Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to the Nexans first quarter 2022 financial information conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to one of our operators. I would now like to turn the call over to your host for today's conference, Mr. Christopher Guérin, Nexans CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, sir. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for participating in Nexans conference call. I'm Chris Guérin, CEO of Nexans. With me, Jean-Christophe Juillard, Deputy CEO and CFO, and as well, Élodie Robbe-Mouillot, Nexans IR. I will now turn you over to Élodie, who will go over the conference call rules.
Thank you, Chris. I would like to remind participants that statements made during the conference call which are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Readers and listeners are strongly encouraged to refer to the disclaimers which are an integral part of our universal registration document, along with the audio replay of today's call that will be posted on our website, nexans.com. I now turn you over to Chris, who will go over the first quarter 2022 highlights.
Thank you. As you can see, Nexans started the year with a very strong quarter one, with many of the results ahead of our internal expectations, and we anticipate a very solid performance through all the year 2022. This performance is supported with a broad-based demand for our innovative solutions launched in 2021, driving solid double-digit growth across all business groups and as well supported by our SHIFT program. If I want to sum up in two minutes, the Q1 results, let me give you five main points. First, an acceleration of our value-driven growth thanks to innovation development.
Point number two, the fantastic crisis management of Ukraine situation by Nexans Auto Harnesses that in spite of circumstances have generated 16% organic growth and will be even more in Q2 due to the high level of satisfaction of our key customers willing now to bring us even much more share. Point number three, first days of Nexans with the Centelsa company. As you can see, Centelsa have generated more than EUR 29 million EBITDA. Thanks to our synergy program on SHIFT program, we aim to deliver EUR 12 million synergy per year. Four points, our Industry 4.0 with Schneider Electric is well on track in order to enhance our tomorrow's competitiveness in electrification. I will develop this part a bit later.
Last but not least, on ESG side, our ambitious 2030 climate target has been validated this week by SBTi. Voilà, for the main point. If I go now to slide four. Before I turn the call to JC for the detail of our first quarter financials, as it is the first release of our Winds of Change, new strategic chapter, let me remind you our value proposition.
Our strategic intention is to become a pure player of electrification. We consider the next 10 years will benefit mainly to pure player, not anymore generalist in all sectors. Because a pure player is focusing all its resource, capital, R&D into one single direction in order to enhance and accelerate value creation.
This choice of becoming a pure player helps to simplify our process, our organization, focusing on the key elements of transformation, amplifying them, then our impact. Of course, facing better potential headwinds coming from the market in the future. Our promise is to deliver benchmark result at scale for the electrification and become the most profitable company of the sectors while deploying an innovative and systemic company performance model around these three pillars, economics, environment, and engagement.
Just in terms of macro perspective, if I go to slide five, why Nexans will accelerate into electrification? As you know, the demand for electricity will grow by 20% because the world population keeps growing, and we need to accelerate the momentum on electrify everything to accelerate the world decarbonation.
In our view, we are at the beginning of a huge electrical revolution that will have the same magnitude as all investments made between 1950 and 1970 in the world. Because most of the generation of energy, power grid installations have been built during that period. Still today, the generation of the world energy depends 8% from fossil fuels that needs to be replaced by decarbonated energy. As you know as well, the average grid age, the average power grid age in Europe is about 45-50 years, and 45 years in North America. The whole age of power grid in those regions is a concern, as the network cable lifespan was estimated at that time in 1970 at about only 30 years.
In other words, there has been significant under-investment for the last 10-20 years according to the region, and the risk of power outage is increasing month after month. Power grid is the backbone of country's economy. The electricity go through millions of kilometers of cables every day. When infrastructure fail, it's not only direct asset damage, but the life stops.
Due to the aging infrastructure intensity of climate risk, each nations needs to massively invest to modernize and fortify its electrical infrastructure. Last but not least, Usages require much safer, robust, low carbon cables to avoid the dramatic statistic of fire starting into a building every 2- minutes in the world. Majority due to electricity unsafe installation. I know that all of you will have some question on the risk of inflation, potential recession.
We know that the world is not linear, and we will face higher complexity in the future and as well, of course, risk, as we can see, for the last two years, sanitary, geopolitical, and climate. At least for the electrification, we are at the beginning of our hyper cycle of demand that we should not underestimate. Anyway, this will help Nexans to enhance its selectivity and drive significant value creation in coming years. Just for a matter of time, I will jump now straight to slide seven, with a word, of course, on Ukraine. The ongoing war in Ukraine is an unconscionable tragedy, and that has resulted in a massive humanitarian crisis. Our thoughts go to all the families of those affected.
I would like to thank first to all our employees in Ukraine that keep working since day one of the invasion. Our unit run in February and March around 80%-90%, 85% load rate versus nominal capacity in average for Q1. Now we are back in April, back to 100%. As you can see, our quarterly organic growth for the entire automotive harnesses business is about 16%, which is very impressive.
I want to thank the management team and all the people in Ukraine because the way Nexans team managed this major crisis is just exceptional on all aspect. You have to know that we have never, ever disrupt any top customers over the period. Since few days, we received many congratulation letters for the agility and professionalism of the crisis management mode of Nexans team.
This customer satisfaction is followed by more business development on market share increase for the next months. At present, the only thing I can say, because business is going well for us, is that we hope for cessation of hostilities as soon as possible on the return to diplomacy in the country. If we go now to acquisition, page eight. Two weeks ago, with part of my team, we were in Colombia. We were in Cali to meet our new Centelsa unit, roughly a $340 million company generating an EBITDA today of EUR 29 million pre-synergy. It's a world-class asset, and together we aim to deliver a $12 million synergy minimum per year. A squad team has been put in place.
The integration manager will focus on all traditional synergy levers. As you know, we have as well the SHIFT Performance program that will play a major role, specifically on cash generation aspect and of course EBITDA. Of course, more information to come on Centelsa. Now let me hand over to Jean-Christophe who will comment on the first quarter 2022 financial. Jean-Christophe?
Thank you, Chris. If we move to page number 10, you can see that over the first quarter of 2022, our sales went up organically 6.1% from quarter one of 2020, with revenue increasing from EUR 1.5 billion- EUR 1.6 billion. However, what is interesting to notice, if we exclude the metallurgy segment that you recall, we purposely want to reduce to sell Nexans first and reduce the dilutive effect of that business. If we exclude the metallurgy segment, the sales of Nexans are strongly up with a +16.3% organic growth. Where is this solid growth coming from?
First, if you look at the electrification business, and I will come back to the electrification business later in the presentation, but if you look at that segment, electrification businesses are up 21.4% in Q1 2022, reflecting the global accelerated trend in electrification markets. The non-electrification businesses, namely Industry & Solutions and Telecom & Data segments, are up 7.1%. Sales in what we call other activities, which are mainly related to the metallurgy business, are down 26.3%, which is again in line with a continuous reduction in metallurgy sales as per Nexans strategy.
If we move to the next slide on page 11, you can see that consistent with our 2022-2024 equity story presented last year, our business segments have been reorganized around six groups and electrification segments. Some electrification segments have been renamed. High Voltage & Projects is now replaced by Generation & Transmission. Building and Territories segment is now split in territories first that we rename Distribution and building, which is now called Usages.
The segment Industry & Solutions, Telecom & Data and Others, which is again, mainly the metallurgy business remain unchanged. You can see that on this slide, Generation & Transmission, Distribution and Usages, which are part of the electrification group, have significantly increased in organic growth, +21.4% in Q1. Each of the segment piece of the electrification business have seen double-digit growth.
The strong growth momentum is driven by solid underlying drivers, namely the robust electrification trend, supporting all our markets all over the world, and our innovation and premium offering beyond cables. If I move to the next slide and we dig into each of the, I would say, sub-segment of the electrification business, I will start first with the Generation and Transmission, formerly again High Voltage & Projects. If we look at Q1 2022, organic growth of that sub-segment is up more than 47% in Q1 versus last year. The main reason of this very high organic growth is a contribution of the Charleston plant, the unique subsea high-voltage manufacturing plant in the United States.
The contribution of our two cable laying vessels, namely Nexans Aurora and the Skagerrak, which had very busy installation schedule in Q1 of 2022. Of course, the growth of our backlog, our subsea backlog, and also a very positive mix contribution of project phasing. Also a high quality adjusted backlog. If we look at the backlog of this Generation & Transmission business, is at a record level of EUR 2.4 billion, which is a 50% growth versus the same period of last year. During this quarter of 2022, we booked significant orders like a turnkey contract for the Dieppe Le Tréport offshore wind farm in France, and the installation contract for the Revolution Wind offshore wind farm in the U.S. with Ørsted.
Finally, as you may see on the right-hand side of the slide, Halden and Charleston plants are fully loaded for 2022, and 90% loaded for the next two years. With a project pipeline reaching over EUR 20 billion, we are very confident in loading our plants beyond 2024 with high value projects. Now if I turn on slide 13, and we look now into the segment called Distribution, which is formerly Territories.
The first quarter sales were up 14.9% with a sound demand consistent with the grid upgrade investment and market share increase through our platinum account. If we look at the region, North America was up sharply thanks to a booming market and Nexans solid position in that market. Europe was up reflecting contract renewals and a robust demand.
In Asia Pacific, Australia and New Zealand delivered some growth while China suffered from local imposed lockdowns. South America remains stable while Middle East and Africa was up thanks to a strong demand, mainly in Morocco. We kickstart 2022 confidently with a Distribution backlog up 41% versus last year. As part of our Amplify program, we launched in Q4 2021 ULTRACKER.
By using the Nexans ULTRACKER solution, users can optimize every stage of the drum life cycle from the date of delivery to the date the drum is empty, delivering substantial financial benefits. The solution has been deployed at scale in 20 countries and more than 30 key users. For these client accounts, sales have been tripling compared to the non-users. The accelerated sales growth witnessed with ULTRACKER users evidence the benefit of our strategy to offer product and services beyond cables.
If I move to page 14 and we look at the Usages of energy, formerly the building sub-sector, sales were up 14.8% thanks to robust demand, and this despite our selectivity on value and premium customers against pure volume. The performance of Usages segment is outstanding due to number one, our continued effort for premium, and number two, the push for SHIFT Performance and SHIFT Prime.
The MOBIWAY and ULTRACKER offers launched globally as part of the Amplify program had strong momentum as clients increasingly recognize the value of leveraging innovative products and end-to-end solution. The group reached a new record with 17,000 ULTRACKER connected drums in the world. Across the various geographies, demand was quite dynamic in the Usages business, supported by a booming North American market, a solid demand momentum in Europe and Africa, as well as in the Middle East.
Only Asia Pacific was slightly down, again, due to the local lockdowns. Our backlog is strongly up 21% versus last year, also demonstrating the strong positive trend. If I move to page 15, and we look now at our non-electrification business. Mainly, namely Industry & Solutions and Telecom & Data. Industry & Solutions performance was robust with a 5.5% organic growth in Q1, supported by sustained demand in Auto-harnesses and automation markets, mainly.
Auto-harnesses is strongly up, as Chris said, +15.6% in the first quarter of 2022. The strong momentum was supported by market share gains despite the war in Ukraine. Our three plants located in the western part of the country have been producing, as Chris said, at around 85% capacity, and we are even back to normal in April.
Automation, which is robotics, had solid growth in sales, 15.6% organic growth, boosted by strong demand in Southern Europe and Asia. In transport, aerospace continued to recover from COVID-19, and rolling stock was challenged by a slowdown in demand, mainly in Asia. Telecom and Data with a 14.3% organic growth showed sound improvement in telecom infrastructure, thanks to good fiber deployment in Europe and a sustained demand in special telecom where the backlog remains strong. LAN sub-business was down amid greater selectivity following the implementation of the SHIFT Performance program. If I move now to a key topic which is basically the cost and raw material access, which are obviously the hot topics of this beginning of 2022.
We just want to remind you with this slide on page 16 that about 80% of our direct costs are passed through or are hedged. We have no impact, I would say in terms of margin or cash, about 80% for our direct costs. The remaining part is mainly managed through active pricing management from Nexans. We want to draw your attention on our solid inflation mitigation measures embedded in our operation and to the fact we are balancing successfully supply chain and raw material challenges. I will conclude with slide 17 with the 2022 guidance. We confirm our 2022 guidance as presented in February during our 2021 financial presentation. I remind you that this 2022 guidance exclude acquisition divestment.
Centelsa acquisition we just closed on April 1 is not included in this guidance. EBITDA is confirmed between EUR 500 million and EUR 540 million, normalized free cash flow between EUR 150 million and EUR 200 million. These assumptions, of course, are based on the current macroeconomic environment, and we're assuming no material impact from further impact from COVID. Last, as mentioned in the full-year result, we will propose at our May 11 general assembly a dividend of EUR 1.2 per share, which represents a 71% uptick versus last year. Now I will turn back to Chris for the conclusion.
Thank you, Jean-Christophe. Let's move to page 19. Here is just a snapshot of all our transformation platform. All our strategic initiative on transformation initiative continue to yield very good results. What we found out, the more we are digging into, is the potential for Nexans remains huge in terms of yield. You know, we have two types of transformation program. The two first, which is about Amplify and SHIFT Prime, is all about value creation, thanks to innovations, brand equity, new services, supported by all our new organization around Design Labs, and focusing only on platinum and gold customers. I remind you that those two initiatives are supposed to bring EUR 90 million of EBITDA contribution by 2024 just for the scope of electrification.
We should make significant progress already in 2022. Of course, we will give you more highlight on their impact with the financials of H1. The deployment of the Industry 4.0 on product procurement performance is helping as well to reduce the price cost squeeze effect. We aim to make an improvement here, net improvement of EUR 15 million after price cost squeeze effect. We are well on track there. Of course, there is the strategic CapEx of Halden and Charleston, which is ongoing. In terms of EBITDA contribution will materialize in 2024. Just a snapshot on two new levers that or one new lever that we developed. First, we had one on SHIFT project execution, specifically for high voltage business.
You know that we already have the SHIFT project modeling, which is to make sure that we are choosing the right profile of project for our future aggregate growth. We discuss about it already over the last two years. It is implemented, it's starting to be implemented in 2020. Now we are launching a new SHIFT project, a new SHIFT program dedicated to a project base. It's about risk management, variation orders, cost optimization within the project execution in order to keep improve our high voltage performance ratio.
Last but not least, we still have, you know, because we are raising the bar every year in terms of average of EBITDA, so we have still some units lagging behind in terms of return on capital employed, specifically in the Industry & Solutions and Usages sectors. We will open up SHIFT Performance work stream again, on the value burners of yesterday are not the same of today, of course. Once again, we believe that we can drive much more performance, which is not yet embedded in our 2024 objective, thanks to this focus on those units. More to come in H1. If I go to page 20, let's focus on the Industry 4.0 journey.
I would say that in 2021 it was a kind of work in progress with two European plants as a pilot to assess the digital transformation potential. What we found out is presenting a huge potential that will benefit the entire company. 2022 will be marked by the transformation of those sites into factories 4.0, and the launch of a massive digitalization project to further improve the efficiency of production lines through dashboards, real-time monitoring of our lines, collaborative tools. The second aspect is predictive maintenance based on sensors and data analytics, and energy monitoring. We know that energy monitoring and analytics will be a key enablers to reduce the cost and of course our CO2 emission.
This aim is really to accelerate the transformation of Nexans into business driven with clear data and foundation on improved performance in all our unit. Of course, we are making significant progress thanks to the fantastic team of Schneider Electric. Page 21. As you know, we cannot manage the company in a silo mode, and we have to take into consideration the deployment of all three pillars, which are the economics, the environment, and the engagement on this across the entire organization. We have introduced the E3 tool during our full year 2021 result. Since then we have launched more than three pilots in electrification that will be deployed all the years.
Of course, we have incentivized short-term and long-term all our top managers in this E3 way of doing. As a responsible player, aware that natural resources are limited, we are accelerating as well our action to improve the circularity of our business, means recycling, and that's again why we have invested in our recycling joint venture, one of the key leaders in recycling in France, for example, to increase the recyclability of our plastic.
Last but not least, before closing, to conclude this presentation, I'm delighted to announce that Nexans greenhouse gas emission target has been fully validated by the Science Based Targets initiative. I remind you that our commitment are to reduce our Scope one and two emission by 46% by 2030. Our Scope three emission by 24% by 2030 versus 2019.
This validation further confirms Nexans is at the forefront of the shift toward a new array of safer, sustainable, renewable, and decarbonized electrification accessible to everyone. Now let me open for questions. Just a quick word before we start with the first question. Let me remind you on page 23 all our upcoming investor events and as well that we will organize an investor event in the U.S. in our Charleston unit, including of course a tour of the unit, as well as a climate day with great American experts in New York on the 21 of September in New York. Now we can open the Q&A session. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. If you would like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad now please. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally, and then you'll be introduced into the call. That is star one on your telephone keypads now, please. We do have a few questions in the queue already, and the first question comes from the line of Miguel Borrega from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got a couple if I may. The first one just on Building and Territories. Can you maybe shed some color on volumes and prices? How much of the 15% organic growth has been purely driven by volumes, and then how much pricing have you put on top of the typical copper price movements? My second question, just on your disposal process. Given your exposure to Ukraine in the auto-harnesses business, do you see interest in that business coming down given the risk exposure?
Even though it's performing well, but do you think we now have to wait a little bit longer for you to sell that business, or is that still in the cards for 2022? My last question on supply chain challenges from the war in Ukraine. Are you seeing any changes in the way you source metals apart from higher commodity prices? Maybe some more competition? Any disruption to highlight from supply chains? Thank you.
I propose, JC, you start by the important question on Ukraine regarding the potential disposal of our auto-harnesses business, which is the question number two of Miguel.
Yeah. In terms of, definitely, I mean, as we said before the war, the harnesses business was, The first business we likely to be divested from Nexans, mainly due to the fact that it's a very different business than the rest of the organization, the rest of the cable we are manufacturing. It was quite of, I would say already very much standalone in the organization.
We were, I would say, moving in the very good direction in terms of of progressing to divest our business. The objective, as we said before the war, was to divest it in first semester of 2022. Obviously with the situation, the current situation, this process is on hold. Difficult to say that when it will restart, but it's still, I would say it's not over, finished, it's just on hold until there is better visibility on the situation. The strategy to diversify that business within the next 12- months remains the objective of Nexans. As soon as basically we have better visibility, we will be able to restart the process. I would say we have just put the strategy on hold, but not off our agenda.
Regarding your first questions on utilities and building. I would say that we have to decouple both of them because this is what we are doing now in terms of presentation, because they will not have the same drivers. Territories, I would say that it's today 80% driven on volume, thanks to new contract signs on new market share development. 20% is of value, mix effect, price effect on the value creation. Whereas in Building this is the reverse and this is all the benefit of our Amplify, SHIFT Prime approach. Building, I will say that it's about 80% of value driven growth. So mix effect, price effect, innovation services development on 20% of pure volume in tons. On this we keep amplifying in the future.
That's really the goal, Miguel, because our aim, we know that there will be some potential downturn, slowdown, eventually recession in some areas of the world because of the boost of inflation everywhere. This is why we want to be a key leaders in terms of value creations, because we know that we will not be able to generate the same creation of margin with pure volume development. This is why we are putting a very strong initiative on all incentives on services, on innovation development in order to improve our price power. Back to your question, number three, can you repeat it again, sorry, Miguel, which is a mix of metals on Ukraine.
Yeah. If you're seeing any changes to the way you source metals, maybe some more competition from the war in Ukraine, any disruption that you wanted to highlight.
Yeah. Yeah. We have not seen any major change in terms of copper, to be honest. Except that the fact that, as you can see, we are focusing our metallurgy asset on our own needs mainly. So that's important to prepare potential shortage that will come on copper in the coming years. What happened with Ukraine is of course putting a very big pressure on aluminum. You know that aluminum is a different process of transformation than copper. The aluminum is coming from the mineral called bauxite. From the bauxite you are creating a powder with transforming a powder, which is called alumina. From alumina you are generating aluminum.
Most European countries stopped producing alumina over the last five years because of environmental reasons, sorry. They have let Russia take the lead on alumina production. The European countries are extremely dependent on alumina coming from Russia, Ukraine, and other countries. Taking into account that the biggest alumina production was in Ukraine, in Mykolaiv, and this production is stopped since more than two months.
We see that there will be pressure on aluminum, no doubt. It's not yet materialized, and this is the feedback that we gave to our customers, that we may start to miss some aluminum for some of them in the coming months. As once again, Nexans is really driven by a very high level of selectivity of the customers on the volume. We don't see any material impact on our growth generation in the coming months.
Next question.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Poppy Boyd-Taylor from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you so much for taking my questions. I was wondering, as you just went through for buildings and territories, if you could give a bit more color on, pricing versus volumes, for the other divisions or on a group level as well. That would be really useful. And then on the pricing point, I was wondering if you see any risk, within the different end markets of demand destruction due to the high inflation. I know there's been some sort of rising concerns about that, across the sector, so it'd be useful to hear your perspective. Thank you.
Thank you, Poppy. Yes. Or so, once again, two sides way of reading. The first one is on Territories, so what we call Distribution right now, it's the utilities business. The majority of our contracts are indexed and indexed on raw materials inflation. So it's 100% pass-through mechanical effect. We do not need to re-enter into any kind of negotiation because of inflation.
Regarding Building, it's more, I would say, a quarterly based price management, depending on the region. Obviously, there is a region where we see a very high level of inflation, which is namely the U.S., where we are not exposed, at least for these sectors. We are exposed on high voltage, but not on the building market, where we potentially see a slowdown in H2 because of very, very high level of inflation.
Regarding Europe, I would say the inflation impact is more modest on the whole, we don't see any kind of slowdown so far because of it. Once again, it's that's all about what we are doing, Poppy, in Nexans we don't want to have a price strategy that benefit from a GDP evolution, but which is much more robust than that, and that can remain even in the slowdown market supported by innovation, service, solution, and that's the reason that we are deploying and scaling up all the innovation that you have seen last year's in our financial presentation, which is today having a very great success for all our platinum accounts.
We are reinforcing our selectivity. We cannot serve everyone. We are dedicating our capacity to our platinum and gold customers. That's again a major driver of margin improvement in the coming months. We are very, very confident for 2022 at least.
Thank you, Poppy. Next question.
Great. Our next question comes from the line of Akash Gupta from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning, everybody, and thanks for your time. I have a few questions as well, and I'll ask one at a time. The first one I have is also on price and volumes, and maybe being more precise on that. If I look at your Q1 growth, you had 16.3% excluding metallurgy business, and this is in constant metal prices. Out of the 16%, can you say how much is driven by volumes, pure volumes, and what is the rest that could be price and others? I'll come back with other questions.
I guess I just answered the question, same question as Miguel. I said that territories utilities is 80% driven by volume, due not to a specific extra demand which is one-off effect, but due to renewal of contract where Nexans grab new market share. On that, those contracts have been signed for the next three years. To be honest, because of the power grid renewal, we are not able to take all the demand of our customer, because they have a huge demand, and we cannot go above what we have contracted.
Utilities territories is mainly driven by volume and market share at 80%, 20% a mix effect on the choice of the customer, the SKUs that we would like to manufacture. Whereas in building, sky is the limit, Akash. I think you need to understand that the SHIFT program is a fantastic weapon in terms of value creation, the complexity reduction that we have done in those sectors. The innovation, the pricing power, the service and solution is generating a fantastic growth, which is value driven, 80% base, and 20% is really new volumes coming from more tons. That's why we are very confident in our future development.
That's why we consider that Nexans will be at the rendezvous of its financial year-over-year. Because even if there is a slowdown, we are shifting to a value-driven mode supported by innovation. Our customers consider that we are one of the top leaders in those sectors that really can make a change. That's the reason it's only the beginning. One question, Akash?
My second question is on Latin America business. You say on slide number eight that the combined business in 2021 was around $800 million, and you have eight sites. Maybe if you can give us a breakdown of which are the major countries you are exposed to here, like how much is Brazil, how much is Colombia, and which are the key end markets that we should be looking for when we are tracking this Latin American business after acquisition of Centelsa.
Yeah, sure. The exposure in terms of market is only Distribution and Usages. There is no high-voltage-type business there. Plus as well, we need to add up in addition to utilities and building market, we have to add up some renewable project that we are following in all the region. Offshore farm and solar farm development. Regarding the decomposition, I will say that on average $700 million is about Andean countries, Colombia, Chile, Peru. This is our position. Now we are a clear leader in this region. You have roughly about EUR 100 million in Brazil.
Thank you. The final one is on strategic CapEx for this year. I think at the Q4 results, you talked about EUR 210 million strategic CapEx and taking the group CapEx to EUR 360 million this year. Any change to that figure or that guidance still valid? Thank you.
I'll take the question, Akash. Thank you. The total strategic CapEx remains the same for the full equity story to about EUR 260 million. This year it will not be EUR 210 million, the number is more in the range of EUR 180 million. It's just a phasing thing, but not that much different.
Thank you.
Okay, Akash? Yeah. Another question? Akash? No.
Okay, great. If you would like to ask a question, just as a reminder, it is star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Jean-François Granjon from ODDO BHF . Please go ahead.
Bonjour, Jean-François.
Yes. Yes, thank you. Good morning. Bonjour. The first question concerns the trend for the organic growth. After the usual strong performance for the Q1, I know that it's not the strategic goal target for you in terms of growth, but nevertheless, do you expect a similar growth for the coming quarter? Are you more cautious regarding taking into account the macro environment? In terms of growth for the organic growth for all the group? This is my first question. My second question. I have a question regarding the cession of the Auto-harnesses business.
You answered previously, but regarding the M&A and other acquisition, do you consider that probably due to the context, we should see some delay for all the acquisitions or all the acquisition for all the group? My third question concerns the growth for the Auto-harnesses business after the very huge performance by 16% growth for the first quarter.
What do you expect for the Auto-harnesses business for the coming quarters? My last question, could you give us some more color about the mix margin for the backlog, two point four billion we mentioned for the high voltage businesses. But for all the group, could you give us some more color? Did you see an improvement for the mix margin for all the backlog with the group? Thank you.
Thank you, Jean-François. A lot of questions. Let me start by your last one. I will let JC develop the others. No, I will take them. Regarding your last question regarding the development of the margin into the backlog, the margin keeps improving in all business. High Voltage, you know that we have a method in terms of selectivity. We already mentioned that everything which is in the backlog, if we have a good execution of the project, we generate between 18%-20% EBITDA on sales over the period. This is in the backlog already. No, should not be any kind of surprise.
Regarding the other sectors, namely Industry, the backlog, we have more than three months backlog, and we see an improvement of margin and as well in all the other sectors, namely Building, on market, on the utilities market, where the margin that we have in the backlog is at the minimum, at the average of Q1 or even better, in for Q2 on Q3. We know that we are presenting only the sales report right now, but no bad surprise on the margin. Even pretty good surprise on the margin development. JC, you want organic growth from Q2?
I will talk, yeah, just about organic growth in 2022 in general. Obviously you've seen the very strong organic growth of Q1, but we've seen that when you look at detail of the presentation, a big chunk of that is due to the Generation & Transmission, which is high voltage and projects business. A part of that, big part of that, I would say, of that growth is due to the fact that we added capacity, because now in 2022, we have more capacity than last year, definitely when you compare the first quarter. I would say this is a mechanical part of the organic growth.
Also in Q1 of last year, we had very low volume on High Voltage and Projects, the Generation & Transmission, mainly due to the fact that we had a phasing that was not favorable. There is a double impact on Q1 this year versus last year due to, again, the mechanical effect of the added capacity, the two vessels and Charleston, and to the fact that last year first quarter was very low. That distorts a little bit the percentage of Q1 this year versus last year in terms of organic growth.
We will continue to have, obviously due to the mechanical effect on high voltage, a very good year in terms of volume compared to last year. About 10% I would say, organic growth on that business due to the mechanical reason of the added capacity. That's one part. The second part is for the, I would say more cyclic part of the business, which is the Usages and Distribution.
We know that Q2 will be strong. We are already at the end of April, so we will be at a similar I would say at least on the Usages part, which is the largest part of Nexans, at a similar, quite a little bit lower than the 15% we showed here, but a very good dynamic in Q2, so that's guaranteed. It's a little bit more uncertain in the second part of the year on Usages, I would say. For the rest of the business also, we have a very good-
Because we don't have the backlog.
We don't have the backlog. We have shortened backlog. It's only a few weeks backlog. Obviously it's difficult to predict what will be beyond the Q2. For the other part of the business, we are also quite comfortable through June that the organic growth will remain good. It will be in line with what we've seen in the first quarter. Really, for H1, for the first half of the year, we should report very good positive organic growth from Nexans. A little bit more uncertainty in the second half due to the lack of visibility, mainly in the more cyclical part of the business.
Regarding the harnesses Q2 growth.
In terms of harnesses growth in Q2, it will be also quite strong. We are aiming at a double-digit organic growth in Q2 for the harnesses business. Definitely the fact that we have been producing almost at full capacity in Q1, we have gained, like Chris said in the presentation, we have gained some market share with other cable makers, harnesses makers that were more in the center of Ukraine. Basically we are not able to produce, and we have benefited from that. We continue to see a good trend in harnesses in the second quarter.
On to link with your question regarding M&A, Jean-François. Of course, the disposal of harnesses is not currently in the pipeline, and we have to have a more stable situation, even if we see a lot of improvement over the last three weeks and specifically regarding the visibility of demand and on the strategy of our customers in regards to procurement and supply. Of course, as soon as the war will stop, we are able to be back to some actors we were discussing with regarding divestment. But the divestment process on some other business is ongoing. So far, we are not on standby.
We are progressing. We are a bit more vigilant on the acquisition because we believe that the inflation and the potential slowdown that we can see in 2023 will affect some of our competitors. We don't want to buy at a high price if there is a material change in the market in the coming months. We remain, I will say, vigilant.
Thank you very much.
Next question.
Okay, great. Our next question comes on the line of Sean McLoughlin from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Morning, Sean.
Thank you. Good morning. I had a question on metallurgy on the other business. You're scaling this down. You can see clearly from the sales trajectory this is fading. You plan to scale this clearly down further. I'm just wondering how we should think about this. I mean, will this scale down as you sell businesses? Is this tied to supplying your own cyclical parts of the business? Because clearly I expect that scaling down metallurgy will have a margin positive impact in the long term. How should we think about that dynamic?
Yes. I'll take the question, Sean. It's really part of our strategy as we presented last year. The objective that we have, we are the only cable maker having our own metallurgy business. If you look at our competitors, they do not. That was a strategic choice some years ago from Nexans. Definitely there are pros and cons about having that metallurgy business. In the past, it was quite dilutive business, and we were doing about EUR 1 billion- EUR 1.3 billion every year of sales. Half of that was selling rods, copper rods to our competitors at a low margin. The business was about less than 2% margin, so quite dilutive on the margin of the group. I mean, we've had that for quite some time now.
We are now quite happy with what's happening in the world right now and the scarcity of copper and the prices on the raw material and mainly copper. We are happy to have the direct access to the mine and being able to serve ourselves and have basically a better situation in the future if copper again becomes a quite tough product to get. We will be much better placed, but we want to keep that business, but instead of serving our customers the way we used to do it, about half of the sales, EUR 500 million I would say was for external sales, we will refocus on our internal needs.
By doing that, we will diminish the sales of that business from about EUR 1 billion- EUR 500 million by 2024. We will do that progressively, obviously. We'll want to make sure that we pace this decrease. The impact on the margin would be about 50-75 basis points EBITDA margin by 2024 accretive due to the mixed effects of variable. This is really the intention of doing that, but we're very happy to have this business with us today.
Very good. Thank you.
We have no further questions in the queue, so I'll turn you back over to the speakers.
Yeah. Thank you. I think we can end the call because I know it's a very, very busy morning for all of you in terms of financial results release. Thank you for your attention and stay tuned for our H1 result. That will be certainly fantastic. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
Thank you very much for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your handsets.