financial circles. But nevertheless, that is where infrastructure is needed, where you can build really strong leading positions at the moment, and we will of course continue to invest into those regions.
A lot of things are going on, and I think the most notable here, apart from the high level of activity in Latin America, the most notable development we've seen here is the acquisition by us of a co-controlling stake in Global Ports Investments, which is the leading Russian port operator, which we're very excited about and which is. Sorry, I'll just go back here. And which we're following up actually now with hopefully a merger with the second-largest port operator. The map here gives you an indication of where things are going on and, as I said before, a lot of activity in developing markets in Latin America. In Africa, there's actually one terminal not on here, which is the Costa Rica terminal in Moín, where we have completed our subsoil investigations.
The acquisition of Global Ports Investments, as well as a lot of activity in Africa and the Aegean joint venture in Turkey. A lot of exciting things going on in markets where there's strong growth and in general lack of infrastructure. The most exciting or the biggest committed investment that we are undertaking at the moment was this year's acquisition of Global Ports Investments. We have since then agreed also with NCC Group, which is the second largest company operating terminals in Russia, on a merger. We are awaiting authorities' approvals at the moment. This is a very exciting opportunity because there's a lot of potential in the Russian market for terminal activities when you look at the figures here.
This is the number of TEUs per thousand inhabitants in a country. It's not that they eat them, but it's transportation. You start with the European Union and the U.S. around 150. China, of course, as it being an exporter, very large as well. You come into Turkey with 93, and you have Russia at 41. There's a huge potential for growth in Russia, and we believe by those two steps that we placed ourselves very well for that development. Giving you the last sort of summary of how I see the situation, I think we can say that on performance management of the group, we've done relatively well.
We now have Maersk Line, in the last quarter or this first half, a clear top performer in the industry. We moved a number of business units into top quartile. As I showed you on the second slide, we're actually having very nice profitability progress in almost all our businesses. The portfolio movements are in line with our strategy. If we take the one exception I could mention, it would be oil, where you may recall that we had a small decline in the invested capital, but that is because we don't take our exploration costs off as assets. We don't put them on the balance sheet. We take them to cost.
Of course, the big CapEx programs are not starting yet in Maersk Oil. We said last year that we would invest somewhere between $3.5 billion or $3-$5 billion per year in CapEx in Maersk Oil. This year, the guidance is just for $2.5 billion. We are ramping up a little bit slowly in that, but the projects of course have to be ready. We have also in the other portfolio activities, the divestments, we are following our strategy. Trond will expand on that, but looking into the future, we have a very strong financial profile. We have very good operational experience in a number of areas, also in the developing markets.
We are ready for growth that should be profitable, and we have a balance sheet that will allow us to do this as we also pay a reasonably good dividends in line with our stated policy to our shareholders. We feel we are in a very good place today. With those words, I'll say thank you for your attention and pass over to Trond who'll dive into the financial world of A.P. Moller - Maersk. You have one. Fantastic.
It's good that they supplied us with 2 of these. Good morning from me as well. Often Nils have told you how we do on performance, the strategic direction, as well as the goal for the group and the business unit. I will go through the cash flow and funding to support that strategic growth. I'll focus also on considering the gearing level and the dividend payment, as well as making sure that we are prepared for the unexpected fluctuations in the market. Nils told you the elements of our investment in growth. We have a big plan ahead of us, but if we take a slight historic look at our numbers, the last five and a half years, we invested more than $50 billion.
That just shows that what kind of growth we have been through, and what we are doing is continuing that in this period. We have clarified the strategy towards where we want to be more focused, but the high level of investment have been there for a longer period of time. The way that has been funded is mostly our own operational cash flow. As you can see, DKK 43 billion out of those DKK 50 billion is all our own cash flow. The level of reinvestment capabilities in this group is big. That means that we had the last few years an average of DKK 9.5 billion in investment every year, and a cash flow of DKK 7.6 billion. That leaves us, of course, as a deficit, you might say, in this period for DKK 7 billion.
Our growth ambition will result in significant investment, but it will be mostly funded by our own cash flow. The element of portfolio optimization and focus on the balance sheets, the last few years, we have also had cash flow, our cash flow supported by the portfolio management. As Nils mentions, we have just to make sure that we can confuse you slightly. Instead of 5.5 years, we have 6.5 years in this slide. As a result of that, we sold off for more than $10.8 billion. That leaves approximately $1.7 billion a year. If you take the deficit of the cash flow from the 5.5-year period and compare it to how we have additional funded that or reallocated those investments, that gives us actually a surplus of $2 billion.
That means that the balancing act between the element of our own generating cash flow as well as the sales proceeds have funded all of the expansion and the growth in the group. The element is that we have continued our sales efforts throughout this year. As you can see on my last bullet down to the right on this slide, we have a project where we call Fit, and that is to focus on the balance sheet, the elements of businesses that are not making the necessary returns. I'll come back to that slightly later to make sure that you also can see the effects of that in the numbers of the first half year. Going forward, our investment in growth is gonna continue. As of June 30, we had committed approximately $12.5 billion in already signed-up commitments.
As we have said before, we see that the balance between our investment level, the average that we had the last five years, will continue going forward. We will be at that level, and that means that we have to optimize the balance sheet and reallocate some of our investments that we have already to make sure that we get the gearing level at the level we have today. That does mean that if when the company grow, the debt will grow, but the level of gearing as such will be the same. As you see here of our commitments going forward, about 72% of these investments are investments that are aligned to the three areas where we see the most growth, drilling, terminals, and oil. That also continues going forward.
Relative to how we see the market, the experience that we had in 2009 and also to some extent in the shipping in 2010, 2011, is also showing us that we live in a volatile world, and will probably been living in a volatile world going forward. That means that when it comes to our commitment to that investment level and that growth, we are not doing more commitments that we than what we can adjust for. If we see adjustments or variations or a downfall in the market, the commitments, as you see going forward, it's not as high than that we can adjust for an ambition for growth going forward. Our ambition level still stands, as we said last year.
We do expect in a 5-year span to grow our investment capital of around the 30% level over the next 5 years. In that, I do think that we are showing you the track record for growth and our ambition for growth further, but in a more focused manner. At the same time, we are constantly optimizing our balance sheet. We're also working very hard to get a more transparent and a more accurate capital allocation. As a result of this, we have over the period of time also been clearer on the roles that the different business unit have. We have laid out for you here the more precise or the accurate roles that each of the business unit are the direction they have it.
As you can see, also Nils mentioned, that Maersk Line is to invest up to its own cash flow when required to fund the market position and preserve the cost leadership. That also includes the renewal of fleet when needed and also growing when the market is growing in general. Maersk Oil continues the program to rebuild the pipeline, and that is of course investing in all three areas, in exploration, in the execution of new fields, as well as investing in producing fields to make sure that we optimize the mature elements. Terminals continues investments in growth positions in attractive and growing locations, which is the growth market in focus.
Drilling, continued investments, but we also have seen how the market is going, and we're now focused on making sure that our growth is also, as you've seen from the announcement yesterday, that we want to have contracts in place when we add on new capacity for the new drilling rigs. The fifth leg of Services and other Shipping investments where profitable and develop and grow, and the unit should have sort of up to a neutral but positive, but at least neutral, but also a positive cash flow for the overall businesses.
When it comes to the investments, we do see that we're gonna spend limited investments, and those investments we do is to maximize the value of these businesses. As you've seen over the last few years, we have focused very much on the performance and where we have defined that as the return on invested capital. In our heavy asset industries, a lot or possibly all come down to return, how much return we make on our invested capital. The second part is, of course, the growth element, but the growth element is only interesting if it's combined with the return. That is the reason why we have focused this much. As you can see on the numbers from the first half year, we see that four of our business units is actually ahead of the 10% gain. We see that Svitzer and Dansk Supermarked is almost there.
If we take the element of adjusting for the impairment and the provision of the time charters on the VLCCs in tank, if you look at then the overall element of the 7.7% and adjust for these 280 and 50, we're at the group of a return on 9.5%. Here, the element is that we're driving towards this. We know we're in cyclical businesses. This will vary over time. We also see that our long and focused element on the return requirement in this business units give us traction over time, and we will continue that. When it comes to the invested capital. You see here that we're at June 30 at DKK 53.1 billion. Year-end, we were at almost DKK 55 billion.
In between, we have invested more than $3 billion, and we have a depreciation of $2.2. If we take the big scheme of things and add those numbers together, that will show you that the reduction in invested capital have been around $2.5, $2.7, $2.8 billion the first six months. Some of that is currency effects. Some of this is the sales of the $500 million that you have seen on the divestments. That shows that, let's say, ±$2 billion has come out of being focused on just simple optimizing on the balance sheet in that period. These are the elements that you will see in addition to the sales proceeds that we will continue over a period. Having said that, it's some time since the group have done those kind of exercises.
We are taking the low-hanging fruit as a result of this year, but we will see more effects coming out of these kind of optimization. One question that I'm also always get or almost always gets in my dialogue with all of you is the return requirements on Maersk Line. We have the overall ambition of 10% for each of our business unit, but we as management have challenged the Maersk Line team with a slight lower return requirement as of this point. Because when we see at the market, the market today, Nils and me have told the line management that their target should be lower than a 10% because of the weak market that we see in the short to medium term.
As a result of that, our challenge to the Maersk Line team is to have a return on 8.5% in the short to medium term. Long term, our ambition is still to come up there, but that needs other things to happen in the industry, and I'm sure that Maersk Line team will address that issue in their presentation. When it comes to the funding of these growth ambitions, I think I can just say three words in that respect. That when it comes to the ambition of the growth, the funding is in place, it's secure, and it's solid. We have the underlying cash flow. We have the solid structure in place, and we feel that the risk in our refinancing needs and everything else is fairly secure. I'm fairly comfortable on these elements going forward.
As many of you probably have noticed this morning, we have been in a dialogue with the rating agencies to get public rating. As a result of that, we have been given a rating of BBB+ and a Baa1 from Moody's. We think that is just a natural step in the development of our strategy of funding the company.
We have done that to ensure stable access to funding markets, and those funding markets are deeper than what we have as an unrated company. We do also think that it will secure lower costs on our funding, and of course, it will gain us direct access to the U.S. dollar market and not go through other local currencies, even though we will still explore those opportunities, because as of now, we don't have any needs for additional funding short term. We will go out in the market when we feel it's appropriate and we feel the pricing is right. All in all, this will have an additional support of the growth, and it will also limit the liquidity risk of this group.
We have been working with the financial guidelines for a period of more than three years, and we do think that these guidelines are consistent with the rating of BBB+ and Baa1. All in all, the structuring that we have been doing the last three years and the focus point that we have had on this financial strategy has paid off, and we're satisfied with the rating that we have received. We are well within these key ratios. The one that we are closest to is the adjusted FFO or adjusted net debt. The adjustment factor is, of course, the off-balance sheet funding, the time charters and other lease obligation that we have on the balance sheet that we adjust in these ratios.
That is also aligned with the process that the rating agencies and the debt capital markets view this. Coming to the dividend development, we actually went from DKK 200 in 2002 to DKK 1,200 in 2012. As you can see, it goes a bit in a two-step. You see that 2005, '06 is even, 2007 and 2008 is even, and 2010, 2011 even, but you see the trending aspect. We still plan for having those dividend paid, and we continue to stay with our dividend statement. But as always, being a CFO, I'm always on the cautious side of things. The board is, of course, deciding that discretion only in our meeting in February.
We, as an administration, can just make proposals and the board will decide that in their own discretion. All in all, the key message from me is that the group have ambitions to grow, and we have the cash flow and the funding to support it. We have the financial policy and capital allocation processes well in place to direct and structure that growth process where we think we are going and the goal that we have. The gearing level will be maintained and the dividend or payments are planned to be paid. We do think that the rating that we have got today will just support the growth and reduce the liquidity risk for the Group going forward. All in all, very good shape, and it's about executing on our long-term strategy.
With that, I would just tell you that it's a 20-minute break, and please be back here at 10:05. Thank you.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back. It's a great pleasure for me and the rest of the management board in Maersk Line to talk to you about today about our business, the results that we have achieved, the strategy we have, and the transformation that we have embarked on over the last couple of years. In the last five quarters, we have made significant progress on our competitiveness, but we are not done yet. We are working on a number of plans that we'll be discussing today that will allow us to take further cost out, but also, importantly, allow us to improve customer service and sales towards our customers. Now, please allow me to start with a brief overview of Maersk Line. We are servicing 67,000 customers globally in Maersk Line today.
Last year, they shipped 8.5 million forty-foot equivalent units on our fleet. We estimate that the goods contained in the containers were worth $650 billion. We operate almost 600 ships in a global network today. We cover literally every trade. We serve our clients through a land-based organization which is present in more than 100 countries. We have 31,000 colleagues in total, 25,000 of them working in the country organizations. We are, with a 15% capacity market share globally, a very leading player in our industry and play a significant role in global trade.
Last year at the Capital Markets Day and in subsequent communication from the board of directors and the group CEO, we have defined the objectives for Maersk Line as being that we want to be a top quartile performer in our industry. We want to deliver a 5% EBIT margin gap to the average of our peers. We wanna grow with the markets funded by our own cash flow. We want to, above all, deliver stable returns which are above our cost of capital. In the medium term, as defined by Trond just before, 8.5% return on invested capital. At the capital markets day in 2012, almost a year ago, our status was that we were a second quartile performer.
We had an EBIT margin which was 3 percentage points higher than the average for our industry. We were growing with the market, but we were burning the group's cash, and our returns were volatile and quite low. For 2012 as a whole, we delivered a 2.4% return. We're proud to say today that we have made significant progress. After the first half of thirteen, we delivered a best in class result for our industry in absolute returns with a NOPAT of $643 million for the first half. But also in absolute returns, a best in class result with an EBIT margin, which was 8.1 percentage points above the average for our peers in the first half.
We are achieving our vision of growing with the market, delivering a 2% growth and maintaining our market share. We had a positive free cash flow in the first half of 2013 of $762 million. When I say we are not done yet, it's because we are not delivering on the return on invested capital. We delivered a 6.2% return on capital in the first half, which we are pleased with because of the progress, but not because of the absolute level. Last year, in early 2012, we made a significant decision which underpins a lot of what we have achieved. We decided to go from an aggressive growth strategy, gaining market share, to a grow with the market, maintaining market share strategy.
That change in outlook allowed us to take out capacity. It allowed us to close down a significant number of unprofitable routes. We have taken that capacity, those ships that we have freed up and invested back into the network in terms of slow steaming, adding ships to individual strings to slow down the network. Today, our network is one knot, about one knot slower on average speed-wise than it were a year ago. From that, we have driven significant cost savings from bunkers and from overall port cost and so on. In the first half of 2013, we delivered a cost, a total cost, which was $1.5 billion lower than in the same period last year.
Having the lowest cost in the industry allows us to be competitive and be profitable in almost any kind of scenario, any kind of competitive scenario, and that's really our goal for our industry. We want to maintain our market share, our capacity market share around 15%. We are in the business of the liner shipping for the long haul, literally and figuratively speaking. Giving up market share would make us irrelevant in about 10 years, and we're not going to go there. Lowest cost in our view is a prerequisite for being successful in the liner industry. It's a tough industry. It's difficult to compete on the physical parameters of the product, the transit time, frequency, geographic coverage, and so on.
The fact that the industry uses vessel sharing agreements, cooperations between participants widely allows even the small carrier to offer a global product to his customers. We don't believe in Maersk Line that at the end of the day, there's a model out there which allows us to charge a significantly higher price than the competition to support a high cost structure. That's why we have a cost deflationary mindset, and we talk about cost leadership being a lifestyle, not a diet. You will hear Morten later on talk about lower and lowest cost. Lower than last year, lowest in the industry. That's what we're going for. Taking cost out started already with Streamline back in 2008, and you can see on the previous charts, you saw the development cost back to 2008.
It continued last year with Back to Black, and this year in 2013 and 2014, we call our operating plan Must-Win Battles. It consists of four elements, optimizing the network, which is really about taking out costs. It's care for customers, which is improving our customer service. It's vantage for profit, which is about deploying the capacity we have in the trades where we can make the most return. It's about finish the foundation, which is initiatives around our IT infrastructure, our organizational structure, and our culture. All told in the Must-Win Battles plan, we have about 35 initiatives, and we are executing on them, and this is how we run the company today.
Every week, the management board meets and discusses progress on the six most important for our result this year, and every month, we spend a full day reviewing all of the 35 actions underneath the Must-Win Battles plan to ensure we make progress, to clear out roadblocks and so on. We have added one more initiative this year to our strategic journey, the P3 project, which you will hear more about today. P3 is an operational alliance between three major players in our industry. In fact, the three largest players in the East-West trades. That means Asia, Europe to the USA, and Asia to the USA. We will be sharing infrastructure, but we will still be competing in the marketplace and towards the customers. The P3 network will give us four things.
It will allow us to offer a much better product, and Vincent Clerc will discuss all these things in greater depth in his segment of the presentation. It'll give us a better product in the physical terms. It will take out a significant amount of network costs. We'll get lower bunker costs, and most importantly, it will allow Maersk Line to deploy our Triple-E ships in a very effective manner. Now, growing with the market as a strategy has another effect, and that is that we need to invest less in Maersk Line in the coming years. We have today an order book of 17 Triple-E ships still to be delivered. It's about 12% of our existing total fleet.
That means that we, in our view, and based on our view on market growth in the coming years, will be able to grow with the market until 2015 with the order book we already have. It means that we do not have to take any new investment decisions for Maersk Line until 2015. When we have to take investment decisions, it will be driven by two things. First of all, of course, that Maersk Line can deliver a return which is above cost of capital. Secondly, we will continue the strategy that we have been driving the last three, four years in terms of buying ships that support our low cost aim for each of the trades that we're in.
In other words, we want to buy ships that are the largest that can be physically and commercially deployed in the trades that we serve. That's the strategy we did with the SAMMAXes, which are the largest ships that can be deployed in the Latin America trades, the WAFMAXes, which are ships that are being deployed on West Africa, the largest, most profitable ships there. Finally, with the Triple-E ships, which albeit not in physical sense, but still the largest commercially viable ships in Asia-Europe today. I've talked a lot about cost because that is really what underpins the improvement we have seen in Maersk Line in the last 18 months. At the heart of what we do are, of course, the customer. We're not gonna want to forget the customer.
We serve 67,000 loyal customers, and what that brings us is a solid contract portfolio. One of the points that we will be making today is that only 25%-26% of our business is directly exposed to the spot market. We have a significant part of our business which is driven by contracts, 41% long-term contracts, 23% short-term contracts. That contract mix has allowed us to weather a lot of the price wars that we have seen in the last 12 months. Today, you'll meet a number of the members of the management board in Maersk Line making presentations. It's a relatively new team we have, but I think we have a team which has the right mix of internal and external expertise. Each of these gentlemen are experts in their field.
Morten Engelstoft, Vincent Clerc, and myself have deep shipping knowledge. In fact, we have never worked with anything else. We have had our whole careers in this company. Jakob Stausholm, Stephen Schueler, and Michael Chivers all bring world-class experience, world-class functional skill to their functions from leading global companies as well. I believe we have a really good mix. First up here will be Jakob Stausholm. He will talk about how we have improved performance in a tough market, because we do actually believe that it's important to note that the improvements in Maersk Line are not really driven by a favorable market environment. Prices have not gone up, to the contrary, they've gone down, and we have seen a very competitive situation where demand is dropping and capacity is growing.
Next up will be Vincent Clerc, who will talk about how we are positioned in the individual markets that we're in, how we're dealing with the challenges we have in the East-West trades with low growth and high supply growth. He will also talk about how we're doing in the North-South trades. It's not commonly understood that Maersk Line's book of business is actually overweight to North-South trades. Morten Engelstoft, our Chief Operating Officer, will talk about cost, what we have done to take cost out, but also what we will be doing in the future. Stephen Schueler will finish up talking about what we are doing to improve our customer service so that we continue to have a strong book of business with a high contract coverage.
I'll then come back and round up, and we'll have a question and answer session. Now let me turn over to Jakob Stausholm.
Thank you, Søren. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. I will in this presentation talk about and connect the business environment that we are facing, our strategic analysis and our choices to how we have performed recently over the last year or two. Furthermore, I will provide you some explanations to our disclosures and a set of forward-looking statements. We call it improved performance in a tough market. We are faced with low demand growth and challenging industry dynamics. Our response, as you have heard from Søren, is around cost leadership and commercial excellence. With those measures, we can report that performance has been improved mainly through cost reductions and more lately as well on better capital efficiency. Moving to the container liner market.
For decades, container demand has grown at a high multiple to the global GDP. This long-term trend was changed with the financial crisis. As many investment decisions were taken before the financial crisis, and as probably we as an industry has been fairly slow to adjust to a lower growth environment, we have seen a supply overhang build up with more new vessels coming to industry than the demand growth. Sensibly, a lot of that new capacity has been invested in slow steaming, which has other benefits, but it still represents the challenge for our industry. As we see it, the heart of the challenge for our industry is the vicious cycle here. It really starts with that today you can make significant reductions in your slot cost by investing in newer vessels, more modern vessels designed for slow steaming given the high bunker price.
That leads, of course, to new vessel ordering, vessel ordering that exceeds the demand growth and, supply and demand in this world works. What you see when you have overcapacity is that you get a declining and volatile rate environment. We have seen over the last decade 1%-2% annual reductions in the nominal rates. You shouldn't think it stops here, the cycle. Unfortunately, what we have seen in the industry is that often the response is I'm becoming less competitive. The way to improve my result is that I need new investments, new vessels to become more competitive. Then the circuit goes around again. That is not an easy dynamics to work with.
On that basis, we have made ourselves four key observations around the market, and we have also taken our strategic choices to each of them as outlined by Søren. First of all, the future container demand. We did a fairly comprehensive study earlier this year to try to understand what are the underlying demand factors that will drive container demand in the decades to come. A couple of observations. I think it's fair to say that the container demand market looks promising for the future. It will continue to grow, we believe, in excess of global GDP, but we will not return to previous multiples where we have seen multiples to GDP to the tune of 2.5-3. It's gonna be much, much lower, but it will be in excess of the GDP growth.
Still an attractive growing market, but at a lower level than we have seen in the past. The implications for Maersk Line are a couple of things. First of all, a positive one is that it requires less investments. We might actually strengthen our free cash flow in such an environment. The second part, and Vincent will dive much deeper into a more disaggregated approach here, is that particularly the East-West trades will mature, and we will not see the high growth rates that we have seen in the past. If you take the Asia-Europe trade, for example, before the financial crisis, very often the growth rate was double-digit, and that is not gonna happen again.
Therefore, as much of the new supplies comes into the East-West and we don't see the high growth rate, this, the competitiveness in that area needs to be addressed. Secondly, we do see the picture that we have seen in the past to continue with, declining freight rates. That's really, I'm gonna repeat it again, you're gonna hear it a couple of times today, that cost leadership is not a diet. It's not something we can fix in the short term. It's a lifestyle. It will always prevail. If we should remain competitive, whatever strategic initiative we take, cost leadership will continue. Thirdly, the margin, the industry is a low margin industry, and we have no evidence for that it should change, much to the better.
Obviously, the financial crisis has been particularly hard, but if we look at it over a longer period of time, it will probably remain to be a fairly low margin business. Therefore, we simply have to do better than the industry. We are convinced that we can make 5 percentage points EBIT margin more than the rest. The industry is fairly commoditized. I know we don't like to use this word, but it's important to have in the mindset. It still gives us space, though, to differentiate on customer service and the overall value proposition. That's why our strategy is not just about cost leadership. It is very much as well about commercial excellence, and we have a number of opportunities to further improve in that area. Steve will cover that in a moment. Turning to the industry.
Over the last decade, the industry have had an EBIT margin of to the tune of 3%. Now, that's not a lot, but the good news is it's fairly variable what individual container liners has performed. In fact, if you had been the best-performing container liner every single year in 10 years, you would have had an EBIT margin of 10% going through the financial crisis, et cetera. The best performing container liner has done 8%. 8% is exactly five percentage point higher than the average of the industry.
Basically, it's data point that gives us confidence that it can be done. Given the scale and the strengths of Maersk Line, we are absolutely convinced that we can deliver that in the future. Now, having described a daunting business environment and industry dynamics, it is important to say that we have many, many levers to pull. In fact, we have a lot of flexibility, so we can adjust to adverse business environment, and I think that's what we have done. I think 2012 is a good example. If you look at 2012, at the beginning of 2012, we thought there would be decent demand growth. What happened, of course, particularly in the second half, was that the macroeconomic environment turned sour.
At the end of the year, we only faced a global demand growth of 2% head haul. I say head haul because that's what drives the capacity, the need for capacity. In the course of 2012, we had many new deliveries to industry. In fact, 8% to the global capacity. Fortunately, the industry as a whole responded to this, and we certainly did our part disproportionately. There was a lot of scrappings. There was extensive idling, blank sailings, and a lot of capacity, as Søren also told, that we had done, was taken out and, so to say, reinvested into slow steaming. Which meant that the effective supply and demand was actually in the favor of demand and not in the favor, not oversupplied.
The result was it gave support for us getting out of the very low rate environment in 2011 into 2012. Moving on to our results over the last six quarters. We started 2012 in the middle of a rate war, and our response was a program that we called Back to Black, and it consisted of four parts. First of all, rightsizing the network. We decisively took out significant capacity from the beginning of 2012. That supported the capacity adjustments. That, supported by the capacity adjustment, meant we could push rate increases, and we got rates up. We then decided to be more firmly in claiming our demurrage and detention rights. It's contractual rights.
We have just not been strong enough in collecting it, so we pushed for that. Early last year, we initiated a major cost drive. Morten will cover that much more in detail, but the point that we're learning here is that when you initiate a cost drive, it takes a little while before you get an impact. Therefore, when you look at the outcome, the immediate improvement from Q1 losses of around DKK 600 million - DKK 227 million was entirely rate driven, no doubt about that. In fact, when we came to the middle of 2012, we started getting a little bit concerned about when do we get the impact of the cost drive.
What happened then was that was achieved in an environment with good growth in the market, and suddenly, basically, the world went to a standstill. That was the moment where we were fortunate to see the cost reductions kicking in. You might not see it up on the chart here in the unit cost because volumes went down, but when Morten later on shows you the absolute cost actually went down a lot. It meant that we, in Q3 and Q4, actually could have decent profitability despite declining rates, declining volumes. When we came into 2013, we were helped by this program, the Back to Black, that basically had made us more competitive at the beginning of the year.
Secondly, as Søren explained to you, our strategy is entirely focused around our four Must-Win Battles, and we started to get the impact from those, particularly optimize the network, where a couple of good decisions, new designs, kicked in early and further improved the cost. What happened in 2013 was that, we saw volumes coming back, and we were able to stick to the low level of cost, and therefore, we saw significant reductions in the unit cost. Therefore, we were able to respond actually to a very, very tough rate environment.
You will see that the rates, the unit rates here in Q2 2013 was actually to the tune of the rates achieved in Q1 2012, where we lost $600 million. Summarizing our performance, I will do that in four bullet points. Firstly, we have significantly improved our earnings. If you look at the last 12 months, we have earned $1.5 billion. As importantly, I think what we have demonstrated here is an ability to respond to the business environment. You could say going through rough sea over the last five quarters, we have actually been able to keep our earnings not entirely stable, but fairly stable. We have not seen the fluctuation of losses, et cetera. It is possible to steer through such an environment and still make a profit.
Thirdly, our return on invested capital, leave no doubt, is not where we want it to be. Again, we made over the last 12 months, 7.2% ROIC. Over the last six months, 6.2%. You could say 6%-7% at the bottom of the cycle might be quite okay as well. Then we hope we can continue to improve from here. On the fourth point, profit and loss is one thing. Cash flow also matters a lot, and we have actually made more improvements in the cash flow. What you see here on the cash flow statement is that that's where we have improved not only from the generation of cash flow, but we have also spent less capital expenditures.
We have been able, first of all, as a new management team, we have not ordered any new vessels. The only thing we have on order is the Triple-E vessels, and we have adjusted our needs for new containers to the lower growth environment. As a result, the free cash flow have over the last 12 months compared to a year ago, improved in excess of $5 billion. Looking at the performance of the industry, the underlying performance of the industry, we compare the EBIT percentage as a good proxy.
If you look at the performance of the industry, obviously we can only include the companies that disclose their results, but looking at those results, the industry as a whole have lost money to the tune of minus 2% EBIT margin in the first half, which perhaps is not a surprise given the very low margins. We are of course very proud to have been able to increase our gap to the industry from a year ago, two percentage points over the industry average to 8%. Now, it is also important for me to state that we don't believe that the 8% is sustainable. Actually, I would say the 8% is a good data point to demonstrate that 5% is sustainable. We certainly don't want to underestimate our competitors. They will pick up on this.
They will push us hard, and they will do catch up. I think also it's fair to say that in the first half, we really benefited from having taken out more capacity than the competition while we were able to defend our volumes, and therefore had a very good improved utilization that helped in this relative picture. Let me turn to our financial disclosure. I would just like to share a couple of explanations also based on questions that we have received also through investor relations. First of all, we disclose only the total revenue of our business, and that consists basically of two part, a freight revenue and other income. Other income is to the tune of 10% of the total revenue.
It's mainly detention and demurrage, something that we have had a lot of focus at and have improved on in the last year or so. It also includes things like VSA income and TCE income. The freight revenue is by far the biggest part, and it's important to mention that we, according to the IFRS rules, has to not take the revenue when we get the boxes on board, but we actually earn it over the course of the journey. For example, if rates goes up, then you will only see the impact over a period of time. We have a kind of a delay in our revenue recognition of this to the tune of a month.
That also means that when we disclose a freight rate, it's the rate of the boxes that we put on the ship, and you cannot use the freight rate and the volumes to calculate the recognized revenue. I had that discussion with a couple of you. It's two different things. We like to tell you what are the rates on the boxes that we get on the vessel. Then of course, we have to follow the accounting rules on the revenue recognition. On the cost side, the major part is bunker. Bunker, I like to say we buy spot, and we don't do hedging.
At the same time, we have to follow the FIFO accounting rules, and therefore we also here have to the tune of a month's delay in price changes to bunker fuel. Tax as one other item of importance is that we are low tax in tax business. We are mainly paying freight taxes and tonnage tax, so you cannot really talk about a tax percentage. That has the advantage of when we save cost, it flows straight down to the bottom line. Ultimately, I'd just like to highlight that we depreciate our vessel over 20 years, whereas we see many in industry depreciate vessels over 25 years. For comparison reasons, you might like to adjust for that. Turning towards the future, the market has been tough.
We believe that we are at the bottom of the cycle now. We have seen early encouraging signs, but only early encouraging signs. The world that we could foresee in the future is one where the container demand will go up 2%-3% in 2013, to 4%-6% in 2014 and 2015, sorry, 2%-3% in 2013. That will be lower on the East-West trade, driven by a higher rate in the emerging markets. Nominal capacity, we have some fairly good estimates for 6%-7% in 2013 and 2014, and there's of course still a lot of uncertainty around the estimates for 2015.
On the cost side, we're not setting up specific targets, but when it comes to cost, I'll repeat what Søren said, no doubt, the whole management team has a deflationary mindset. I hope by the end of this presentation, you will have got enough data points to see that what we have achieved so far is sustainable and we have a lot of initiatives ongoing that will lead to lower costs going forward. Now, that might not be entirely linear. There will be seasonality in our volumes, et cetera, but medium term, our unit costs will go down. We will stick to our market share and the capacity market share of around 15% we can continue to have with the current order book at least until 2015.
That means that we can keep investments to the tune of $2 billion a year. Again, it might be a little bit more, a little bit less in the years to come. 2013 to 2015, spending $6 billion is a good proxy of the planned activities. Let me just summarize to say that we are proud to have improved our performance in a tough market. I'll now hand over to Vincent, who will share with you at a much more disaggregated level how we are positioned and how we are grabbing opportunities and addressing challenges in the market. Vincent, over to you.
Thank you, Jakob. Usually, I think, taking over after the CFO is a bit of a tough spot, but, I've been told that on Capital Markets Day, that's actually prime time. I'm very happy to take this opportunity to lift the hood a little bit on Maersk Line and share with you a sneak peek of how we put the macro view that Søren and Jakob have been presenting to you into a day-to-day context and how we go about rising to the challenge that we have in this tough market. In short, what this will mean is I will have to demonstrate to you that we have very robust and radical measures to deal with the overcapacity that we are faced with right now and that we will continue to be faced with in the years to come.
I will also spend some time showing actually the exposure and the strategy that we have in the North-South trades, which are extremely important for us, and also of the very promising model that we have in the intra-regional trades, where we're seeing a lot of very strong and positive trends. Morten will talk later about the size of our network and the impressive machine that it is. To manage it on a day-to-day basis, it is important for us to cut it into bite-sized chunks that we can manage and that we can influence on a day-to-day basis. We follow about 80-plus trades on a monthly basis with the respective trade managers and have grouped those in nine groups of trades to manage the business. For this presentation, I will concentrate those into three groups.
The first one is the East-West trades, where we have a strong issue with oversupply and low growth at this time, and where the measures that need to be taken in order to solve this are largely interdependent. The other one, and it is actually very important, is to look at the North-South trades. These represent more than half of the business that we do. It is also where we derive most of our earnings and where we have the higher growth expectation. It is a very strong position that we have in trades that are by and large unaffected by the oversupply that the industry overall is suffering with. Lastly, the growing part of our market, the intra-regional, where we're having 7% right now of our business and where we have chosen a completely different business model to compete in those markets.
The reason why these three groupings make sense is well illustrated, I think, on this slide. The overexposure that we have to the North-South trade is an important value driver for us. We achieve there above average EBIT. We have the highest growth prospect. Just everything remaining equal, if we're able to keep that up and grow with the market overall, we can increase our average EBIT differential to the market by keeping on positioning and pushing on that overexposure. The situation on the East-West trade is clearly difficult. Despite some good measures on slow steaming, on scrapping, and so on, we are at a very low EBIT level and certainly not a satisfactory one.
I'll talk about it in a couple of minutes. Lately on the intra-regional, you can see that for a while Maersk Line has struggled to find the right formula to compete in these trades. This is illustrated in the under-penetration that we have in those trades. This is now something that is picking up momentum as we're going into the our sub-brand models in these regions. The East-West has been the situation there has been fairly well described. We have high capacity increase, low demand. One of the things that we could start by wondering is why do we want to keep on staying there?
I think the very important thing to say is despite the fact that the trades or the cargo moving in these trades has a low EBIT, these trades constitute the spine of the network on which a lot of the value generated in the North-South trade is riding. The scale that we can achieve in these trades is fundamental to our ability to deliver returns in the North-South trades. Therefore, we need to make sure that we take radical action in these trades in order to be able to sustain a cost leadership, have a good product, and keep on generating value, more value on these trades, but keep on generating the value that we generate on the other trades on this spine. For us, this is centered around four initiatives. The first one was implemented in 2011. It's Daily Maersk.
Daily Maersk for us is two things. The first one is vis-à-vis our customer. This is our line in the sand in terms of quality and reliability of the product that we want to be able to deliver week in and week out to our customers. Second, it is also a smarter network design with a lot of overlap, one that enables us to manage capacity more effectively than what our competitors are able to do thanks to the interconnectivity that we have built in the network. Capacity management is enabled to a large extent by Daily Maersk, and is a tool that we have used more aggressively than our competitors in the past couple of years.
It is a tool which in general has been heavily used and explains a lot of what is going on in the East-West trades right now. Finally, we have the Triple-E's, which have always been aimed at lowering our production cost and our break-even rates on the spine, but where we have found a way to really unlock extra scale synergies through the P3 Alliance and our cooperation. As Jakob presented, the market has slowly but surely decelerated since the financial crisis, and we have had an overhang of capacity that has trickled into the market, and you can see this slow trickle on the graph of the industry capacity growth.
Despite this trickle of capacity, the rates have not collapsed in these trades, and actually the composite freight index in 2012 was higher in 2012 than it was prior to the financial crisis in 2008. What has happened is actually what you can see on the blue line, and this is what capacity management is about. Lines have invested a lot of their tonnage in not adding capacity offered to the market, but in adding vessels to strings and lower their production cost. A string on Asia-Europe in 2008 was 8-9 vessels. It is today common to have 11-12 vessels deployed on the same route. On the Pacific, we went from 5-6 vessels on a rotation, and so on in most of the trades.
This has made the industry more capital intensive, but also has created a more resilient environment, from a freight rate perspective. From an operational perspective, there is a lot more potential for saving and for utilization of assets, in this. The wedge of 14% that has been opened between the capacity coming in and the effective capacity offered into the market can and will be increased further. Maersk has been especially aggressive, on this and had the possibility to do so, thanks to its design on Daily Maersk network. We have taken 2 strings out of Asia-Europe while still delivering our promise to our customers. The cost case of this is so compelling that it is a question of time before we see some more momentum, being taken by the industry at large.
Despite all this though, we could see before that these trades have only generated a paltry 2% EBIT return. In order to see this lifted, we needed something radical. The Triple-E's were going to give us a lot of cost advantages, but we did not feel that it alone would be enough or that it was the most that we could do to get to the lowest cost in these trades. In order to get to that lowest cost without sacrificing the product that we offer to our customers, we embarked on the P3 Alliance. Now, the P3 Alliance is subject to regulatory approval still, and we're working on that process. In between, let me lift the veil a little bit on what we expect to see from P3.
P3 will be a radical improvement of the product that we're offering to our customers. There will be more ports that are served directly. There will be more frequency and more reliability in the product that we offer. There will also be a lower environmental footprint because our design of our network is a lot more efficient. All these are great benefits for the customer. For us, we will be able to increase between 2013 and 2015 the capacity that we offer to the market by 6%. By only injecting 4% of capacity and the total cost of running this network for Maersk Line will be 8% less. This means over two years, a 14% reduction in our unit cost in the P3 scope. That will result in a significant uplift of our EBIT in these trades.
In the north-south, the situation is fairly different, and there most of the trades have so far been fairly isolated from the oversupply that we have in the east-west. The trade there have infrastructure bottlenecks. They have more dispersion of volumes that make the usage of the large vessels on the east-west either impossible or uneconomical. That has actually enabled the carriers that have strong position in these trades to isolate them, their PNL and their performance from the volatility that we see in the east-west trade. In order to be successful in these, there's a lot of talk about ships, there's a lot of talk about terminals.
We actually believe that what makes a very big difference in terms of competitive advantage and for the sustainability of the performance is a lot of the soft stuff that we have in there. One of them can be illustrated in Africa with the big organization that we have there. Maersk Line started the first service in Africa in 1959, and have today 166 of its vessels of its close to 600 vessels that are directly involved into servicing our customers in Africa. This is supported by 74 land-based offices with a lot of colleagues from Safmarine and from Maersk Line that have spent many, many years building expertise, experience, contacts, and contracts in the African continent that are very hard to duplicate for anybody.
This has enabled us to have a very strong market position there, and is a position that we can keep on building on in a continent that has a lot of opportunities, going forward. In order to support the many ideas and the many opportunities that there is in the north-south trades, the important is really not about being everything to everybody, and be able to keep the whole organization focused on the trades where we can make a difference, on the trade where we can build competitive advantage, on the trades where we can return superior returns.
Here, I've taken an example not from Africa, but from Latin America, to illustrate the rigorous process that we have where we manage all of our trades on a monthly and quarterly basis, go through the performance, the outlook, and the plans that there is to turn these things, these services around and generate a return that we're seeking. In some cases, this will be a commercial repositioning. In other cases, it will be a revamp of the product. In some cases, as you can see here on the Andean service, we simply chose to shut it down if we don't see a proper way to turn it around. The case of the Andean was actually a difficult case.
It was the first service that Maersk Line opened in Latin America, but the trades was in a state where we simply could not see how we could turn this into a long-term, profitable service, and we therefore chose to close it. The important for us is to have options in these trades so that we can put in place a lot of plans and be creative in the design and the solutions that we seek. This, to be able to do this, we need to base ourself on two sets of capabilities.
The first one is the operation capability, and there, the spine that we have, as I mentioned before, is playing an important role in enabling smart network designs where we can combine drivers, lower cost base, and make trades, and make choices of services and product that lower our production cost significantly under what our competitors are able to achieve. The second part of it is the hubs, because they tie our network together and they create points where we can have a lot of connectivity between the trades. They enable a lot of combinations. The strategic location and the control that we have of our hubs, the partnership that we have in most of them with APMT, is a fundamental advantage for us in being able to engage in smarter network design solutions and lower cost.
Last is, of course, there's some of the tonnage that you have. In some of these markets too, in order to achieve the lowest cost, you will need purpose-built tonnage such as the WAFMAX or the SAMMAX that Søren has been talking about before. The other set of capabilities that we need is a commercial capability, because not everything is just about revamping the cost. One example of this, to illustrate the capabilities that Maersk Line has, is the Triple I initiative, where we try to attack the profitability issue that we have in the reefer segment, a segment where we have a strong exposure and strong market share, but where we felt that the returns were not commensurate with the level of investments that we needed in there.
We publicized a heavy rate increase, went through it knowing that it was going to be difficult, and it was going to cost a lot of tough decisions. We lost some business in the process. We lost close to 14% of our volumes, first half year this year versus first half year last year. Overall, we're able on the 86% that we have back to generate a contribution margin that was higher than what we were able to have a year before with 100% of the business.
This has fundamentally changed the profitability of the reefer segment for us and we're now seeing returns where we are comfortable with our market position and the choices that we've made, and where we can begin to invest again into supporting the business and growing with the market with our customers. The last thing I want to talk about is the intra-regional trade, because there we have made a choice a couple of years ago that is quite different from what a lot of our competitors have done, and where we're seeing both on a market share and on a return perspective, a very strong evidence that the market is really taking ground. As you can see from the under-penetration that we have in this segment, Maersk Line has struggled to generate returns and to compete in these markets. They are tough.
There is high volume dispersion, very short transit time, and a combination of feeder volume for the long hauls and direct cargoes in the trades. What we have found out is in order to win there and have the level of control of your cost that you need to generate returns, it is absolutely imperative to have an organization whose single focus it is to follow the development in these trades. We started in 2009 with MCC, and we're very pleased with the impact that it has had on return and on our ability to grow our share in this trade. We continued in 2011 with Seago, who is going exactly through the same learning curve right now and where we're seeing the same trend takeoff in performance.
There, with the growth that we're able to achieve and the returns that we're able to achieve, we see a model with a lot more potential, that will help us raise our financial performance in the coming years. What I wanted to present, and I hope that I could have made a good case of, is how radical some of the measures that we have and ambitious some of the measure that we have on the East-West have been, and are. The plans that we have for the next couple of years to really lift the EBIT performance of our spine network on the East-West trades.
How we will continue to build on the strong position that we have in the North-South and the importance that this has for us, given that it is more than half of what we do. Also that we have a model here, in the intra-regional, that are quite different from what our competitors have chosen to do and where we can also build on, to achieve, better performance in the future. With this, it's time for me to give the microphone to Morten, who will talk about how we aim for lowest cost in the industry.
Thank you, Vincent. Good morning. You may not know it, but the 596 vessels that we operate in Maersk Line are deployed in a global network with more than 45,000 individual port pair combinations. Every year, we consume more than 8 million tons of fuel, and when we add together all our vessels, it means that we are operating one of the largest combined engines in the world. Operating a machine of this size clearly has significant cost implications for Maersk Line, and I can assure you that we are really, really focused on optimizing our network design, our execution, and our cost base. There are basically three things that I would like to talk about here, today.
First, I will take you through the $1.5 billion in savings that we have delivered here first half this year compared to first half last year. I will give some examples of what we specifically have done in order to achieve this. I will then explain why we are confident that the savings are not only sustainable, but that we are also able to continue to build and take out further cost also in the coming years. I will talk about how this is creating competitive advantage for Maersk Line, compared to other carriers in the industry, and how the Triple-E vessels will be contributing to this. Jakob earlier showed the overall breakdown of costs, but let me just add a few more comments to the overall breakdown.
This is the breakdown of the $26 billion cost base which we have. There's essentially three cost items that each comprise about 25% of the total cost. The bunker costs, which is the fuel that we consume. Vessel costs, which cover depreciation, running costs and chartering. Terminal costs, which is the handling at the terminals around the globe. These are the three largest cost categories overall. All the cost categories in Maersk Line are of a very significant size, and we attack them in every way that we can. As Jakob and Søren mentioned earlier, we do it based on an approach that we call lower and lowest.
Lower the deflationary mindset with all of us that we need to lower our unit cost every single year, and lowest with the targets of us having the total lowest overall unit cost in the industry. We have in recent years reduced the cost base in Maersk Line quite significantly. In first half this year compared to first half last year, we have reduced the cost base by $1.5 billion. If you look at it in unit cost terms per transported forty-foot container, we have reduced from Q2 last year to Q2 this year, our unit cost by almost $400 per forty-foot container or equal to a 13% unit cost reduction. I will in a moment describe some of the specific examples that we have done in order to deliver this development.
If we break down the $1.5 billion in savings into the different cost components, we can clearly illustrate that the bunker component, the fuel part of it, takes up the majority of the savings with more than $1 billion achieved. We have had a lot of focus in recent years on the bunker cost for several reasons. First of all, it is one of the three largest cost categories. We spent approximately somewhere between $5 billion and $6 billion per year on bunker costs. It is a cost component that we ourselves has a lot of chances to do something about ourselves through our behavior and our execution. Breaking the cost components up like this and comparing them actually deceives a little bit in the favor of bunker costs.
Because we are actually investing vessel costs and terminal productivity at the terminals in order to turn the vessels faster, getting them out to sea again, and be able to sail slower. Having this total overview, or total cost view allows us to add more vessels to sail slower. It allows us to invest in increased terminal productivity at the terminals in order to turn the vessels faster, getting them out to sea again, and be able to sail slower. Overall, that's the breakdown of the $1.5 billion savings. If we then zoom even further into the bunker costs, components, then, as it is illustrated here, we got a bit of help from the market in terms of lower fuel prices over the last year. We're happy to take them.
They explain somewhere between a third and half of the improvement that we have achieved on bunker cost over the last year. I'd also like to point to the right side of the graph or the slide here, which illustrates both the focus that we have had on bunker consumption, but also the development that we have achieved. If you compare the fuel consumption per 40-foot container transported in 2007 up until today, we have reduced the consumption by more than 40%, 18% alone in the last 12 months.
I'd say that bunker cost is influenced by every component of our operational behavior, from the network that we design, the vessels that we select, where and when we procure the bunker, the speed that we sail with, technical innovation and execution, and the way that we execute the global business. All these operational components are directed towards minimizing our fuel consumption. One of the key trade-offs in our industry is finding the right balance between cost savings and the attractiveness of your products. You need, when you talk about costs, you need to look at it in terms of unit costs, because we need to put our cost base in relation to the business that we carry.
Because if we do not have a competitive product, we cannot attract the business that our network is designed based on, and not able to fill the ships will neither be good for our unit cost nor will it be good for the top line. The balance that we have found in Maersk Line is that we have been able, if we take a look at the last year, we've been able to reduce our bunker cost by 18% per transported unit, while at the same time have been able to maintain a reliability level that has allowed us to be number one in 8 out of the 9, the last 9 quarters in the Drewry Schedule Reliability measure. We have consistently delivered more than 95% on time delivery on our Daily Maersk product.
The reason why we are more reliable than other carriers in the industry is that we design our network for high schedule reliability, and we are very focused in our execution. We have for every single service detailed operational handbooks that guides us on how we are operating in the day-to-day, and also describes how the contingencies when they occur are to be handled. That has allowed us to have this balance both between being very cost efficient, and being very reliable. We are reliable without having to speed up, because we are late. As Vincent talked about a moment ago, network is critical for our business. In fact, our network optimization is a close cooperation between the global network department and each of the trade managers. Every year we make approximately 250 network changes to our global network.
Many of them, of course, small optimization initiatives, but we make approximately 20 or so large-scale network changes. We have a tool that we have developed that helps us calculate and simulate the different options so that we can make exactly the right choices. Let me share a couple of examples with what we have done over the last year. We have taken one of the Asia to Europe services and combined it with one of the Asia to North America services, rerouting the North American business from going through the Panama Canal to go through Suez. Thereby, we have allowed ourselves to scale up the vessel sizes. We have improved the utilization of our vessels.
We have been able to redeliver sub-optimal tonnage back to the owners and through that initiative, saved to the tune of $200 million net. Similarly, we have done an initiative on the West Med services. We combined services, scaled up vessel sizes on new services, closed the old ones, improved utilization levels, and again, also here had the ability to redeliver sub-optimal tonnage back to the owners and sub-optimal charter tonnage that is back to the owners and thereby saved, in this example here, $80 million. These are, of course, some of the larger network changes, but we're constantly on the lookout to see how can we optimize the network based on how we see the different cargo flows develop.
In addition to network design, we also have a lot of focus on the performance of each of our vessels in our fleets. All our own vessels and 94% of all the charter vessels have our own vessel performance management system installed. That is a system that on a range of different data parameters are giving us daily updates on performance. That data is used to analyze and to benchmark against targets and sister vessels, and it leads to a range of action on the fleet. Let me share an example on paint upgrades and hull cleaning. It may not sound like the most interesting thing in the world, but it actually has a significant impact on our fuel consumption. Every year, we make more than 200 hull cleanings.
We make more than 500 propeller cleanings. We constantly test, patch, paint newly developed paint types in order to get to optimization on the paint and hull side. What it really is about, it's about having vessels that are sailing through the water with as little friction as possible, and thereby we are improving our fuel consumption. We also have a 24/7 vessel monitoring center that is giving us alerts every time that one of our vessels is sailing faster than it should in accordance with the agreed schedule. These alerts we then follow up on together with the vessel to determine whether a particular action should be taken.
We're getting this information every 10 minutes, and as a comparison, and I should say we're getting the information through a newly developed vessel satellite system. Our competitors are getting the information, most of them somewhere between 4 and 6 hours, which means that we are able to follow up a lot faster on deviations compared to the sail plan. The data that we collect is also used to upgrade and invest in our existing fleet. Every single year, we invest somewhere between $50 million and $100 million in order to upgrade our existing fleet. Because up until just a few years ago, actually, vessels were built with the purpose to maximize speed. That's very different from the way that our vessels today operate.
We have actually a long range of opportunities to invest in our existing fleet and thereby upgrade fuel efficiency and actual vessel intake. Let me give one example. We based on data identified that by changing the bulbous bow rather, which is the front part of the vessel used to cut through the water, we could optimize fuel efficiency and change that on a series of eleven vessels with a payback of just one year. We have a range of initiatives whereby we can increase intake and where we can improve fuel efficiency on our existing fleet, all of them with payback periods within one to two years. We expect every year, as I mentioned, to invest somewhere between $50 million and $100 million, taking 15-20 vessels through optimization per year.
As I mentioned, we have taken out a lot of cost in recent years, but we also have a lot of fixed and firm programs that we're executing on that will allow us to take further cost out in the coming time. Vincent talked about the P3 Alliance, but let me give a couple of other examples of programs that are there with the aim to take out cost also in the coming time. We have what we call service speed equalization, and this is really the third generation speed initiative in order to reduce fuel consumption. What we did starting back in 2008, we introduced the by now very well-known slow steaming, which really was about lowering the speed at the average speed at the different services in the network.
Still left lots of variance between the speeds that you sail with throughout the network. Actually from a lowest cost perspective, the optimal network is a network that both have slow speeds but also have even speeds throughout the network. You save a lot more by sailing 16-20 knots at all parts of the network compared to a situation where you sail 18 and 14 at the different parts of the day. Earlier this year, we had an initiative that we called the backhaul speed equalization, and that meant that we on the backhaul, which is if you will, the return legs in the network, as an example, back from Europe to Asia, we evened out the speed.
Next year we're going to introduce what we call service speed equalization, which is taking a roundtrip view on how we can even out speeds more throughout the network while still by and large maintaining the roundtrip steaming time in the network. Some of you in recent days may have had the chance to see our one of our Triple-E vessels at Langeliniek aj or maybe even been on board. We have 20 Triple-E vessels on order between now and up until mid 2015. Three of them are with us already, 17 to go. Each of these vessels will help us reduce our unit cost further. The vessels are 20% more fuel efficient compared to the most fuel efficient vessel in the industry before the Triple-E vessels were delivered.
They're 35% more fuel efficient than the average 13,100 TEU vessel, which is the common large size vessels in the industry. They're 50% or so more fuel efficient than the average vessel that sails in the Asia to Europe trade. They are significant contributor of additional cost savings in the future. We will deploy the vessels without adding additional capacity. What we do is that we introduce the vessels basically one by one as they are delivered on one of our Asia to North Europe strings, replacing existing tonnage that are then cascaded elsewhere in the network, replacing tonnage that again are cascaded elsewhere in the network.
In the end, after all the cascading, we end up with a residual of charter tonnage that we can redeliver back to the owners and thereby have deployed more energy efficient tonnage without adding to the total capacity. In general, when we talk about our network and our fleet, we plan for both flexibility and low cost. Flexibility to be able to maneuver and take action whenever the market is getting stronger or weaker, and low cost as the aim of all the vessels that we bring in to our fleet. The target we have is that we want for the large and specialized tonnage, we want to own that tonnage because it is not readily available in the markets, and it is often specialized of nature, and it's cheaper to own compared to chartering.
For the small tonnage, however, we prefer to charter, and we currently prefer to charter short-term because the market rates are low. We are expecting the market to continue to be low in the small segment where the vessels are readily available. We can over the next 12 months redeliver up to 200 vessels or 22% of our fleet if we want to, or we can extend it or extend part of it at the current very low market rates in the charter market. As Søren said, we will invest in our existing fleet, but we have no plans to order more newbuildings in the coming time. We have the Triple-E vessels coming, and they will be keeping us busy and satisfying our requirements in the near future.
To summarize, I'd say that we have taken out $1.5 billion first half this year compared to last year, due to a range of different initiatives that we have executed across the different parts of Maersk Line. We are very confident that the savings are sustainable and that we are able to continue to build on the cost savings also in the coming time. We see this as generating competitive advantage for Maersk Line, something that the Triple-E vessels will help us contribute to also over the coming time. With that, I'll hand over to our Chief Commercial Officer, Stephen Schueler, who will talk about our go-to-market strategy. Thanks.
Thanks. Thanks, Morten. Today, I'd like to talk three main points. First, Maersk Line has a solid foundation for a strong commercial future. I think very importantly to the people in this room, I'm gonna go through an example of how this enables stable rates in the marketplace. Second, review the 2014 commercial priorities as we continue to differentiate in the marketplace. We will review what it takes to be best in class as a commercial organization. All this at a competitive SG&A cost. As Søren said in his opening, we have a very strong global footprint. We have over 362 offices worldwide, where we have over 31,000 employees. From a commercial perspective, we have over 4,000 sales and sales support employees. We also have over 8,000 customer service individuals.
This structure allows us to have direct access to our customers as we manage multiple trade routes, as Vincent highlighted in his presentation. This has enabled us to have high shares and high share of wallet with our top customers. If you look at the chart, you can see a lot of lights in India and also in Africa. An example of this is one of the largest Indian motorcycle companies has been able to achieve a 47% market share in Nigeria. As we've helped them provide logistics service, they've rewarded us with a 100% share of their ocean freight transportation business. I'm very proud to say that we have over 67,000 customers. Reviewing our foundation, I'll review four key points. Our solid customer base and diverse cargo, our long-term contracts, geographical diversification while being cost effective.
This strong diversification of geographies and customers gives us an opportunity to participate in the development of global trade, making a difference every day. One of our best examples is General Motors, where we do business with General Motors, enabling their global trade in over 40 countries. Continuing to review on our solid foundation through a makeup of customers with a healthy balance between key brand clients such as General Motors, direct smaller customers, freight forwarders, and specialties in our reefer business, we have a good representative share across all different trade groups. We also have a very diversified cargo split, as highlighted in appliances, textiles, and automobile. Based on our long relationships in key industries, as I stated before in the automotive, where we've done very well with companies like General Motors and our recent success with Ford Motor Company.
As Soren highlighted in his presentation, we also have stability in our contract duration and geographical footprint with over 40% of our contracts long term, an even volume split across multiple geographies, as highlighted here in Western, Central Asia, North America, Latin America. As you can see, we have a very healthy distribution of our business globally. Now, what I think is one of the most important slides in my presentation today, especially as I think of the people here in this group, is that this stability has allowed us stability in our market rates. The stability mentioned earlier behind our 67,000 customers, our long-term contracts, our multiple countries involving multiple industries, has enabled us to have stable rates in the market. As you can see, in the example is the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index in Q2.
As most of you know, it was a challenging quarter in Q2 on the Shanghai Freight Index, which actually went down temporarily for 38% in Q2. As you can see on our business, we saw an overall 5% decline. On average, rule of thumb, about a 1 in 10 influence on the Shanghai Freight Index to our total business. I think as I think of this room, this would be a very, very important chart of again how strong commercial leads to better stability in the market rates. A second chart, which I think would be very important to this group, is our SG&A and specifically our SG&A reduction efforts. In 2008-2012, we've reduced our SG&A by 22%.
Coupled with the volume increase over the same period, we saw a 34% SG&A decrease on per FFE. Now, this was achieved by doing some significant interventions. Some of those include significantly decreasing our central group here in Copenhagen. We've also moved from 15 areas to 8 regions, and we've also significantly moved work into our global service centers, removing low to non-customer facing work into the GSCs. We continue to expect to reduce the SG&A per FFE. This is just the beginning of future efforts as we move forward to continue to be competitive in the marketplace. To summarize the foundation, we have the most extensive global network, we have superior customer service, and as Morten mentioned in his presentation, we maintain our commitment to be the industry leader in reliability.
I'd now like to focus the second part of my talk today on what are Maersk Line's key commercial differentiators moving forward into 2014. I'd like to cover how we're gonna make improvements on sales and customer service, technology, and I'm very proud to say that we're gonna launch our new marketing campaign today. First, I'd like to talk about the customer charter. Last year, we asked our customers, "How can we do better? What are the most important factors that define superior customer service?" Based off of our customer interviews with our current customers, and also, I think more importantly, with the customers that we would like to be our future customers, we realized that there was 8 points that were critical to define success in customer service.
One of the areas that I heard the most was in Maersk, and also I think more importantly with the customers that we would like to be our future customers, we realized that there was 8 points that were critical to define success in customer service. One of the areas that I heard the most was invoice accuracy, where we've made significant improvement over the last year, moving from 85%-92%. Now we still are committed to doing better, but this has been a key enabler with the discussion that we have with our partners. This allows us to give, gives us a base as we build joint business plans. We're now moving to the second phase where we're releasing the customer charter on a by customer basis. This has been a very key enabler on changing the dialogue and discussion with our major partners.
We've also launched the customer care program. How do we treat our best customers differently? If you look at our top 6% of the customers, they represent 50% of our business. Through the customer care program, we made an effort to make sure that we treat them differently, and we've been rewarded. One of those examples is General Motors, who rewarded us this year as Supplier of the Year, which we're very proud of. Based off the success of the results of the program, we're extending the program this year. We're going from 6% of our customers to 9%. By the end of next year, we'll have 65% of our business on the customer care program. We're also making great strides on technology. For the last 6 months, we've been testing a new website for maerskline.com.
We've been testing this with 4% of our overall business. Next week, we'll be launching our new website. The feedback from our customers is that it's been somewhere between 2-7 times better than what they currently believe in our maerskline.com website. This will allow ease of booking, proactive information, one-stop information, and again, this is just the beginning of the journey on how we can leverage technology to provide better customer service. The next area is sales effectiveness. In sales effectiveness, we're focused on four key areas. The first one, which might seem simple, is provide salespeople with good recognition. We are launching the A.P. Moller-Maersk Sales Excellence, recognizing our top salespeople globally. We've also done an extensive review on sales competency and what it takes to be successful in sales going forward, building a best-in-class model.
One of the key areas that we've learned is how to build a long-term joint business plan and joint scorecard, and we're now implementing a college one and a college two global sales training program. Another key learning is that we did time motion studies across some of our biggest countries. One of our key learnings, our people were spending too much time in the office, and we like our people to be spending a lot more time selling. On average, people were spending over two days in the office. Through better sales management, our people are out selling and spending a lot more time with our customers. The fourth plank is an enabler, as I mentioned before, is technology. We've launched Salesforce.com with very good success.
Where we've seen the best progress is on our pipeline because it's continually looking for new customers and new business. We believe that we're just starting the journey of where the benefits will come by leveraging Salesforce.com. I now would like to talk about our new marketing program, which we are officially launching today in this meeting. As we went out and we talked to our customers, as we tried to develop the customer charter, we also took a great deal of feedback. People said many good things about the Maersk brand, especially trust. One of the areas where they felt we needed some opportunity was how do we have a little bit more human touch, a little bit more customer centric.
As we talk to companies like Walmart and Toys R Us, the key insight is that every day, they're making promises to their customers. For example, the Christmas holidays, they're making promises to make sure that their toys are available so that all the children have availability to the latest Barbie doll. The key insight is that we help these retailers, these partners, make promises every day. That was the key insight of our new marketing program, which is Your Promise Delivered. I now would like to share a 2-minute video demonstrating how we're gonna leverage the new brand strategy going forward.
Every day, you make promises to your customers. Your customers expect you to keep your promise of delivering the right quality on time, efficiently. Keeping your customers happy is what makes your business grow. Unfortunately, things don't always run the way you've planned. You need to ensure your promise is in the safest of hands. From factory door to shop floor, Maersk Line is the world leader in ocean transportation, offering services that complement our products, built from an understanding of your needs and a clear drive to deliver your promises. What's in our care are not fruits, clothes, or appliances. They're promises. Promises from businesses like yours all over the world. Promises too valuable to break. Promises we intend for you to keep.
Hopefully, you can see with our new brand positioning, we're leveraging the strength of the brand built on trust and reliability, tied into the customer insight that our partners are making promises every day, and how we want to help enable them deliver their promises. In conclusion, we're focused on building a best-in-class commercial organization built behind superior sales and customer service. I also hope that you've seen that by being stronger in commercial helps us enable stability in market rates and less market fluctuation in our business. We're gonna be focusing on the key differentiators in 2014 commercial drivers, which are sales, customer service, enabled by superior technology behind our launch next week of maersk.com and our new marketing program, Your Promise Delivered. All of this at a competitive SG&A cost.
I'd now like to turn it over to Søren for closing comments.
Thank you, Steve. It's time to wrap this up and give you a chance to ask us some questions. I'll very briefly summarize what we have been saying. We have been able to take cost out 7 out of the last 8 quarters, and that is really the foundation for why we have improved results in the way that we have. We're pleased with that, but we are not there yet as when it comes to return. We still have a significant job ahead of us. I wanna underline that the improvements has come in a very difficult environment. It has come because we have taken tough decisions, not because rates have gone up, not because supply and demand has improved.
That gives us a lot of hope, actually, that we have an ability to impact our own future. We've gone from aggressive growth to growing with the market. That allowed us to take out capacity. That allowed us to close unprofitable services. That in itself enabled a network cost reduction by going slower in the system. On top of that, of course, we worked on our variable costs, we worked on our behaviors, stopped doing things that costed money, that is not adding value to the business. We have done, I think, also a pretty good job on procurement, helped a lot by our group procurement team. Finally, by reducing the size of the headquarters, by offshoring work to our service centers, we have also been able to continue a good progression or downwards progression on our administrative cost per container.
Now, the biggest single challenge that we are facing right now in Maersk Line is that the East-West trades are not delivering a decent return. We have just over 40% of our capacity deployed in the East-West trades of Asia to Europe, Transatlantic and Transpacific. We've got to get that business to deliver a reasonable return if we want to achieve our targeted returns. We have a number of initiatives. We're deploying the Triple E ships, we're going into the P3 alliance, and we are working much more on a day-to-day basis with capacity management, canceling sailings when we don't have full ships, and so on. Of course, we will continue to hang on to Daily Maersk, which we do believe gives us lots of opportunities, both to do well with the customers, but also to manage our capacity.
Looking ahead, the Must-Win Battles will also be our strategy for next year, and they will continue to deliver cost improvements. We will have full-year effect of a number of the initiatives that we have taken this year. Morten gave a couple of fairly good examples with how we have reworked our network around how we service the U.S. East Coast from the Middle East and from Asia. Of course, that will get full-year effect next year. We have a number of other ideas on what we can do to the network, and then on top of that, we're building the P3 Alliance. Taking cost out, but also improving the product so we can deliver on commercial excellence as well. Steve just went through this, and I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on it.
For me, it's just important to say that the future will bring a world where we, in a much higher degree than what we are today, will have transactions with our customers that are automated, standardized, and digitized. That will help us deliver a better customer service and take cost out at the same time. Whenever I meet analysts, they always ask, "What is gonna happen to the rates?" We don't actually make rate predictions, and I'm not gonna start today either. What I would like to leave you with is that there are many factors that impact rates. Of course, some of the things we all look at is the order book on the supply side and the global economic growth on demand side. It's more to it than that.
Supply is driven by how much new capacity is coming in, but how much is going out in the form of scrapping, how much is being idled, and how much is being invested into slow steaming. How many weekly cancellations are we doing? There are many factors at play. On the demand side, global economic growth drives our demand, but so does inventory at any given point in the cycle. So does how much is being outsourced offshore in terms of manufacturing, and how we are doing on containerization. I recognize on East-West trades, containerization by and large is done, but North-South trades, it's still an issue. The rate outlook is uncertain, and as Jakob showed in his presentation, you know, there's a significant amount of capacity coming in also next year and probably also more than what demand will grow.
The key point for us to say is that our risk mitigation strategy should be clear. We want to go out there to the industry and have the lowest cost so that we are able to compete in any kind of environment. It also means that if competition wants to take us on in a rate war, we'll be ready, and we will be able to win such a rate war. That's a key point to take away from today. We don't want rate wars, but they are gonna come, and we're gonna have one tomorrow, one next year, who knows. That's just a fact of life in this industry as it is today. If we have the lowest cost, we also have the best chance of coming out of that in a good place.
Now, I just want to end by saying that we are committed to delivering on the medium term objectives that have been defined and further refined here today. Top quartile performer in our industry by delivering a five percentage point margin gap to the average of our peers. Grow with the markets funded by Maersk Line's own capital, cash. We don't want to be burning the group's cash. Finally, of course, we have to deliver stable returns above cost of capital. In the medium term, that means our target of 8.5 percentage points as Søren outlined. Now what I would like to leave you with is what Jakob talked about on improving performance in a tough market.
In terms of the market position that Vincent talked about, the problems, challenges we have on East-West and what we are doing about them and the strengths we have in North-South. Morten's presentation about cost leadership, what we have done and what we can do in the future. Finally, all the stuff that we are working on to become more customer centric, and you take that opportunity which is really out there for us. We are not starting from behind, we are starting from a good place, but we can do much better on customer service.
I hope that excited you a little bit. Welcome back for lunch and thank you for the introduction, Henrik. A bit of a tough act to follow the Maersk Line guys. I'll do my best. Also tough to follow a lunch.
I'm sure that I'm really confident at least that I can excite you with the Maersk Drilling story, and certainly enough to keep you away from the 200 kilometers of books that are in the building. Let me go on and just briefly introduce myself. My name is Claus Hemmingsen. I've been 32 years with A.P. Moller-Maersk and have done a variety of things in that in that time. Also been working in Asia and and been working in Europe and has done a lot of different jobs for Maersk Line and some of the other companies. For the last 8 years, I have been in charge of Maersk Drilling and some of the other offshore units.
Just to put it in perspective of our current plans over those last 8 years, we have actually tripled our revenue in Maersk Drilling and also tripled our results fortunately, so they go hand in hand. I'm privileged to work with a very experienced management team who I'll just briefly introduce. Five guys and girls here. Marianne Sørensen, who has been with the group since 1990, has a lot of experience with the group functions and funding and other finance areas, and she has been my CFO since 2008. Jørn Madsen also started in 1990. All the time, career in Maersk Drilling. Engineer by education and has been in charge amongst other things for our Norwegian operation for a while. Today, my Chief Operating Officer.
Martin Fruergaard since 1989 with the group. Various commercial positions and since 2009, Chief Commercial Officer for Maersk Drilling. Frederik Schmidt, again, 1990. I think 1989, 1990 was a good year. Also with the group and has done a lot of projects, built a lot of rigs, and innovated a lot of technology for Maersk Drilling, and today my Chief Technical Officer since 2010. Finally, Jesper Madsen has been with the group for 12 years and has been my HR manager since 2010. We have a little bit limited time, so I will do the presentations, but now you know who they are, and they are also available for questions afterwards.
Let me just start with putting Maersk Drilling on the map. Just very briefly, we were founded in 1972, meaning that we have been active in offshore drilling for more than 40 years now. We have more than 3,600 employees as we speak now, plus roughly 5,000 employees in a joint venture in Egypt. We have 16 rigs currently operating on the international scene, and 7 rigs that is big, offshore, sophisticated rigs. 7 rigs under building to complement that fleet. In 2012 numbers, our revenue was just short of $1.7 billion. Our EBITDA was $638 million, and our net operating profit last year came close to $350 million.
That's Maersk Drilling in a snapshot by 2012 numbers, and that's really where we start what I would call our second growth phase. Just to quickly recap our strategy as we've also laid forward in the public. It's overall about delivering on the group's ambitions for Maersk Drilling, the one that Nils Smedegaard Andersen alluded to a little bit earlier. $1 billion, easy number to remember, by 2018. At the same time, of course, also living up to the group's requirement for return on invested capital, so definitely above 10% return over the cycle. At the same time, we also have an aim in the industry to conduct incident-free operations, and I'll get back to the safety element of the industry a little bit later in the presentation.
We also have an ambition to become a sizable player in the market, and we have put 30 rigs up there as the number of rigs we need, the big offshore sophisticated rigs, to be a recognized, sizable, significant player in the market where we can constantly be something to our customers and constantly have something to offer. The growth that we are aiming for is within the ultra-deep water area and the ultra-harsh environment, meaning basically Gulf of Mexico, West Africa, Brazil area in the ultra-deep water and the Norwegian North Sea sector for the ultra-harsh environment. What we're really doing is trying to leverage the position that we've built, especially since 1990 in Norway, but also leverage the position we've built the last four years entering into the ultra-deep water market, especially in the Gulf of Mexico and West Africa.
The aim of the presentation today is really to portray to you why this is an attractive industry and why Maersk Drilling is in a good position. I have these four agenda points. I'll talk a little bit about the industry and the drivers for the industry. I'll talk about where is Maersk Drilling today. I'll talk about importantly how do we actually try to execute on the strategy that we have laid out. I will also show you how are the finances looking now and a little bit of history and not so much about what we expect, but at least I'll repeat the guidance that you have already received. In a very, very simplified manner, the whole oil and gas industry has a value chain that looks roughly like this.
There's the upstream, the midstream, and the downstream, and you can see the activities that the oil companies are engaged in within this value stream. The offshore contract drilling is situated all the way to the left. Oil companies in the world, as most of you will know, basically outsource or contract out their requirement for drilling wells and a lot of other services for the drilling industry. But in particular for drilling of the wells they need for both exploration, that means searching for oil based on the seismic and the geology knowledge they have, but also for drilling the development wells that is actually needed to produce the oil.
That is the part of the industry that Maersk Drilling is playing in, and the overall offshore drilling, and this is excluding the land drilling, but the overall offshore drilling industry in 2012 numbers is roughly a revenue base of $44 billion. This is the field that we are in. This is where we see the opportunity to grow and definitely within the attractive segments that I will show you a little bit later. As we just look very simplified, what is a drilling rig? I don't think it comes as a surprise to most people, but a lot of things has happened recently within the drilling rig design, especially the last 10, 15 years.
The rig types here on the left are really the most advanced rigs that have been built ever, and this is where Maersk Drilling is having some of the most sophisticated and most capable rigs in the world fleet today. We start from the recent drill ships that are capable of working in water depths of up to 12,000 feet, and beyond those 12,000 feet, capable of drilling wells down to 40,000 feet of length in any direction. That is the latest design, and the ones we are building, that I will get back to, is definitely top of the pops, as you would say.
The semi-subs, kind of the same features as a drill ship, slightly different capacities, but also capable of drilling in 10,000 feet of water and also capable of making these 40,000 feet long wells. Then finally, the jack-ups, where it stated up here that jack-ups are capable of standing in water depths of up to 500 feet. That is a little bit of a, an overestimation maybe because most of the jack-ups that are able to do that is actually owned by us. Most of the world fleet is capable of standing to 300, 350 feet, some of them to 400 feet. Really this is the most advanced ones, and we are definitely a market leader within that field.
There is also drilling barges and land rigs, and we own some of those, but really our expansion and our plans for the future, our growth opportunity lies within the three types of rigs that you see on the left-hand side of the graph. I will try in the following to demonstrate to you why this is an attractive industry, why there is a need for a massive spending in the upstream arena in order to explore for, find, and produce the oil and gas that is needed to fuel this world's demand for energy. I'll also try to explain why we are concentrating on some of the frontier areas and the more sophisticated areas of the industry, and I also show you what the customer preferences are.
Let me just move into, first and foremost, what is the market actually that we are seeing. If you look at the demand for oil and gas, and the current production, you will see here that, on the left-hand side, 2013, the daily production of oil and gas combined into barrel of oil equivalents is 151 million barrels a day. If you take the current decline, and this is basically not just a forecast, but it's a well-known fact that the oil fields of this world that are producing today are in constant decline, and this decline is roughly about 3% per year.
If you extrapolate that a little bit more than 20 years, 2035, and that is actually not, it's not us who's extrapolating it's the International Energy Agency, then you will find a decline. That was the wrong button. A decline that is rather significant over just a 20-year period. At the same time, if you take the forecasted increase in demand, even with the current economic growth, just short of 1% per annum, you will find here that in 22 years from now, there will be a gap in the world's energy production of more than 110 million barrels of oil and gas equivalents per day, and that relates to the 151 million barrels we produce today.
Obviously, there's a massive need not only to perform exploration drilling to find the oil and gas, but also after that subsequently, to drill for the production wells and to facilitate the production of the resources. If you look at where how does this then stack up mathematically coming from the 151 million barrels that we are producing today and getting to the 183 million barrels that we expect that we will need to be producing in 2035. You will see here that. It's very tempting with this large green one here.
You will see here that we have grouped the land-based oil and gas production, which is of course significant, and little more than 80 million barrels per day is actually land-based out of the 151. The decline, that is the net decline. Even if you find new oil, you will have a net decline in the land-based production of 20 million barrels per day. If you then take the unconventional, that is among others, the tight oil, the shale oil, and the shale gas, and you add that, you can see that combined, that will sort of add a little bit of growth, but first and foremost, it will even out the decline in other land-based production.
Where we are playing in Maersk Drilling, that is really in the offshore markets, and this is again, remind you, net additions, so it's not the overall production, but this is what needed to be added to the current capacities. You can say one way of looking at this is that most of the additional capacity actually will have to come still from the offshore sector, going forward, and much of that will come from the new frontiers, deeper waters, more harsh environment, and more complex drilling operations.
If you take a look at how this stacks up in another way, and this is just to use the same, you will see the dark one here is the land-based production, relatively flat. A little over 0% growth on an annual basis, whereas the offshore production is the one making up for the gap in production in 2035. If you take the offshore and look at where does that then come from, again, you will see the shallow water, which is the easier oil, is relatively flat, whereas all the increase is coming from the deeper waters, especially from the deep and ultra-deep waters, meaning above 5,000 feet and especially above 7,500 feet.
Obviously that is the areas as an offshore driller that we are looking at to expand within, and this is also where we think the world will need the energy to come from. Relatively a very, very strong position to start from. It's actually not a new prediction that we will have the decline, we will have a further demand increase, and we will need to do more to produce energy for the future. If you look at how the offshore industry has developed since 2003 where it really got clear that we had to increase the production, you will see a tremendous increase in expenditure up to the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.
14% on an annual basis is what the revenue base of the offshore drilling contract industry has enjoyed. Some of that of course being inflationary measures, but a tremendous increase in activity, a tremendous increase in the number of rigs working, and a tremendous increase in the exploration and development drilling. We have a little bit of a quiet period, of course, when the crisis hit, it impacted everybody. Also, the oil companies reduced their efforts a little bit, but what we see now is actually that we are back to 2008 levels, and the predictions that we're getting from our customers is that the exploration and production spending will be back on an increasing trend.
If you relate this back to the former chart where we saw where the increase would come from, and you then have to take the next 22 years into perspective, we believe that we will see a dramatic increase on a continued basis in the offshore drilling contracting industry. Part of this additional activity in this period has also led to some very, very significant discoveries. I will not try to cover here all the newfound oil in the world, but just share with you some of the more significant discoveries in the deep waters in Gulf of Mexico, around Brazil, and around Africa, and also in the harsh environment of Norway. The only one I will mention in particular is the Hadrian South field, ExxonMobil.
Huge discovery right after the Macondo crisis, and the reason that that's interesting is because it was the Maersk Developer that drilled the well, and that's of course great. We also like when we find oil for the oil companies. By the way, the Developer was the first rig that was approved to drill after the Macondo incident, and I'm happy to say that all our equipment lived up to the requirements without having to do any modifications before going out. That was a great success. This shows that there's a lot of oil that has been found. Those of you who were here last year will remember from the Maersk Oil presentation that when you find the oil, it takes a lot of years before you actually produce the oil.
The good thing for a drilling contractor is there's a lot of drilling work to be done before all this oil is actually coming off the ground. Adding to the attraction for a drilling contractor in this industry is not only the level of activity that needs to be done. That means there's a lot of new rigs being required. It is more complex areas, so we need an upgrade of technology. We need bigger capacities. If you look at the current rig fleet composition, you will also see that there's a huge amount, and this is all the offshore rigs that are available on a global basis. There's a huge amount of rigs that are already today more than 30 years of age.
I'm not trying to say that some of these rigs cannot be upgraded, and some of them will definitely, a lot of them will operate for a number of years. A lot of them has also reached the limit where you can no longer upgrade them for the complex jobs and the requirements of modern-day offshore drilling. Whether it's gonna happen tomorrow, next year, the year after, within the near future, a lot of these 400 rigs in the offshore sector, almost half of the world capacity, will necessarily leave the scene, in our opinion.
You will see it if we take the floater utilization, and we try to look at rigs built before 2000 and rigs built after 2000, and there was a dramatic technology shift in the beginning of 2000 in terms of what equipment did you put on the rig, how much hook load, how much space, how much capacity. You will see here how the customers has recently reacted on the older rigs, taking down the utilization to the 90%-93%, whereas the newer rigs with all the modern equipment enjoying basically a 100% utilization. We believe that bifurcation will stay with us and will continue and will be even more dramatic as we proceed and as more of the easy oil gets will no longer be able to satisfy the demand.
Clearly a huge sign that new, modern, high-capacity, sophisticated rigs is what the customers need and what the world's energy production requires. Some of you will probably just relate a little bit to those 200 new buildings that were here. In order to answer that question before it's asked, let's look at the floater order book, that is the semi-subs and the drill ships. There's 92 rigs on order today. If you look at how many of those have already gotten a semi-long to long contract as they leave the yard, it is by far the majority of the new order book that already has a customer, already has a job to go to, and will be taken straight from the rig and will never hit the market, so to speak.
That is, of course, because they have hit the market already. Availability today, if you look at from now to end of 2016, is only 28 rigs. There's nothing available for the rest of this year, and there's only 11 rigs available, 2 of them, by the way, being ours, we'll get back to that, available for the 2014 period, and there are 17 rigs being available for 2015 and 2016, in total.
If we look at the new order book, if we look at the demand, if we look at the way that the uptake has been contracting these rigs, we think still that it's an incredibly positive picture and we, in our mind, has very little doubt that we will continue to enjoy for the modern, sophisticated, and high-capacity rigs 100% utilization going forward. That was my few words to try to illustrate to you that the industry is attractive. There's incredible demand. There's a need for a very, very huge increase in activity. There's a need for the new rigs that are being built. Now I'll try to turn the story a little bit to how is Maersk Drilling then positioned today.
As you will see from our geographical positioning, there's a very big overlap on where we already are to the areas where I said the deepwater segment is in particularly developing, and of course also to our presence in the harsh environment of Norway. Our key areas are the ultra harsh environment and the ultra deepwater. The number of rigs that we have today is only 16, you may say. Some would say only, but I'm very comfortable that it's 16 of the best rigs that are out there. I will get back to the ultra deepwater and the ultra harsh environment. We have left the premium jackup segment out of here, but it's in your appendix in your book, so you can read a little bit about that segment there.
I'll tell you a little bit later about what is maybe not so core to our business. Let's start with the ultra deepwater. Maersk Drilling decided some years ago, it was actually in 2005, but it takes a little bit of time to design and develop and build a rig. We went into the deepwater market in 2009. One rig in, at that time, the Gulf of Mexico. We follow up with a rig in Australia and one rig in Angola. Today, those three rigs are still in the Gulf of Mexico, one in Angola, and one is now in the Mediterranean.
I'll just say repeatedly about the market, there's a significant demand for these rigs, and there's a real need to further development all these discoveries that has been made. You should think about the amount of money that the oil companies has already spent in finding that oil. There's a definite need and a high desire to also start producing that oil. That the current new building order will be absorbed, I've already illustrated, but let me point to the fact in one other way and just say that the number of rigs, if you take that as the demand curve since we have 100% utilization, of course, we have seen a sharp increase, but we've also seen throughout the period, and as I've just shown you in the coming period, that there will actually be 100% utilization.
We've also seen on the day rates that it's a little bit scattered, but I think everybody can get the clear trend. Again, a little bit of a dip when the crisis were on and activity was just a little bit uncertain. Apart from that, we are still enjoying all-time high day rates in the markets. How Maersk Drilling is portrayed there, it is not because age and capacity is necessarily linked. In the deepwater market, it is actually the case that the new rigs far outperform the older rigs. Therefore, age in this market and age of the fleet is very, very synonymous to the attractiveness and the capacity. You will see here that Maersk Drilling is very well positioned with the second youngest fleet in the floater segment.
You will see on the right-hand side of this graph, our contract positioning, where the 5 of the rigs are enjoying solid coverage for the years to come and good options for a couple of them. Of course, our opportunity lies with the 2 uncontracted rigs that are being delivered from Samsung during 2014. We are not worried, not yet at least, that these will enjoy a contract, and we are in very advanced discussions with several oil companies. It comes back to the fact that out of these 11 availabilities for 2014, we have 2, and we actually believe that that is an opportunity. Again, solid contract coverage going forward for most of the rigs we have in this segment.
If we turn to Norway, we have been active in Norway since 1990, and we actually claim that we invented the jackup drilling for Norway. We built rigs that were slightly more durable, slightly higher capacities, and we actually replaced the floater segment in Norway with jackup rigs that could work on the shelf. We've had a leading position since 1990 in Norway, and that's definitely one that we both enjoy and one that we will fight to keep. I will show you that a little bit later as well. Norway is a market that is relatively small, but there are high barriers to entry. It is expensive equipment, and it is very, very regulated, and you have to really comply and be good at what you do.
That is both something that we are good at, so it plays right to our heart. It is also something that we have actually been able to leverage as we go out on the deep water and other places and say, "Well, whatever we have learned and whatever we've gotten out of efficiencies and way of operating in Norway, that's actually what we have taken out of that segment and gone global with." In this market, you have seen recently or the recent years that the new buildings most of them coming in is actually supported by long-term contracts, as we also proved yesterday. If you look at the market, yes, the market is of course smaller, but you will see throughout 10 years, 11 years actually, 100% utilization. You will see day rates that has increased.
I'm happy to say that most of these dots up here, they are naturally when we have a leading position, and we are talking jackups only, most of these dots are set by Maersk Drilling, and we will continue to place the dots in the right area up here as we go forward. 100% utilization and a very, very solid market forecast. This is our positioning compared to the competitors in this market, and I'll just remind you that in Norway, you cannot just take jackups in from other places in the world. The rigs have to be purpose-built, and they have to fulfill very, very strict requirements. It's a small market, but it's also one that is relatively difficult to enter. We have six of the nine rigs operating in Norway as we speak.
We have three rigs coming in, and actually as of yesterday, we have four rigs coming in. We enjoy a very good position. The good position is further demonstrated by the even more solid contract coverage that we have with our equipment in Norway. Very close to our heart and one position that we will further leverage on and build on going forward. Last slide on our positioning. I'll just mention the two segments that may be for those of you who have studied Maersk Drilling know that it's not really connected in any big way to the sophisticated and deep water, harsh environment, offshore drilling. We have two very good businesses in Egypt and in Venezuela.
The Egypt joint venture with the Egyptian state oil company has been in force for more than 35 years. It's a $400 million+ revenue business with 5,500 local employees. Very skilled and running smoothly for almost all of this period, and also having run smoothly through the last couple of years with upheaval in Egypt. One good business, but as I said, not something that is really connected to the rest of Maersk Drilling's activities. Venezuela, 10 drilling barges. We've been there since 1992. Also solid business, $200 million of revenue. Everybody knows that Venezuela is a challenging place to operate. But we have actually had enjoyed both good results, also a good ability.
Many of you asked me that question yesterday, "Can you actually repatriate the money that you earn?" Yes, we can. Very good operations. One thing that I have to admit is that they pay a little bit slowly, but that is how Venezuela is. As of last week, we decided to divest if and when the timing is right. We actually decided to open that process, and we have informed the state oil company. We've informed our employees that we will be seeking a new and better owner for this activity since it is getting further and further away from the rest of what we do in Maersk Drilling.
Divestment if, when timing is right and if a divestment is a good business proposition because if it's not, it's actually two rather okay businesses to run. We'll get a little bit back to that. That was actually my words on positioning of Maersk Drilling. Now you know the markets that we find attractive within a very attractive industry. You know how our starting point is. If we take 2012, we have positioned us into this starting point very determined since 2005. Sold off older rigs, sold off rigs that were not in the right spot, and expanded our rig fleet where we think it made sense for this future.
Let me talk a little bit about how we then execute on the strategy ambition that we have, because that's obviously very, very important. Strategy messages cannot be repeated too often. Just remind you, it's all about reaching a billion-dollar net operating profit in 2018. It's about reaching a sizable size, a significant size. I've just one comment here. The 30 rigs is not related to the $1 billion. We do not need 30 rigs to make a $1 billion profit, but 30 rigs is the size of the company we think will really make sense and be significant in the industry and within the segments that I've already talked to you about. If you look at how we execute. Let me just spend a moment on safety.
No offense to you, but had it not been with this audience, I think this slide would have been number one or two, because in the company, safety always comes first, and that's always something that we start out with. To us, safety is extremely close to our heart. As was said in the video, when we send people out to work, there's only one priority, and that is that they come back in the same shape. Any incident, any accident out there has a risk of have a consequence of bodily harm or permanent injuries or even slight injuries, and we simply do not want that to happen.
Safety is first and foremost a driver in this company, and much of the technology that we actually put on board the rigs are to get people away from harm's way, and we have been relatively successful with that. We still have incidents. We still have a drive to get to zero incidents by 2018. That's not gonna be easy. It's gonna require a lot of work. In the meantime, we are having a sort of positive trend and are performing relatively okay. I just have to say, as long as we do have incidents, there are incidents to be eradicated. Very, very close to our heart with the safety performance. Execution to reach $1 billion is also about growth. We can obviously not reach $1 billion with the fleet we have today.
I've already alluded to some of this, but we are building four ultra-deepwater drill ships in Samsung Heavy Industries in Korea, an investment of $2.6 billion. They are becoming ready as we speak almost, one of them to be delivered by the end of 2013, the three of them to be delivered in 2014, and two of them already having significant contracts with ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil in the Gulf of Mexico and ready to go very soon. In addition to that, three ultra-harsh environment rigs for Norway being built at Keppel FELS, $1.9 billion in total and very satisfactory. Jesus Christ.
The three contracts that we have for these three units, very significant, very firm with prime customers in the Norwegian market who we know not only has the scope of work for the duration of this contract here or these contracts, but also have the scope of work to actually continue with the rigs, after that. That's obviously something to be negotiated. In addition to that, as you saw yesterday and we're very pleased to just having landed a contract with BP for $812 million, five years minimum, and options to extend the contract for up to 10 years.
Against that, we have ordered a rig with Daewoo, similar rig to the other three harsh environment rigs that we are building in Singapore, but with some special upgrades and equipment since it's gonna do very, very particular jobs for BP on the Valhall field in Norway. Obviously, standing here in front of you and having 7 rigs on order before we prepared this presentation and being able to land this additional one, showing that we are further on track to reach size and our strategic aims are just fantastic opportunity. It's not all about just the number of rigs and the size of the fleet and the availability to the customers. It's also about how we make a difference.
We have through time, Maersk Drilling has actually five times in our 40-year history built the largest and the most sophisticated jackup in the world fleet in the drilling, in the oil drilling space. We're also focusing a lot, as I said, on safety, a lot of automation, a lot of mechanization. One of the prime projects we have right now is what we call the 20K project, a project that will enable drilling to in reservoirs with 20,000 PSI pressures. If you wonder what 20,000 PSI pressure is like, there's about 34 in your car tire, so you can try to divide that. It's a big bang if it goes. There's actually not many places on land that you operate with pressures like this.
Temperatures up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Really, the project here with BP is not just to make, for those of you that are in the industry, it's not only to make a blowout preventer that can hold the pressure of 20,000 PSI. It's really to make a drilling rig that is all integrated with full capacity to run these very, very complex drilling programs in an optimal way and of course, in a very, very safe way. We have the ability to develop this technology together with BP. We have engineers stationed in each other's offices in Houston and in Copenhagen, and we work a lot with equipment suppliers to get to the right design and the right capabilities here. Of course, one aim is that this would lead to contracts with BP.
They are the biggest license holder on the high-pressure, deepwater, oil and gas reserves. They believe that technology like this could actually lead to 10 billion-20 billion barrels of resources yet to be found and developed. Obviously, that's one aim, getting contracts with BP, building rigs to this survey or this requirement. To be able to use this technology, and we will be able to use this technology with other customers in the same arena. This is one example, but one of the huge ones of technological development that Maersk Drilling is embarking on. Turning to the forward coverage. I've already shown you the sort of on the individual rig types that we have long contracts and so on.
Actually looking at this picture, I think that outperforms any of our competitors in the marketplace. Obviously, we are sold out for 2013. We are having almost sold out for 2014. As we go further out, of course, the percentages are decreasing, but this is actually a very, very firm and significant earnings visibility if you check around in the marketplace. Very solid forward contract coverage, and this is by the end of Q2 , by the way, so this is what the knowledge or the public knowledge was about at that time. Since that time, we have made two contract extensions.
One for Maersk Giant, one year, $137 million worth of revenue, and a two-year extension for Maersk Brigand in the U.K. at $170 million worth of revenue. Of course, you can top that with the $812 million for the XLE4 that we announced yesterday. I think I can be pretty proud with my commercial team and the rest of the organization who has actually, since end of Q2 , added $1.1 billion to our revenue backlog for the coming period. Very significant, and again, adding a lot of security and a lot of visibility to our earnings potential.
This is shifting a little bit, but part of the growth plan, when we say a lot of new rigs, having them on contract, having customers, having revenue, of course, there's one thing that is pretty essential, and that is that we actually get the rigs delivered on time, that they work, and that we are ready to go out as per plan. This is, we didn't have time to add, XLE4 here, but this is the 7 new buildings that was an order so far. A huge emphasis and a huge focus on us, of course, is that not only do they get delivered on time, but first and foremost, that they are fully commissioned, that they are ready to operate when they leave the shipyard.
A lot of talk about delays in the business right now on new buildings. We are having some insignificant delays on some of these rigs. As you can see here, they are basically running to schedule. They are all running on budget, and they are all running definitely within the contracts that we have made to the customers. There's no exposure on that part. Huge focus area on our part, of course, to get these rigs out. It's a huge investment. They need to be managed, and they need to be monitored and controlled properly. Having talked about the new buildings, there's also a lot of talk in the industry about the people that has to run these new buildings. This is just a graph showing actually part of what we call our Plan 3000.
We have made a very, very elaborate plan for how many people do we need if we need to reach the 30 rig size. That is actually 3,000 new hires. 1,300 of these 3,000 is needed for the first 7 rigs, and that is why part of that plan is portrayed here. You will see that we are filling vacancies, employing people to a very, very large degree for rigs that are being delivered by the end of the year and into 2014. Also for the first jack-up for Norway, already now, a lot of people employed. It is actually close to 400 people out of the 1,300 that is already on payroll. We are raising their competence levels, spending a lot of money on training.
That is all to make sure that when the rigs are delivered and they work, that we also have the crews ready to man the rigs and work the best possible for our customers. Actually, we have for all of these rigs, on top of that, roughly one-third of the people that will be on board will actually be known Maersk Drilling employees that knows our systems, knows our way of operating, knows our philosophy. A very good picture to look at, and everything is on track. You will note that there's no blue spots here, and that means that we have no vacancies within that plan that is actually overdue. The whole purpose of doing this is to achieve this going forward.
The operating uptime of our fleet has been actually pretty good, to use a modest word, since 2009. Not only has it been good, but it's also been fairly consistent throughout those years. We are having first half 2013, a little over 96% operational uptime. I would dare say that is rather outstanding in the industry and one thing that we are very, very proud of. This to us also proves that the machinery is one thing, that is half of our asset. The other half of our asset is the people we have out there and the people who operate it, and that's really, in our view, what makes the difference between us and some of the competitors. That's one that we are building very, very firmly on, going forward.
Very solid uptime, very consistent, and one thing that we definitely work to keep and improve on. That was kind of the execution. We've now looked at the industry. We have looked at where we are, 2012 being sort of, if not the starting point, then the midpoint in our growth, and how we're looking at execution, executing on that growth and how our immediate future looks. Let's look a little bit about how the financials look for Maersk Drilling.
I brought this graph along here to just illustrate that as we went back, if you remember the graph from before, where the industry in general had a 1% annual growth rate from 2009 to 2012, Maersk Drilling has actually enjoyed 16% annual growth rate way above the industry. Just to qualify a little bit, if you take this year back to 2005, our revenue in 2005 was roughly $500 million. That's why I mentioned before, it's a tripling of the revenue up to 2012. The EBITDA levels are following that graph, and I will just qualify 2012.
As some of you know, we had a rig in particular last year where we had unexpected and extensive maintenance, which meant that we were delayed on a contract in the Mediterranean. That actually harmed our EBITDA rather significantly for 2012. That's what we reckon was a one-off, I think, $80 million-$90 million. You cannot call it a bump on the road, but it was a one-off, and it was a particular case and one that we have addressed since in our systems, in our procedures, in our maintenance protocol. One thing that we certainly do not expect to hit us again. Net operating profit follows the same trend with the dip in 2012 for the same reasons.
Here you just see the first half result almost reaching the same level as the full year last year. Therefore, we also have issued the guidance that Maersk Drilling 2013 will be significantly above 2014. I will in a moment, just before you get it down on your notes, try to warn you against not just doubling that number to get to the 2013 or 2014 result. The growth that we have enjoyed from 2009 to 2012 obviously is also in the plan to continue for the years to come.
This is why we have tried to say, okay, the revenue backlog that you saw in percentages before, how much is that actually in billions of dollars in the years to come? How much of that does it actually secure our top-line earnings for the year to come? On top of these numbers, because this is also quarter two numbers, you can add the $1.1 billion contract value that we have added to our portfolio in the last couple of months. Not only is it a solid revenue and earnings potential and visibility, but you will also see, and I would definitely vouch for that the customers that we hold this now $7.7 billion total of revenue with are prime customers, definitely credit worthy.
More importantly, customers that are involved with exactly the place that we are attracted by, exactly the fields and the areas and the type of drilling work that we are positioning ourselves for. Also on a customer base, not only do we have a loyal relationship with these customers, but a long-term relationship, but it's also the right relationship going forward. Also in this way, a pretty good situation. This is also what will lead if you look at our EBITDA margins. 2009, you remember that we went into deep water in 2009.
We had a lot of the 9 rigs we built in the past delivered in 2008, 2009, and 2010. You'll see significantly how we repositioned the company in terms of EBITDA and how we have outperformed the average industry and gotten close to the top quartile in the industry in the meantime. 2012, obviously, the dip that I was alluding to before, but in 2013 again, trending towards the 50% and trending towards top quartile. Top quartile is definitely our aim to be in when you talk about EBITDA and EBIT margins. It will all be achieved by improving our operational efficiency along the ways that you saw in the other graph. Having the right segments, being in the right assets, and also focusing on the segments and geographies that provide these margins here.
At the same time, we have a little bit of an opportunity in the portfolio optimization. However, it is probably limited to the two activities that I shown you in the other graph. To qualify my warning against not just extrapolating the current numbers, when we invest heavily in people up front, in training, in competence building, in really making sure, trying to make sure that as we go out there, as we go into operation in some of these very, very complex drilling operations, that we can do it maintaining the high uptime. It of course all has a cost.
If you look at when we place the order for the drill ships in 2011, year zero, for instance, and we take year 3 when the rig is delivered from the yard and we commence operation, we have cost that is not CapEx cost incurred, and the closer we get, the higher they become. People salaries, training courses, familiarization on board our current rigs, et cetera, et cetera, to the tune of $20 million-$30 million per rig. That is cost that we incur on assets that we still do not have, and long before we actually start earning revenue on these assets. I don't think it would hurt so much if we had sort of an annual building program of a couple of rigs, and we already had the 30 rig size.
You can imagine having a rig size of 16, having 7 and now 8, but the 8th one is out there in 2016, fortunately. Having 8 rigs coming in the next 12 months- 18 months, this picture will have a significant impact on our outright P&L earnings potential. That is a fact of life. It is the cost of growing rapidly based on a relatively medium size. A cost. I don't think Nils will appreciate that I say we are happy to have it, but it's one that we feel we need to have, one that we have to have in order to secure our revenue when the rigs are delivered and really getting a prime operation. In addition to that, probably most of you own a car or hope to own one or probably own one.
As you know that they have to be checked now and again, and so does a drilling rig. We actually have six rigs within next year that has to come into the yard for a five-year class survey. That is just a fact of the industry. These rigs are working, they're getting hammered, they're really doing a tough job, and some of the equipment out there just needs to be certified and checked both for safety reasons, but also for integrity and performance reasons. Unfortunately, we have six rigs needing that survey in the same year. Quite some of those, you say the Developer, Deepwater Semi, Gallant, Reacher, Norway, Ice Environment rigs, Discoverer, high-earning rig in Egypt. It's not so much the cost of the survey and to drag the rigs in. That's bad enough as it is.
It's 300 days of lost revenue. Again, it is equal to what other people in the industry is suffering. When you have 10 rigs and you have 6 rigs hitting us at the same time, it kind of makes a dent. The good thing is that the next time they will go in is 2019, so then we can take a little breather there. That was just to qualify and to warn you against when you see the first half earnings and you look three, you know, second half, first half, second half next year, be a little bit careful with just extrapolating the line. As much as we would like to, I don't think I can promise you that performance.
To finish up the presentation and to qualify our abilities, this is just another way of looking at our history over the last four years. As we have a huge growth ambition and we aspire to become a big company, significant not only within our market, but significant also in terms of the A.P. Moller - Maersk group, delivering on the $1 billion zero incident strategy that we have. We have actually enjoyed and outperformed in terms of growth, both the average and the top quartile of the industry. In terms of the EBITDA growth, likewise, the bump on the road in 2012, but still a trend that is solid. In terms of return on invested capital with the first half 2013 result actually topping the markets, to our great satisfaction.
A very good track record and a very good position to be in. Final slide. I hope that I have given you a sense of a very, very attractive industry. An industry with somewhat high barriers to entry, very complex technology, very complex and challenging operations, a complex people situation where actually having the right people, the right organization in place is paramount to our operations. Our positioning in the industries will leave you with a very, very good impression. On top of that, we have a very high contract coverage, earning visibility. If we do our job properly, it's very, very high. The investments now, not in $4.5 billion, but in $5.1 billion cater for the growth in the first three years of our plans, definitely.
We have to manage the newbuilding program. We have good signs that is going well. Staying on the ball and really making sure that we get the rigs out on time and on budget. Very importantly, a strong operational performance that has actually been proven over the last four years very consistently and giving us very high level of confidence. My final remarks would be that the team here who hasn't been allowed to say much, but that is because of the time, and me, we are all well on track, very enthusiastic and very excited about reaching $1 billion in 2018, executing as per our plans and really delivering as promised. I hope I have left you almost as excited with our story and with these words.
I just thank you for your attention.