Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our Capital Market Day. It's a very important event for us, and you'll see, we will take you through the journey for Groupe SEB, the achievement, and most of all, the ambition. For the introduction, I will call on stage our Chairman, Thierry de La Tour d'Artaise, and you will see it's a great journey that we've been achieving so far. Ladies and gentlemen, Thierry de La Tour d'Artaise.
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Long time, no see. Last time we met was back in 2019, before the COVID. So it's been a long, long time. We very happy to have you here today, and we thank you very much for joining us. We'll be together for about four hours, it's a lot long time, during which, Stanislas de Gramont, our CEO, and our teams will address and present to you several topics to give you a better understanding of where we are today and where we go. As far as I'm concerned... You don't hear me? Well, as far as I'm concerned, and as an introduction to the future presentations and Q&A sessions, I would like to share with you three ideas. Number one, the last 3 years have been pretty hectic, but the group is resilient.
Let's remember, 2020, we started COVID before everyone, as it started for us in January 2020 in Wuhan, our factory, our cookware factory in China. And then a period of rollercoaster, depending on lockdowns and easing of restrictions. Our professional business in 2020 declined more than 30%. All restaurants were closed. 2021, different story. EUR 1 billion organic growth, something I'd never had in my life. It's more than 16% growth in our consumer business. But at the same time, a highly disrupted microeconomic environment with component shortages, if you remember, huge headwinds in raw materials, freight, and volatilities of currencies, but a fantastic year. 2022, well, after the 2021 euphoria, a setback with a severe drop in consumption in Europe, but in some other countries. Still, the disrupted microeconomic environment, we'll come back to that this afternoon.
You will see it was not a minor thing, leading to historically low margin for the group, below 8%. 2023, we are back to a more familiar territory since Q2, both in terms of growth and margins, which are now closer to historical standards. There's two things I would like to remember or to recall from, or to gather from this period. As during previous crisis, and as always, the group has demonstrated its agility, managing production on a daily basis, and we have a highly volatile demand. Taking risks sometimes to secure component supply, implementing a resolute pricing policy to compensate headwinds, adapting growth drivers to the volatility of the markets. But the group never lost sight of its long-term vision and continued to prepare the future, reinvesting more, even more in our innovation teams.
Investing in new logistic centers, like in north of France or in Burgundy, signing new JVs, like in Morocco, to open new territories. Continuing acquisitions, both in consumer and professional. StoreBound in the U.S., Pacojet in Switzerland, La San Marco in Italy, Forges d'Adour in France, plus, of course, several investments through SEB Alliance. This combination of agility and long-term obsession has a name. It's resilience. And like an American company in which I started my career a couple of years ago used to say, "Resilience is a choice," and that's the SEB, the choice that SEB has made years and years ago. So let me take this opportunity just to thank all the SEB teams which have gone through this period which was very hard for all of us, for their discernment, courage, and commitment.
My second point is that now that we're back to normal territory, we confirm once again the relevance of our profitable growth model. It's,
Yeah.
Should I take that out?
Yeah. No, it's okay. Keep it-
Keep it.
But we will switch to this. Sorry.
Do you hear me?
Yes.
Is it better?
Fantastic. For several reasons, the business model makes sense, which we believe at least. First of all, we operate in a structurally growing industry, driven by the development of middle classes and increasing their purchasing power, particularly in emerging countries. You'll see figures later on, which are fascinating because it shows that it will be a long-term tendency, which will drive the demand for our products for a very, very long time. And at the same time, the emergence of new needs, especially in mature countries, but not only, delegation for the most tedious tasks, nomad lifestyle, nutrition, health, aging population. So all these tendencies will obviously generate new needs of our consumers.
Even more now, because we have a new tendency, which did not exist a couple of years ago, but now it does exist, which is the consumption, the desire of the consumers to have more sustainable products. More sustainable products, repairable, reusable, recyclable. That is the need, a new need, and obviously, because of our position as a strong, industrial company in Europe, it is a great chance for us. Number two, this industry is fundamentally profitable. It's not capital intensive, and if we do good business, normal business, we generate cash, which allows us to create the virtuous circle, which I think we have tried to develop all of all these years, made of innovation, geographical expansion, and acquisitions.
I think in this industry, we hold a distinct position built upon a pioneering spirit and a simple but efficient strategy that we have consistently implemented all the time and everywhere for just about 160 years. And this strategy, you probably know it, but I just want to recall a couple of items, is based on products innovation as an obsession and a strong belief that the only limit to innovation is our own imagination. I joined this group 30 years ago, and I was wondering if we could still innovate in our business. 30 years later, everybody knows, and you've seen some of our products, everybody knows that we can definitely reinvent the daily life of consumers all the time.
Brands, more than 30 renowned brands, representing 2,800 years of proximity with our consumers worldwide, and a legacy that we're proud to carry and happy to perpetuate. Three, a worldwide presence as an evidence, with a strong philosophy to adapt ourselves to the various cultures of our consumers worldwide. We all like people not to live the same way and not to eat the same things in China, France, or in India. These levers have permitted us to become the world leader of the consumer small domestic equipment. Tomorrow, they will be our recipe to develop a new growth platform for the group in the professional segment. Why? Because the professional segment is appealing. A rapidly growing and highly profitable business. Complementary services to sales of equipment. Synergies between the various professional activities and with the consumer business.
Numerous acquisition opportunities with neat players specialized by product or geographies. We entered the professional segment back in 2016 through the acquisition of WMF, which gave us immediately a worldwide leadership position in full automatic coffee machines, professional. We have since expanded to other segments of the professional coffee. Filter coffee in the US with the acquisition of Wilbur Curtis, specialty coffee or traditional way of producing coffee through the recent acquisition of La San Marco in Italy, which has allowed us to already build a business which will represent this year around EUR 1 billion, starting from scratch in 2016. Now we're moving more globally to other professional segments beyond coffee, and especially to the kitchen professional equipment.
We are already in restaurants, which you don't know, but we have been in the professional kitchen for long with our brands, Tefal, in the pan, in pots and pans, and All-Clad, especially in the United States. But every good chef around the world uses All-Clad. We have started to consolidate this business with Krampouz and Pacojet in Switzerland, Pacojet, which we acquired earlier this year. With a very simple growth model, acquisition of a product platform, product portfolio expansion, internationalization through synergies between professional commercial teams. My last point, I'm looking at the time, the continuity of our strategy primarily relies on several factors. Number one, the stability of our shareholding base, with the support of a family group, I'm sorry, that remains deeply committed to the group. The founding family is still today the major shareholder of SEB.
We now have the eighth generation, which is becoming shareholders, so it's a long time. It's 400 people. And the family has set up a liquidity vehicle two years ago in order to be able to act like a bank, internal bank, and reinforce its presence in the group. But we also have first-rank investors on the board, like Peugeot Invest, FSP, and BPI. Some are there in the room today, and I thank you for that. The second thing is the stability of the management sharing common values. As you will see today, during this CMD, with our speakers, it's an international team made of senior managers with a long SEB tenure, but also newcomers with recognized expertise.
We have our values, our five core values: entrepreneurial drive, passion for innovation, respect for people, professionalism, group spirit. Mind you, apart from the last one, the group spirit, they've all been written more than 50 years ago, at a time when the group did not even exist. Three, corporate governance, which has taken into account the evolution of the French, but also international regulations, leading to the split of functions between the chairman and the CEO. Family chairman and a very, very competent CEO, with different tasks, but complementary roles. This stability is ultimately expressed through a strong social, societal, and environmental responsibility, asserted long before current regulations and deeply ingrained in the DNA of the group. Probably some of you know that our founder, 160 years ago, was a tinner, repairing cooking utensils around France.
Repair is our DNA, but we know that repairability does not mean to repair a product. It means to create a product that will be repairable at a reasonable cost, and that's very different. And again, in that respect, our industrial presence in France and in Europe is obviously a unique advantage as compared to all our competitors who have delocalized their production in South in Asia. The group has always had long-term commitments towards its employees, profit sharing, different way, of showing that. And we've had a long-term commitment to reduce the consumption of our products, which is the most important element in our decarbonization policy. To finish, and just to be on time, our mission, which is: make consumers' daily lives easier and more beautiful, and contribute to better living worldwide.
I think it's a beautiful mission, and I believe the role that a company must play in today's society. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for this introduction, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, just in case, you never know. So now we're gonna start the presentation and journey with our Chief Executive Officer, Stanislas de Gramont. Please. You think it-
Yeah.
It should be okay?
I'll try and see if the mic works.
Yeah.
No background sound, right. Good afternoon. Bonjour tout le monde. Merci, Thierry. Right, I will spend the next half an hour to complement what Thierry has highlighted as the key stakes and the key opportunities for the group. I'll take you through what we call the successful growth model of Groupe SEB. And it all starts with our mission. We want to make consumers' everyday life easier and more enjoyable. Doing so, we contribute to a better living all around the world. Keep those words in mind because they will be some of the driving elements, the key driving elements, of our speech today. Now, Thierry has told us where we are coming from and what has taken us where we are. Where are we today? We are a EUR 8 billion group. We are four times as big as we were 20 years ago.
We operate in 150 countries around the world. We sell 400 million products every year, and we do that with the contribution of our 30,000 employees. That makes us the number one worldwide player in small domestic equipment, and that makes us the number one worldwide player in professional coffee machine. Our vision for the future, we want to outperform the market growth in consumer. We want to do that through constant product innovation. We'll talk vastly about product innovation today. We want to expand our category coverage, meeting every need of the consumer around our mission statement. And doing so, we will strengthen our leadership position in our markets. In professional business, we started in 2016, low profile. We are now number one in the professional coffee business. We want to become a reference player in the professional business.
We want to leverage the success in professional coffee. We want to enter new categories, new business segments, organic and acquisitions, and we want to make them global. And I will endeavor to explain to you how we do that in the next 20 minutes or so. Starting with the consumer business, how do we define the small domestic equipment for consumers? We see a market of around EUR 75 billion. We see a market that is composed of small domestic appliance, electric products, kitchen electrics on one hand, home and personal care products on the other hand, and that makes the small domestic appliance market around EUR 50 billion worldwide. Over and above that, and that's one of the specificities of the Groupe SEB, we operate in what we call the cookware and kitchenware market, pots, pans, kitchen knives, et cetera, conservation boxes.
That market represents around 25 billion EUR of sales worldwide again. Now, that market is structurally growing. If we look at the last 10 years, and we project forward, we see a growth, CAGR growth, that is above 3%. That growth happens in mature markets. That growth also happens in emerging markets. I'm gonna share with you why in the next few slides. The starting point is we cater for the middle class needs. If you come back to our mission, we make consumers everyday's life easier and more enjoyable. This is really, something that caters for the middle class, and middle class is our core target group. And the middle class happens to be the fastest growing, segment of the population worldwide. Think about it.
We had 1 billion—we had 2 billion people in the middle class back in 2010. We have 3 billion in 2020. We will have 4 billion in 2030. What is more remarkable is that middle class growth is primarily in emerging markets, to the point that it was 1 billion in emerging markets in 2010, 2 billion in 2020, we'll reach 3 billion inhabitants by 2030. Hence, the need to focus on emerging markets as a key core competency of our industry. The other fascinating thing is that growth of purchasing power, that number of people becoming more affluent, that we measure through the GDP per capita growth, is almost linearly correlated to the growth in spend in small domestic appliance.
Said otherwise, when people get more affluent, they spend proportionately the same amount on small domestic appliance. And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense because the first thing you wanna do when you become more affluent is to take care of your daily life. And you wanna take care of your daily life, you want to make it easier and more enjoyable. And in emerging markets, the first thing people do is they'll be buying cookware, then a bit more sophisticated cooker. They're also gonna be buying a kettle, a rice cooker in China. And those equipments are brilliant value for money for consumers because their cost isn't so high, but their daily usage, their multi-daily usage, make them indispensable and a great way to improve your quality of life. That's exactly what we do.
The beauty of it is that not only people get in entry products, but they more and more sophisticate to the point that the levels of equipments of our categories can reach 10 per household in China and up to 25-30 in the Western world. The other fascinating thing, you heard, you understand that we are a lot into cooking and kitchen electrics, and cooking is really a local thing. People don't cook the same way in France, in Italy, in Spain, in Germany, let alone in Colombia, in China or in Japan or in South Korea. Those local cooking habits, those local habits, create local needs for our products.
Yes, you can say that there are vacuum cleaners everywhere in the world, but the floor is different between different countries in the world, and therefore, the answer from the industry has to be different. So we see that there is this mission, this large target market and expanding target market creates a lot of need in emerging markets, but equally in developed markets and in all markets, we see a constant evolution in consumer needs. A constant evolution in the time of life you're in. When you are starting in your student bedroom, you have some needs, then you get married, then you have children, you have different needs. Then children leave home, and you have different needs again. So in times of life, you have different needs. In social behaviors and social trends, there are evolutions.
Today, a lot of people talk about healthy eating. Healthy eating was not on the agenda 15 years , 20 years ago. Healthy eating creates new needs, and so on, and so on, and so on. So we have a category, and this is the magic of this industry, a category where consumer needs are constantly evolving and innovation is always there to answer. On top of the evolution of those needs, we see an acceleration of the evolution of available technologies. What does that mean, available technologies? Well, we have a lot of new capabilities and a lot of new resources that enable the creation of new products that, in turn, answer better the evolution of consumer needs. And all these needs to what we call trading up. That is, we present products, we sell products that better answer more needs.
I've taken the example of Cookeo, that sale mix of will, come again. We start with an electric pressure cooker. We connect it, we do step-by-step recipes, we create an app with 10,000 recipes, we can pilot at distance that, that device. And that means the today's up, up, French Cookeo sells around EUR 400, when the range is around EUR 200. As an answer to the total market, if we split the, the market by volume quartiles, that is, take 2019, follow me, that's very complex. You take 2019, 25% of the market is each of the quartiles. In 2019, the fourth quartile in this category is 29% of the value sales, 25% of the volume, 29% of the value sales.
In 2022, it's 37% of the value sales, and that's what we mean by trading up. And beyond trading up, there is also multi-equipment. Multi-equipment for multi-usage. I've taken the vacuum cleaner example, which is a, which is a great one. Vacuum cleaners, 78% of the French households have what we call a canister vacuum cleaner, an aspirateur traîneau, for those who know the word in French. Why? Because it's great for a full session vacuuming, because you do it once a week, the whole apartment or the house. But then we've seen developing over the years more spot on intermediate vacuum sessions, where the versatile vacuum cleaner is the right answer. And then with the evolution of the modes of life, ways of life, people turn more and more to robot vacuum cleaners.
Two people working in the household, you need the house to clean itself on its own. And we see that versatiles have a 21% penetration in France. Robots have 12% penetration in France, both growing. So we see that our market, which was a remarkably stable market, vacuum cleaners, is in fact growing and expanding to the point that today, the average French household has 2.3 vacuum cleaners, which means the market's 2.5 x bigger than when they had one. So we have a consumer market that is growing, and that is growing structurally because of the evolution of consumer needs, because the evolution of the abilities to innovate, and because of the sheer growth of the population. How do we perform, and what is our value creation formula in this market? It's fairly simple.
We start with leadership position, in a, with strong brands, applied to a wide geographic reach, a large coverage of categories centered around our mission, go-to-market excellence, a competitive industrial footprint, fed through the years by a successful track record in mergers and acquisition, and a layer of, environmental, social governance that allows us to do that in a very sustainable way. That's what I'm gonna develop. That's what I'm gonna develop in the next few minutes, starting with a clear leadership in our consumer product categories. We're number one in cookware worldwide. We are number one in electrical cooking. We're number two in blending. We can debate. We've taken number two, so that not to be polemic. Some of us argue with number one, but okay, in the top two.
We're number two in beverages, covering, kettles, coffee machines, et cetera, and we're number 1 in linen care. Those are five of our top eight categories. That is complemented by a pretty strong and organized, portfolio of international brands. We have three international brands covering, specific product categories. We have Moulinex, covering, food preparation and electrical cooking, kitchen electrics, let's say. We have Krups, which is a global beverage brand. We have Rowenta, which is a global home and personal care brand. We have, since the acquisition of WMF, WMF, WMF, as we call it in German, which is a premium brand covering the cookware and kitchen electric products. And when we have only one brand in those new markets, we use Tefal as a transversal unique brand covering all categories.
That portfolio of international brands is complemented by a strong network of local brands that altogether feed a business where we are leader in 75%, 75% of the categories, countries we operate in. Local brands help consolidate that leadership, particularly so when it comes to cooking, because local brands create a lot of trust and reliability for cooking. We have a wide and balanced geographical reach. We are probably the most international player in the small domestic equipment. Of course, Western Europe, 33% of our business, this is our home-grown baby place. We are born in France, profoundly European. From Western Europe, we've expanded eastbound to be close to market or market leader in call it Central and Eastern Europe. That's 14% of our business.
The second big pillar of the business of the group is China. We have 29% share. We have one probably of the most impressive success stories in the consumer world of the last 20 years. I think Vincent, I know Vincent will elaborate on that later on. Other Asia is 8%, with, of course, a disproportionate size of Japan and South Korea within other Asia. North America is eleven percent of our business, with strong positions in cookware. Number one cookware brand with Tefal, number one premium cookware brand with All-Clad, number one ethnic brand in cookware with Imusa. A strong position in the linen care, number one or number two, depending on the sub-segments, in linen care, and selectively looking at more categories, potentially in North America. And last, Latin America.
Latin America, 5% of our business. Brazil, Colombia are the two strongholds of our business. A wide geographic coverage, strong leadership driven by an optimized portfolio of brands, and a large coverage of categories responding to consumer needs. Now, again, I'll take us back to our mission. We want to make every consumers' everyday life easier and more enjoyable. And the products we're covering, the product families we are covering, are the ones that actually cater for that, making everyday's life easier and more enjoyable. So you see a lot of product families. We see them as responding to needs that actually are right front and center in the hearts of consumers' everyday's life. And within all of those product families, here you have the kitchen electric families with breakfast, preparation, cooking, outdoor.
Within all those product families, we organize our portfolio of products, trying to cater for all the benefits of consumers and all the price points. Again, we're a middle-class target company, and we're making sure that our product families cover and cater for the needs of our middle-class product families. Outdoor is something that has developed lately with the acquisition of Forges du and Campooz, and we see that as a potential add-on to our kitchen electric products. So we're in kitchen electrics.
We also do that in home and personal care products, catering again for those needs that are really part of the daily life and the daily need of consumers in vacuuming or ironing, which we call the chores, things where we can help consumers make those chores easier and more palatable or less annoying, less boring, meeting the needs of the consumers, but also home comfort. We are strong in fans. We are strong in purifiers. We have some presence in those home comfort categories and some personal care business. So we have a large range of products. We have a wide geographic coverage. We have a strong network of brands that contribute to that, and we have excellence in go-to-market. As I said, we are one of the most international product company or SDA company.
We are operating with 50 market companies, covering 150 countries. We have a workforce of 6,500 people doing sales and marketing locally, and that is a lot of cultural diversity. We are Colombians in Colombia, we are Chinese in China, we're Germans in Germany, we're French in France, et cetera. We also have a multi-channel distribution strategy. And again, why a multi-channel distribution strategy? For a very simple reason. Consumers are shopping our products and our categories in all, trade types. They shop our products in mass. They shop our products in electro specialist. They shop our products offline. They shop our products online. They want to shop our products on our own internet sites. They want to shop our products in our stores. And in fact, we have. We've made the count.
We have over 2,000 key accounts worldwide. We're probably the most distributed company in small domestic equipment worldwide. In the last 10 years, we've seen a massive acceleration of the digitization of the world. Of course, we look at the digitization as the evolution of the online sales and the evolution against the offline sales. But not only, 95% of the consumer shopping journey today has some digital interaction. That means we need to be in that moment and that space where consumers are gonna be looking for information on our products. And to do that, we've equipped ourselves where we have content factories, a big one in Écully, a big one in China, but also some smaller ones in other markets. We produce master contents, photos and videos in Écully or in Supor.
We expand and export those materials in all our market subsidiaries, we translate. Recently, in the last five, six years, we've expanded our CRM programs. Today, we have over 45 million opt-in consumers in our CRM programs, half of them in China, the other half outside of China. That allows us to have a direct contact with consumers, and the good news for us is that our categories, our categories, consumers love to be entertained with. People love talking about cooking. People love talking about kitchen. Even vacuum cleaners have some interest, interestingly. So we have a direct contact with consumers, and that is bound to grow. We have dedicated applications, apps, with tens of thousands of recipes. We receive close to a million contacts per month on our apps.
And last but not least, as you know, we are very strong in China, and China is at the forefront on a few very modern activation techniques, like live streaming, and we learn a lot from our friends of Supor. Today, we have over 13,000 influencers worldwide, and that is a very strong network that is inspired by China and replicated elsewhere. Coming into the professional business, I'll try and put into equation what Thierry has exposed in the strategy. Well, first, how do we define what is our professional market? The way we define it, we see a EUR 15 billion market. We see a market made of beverages, of course, including coffee, food preparation, cookware, kitchen knives, utensils. That's what we define as our target market in the professional business.
It's a highly attractive market, strong fundamentals. It is fast-growing, 5%-10%, depending on the markets. It's a very quick return on investment for investors, and if you think about it, it's a bit the same as for consumers. The price is not so high compared to the value perceived and created by the device or the product. It's a quality business model with recurrent revenues in service, in spare parts. Martin Zouhar will elaborate on a very specific example on professional coffee later on today. We see high barriers of entry. We see a value to leadership, and that drives a profitability that is substantially higher than the consumer business, above 15%. So this is why we love this market. Our formula, our value creation formula is the same. It is about strong leading brands. It is about wide and wider geographic reach.
It's about large coverage and larger and larger coverage of categories, go-to-market excellence, competitive industrial footprint. M&A plays a greater role because, well, we are probably more at the start of the journey than we are in the consumer business, and ESG has a backbone of everything we do. Now, if you take them one by one, so we start with a leadership position in full auto coffee machines. I won't come back on that. We all know that. We've acquired a complementary product offering, drip filter in the U.S., San Marco, traditional barista coffee machine in Italy. We expand them geographically. When we acquired WMF back in 2016, Europe is over 50% of our sales. Today, Europe is below 30% of our sales, from over 50% to below 30%.
So we are making this business international, and we expand the customer base from traditional customers into coffee shops, into convenience stores. Again, Martin will expand further on that, so my purpose. From these full auto coffee machines, we've acquired—we expanded our business in beverages. The acquisition of Zummo gives us access to the market leader in professional juice extractors. That's in the beverage. And then we work in the kitchen with the acquisition of Compoos and the acquisition of Pacojet, and going into the kitchen offers a large range of expansion opportunities. And the way we will do it, so those categories, those product families are there, they are ours. We will expand them geographically.
A lot of them are centered around Europe or even Western Europe or even France there, and we'll make them global, we'll make them international, and we'll expand the customer base of those, new categories on restaurants, on bars, on chains, convenience stores, retail stores, et cetera, et cetera. So it's exactly the same model as we've been doing in consumers in the last 50 years, as we are doing in professional coffee, and as we're gonna be doing in the rest of the professional business. And then, of course, we'll have potential synergies within professional. When we sell beverage, whether we sell a coffee machine or a juice extractor, well, probably there will be, common customers, there will be common go-to market, distribution routes, et cetera, between these two, but also between professional and consumer.
Where we see that take coffee, we see that between the high-end consumer coffee machines and the entry range professional coffee machines, we see that that boundary blurs more and more, and it's not by chance or by mistake that we've created, in the last 18 months, a range of consumer coffee machines with WMF, because we see that this trade up from consumers to professional or trade down from professional to consumer is gonna happen because those worlds are blurring each other. So a lot of opportunity. And now, in consumer business, a lot of opportunities. In professional business, we feel we are very much well equipped to answer those opportunities. And I think I'd like to stress three enablers. One is around operations, sustainability, sustainable development, and our people.
Starting with operations, in both businesses, professional and consumer, are supported by a flexible source of production. 60% of what we sell is made in-house, 40% of what we sell is made outside, which allows us to get faster access to new things when we don't have them available in-house, which allows them also to check and balance constantly the competitiveness of our industrial setup. Beyond that, it's very balanced industrial footprint. We have over 15 plants in Europe, we have 41 plants in total, 35 in consumer, six in professional. You'll see five in Martin because there's one doing Zummo products in Valencia. We make our sales 240 million products every year, and 40% of what we sell outside of China is not made in China.
So we have our own production that is serving local, regional markets outside of China. And in fact, reflecting on this, on this, Investors Day, Capital Market Day with the team, we thought, well, one of the things that really makes us a bit different is that we are a marketing company, because we think consumers, we are life-centric, we are consumer-centric, but we're also an industrial company, and that gives us access to technologies. We know and understand how we make products, and we think that's a key asset for us yesterday, today, and in the future. Beyond, making products, beyond production, we have, as Terry said, a very strong root in the sustainable development of our products. Yes, we do what a lot of people do. We have 42% of recycled materials in our products, packaging or plastics or whatever.
So that's, that's great, and we'll keep doing that. But we have we offer 15 years repairability at a fair price on over 90% of our electric products outside of China. Now, three concepts, it's repairable. That means it is easy to dismantle and to rebuild. And here, what you see on the screen is that vacuum cleaner and the parts that make this vacuum cleaner. The second part is at a fair price. That means all of those parts are available in our store, and we keep 15 years of inventory of those parts. That means when your vacuum cleaner is broken, you don't need to change a block that is a third of the price. You can change that resistance, that spring, that pump, that allows you to get repairable at a fair price and last 15 years.
Well, that means we hold 15 years inventory of spare parts. And that is, I think, a key element of differentiation of the group. Over and beyond that, we set ourselves some self-imposed constraints or challenges. We have an internal guide of healthy eating. We don't propose recipes that we reckon are not healthy by current dietary standards. We have an inclusive design guidebook, a playbook. That means we're able - we know what it takes for disabled, temporary or fundamentally disabled people to use our products, and we use those guidebook guidelines to design more and more products. So sustainability is not only a KPI, it is a way of doing business that is and has been part of the group's DNA.
That is recognized by a recent platinum EcoVadis rating. Platinum EcoVadis means we're in the top 1% of the companies rated by EcoVadis in 2023. We have a full sustainability strategy that we'll take the opportunity to share with you in much greater detail at a later stage. I want to finish with our people. Our people were, are, and will be the essence of the performance of this group. I could speak for hours about our people. We have here 90% of the Comex of the company that has joined us. You'll see three of them later on today on stage. But beyond that Comex, which is in itself a few nationalities already, we have a very loyal and committed senior leadership team.
14 years average tenure in our top 200 managers. We're an international and multicultural company. We have over 150 nationalities in the group, and as I said, we are Colombians in Colombia. The second biggest population of expatriates in the group is Colombians. We have a lot of Russians, we have a lot of Chinese. Of course, China is our biggest population, with the weight of Supor. And last but not least, diversity. 46% of our managers are women. They are 48% of our employees, so we believe that diversity and cultural diversity, gender diversity, is a key for the ability of the group to sustain its development. As a summary, I started with that, I'll conclude with that. We are here to...
We strive to strengthen our leadership in our consumer business. We see an exciting development potential and opportunities in the market. We see remarkable capabilities and abilities of this group to keep that journey of strengthening the leadership, and we see professional business as a brilliant opportunity to become a reference player in that business. We have a very clear idea of the market potential. We pretty well know how we will do it, and we would like to engage you in that journey with us. Later on today, you will hear about innovation, you'll hear about China, you'll hear about professional coffee, and then I think we'll have a Q&A sessions. Cathy?
Yes, right. Thank you, Stanislas, for this insightful overview.
Thank you.
You'll be soon on stage. We have a Q&A session. Now, for our next speaker, you're gonna have a deep dive in innovation for our products. You will see that it's not only creating products, but also enhancing and understanding our consumer, and it's all about life-centric. And for life-centricity, please welcome our Senior Executive Vice-President, Cyril Buxtorf.
Very good afternoon, everyone. We see now together that we are definitely life-centric, Groupe SEB is definitely life-centric. Stanislas mentioned it earlier, our mission is to make consumers' everyday life easier and more enjoyable, accompanying millions of families around the globe, on all continents, at any time of the day, in all the rooms of the homes, with our 50 product categories. Creating moments of sharing, of fun, of pride, of well-being, creating outstanding experiences. Let's see this with a film. ... How the group will make a difference? Groupe SEB has had a long commitment to innovation, leveraging a robust innovation engine. We see in the first part that this is based on a robust innovation and product development process. In the second part, that this process is driven by considerable firepower.
Last, we will highlight our capability to execute this in a systematic, industrial way, with an agile pace on the largest portfolio of our industry, on 50 product categories in all continents. And that we constantly reinvent ourself, that we constantly reinvent categories of a generation. Let's begin with our robust innovation and product development process. All starts by the understanding of the trends, the consumer trends, and the consumer insights. Then we leverage these insights together with technologies to drive the innovation and product development. And we build comprehensive lineup with broad coverage in terms of prices, and at the same time, with offers that are targeting every consumer group. Again, all starts by understanding the consumer trends and the consumer insights.
Decoding the social and societal trends, demographic changes, population getting older, increasingly urban, the growing middle class in developing countries, attention to health and to dietetic, home cooking, cooking from fresh ingredients, but at the same time, the rise of home-delivered meals, quest for meaning, collaborative economy, consume less but better, search for convenience and for life quality. Decoding new lifestyle. Since the COVID, my home is my castle. We spend more time at home, we enjoy cooking, we enjoy great time with the family and with the friends. But as well, eat on the go, home working, increased number of single households, whatever the age, snacking, et cetera.
This allows us to define our main innovation domains: easy life at home, including some delegation solution, healthy lifestyle and changing eating habits, self-accomplishment, engaging experience with comprehensive ecosystem, with connected design, app that is step-changing the consumer experience with inspiration, coaching, securing the perfect result. Last, commitment for the planet, with a strong mobilization on eco-design. We developed the right offer, thanks to an in-depth knowledge of the cultural differences and of the different cooking habits. I will illustrate this with three example: on rice cooking, on cooking, and on ironing. Let's start with rice. Rice is a staple food for 3.5 billion people eating rice every day. Of course, there are quite different habits between countries. There are more than 2,000 rice varieties and tens of ways to cook and eat rice.
And because of that, developing a top-notch rice cooker is super demanding, and Groupe SEB has developed a comprehensive expertise on food science on rice, testing in its lab in China, nine categories of rice, matching the recipes and the habits of countries around the globe, checking numerous physical chemical parameters, characterizing the impact of the cooking temperature at each step of the cooking process, and of course, testing the result with experts. 125 tons of rice are tested every year in our lab. This means over 1,200 tests every day. So many cooking habits. Yes, cultural differences as well on cookware. The size, the shape, the material of the pots and the pans are very different according to the taste and to the habits.
With caldero in Colombia for cooking arroz con pollo, pressure cooker in Brazil for feijão tropeiro, cast pot in France for boeuf bourguignon, of course, stainless steel stew pot in Germany for Bohnen mit Lammfleisch, woks in China, fried noodle, and miso soup with a multi-pot in Japan. Various habits on ironing with quick last minute de-wrinkling for young urban consumers. Steam gen, steam generator for demanding consumers in Europe. Garment steaming, sanitizing as much as getting niche result in Asia. And mini iron with small ironing board directly on the floor or put on the table in Japan. We leverage technologies as enablers. This includes automation, connectivity, engineering, materials, food science. I will come back to this later. Having a thorough understanding of technological ecosystem, we can anticipate the emergence of new technologies that we would master in-house or with partners.
Our know-how is to integrate several of those technologies, to adapt them, and to integrate them in our product. One example, integrating new battery technology with new brushless motor piloted by electronics, with high expertise on hydraulics and on acoustics. This for our new top-notch versatile vacuum cleaner. Understanding of consumer insight together with technologies enable us to drive our innovation and product development. Developing the right innovation solution, right innovation solution for meal for two, for nomad life, for memorable time with the kids, or for barbecue party with friends. Innovative solution to answer to new moment in life. Family getting bigger with the arrival of a kid, or smaller with grown up children happily leaving the home. Change in family can also be the arrival of a pet. Best solution for well-being.
A few examples now of crystallizing consumer insight and technologies into great products, great consumer experience with Cookeo, rice cooker, and a versatile vacuum cleaner. Let's start with Cookeo. Again, everything starts with the consumer insight. What do we eat today? I'd like to cook delicious and balanced meal for my family, but I have no inspiration, and I have little time. To answer to this insight, we developed Cookeo, which is a concentrate of technologies with benefits answering to this insight. Inspiration with an infinity of recipes shared by community and step by step support on the touch screen. Healthy cooking with high preservation of vitamin and with air frying. Full delegation, ensuring perfect result while we play with the kids. Fast cooking with pressure cooker, up to 6 x faster. Let's watch the ad.
Here's Justine cooking a blanquette. Here, cooking a chili. How? With her new Cookeo Touch by Moulinex, she's inspired and guided by its intuitive screen. And tonight, in under 10 minutes, she cooks a delicious coconut chicken. So more time for Max. Cookeo Touch, the fastest way to revolutionize your meal times, Moulinex.
Healthy and tasty meals on your table in no time. The KPIs show that we are spot on with an excellent rating of 4.7. A product used 3.5 x per week. 23,000 recipes developed and shared by consumers worldwide, and 5 million units Cookeo sold since 2012, since the launch. Second example, rice cooking. Rice cooking around the globe. Every consumer wants the exact cooking result he is expecting according to his taste and according to the habits of his region. We guarantee fluffy and tasty rice, thanks to strong technological know-how. Even cooking, thanks to spherical pot that allows an optimal heat diffusion and perfect cooking with our smart technology, controlling time and temperature of the seven steps of the cooking process.
This for perfect result, the rice is blooming evenly without cracking, each grain white and shiny. We are a key player, selling 15 million units per year for a revenue of EUR 400 million. We'll come back to rice cooking with Vincent later on, with our latest infrared product. Last example, this time on home cleaning. No compromise on cleanliness, and I want the best experience. X-Force Flex 15.60 has been developed for demanding consumer looking for perfect for best in class performance, and with automatic adjustment to each type of floor. Let's see this with a film. We will see now how we build a comprehensive lineup. We build a well structured product offering, covering the key price bands with meaningful benefits at each price points, and offers covering the good, better, best ranges.
But at the same time, we design sharp answers to the need of each consumer group. Let's see what it means with example. OptiGrill. OptiGrill is an intelligent grill, which allows perfect grilling with automatic program for all kinds of meats, delivering your preferred cooking result from rare to well done. And this is a great innovation with excellent performance. We sold 8.5 million units since the launch. From this breakthrough innovation, we've built a comprehensive lineup. You see in the middle of the chart, the first product called OptiGrill Original, and from there, we, we are trading up with new generation OptiGrill Elite, with an Elite version. Our latest product, the 4-in-1, which is offering versatility from meat grilling to preparing lasagna or pizza.
And we have added to those intelligent grill more affordable products, each with meaningful benefits: ingenious vertical storage for Ingenio grill, and barbecue and browning position for Ultra Compact. To build a comprehensive offer, it's about covering the good, better, best; we just saw it. It is also about addressing each consumer group with a relevant offer. For the young beginners, for the less involved, dutiful consumers, the driver is easy and smart cooking, and we developed So'Lite, an induction cookware range, 43% lighter. For the traditional experts, the cooking lovers, and the status seeker, the driver is performance and inspiring cooking. Unlimited is matching their expectation with the best anti-scratch, non-stick coating. Last, Renew is an eco-design, non-stick ceramic cookware made of 100% recycled aluminum. The best offer for the healthy delegators that want responsible cooking.
Active on all segments, addressing different tastes and different habits, we hear the example of coffee, where our offer covers different tastes, from the ristretto to the long Americano, from the black coffee to the white coffee. It's made for connoisseur or for status seeker, but as well for the non-involved, for different times of the day, possibly with second equipment on all segments, from the drip coffee maker to the full auto. And as you can see, with various design execution. And since a good day usually starts with a good coffee, you will understand that it is a very serious matter to our consumers. We have seen a robust innovation and product development process. We start now the second part of the presentation, highlighting our considerable firepower in the field of innovation and product development.
It's about in-house resources and expertise, extensive technological know-how. It's about mastering state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies. Yes, we are manufacturers, and we are manufacturers for good reasons. It is giving us a edge when innovating, when developing new products, and we see that being global allows a constant cross-fertilization. So let's start with strong internal innovation, expertise, and resources. We have a considerable firepower pursuing 165 years innovation journey. Innovation is encoded in the group's DNA. We've an innovation community of close to 3,000 people, investing EUR 300 million in 50 product categories. 500 patents are filed every year, and we own 10,000 active patents. And to this, we should add 20,000 utilization patents in China.
Our global innovation center was created in 2021, in Écully, near Lyon, in our headquarters, and it includes six centers of excellence, complemented by regional hubs in Germany, in China, in the U.S., Colombia, and Brazil. Six global excellence centers, the first one being about consumer insights with anthropologists, ethno-digital expert, UX designer, and engineers. Food science, with several Ph.D.s, food engineers, labs, electronic energy, and motor, with electronic energy and motor engineers and experts. Engineering with data scientists. Data scientists, absolutely key on many matters, including when capturing consumer insights. Robotics, IoT ecosystem. The material center of excellence is addressing metal transformation processes, high-performance plastic, and recycled material, and last but not least, intellectual property. Three examples now of application of our technical, technological know-how.
Starting on the left-hand side by metal crafting, we are here in All-Clad, in a factory, in our factory in the U.S., manufacturing a multi-layer cookware for perfect heat diffusion. In the center, you have the development of a vacuum cleaner on the back of strong expertise in aerodynamics. Then you have coating, here, enamel coating on the steam iron soleplate in our plant in France. Three key innovation resources on this slide. Number one, keeping laser focus on consumer insights, on consumer experience. Seb&You is a Groupe SEB panel created in 2015, and we're grouping today 13,000 consumers in several countries. And they are testing our new product during 2 months, and they are giving us a lot of insights on our products. With our SEB Lab, we organize agile creative sessions in a dedicated space.
As part of our open innovation practice, SEB Alliance is our strategic investment fund, and you have here, Auum, which is mentioned, which is, our recent acquisition. It's a company in which we made a recent acquisition of a minority stake, and this startup is proposing an ecological alternative to disposable cups. Their machine is sanitizing, is disinfecting and drying glasses in a matter of seconds. Mastering state-of-the-art manufacturing. We'll go now in our steam iron and steam generator factory near Lyon, and you will see three key plastic molding, as well as robots. And by the way, our French factories alone are equipped with more than 750 robots. So let's go into these ironing factories. Our strength is as well to drive a constant and agile cross-fertilization.
Cross-fertilization between categories and cross-fertilization between geographies. What do cookware and iron have in common? Well, glide and metal coating. Enamel coating is a process well mastered in Tefal cookware factory, and from there, a coating process was developed for the sole plate of our steam iron. Few additional examples of cross-fertilization, starting by cookware. We developed in France, top-notch non-stick coating, top-notch non-stick enamel, ceramic, sorry. We developed as well Thermo-Spot, which is signaling when the fry pan has reached the right temperature. Those innovative coatings, as well as Thermo-Spot, have been rolled out outside Europe, including in our manufacturing operation, for example, in China. Today, Thermo-Spot is a key brand distinctive asset, both for Tefal and for Supor.
Cross-fertilization on rice cooker with spherical bowl and with infrared technologies, developed in China and sold in China under Supor brand and the rest of the world under Tefal brand. What do vacuum cleaner and fans have in common? Well, in fact, silence. Silence and performance. And the starting point was a range, Silence Force vacuum cleaner range, developed in France on the back of a very strong expertise in acoustics and in aerodynamics. And we leveraged this know-how to support our innovation hub in Brazil, innovation hub on fans, to develop a new Turbo Silent fan concept with the best combination of performance and silence. So cross-fertilization between categories, but as well between geographies. This concept was adapted to the Brazilian market with plastic grids, but then for the rest of the world, with metal grids.
We have covered our robust process, our considerable firepower. We see now that our innovation and product development war machine is implemented in 50 product categories and on all continents.... Indeed, what is characterizing Groupe SEB is its ability to implement this innovation and product development on 50 product categories as an innovation and product development engine. On cookware, on cookware, here we've our latest Renew range, with best in class nonstick ceramic coating. On electrical cooking, with our new air fryer, Dual Easy Fry and Grill. A full meal for the family, the chicken together with the french fries on one go. Food preparation with i-Coach Touch, your baking coach at home to succeed homemade cooking, whatever your skills. Sensation, new full automatic coffee maker, your preferred recipe into an intuitive bean to cup machine.
Ironing with Ultimate Power Flow, the power of a steam generator into a steam iron, thanks to a pump, and with long lasting performance, thanks to an anti-calc system. Pure Pop, my personal vertical garment steamer to dewrinkle and purify any style on the go. Home cleaning with our latest, robot vacuum cleaner, Explorer vacuum cleaner, with high cleaning efficiency, ultimate mopping performance, but as well against its competitor, most competitor, avoiding low size obstacle. Home comfort, the most intelligent three-in-one purifier by Rowenta. It's a purifier, but it's as well a fan and a heater. And we implement this in all continents. Our market companies, our manufacturing operation, as well as our innovation hubs, are giving us a strong grip in understanding consumer insights. For example, on blender. Blender is a global category, but the habits are very different between countries.
For preparing juices in Brazil or in Colombia, guacamole and sauce, of course, in Mexico, hummus and juices in Middle East, smoothie and soup in Europe, ice crushing in Japan and Korea. We developed innovative solution, easy cleaning with a removable blade, power blades with long lasting sharpness, and we adapted this to different product platform, manufactured in South America or developed for Europe or developed for China. Different product platform with different geographies of blades and of bowl, adapted to the preferred local recipes. Consumers expect versatility. Let's look at one of our latest blender. Groupe SEB is the second player on blending worldwide, with leading position in many countries, creating healthy moments all over the world.
To make a long story short, to make a long story short, the impact of our innovation and product development firepower translates into EUR 2.5 billion sales in 2023, realized with products launched since 2021. We have a long-standing commitment to improve and reinvent consumers' daily life, and Groupe SEB is constantly reinventing its offer, following the changes of consumers' habits, innovating, capturing opportunities of new technologies, accompanying consumers generation after generation, in what can be described as saga. Saga on linen care, a great story made of constant progress. Groupe SEB created the first European electrical iron in 1917, then the first European steam iron in 1952. 1980, laser-treated stainless steel soleplate on Rowenta range for smooth and durable gliding. 1990, long lasting performance with anti-calc cartridge.
In 1995, our first steam generator for perfect result, 30% faster. In 2012, Freemove , a cordless steam iron, smooth ironing session, the cord no longer gets in the way. Then from 2012, new ironing solution with handheld garment steamer. Garment steamer, Tweeny. Tweeny, ironing or steaming, vertical or horizontal, as you wish. In 2022, Care for You, a delegation solution, and our latest product, Pure Pop, colorful, fun, and permanent garment steamer for traveling and for home. And we are today worldwide leader on ironing.... The key saga for the group, accompanying consumer of a generation, this time on cookware, starting with our iconic Cocotte Minute. A pressure cooker launched in 1953. A lighter pressure cooker, thanks to a breakthrough stamping process.
It's a good example of a success realized thanks to the combination of technology, technology made possible, by the way, because we are manufacturers. Combination of technology together with marketing, with a strong attention to user experience, supporting the consumer with recipe books, with cooking classes, and with, as well as you can see, spectacular marketing campaign. Many successors followed our Super Cocotte, with stainless steel, with slide system, with Clipso, a one-hand opening system, and with our latest product, Tempo, with three-in-one cooking modes: pressure cooking, slow cooking, but as well, cooking in oven. And many more local pressure cookers are sold in Brazil, in Italy, and in China. All in all, we have sold over 75 million pressure cookers since 1953, and this year we celebrated the seventieth anniversary of our Super Cocotte.
The legendary pressure cooker category is now complemented by electrical pressure cooker, which is a category which started in China and which has become now a global category. We've here our latest product from China, with Supor brand, and on the bottom right-hand side, our latest Cookeo, with a connected product with integrated scale. So as a conclusion, we understand consumer insights. We drive innovation and product development on 50 product categories, answering to local needs with constant and agile cross-fertilization, thanks to our geographical footprint. I hope you now better appreciate that Groupe SEB is definitely life-centric, and that this is how we make a difference. Thank you.
Thank you, Cyril. So now be ready to see a lot of new products on shelf from Groupe SEB. We are very privileged now to have for the next segment Vincent Tai. He's our Executive Vice President for SEB Asia, and he will take you through the next success growth story for Groupe SEB. So please welcome Vincent.
Thank you, Cathy. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. In the next 30 minutes, we will talk about innovation at Supor. We will also talk about how, at Supor, we take innovation beyond product. We will talk about how innovative idea transforming our online business model. We will talk about how innovative idea changing the way that we are communicating to our consumer. We are going to show you how latest technology and innovation transforming our industrial base in China to a world-class manufacturing facilities. So, let's start with giving you a very brief introduction and update of Supor. Supor has been a fascinating journey. Actually, the company started back in 1987, called Yuhuan Pressure Cooker Factory. And in 1994, it was formally established as Zhejiang Supor Company. So you can, you can think of next year will be the 30th anniversary for Supor.
The company was listed on Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2004, and today, we still remain listed in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. In 2006, the group has acquired majority share of Supor. And since then, since established, we have been improving the Chinese consumer every day and night by offering great products, from cookware to kitchen electric, and lately, to home care product. We interact with consumer from every corner of the country, from modern distribution in urban city, to all the villages in very remote area in China. And today, we interact with majority of our consumer anytime, anywhere, through our mobile devices.... Since we have acquired the company, it has been an amazing success story. Today, Supor is a EUR 2.1 billion company.
We have been able to transform the company into a fully digital online company, with over 70% of our business is coming from online. We are holding our long-term leadership as number one cookware brand in China, and we are happy to report that we overtake our second competitor in kitchen electric and becoming number one last year. We have been expanding our product category from 11 to 38 today, and from a cookware brand and becoming a household name in China. Today, we have 5 manufacturing facility in China, producing over 150 million pieces of product every year, and we are holding over 20,000 of active patents in China. And during the last 10 year, we are getting better and stronger. As I just mentioned, we are becoming number one in the kitchen electric categories.
We are always saying that we are undisputed leader in the cookware market, with over 35% market share. When we look at the offline market share for our cookware business, we are more than 2 times bigger than our next competitors. When it comes to online market share, we are doing even better, with more than 3 x market share over our next competitors. During the COVID period, when you look at Supor, we are more resilient to market turbulent, thanks to our very unique portfolio mix. We are very strong in something what we call non-discretionary category in China. For example, rice cooker, frying wok. Those non-discretionary category is immune to any economic cycle because Chinese consumer need those product for everyday cooking.
They are replacing the product, renewing the product, every 4 years -5 years on rice cookers, maybe two years for frying woks. We continue growing share in all these non-discretionary categories in China. But on the other hand, we have been very agile in capturing new emerging categories, like air fryers. As you see from the chart, we didn't even have an air fryer business back in 2019, and within 3 years, we are becoming number one in air fryers in China. So let's talk about our view on the future trend in China, and why we remain confident that there is still a long runway for growth.
Because we believe there are supportive structural market fundamentals, including a very favorable demographic trend, an evolving lifestyle, continues to increasing the category penetration, and continuous product renewal, which drive the premiumization in the China market. So let's look at the demographic trend. The urbanization in China continues. From now till 2030, each year, there are additional 9 million urban population created in China. As you can see, though, from the picture, it shows the difference between a rural area kitchen and an urban city kitchen. And if you look at this, okay, the rural area, the penetration of kitchen appliances is around four pieces per household, and in the urban kitchen, it's around 13 today. So as all this urbanization, people are renewing their home, refurbish their kitchen, that will increase the category penetration for the market.
Middle class, Daniel have mentioned about this for the emerging market. From now till 2030, every year, there will be additional 8 million middle-class population created in China, and that will drive the premiumization of our industry. People might worry when they see the statistic of last year from the Chinese government is, for the first time in the history of the last 25 years in China, that the population is not growing. But what really matter to our industry is the number of household. As the Chinese household size is getting smaller and smaller, from now till 2030, there will be additional 2.5 million household created every year.
One of the key element of this young, more affluent household is they are willing to pay premium for better design product and better user experience. Here, I just show you an example, okay? In the middle of the slide, this a traditional electric pressure cooker. It's a very traditional design, but very functional, very basic, very functional, selling at RMB 359. Last year, we launched this new product, what we call fast multi-cooker, selling at RMB 1,299. Then within 12 month, this product become the number one hit list on the market above RMB 1,000. Then you, as you can see from the right bottom corner of the picture, actually the design was inspired by the cocktail design from our BU colleague back in France. I mentioned about category penetration just now.
I still remember when I have similar presentation 10 years ago. At that time, we were seeing that the penetration of the product category per household in China is around four pieces, and today it increased to 10 pieces per household. But when you compare this number to Western world, to Europe, developed market like Germany and France, we are not even half of the penetration that you see in the developed, developed market. That's why in term of penetration of the product category, China have still a long run rate for growth. Let's talk about lifestyle. When there is an increase of the middle class size, the lifestyle start to evolve in a different way.
As you can see in the middle of the picture, instead of just cooking in, inside the kitchen, now the Chinese young consumer likes sharing cooking on a dining table, and then we launched this product, a grill, a grill and Pengchao that allow the consumer to share dining experience on a dining table. And our usage of our product are more than at home. As you can see in this picture, this glass kettle at office. Okay. Consumer are using this glass kettle to prepare hot beverages at the office, like fruit tea and all different kind of herbal tea, herbal tea. And during the COVID period, the Chinese people has been staying at home for too long, and then during the last 12 months, we have seen outdoor activity becoming extremely popular in China.
The picture on the right-hand side, you see a product, a coffee maker that we just launched five months ago. It's a automatic coffee maker driven by a rechargeable battery, and that allow the consumer to be able to enjoy coffee when they have their outdoor activities. So we remain confident that for China, there is still a long run rate for growth for the market in mid and long term, and how we are going to capture all this opportunity. Supor growth strategy is very simple and is very similar to what Stanislas described for the group. We will continue to grow our share in the existing category. We will entering new category, be it a adjacent category in cooking or a totally new category in home care.
The consumer buying behavior in China is changing very fast, and then we will continue to extend our reach to the consumer whenever and wherever they are going to shop. And to do this, what is our winning formula? There are five key pillars in our winning formula: a unique and agile innovation model, a strong brand, our exceptional ability to transform our go-to-market strategy, always one step ahead of our competition, and our world-class industrial base in China, and last but not least, is the people. So let's look at our unique and agile innovation model. So we call it premiumize and democratize. It all start with our very strong Chinese consumer insight, and be able to build a relevant innovation product for the consumer.
Then we've been able to create demand with our unrivaled marketing engine, which I will talk about later on. We have the skill and capability to be able to cost down innovation a bit. That allowing more consumers to be able to access the innovation at a more affordable price, and then with our strong distribution, we are reaching the mass market and build scale and grow the share. So let me show you one example to illustrate our innovation model. So you see on this slide, the animation is a detachable blade on a high-speed blender. Somebody may think, "Okay, it's obvious, I mean, detachable blades on a regular blender," but it's not that simple on a high-speed blender.
When this machine is spinning at over 30,000 rev per minute, and all the high-speed blenders in China are equipped with cooking function, so there is a big heating element under the blade. Try to do this airtight, but at the same time, allowing the consumer to be easily dismantle it without effort. It's a very complicated structure. And then when we first launched this innovation, we are putting it on a product selling as RMB 999. And within 2 years -3 years, we've been able to reduce the cost of this innovation by 50%, this component, and that allowing us to put this innovation feature onto a product today we are selling at RMB 399. And the story doesn't stop here, because while we are costing down innovation to make it more accessible to the mass, we are starting the next innovation cycle.
As you can see from the far right-hand side corner, the picture, we are taking advantage of a new motor technologies, which allow us to make a slimmer product and a quieter product, and at the same time, we are putting a very premium, whole stainless steel casing onto the product, and allow us to sell this product at RMB 1,299. Now, I would like to talk about... to show you a few more example of our iconic product in Supor. Our anti-rust iron wok, the Thermo-Spot wok that, Cyril just talked about. Our ever, ever most successful product in China, the spherical pot rice cooker, which today we sold over 15 million unit in China and around the world. And all this iconic product is important because that becoming a strong asset to the Supor brand. And our late- lately innovation is this far-infrared rice cooker.
We are thrilled to see the initial result of this product. We have been selling over 1 million pieces of this infrared rice cooker in China during the last 12 months since we launched the product, and we strongly believe that this will be another phenomenal success in China, like the spherical rice cooker that we launched 10 years ago. And actually, we have another version of our innovation model, where we try to be very agile in capturing new category in China. Because in China, if you look at the market, when there's a new product category coming, the window opportunity is very short, and then we have to be very agile and quick. So this model, we call Build and Innovate.
So, for new category, we usually partner with our OEM partner to launch the product very quickly into the market, and at Supor, we have an extremely good supply network within China, all over China. And therefore, our very strong position, we have been able to build our initial position and volume into the market, but at the same time, we are working on a new innovation. And then we launch innovation later on, and when we build the scale of all this new category, we start to in-source the manufacturing in-house, and that allow us to further improve our cost competitiveness of this category. So we can build product leadership through innovation, as well as economic of scale, and grow our market share.
I just show you example how we've been able to build air fryer business in China from nothing back in 2019, and then become number one in three years' time. Innovation and quality has always been in the heart of the Supor people. Today, we are holding more than 20,000 active patent in China. And then if you look at the trend for the last four year, we have been register more than 15,000 new patent in China. That means we are registering more than 3,000 new patent every year for the last four year in China. And superior quality standard at Supor lead us to our product return rate is as low as 0.8%. That is the industry-leading return rate today.
If you look at our online platform review, 99.6% of review are positive review. Our system is connected, and then we've been able to capture over 4 million consumer review every year, and by making use of the latest IT and AI technology, we've been able to do contextual analysis of all these 4 million reviews that we capture every year, that allow us to further improve the quality of the product, as well as improving the user experience of all the product. From time to time, we also discover new consumer insight through these powerful tools. China is the very fast-changing market, and I have to say, it's the most competitive market in the world, so speed is of the essence.
So if you look at our speed in innovation, for a breakthrough technology platform, like the infrared, usually it takes us 18 months from concept to product launch. And if we have to adapt this new technology on another product, another product category, like using the infrared on air fryer, it only takes us 8 months to do it. And then on the existing product, if you want to add a new feature with a relevant benefit to the consumer, like this product, what we call fast pressure release EPC, it only takes us 4 months to do it. Let's talk about some of the development of the new category. During the COVID period, between 2019 and 2020, we've been able to double our business in home care.
Today, we are number one online for steam iron in China, we are number two online for garment steamer in China, we are number two online for versatile. Eighty percent of the home care products sold in China today are online. So being number one online or number two online, that means actually we are number one or number two in this category for the overall market share. We are now penetrating one of the big category in home care in China, is the floor washer. This is a true demonstration, showing us that actually we can take Supor brand beyond kitchen. Let's talk about the brand. I mentioned that innovation, relevant innovation, and quality has always been in the center and in the heart of the Supor people, and that is important to build our brand.
We have the highest recommendation rate in our industry today in China. So if we ask a user of a Supor product, "Would you recommend this product to your friends or other family member?" 79% of them say yes. And for some of the categories like rice cooker, the number is as high as over 90%. So we always say our consumer is our brand ambassador. Go-to-market. In China, when we look at the online distribution, is mainly a marketplace, what you call a marketplace online, online marketplace. Tmall is a marketplace, Pinduoduo is a marketplace, TikTok is a marketplace. JD.com, they have marketplace, but also they have one P model as Amazon in the rest of the world. So majority of the online business are marketplace.
When you look at marketplace online, actually is no different with the marketplace in the offline. The more shop you have, the more footprint and traffic you are going to have. So back in 2019, when our competition are struggling with ever-increasing paid traffic on their online business, we come with this idea and say, "Okay, let's expand and build our, what we call, online store matrix or online store footprint." So in 2019, we have around 160 online store on all this marketplace, and then today, we have been growing it to over 400 online store in all the marketplace, and we are number one in Tmall, we are number one in JD.com, we are number one in Pinduoduo, and then lately, we are number one on TikTok e-commerce platform.
Those online store expansion allowing us to capture a lot of what we call unpaid traffic. People might say, "This is not difficult. I mean, you just get more stores onto your platform." But in order to do this, at the same time, we have to totally transform our supply chain infrastructure in China. Today, we are partnering with Tmall, we are partnering with JD.com, that we centralize all our inventory in one warehouse. We are connecting our IT system to the platform, such that allow us to have real-time sales and inventory data of each of the stores online, and that greatly improve our sales forecast accuracy by 3x-4 x. We are in the process of replicating model with Pinduoduo and TikTok next year.
With this leading supply chain infrastructure in China online business, we believe we still have a 2- to 3-year lead ahead of our competitors. I've just mentioned about our marketing engine, okay? Stella mentioned about everything is digital. So if you look at our marketing engine today, we have over 3,000 influencer on our book, that have constant partnership with them, and producing more than 25,000 live streaming per year. Those are key influencer in China. And we have over 400 online store today, and they are doing live streaming, always on. We are doing more than 2,000 session of live streaming every week. That means we are doing 300 live streaming session every day.
Each of these live streaming session last for around 12 hours, and some of them might last as long as 16-17 hours, starting from 7:00 A.M., which interestingly, that is the peak hour people will buy when they are stuck in the traffic, and then they buy, they buy product on a mobile phone. And that lasts until midnight. And content, digital content. Now, we have a very efficient ecosystem and an infrastructure to create content. Each year, each year, we are creating more than 300,000 short videos online and have more than 2.8 billion viewer per year. And then trying to do this, okay, you hear, we have to build a very efficient engine and infrastructure. Powerful CRM that enable us have direct communication with over 45 million of consumer in China.
We have over 20 million social media follower, like Red Book, TikTok, or Weibo in China. On our own CRM system, we have more than 25 million qualified loyalty member, each of them with more than 200 attributes that allow us to thoroughly understand the behavior of this consumer, and as well as enable us to do a very targeted marketing to all these loyal consumer for Supor. So let's talk about industrial. I just mentioned how we take advantage of the latest technology to transform our industrial base into a world-class manufacturing facility. Here, we show you a product, a kettle, and you might know kettle is a highly commoditized product, so cost competitiveness is key. And today, the Shaoxing factory, the picture that you see here, is the largest kettle manufacturing factory in the world.
This product, what we call a double-layer kettle, with a stainless steel body inside and a plastic body outside, and it's a fully digital-controlled, temperature-controlled kettle. We've been able to produce kettle at a cost below EUR 5 in our Shaoxing factory. What I would like to do is to show you a short video of how we produce this kettle at our Supor factory in Shaoxing.
In the video, what you can see is how we fully automate the production of this stainless steel inner body, how we make use of the latest, latest, laser technology to engrave the Supor logo and all the graphic on the plastic body, how we use automation to assembly the product, how we make use of the AGV, the automatic guided vehicle, within our factory to improve our logistic, and also how we do automatic testing of the product and packaging of the product. So let's roll the video, please. What I would like to is, is to stress two point.
If you look at our packaging facility, actually, probably you won't notice is that every product coming out of our production line, we are stamping it with a very unique serial number that we can keep track of every product we sell into the market. Secondly, when we show you a picture of a Chinese factory 10 years ago, what you will see? You will see thousands of workers on the production line. But in the video, you don't see that many people at all. So in all Supor factories, that has been transformed into a very modern, world-class, and very competitive industrial facilities. So we talk about innovation, we talk about the brand, we talk about go-to-market strategy, and then we talk about our industrial competitiveness. And all this would not be possible without the people.
I cannot finish any presentation without talking about Supor people and their unique culture. At Supor, we have exceptional ability to cultivate top talents, and we have proven track record growing people from grassroots. Here, I just show you a few of the senior management members of the Supor team, the general manager of respective BU, and the general manager of our largest factory in Shaoxing. You see, this lady started with the company as a factory worker 32 years ago. I won't reveal how old she is now. But she started as a factory worker, so she knows all the nuts and bolts, how to make a product better, faster, and cheaper.
If you look at our young general manager for our home and personal care business unit, he started as a store promoter 23 years ago, 22 years ago. This gentleman, I mean, have the understanding of the psychology behind all the consumer buying behavior, how we should sell and communicate to a consumer very effectively, how we can manage our customer and key account, building a very strong relationship. This is very important to support because, if you look at this, I mean, that allow us to have a very consistency in strategy execution. It's a hard-to-match industry knowledge base, and as a matter of fact, if you look at the product managers at Supor, most of them has been managing the same product category for over 10 years. So when we are talking about consumer insight, that is a consumer insight.
The people have been doing the same thing for the last 10 years. They know every bit of the detail of the business. At the same time, we are putting new blood into the organization. The average age of our new hire over the last 3 years is below 30. If you look at our online commercial team, most of those young people are Gen Z, young people with age below 30. So this is very unique to Supor. I mean, this allow us to preserve our unique culture and entrepreneur spirit as Supor. The key takeaway.
So we still believe, and strongly believe, and confident that the China market has still a long runway for growth, because there's a favorable demographic trend, there's an evolving lifestyle of the middle class to increase the category penetration, and the continuous product renewal will drive premiumization. And support, as what I describe our winning formula, we are in a unique position, and we have the competitive edge to be able to capitalize on these future opportunities. So I would like to finish my presentation by showing you one of my favorite pictures. During the last 13 years, we have been enjoying tremendous success in China, and it's always in our heart that we should give back and contribute to the society and the local community. So 15 years ago, we embarked on a journey.
We have a project called Supor School Project, which we would like to be able to provide education to all the underprivileged children in a very remote and mountainous area in China, and we are building 2 schools every year. Today, we have 29 schools in China in all these very remote areas, allowing all these underprivileged children to have basic education. And over the last 15 years, there are over 20,000 children who benefit from this program. So I would like to show you this program, a picture, and it's very striking because when you see all the smiling faces and the joyfulness of these children in front of our school. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Vincent. So now you've had the behind the scenes of several areas of the company. If you have some more questions, we now have a Q&A session for 15 minutes now, and then you have a pause. I call the speaker to come on stage. Thank you.
Right. How does it work?
So do you have any questions? Yeah, and if so, I will take the mic because you have a lot of light. Do you have any questions? Wow, you've been so clear. This is impressive.
Hi, Madeline Fall from SG. Thank you for the presentation. I've got two questions. The first one is about innovation. Could you tell us, how do you factor in your innovation process the pressure on the purchasing power from our to household? And how do you project probably a more competitive environment in your over the next years? And the second question is to have a better view of your future pipeline of new products. How will it increase over the next two years?
... I'll take the first one, you take the second one, Cyril, and maybe Vincent, you wanna complement with China. Come over with us. Come over.
It's micro.
Maybe on, on your first question, what is the impact on current purchasing power tensions and of increased competition? Well, in fact, increased competition is, was, and has been, and will be a key parameter of our industry. And we see that, in fact... So the, the first thing is there is no increased competition, competitive pressure today as there was 1 year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, and I think what we see in China is a reflection of that. On, on the ability, on the impact on our, innovation pipeline, I would say minimal, because at the end of the day, we see that even in those times of constraint on consumer purchasing power, we see that consumers are quite prepared to pay for the right, the right price, for the right level of innovation.
I would tend to say, yes, we've seen, in terms of, market behavior during those 6, 9 months of high inflation, some growth of B brands and trade brands, but I think our market is structurally craving for added value innovation, and I think still works and will be working still.
And to build on Stanislas's comment, we do see, in the latest years, and they were not easy years for consumers with high inflation, we do see markets trending up, new segments developing, and this is true on, all categories, from, versatile home cleaning to robot vacuum cleaner. In cooking, with a more, comprehensive, solution with a connected device, et cetera, et cetera. You were asking us about our innovation pipe, if I understand your question. You will probably very much understand our answer is that, of course, we'll not disclose here, what we have in the pipe. You heard that we have created an innovation, a center, two years ago.
We do have many innovation projects in the pipeline, and so we are very confident that we'll continue and accelerate our innovation journey.
Vincent?
I just want to comment on this cost competitiveness. I mean, that is not new to our industry, I mean, for the past 20 years or 30 years, I mean, price competition is always there. But if you look at the capability of our China team and our Chinese industrial base, I think we... It's very unique. I mean, we have the unique capability to cost down product without sacrificing the relevant benefit to the consumer as well as the quality. And yes, I mean, it, it, we might be long story how we do it, but the, we have a proven record, be able to cost down at speed to compete in the market.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Do you have any other questions? Yes.
Yes, hello. Maybe it's linked to the affordability question. I was wondering, what has been the price increase globally on your products over the last three years? And the second question is, there is a lot of data report on the weakness of consumption in China. What do you see on your market in China?
Well, yeah. Right. On the price increase, we did put price increase over the last 2 years, for the reason that you know, cost increase of raw material, of electronics, of maritime freight. We have put on average a low single-digit to double-digit price increase with a different situation, depending on categories, sometimes much more than this. Now, what was key and what is key for us is our ability to develop a new product and to make sure that we keep strong position on key price points being promotional or permanent retail, psychological retail price. So this is what we are ensuring to make sure that we keep our position.
So on China, if you look at the economy in China, I always say economy have cycle, right? There's always up and down. But if you look at the economy in China, I think there is a structural problem today because for the last 20 years, it's relying on three, what we call three engines, and the two most important is export and infrastructure investment. But if you look at the structural economy in China, there's only that many highway or airport and bridges you can build. So they are into a structural problem. And I think the current Chinese government and the leader are very clever.
If you look at their current policy, instead of, like, what they have been doing back in 2008 when there's a financial crisis, they inject CNY 4,000 billion liquidity into the market in a general basis, which you can see today, that inflate the price of their asset and then create a bubble. So this time they learn, and then they are trying to do it differently. If you look at the Chinese government policy to date, they are not doing any stimulus package on a general basis, but they are doing stimulus in a more, what, what I call more sectoral and earmark approach. So they are putting a lot of investment in new industry like EV, renewable energy, digitalization of manufacturing, AI technology.
Then if they are successful in doing this, that will totally change the structure of the economy in China, and that will provide a more sustainable and long-term goal and increase the productivity in China and becoming more competitive in the global market.
...Of course, when that happen, I mean, we'll benefit because, like, the consumption will pick up again. So I don't have a crystal ball. I mean, how quickly, I mean, they can do it, but I think they are, we are in the right direction.
Maybe a complement to this inflation story. I think, I mean, I've spent, as you know, a few years of my life in the food and drink business, and in the food and drink business, we're in a pretty contained or absolute volume business. I mean, you eat and drink so much food in the day for every human being. In our industry, I think it's an ever-expanding category.
So yes, we've seen some very, very short-term maybe impact of inflation on product mix or volume demand, but the reality is that the drivers of the demand of our categories, either because they are not discretionary, as Vincent was saying, I mean, when your wok or your frying pan is not working any longer, you need another, another one because you need to cook tonight or tomorrow morning. So either it's because it's non-discretionary or because the service rendered by our products is so great compared to the cost of the product. We see that our industry is not immune to inflation or economic cycles, but the driving forces that drive demand of our categories is very, very much stronger, that it can be, for instance, in food between inflation and volume development. I don't know if that makes any sense. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Do we have another question? Yes, two.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
All right. Hello. Maybe just one question. You mentioned that EUR 2.5 billion of sales have been done with product launch in 2021, from after 2021. What is the same figures in terms of volume? You obviously have 30% of sales with new product, but the volume. And maybe another question which is linked to that one, do you have the average age of the bulk of your sales for the 70% remaining? When you launch a product, can you sell it for 10 years, 7 years, 5 years, or something like that?
Age of the products? Yeah, I understand the question. I'm not sure we have the statistic in the back of our head. What was the question? First question was on the weights in terms of volume. It's probably a bit lower in volume, since the new products includes, of course, trading up.
Maybe to simplify the question, what is the average premium price that you put with a new product compared to an old one?
Let me take that. I mean, it's, it's, there's so many categories that it would be really, first, making averages on things which are so different is really misleading, so we don't do it. Every time we try to do it, we stop because comparing a frying pan, 15 EUR average selling price or 25 EUR with a pressure cooker, with a full auto coffee machine, just doesn't make any sense. So I'm, I mean, we love to answer questions, but we know one, what we do is we pile our trading up, we pile our price and mix, as you see in our bridges, and that's the way we drive value creation. But we have no such things as volumes or average price markup. And again, I mean, I answer your question.
I spent a few years in my life in food and drinks, when answering those questions is very easy, but I think in this industry, it's very difficult. And we would—I think we would be telling you numbers that wouldn't mean anything.
Okay.
Again, our innovation engine is to evolve, renew our offer on 50 product categories with some disruptive innovations, some new segments that we are building, some very differentiated products on the top of our range, but as well on the good, on the better, on mid-price proposition to bring differentiation, to bring added value. So the renewal is not always, and not only, of course, on the top of range, not always trading up, but it can be to renew at the same price a product with a new benefit, with a differentiated proposition.
Thank you, Cyril. We can go for the other question.
Yes. Good afternoon. So Cedric Rossi from Bryan Garnier. I have two questions. The first one is regarding innovation. So as you alluded to, the software component in your products is getting more and more important. So how do you make sure that you are still ahead in the curve with regard to software? Are you partnering with IT companies? Are you developing this expertise in-house? And do you feel that it's gonna be a key competitive advantage going forward? And my second question is regarding China.
I recall a few years ago when we made the analyst trip in China, you were highlighting the strong gap between Tier 1 cities and Tier 2, three and four cities in terms of equipment. So you said that it was on average 10 products per household. Could you update us on the difference between Tier 1 cities and all the smaller cities? Thank you.
So on the first question, yes, indeed, we are bringing very meaningful consumer experience with connected product, connected with a touchscreen, connected to app, inspiring the consumer with a new recipe, giving them the ability to share. So that's a very key part of our strategy, of our innovation strategy, and we developed this with in-house expertise, and we have strong expertise in-house. And you understand it's about mastering the technology, but it's even more about mastering the ecosystem, developing recipes that will flow in the right way in all the ecosystem, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, we do leverage partnership to be always in the first, you know, in the front run on those technologies.
So we do both internal expertise and partnering with the best-in-class technological partner. And on top of that, we have a manufacturing facility in Saint-Lô, in Normandy, which makes the carte imprimée, PCB cards. The more sophisticated, the more upmarket ones, because we think, again, that understanding the way those things are made, understanding those things are developed, understanding the way those things are evolving, even if it's a bit more expensive to make them in Europe, we think is a key element of controlling and mastering the technologies. So outsourced in terms of development, in-sourced in terms of development, but also in parts in terms of production. Vincent?
Yeah, regarding the penetration, actually, I did mention in my presentation. If we compare the rural area and the urban area, to the average in China is around 10, but in the rural area, it's still around 4, and then in the urban area, it's 13, so the average is about 10.
Thank you. Do we have one last question?
It's not that we're hiding, it's that the lights are
Yeah, the light is kind of... Yes.
Yeah. Good afternoon, Christophe Chaput from Oddo. In China, you say that you want obviously to grow into existing category and enter into new category. Could we have the size of the market in existing category and the one you want to address in new category, please?
Okay. If you look at our existing business, like cookware and and kitchen electric, cookware, at the retail price, the market is around CNY 25 billion for cookware at retail price. For kitchen electric is around 58 billion RMB. Okay? But actually, if you look at the home personal care, actually, the market is even bigger. At the home and personal care, it's around CNY 80 billion market, because there are few very big category, like the floor care and the home comfort, like the fan and heater. So just give you an example, like the fan and heater market is around CNY 13 billion market in China, which we are not bringing today.
Thank you. So there's, I see, one last question.
Yes, Mourad Lamidi, BNP Exane. Just a follow-up on China and, and the, the slowdown of your industry over the past 12 months -18 months. I'm just wondering, what are your thoughts of the drivers that are behind this slowdown, the, the health of the consumer? Maybe the property market is biting, the purchasing power. So just give us your insight on, on, what's, what's happening in the SDM market in China.
Okay. Let me first explain the real estate market, okay? I mean, people are very concerned about the real estate market crisis in China. But when you look at the real estate market, actually, there is still a genuine demand for new home in China today. As I show in my figures, there is an increasing number of household in China, which that they need to buy a new home. So the problem for the real estate market in China is not on the demand side. The problem is on the supply side, where, as I explained back in 2008, when the Chinese government inject RMB 4 trillion liquidity into the market, that inflates the price, and everyone try to buy a house as a investment.
So the problem is in the oversupply side, and there is still a general demand for new home in China. And the slowdown, the whole economy in China is slowing down, okay? And then the consumer, obviously, the problem is the confidence to spend. So when they see the economy is not growing as fast as before... So because in China, if you look at the spending pattern for the Chinese consumer, Chinese consumer has the highest saving rate in the world, okay? In the Western world, like, US, people are spending on credit. In China, we used to save a lot of money.
So that means the discretionary part of the spending is getting smaller because they want to save more money in case, I mean, the economy is getting worse and worse. So I think it's all about the consumer confidence. And actually, when we look at the market today, the volume has been holding, yes, slightly negative, but we see the market are turning down. People are looking for a better value for basic functional product. So I think that drive the slowdown of the market in China is the consumer confidence.
Thank you. So one last, really? Ah. Yeah, we'll do it then.
...Hi, it's Fraser Donlon from Berenberg. Thanks for the presentation. On China, if you have to grow in smaller cities and enter a new category with HPC, can you do that while also having, let's say, defending or improving the margin for Supor?
Okay. First of all, about penetrating the lower tier city. First of all, I think that there are two way, I mean, that we have been doing a very successful. First, first of all, is the online market, even for the lower city and the remote area, because of the very well developed of the logistics infrastructure in China. So we can reach the rural area for online platform. Secondly is, actually, I didn't mention in my presentation, all these online player, like JD, they are building an online physical store at the rural area too. And so today we have over 20,000 retail shop with JD at the rural area.
That greatly improves the efficiency of the distribution in the offline, because in the past, when we try to reach our consumer in the rural area, we sell to our wholesaler, the wholesaler sells to the sub dealer, and the sub dealer selling to the mom-and-pop shop and all this rural area. Now, we go direct through the JD platform. So the JD platform will take our inventory in the warehouse and then send it to all these 20,000 shop at the rural area. So that is a much, much, much more efficient model, because in the past... Interestingly, if you look at the retail price of our product at the rural area, it's more expensive than the urban area for the same product because of the expensive distribution structure.
So that is about the rural area. In the new category development, it is adjacent category in kitchen. I already mentioned we have the power, we have the brand to do it, like air fryer. On new category of home and personal care, we're just starting. As I said, now we have already become number one in steam iron and number two in garment steam and versatile. And we still have a very long way to go because today we are very small in floor washer. We are not even participating in any home comfort. But with our success in linen care, as I said, that demonstrate we can extend the Supor brand beyond kitchen, and then we have a very powerful distribution.
So if you look at our online platform today, we have our flagship store, say, for example, on our Tmall. And unlike traditional offline platform, we have total autonomy, what product we want to put on the, on screen to sell to the consumer. Because in the past, entering new category will take a much longer time because you need to negotiate with the offline retailer to get the shelf space on this. But on the online platform, you have unlimited shelf space, and we are very strong with this 400 online shop in China, and then we can list our product instantly. But of course, the other end is, as always, we always believe we need to build great product, to build, I mean, to enter a new category.
So like the floor washer, okay, there's still a lot of ping pong in this product, and then we need to improve it and then offering additional value to the consumer. And also, when we enter a category, another very important consideration is, can we create value? We don't want to enter in a category that is no profitability, like the floor washer today. Does that answer your question? Perfect.
So the last question before we close this first session. No more question?
I think there was one question here in the-
Yeah
... in the middle. No?
I see.
No?
Okay. So we have a 30-minute break. You have everything ready in the lobby, and you have also a specific session if you want, available from Veda, working in the Manufacture du Café of Ducasse, who is the third in the World Championship on coffee. So if you want to have some insight from him, he's waiting for you, and you also have a lot of other nice things waiting for you in the lobby. See you in 30 minutes. Thank you.
Thank you.
Oh, baby. Everything I do- So many times before.
So we're back. Thank you very much. So for the second part of the Capital Market Day, we will take you through now the professional coffee. And to make sure you are in the atmosphere, you can feel and smell that, we have put some coffee smell also in the room to make sure you know where you are. So for this, you also will have Martin Zouhar here, who is Executive Vice President in charge of professional coffee. He will take you through the story that we are starting about coffee and the ambition. Martin, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Cathy, and very good late afternoon. I will start with a short introduction of myself. I'm Czech. I started in Groupe SEB in April 2000, and I think that puts me in the big community of the lifers in the company. In the 21 years of my spell in Groupe SEB, I started in the consumer division in various positions of management around the globe. And from September 2021, I've been privileged, underlined privileged, to lead the Groupe SEB professional organization. It is a real pleasure for me during the next 30 minutes to introduce you to the world of professional coffee. So let's get started. Today's presentation is split into three main parts. In the first part, I'm going to talk about leadership position of our four complementary brands.
Then I will move on and explain a little bit about highly attractive market of coffee and professional equipment, and I will conclude with our growth model and key success factors. A leadership position of our four complementary brands. As Thierry already mentioned, the entry of Groupe SEB into professional equipment market started with the acquisition of WMF. Overnight, we entered a new industry and became a global leader in fully automatic espresso machines with two renowned names, WMF and Schaerer. Both have been leading brands in the industry with a high level of complementarity geographically, with the go-to-market and customer segments.... In 2019, the group made a very smart move and entered the biggest coffee market in the world, USA, with the acquisition of Curtis, a strong number two in the filter coffee makers. This acquisition enabled us to enter the filter coffee market.
It also enabled us to consolidate the market share between the fully automatic and filter, enlarge our customer portfolio, especially with the small customers and roasters, and most recently, to accelerate our automation story. In 2023, Group made a first inroads into the traditional coffee markets with the acquisition of La San Marco, iconic Italian brand, with a very unique lever technology. We are just seven years since we started, and we accomplished a lot, covering major segments of the professional coffee equipment with four complementary brands and technologies, allowing us to offer our customers unique one-stop-shop solution, especially relevant for segments like convenience stores, hotels, or quick service restaurant, namely in North America. I will give a quick snapshot of our financial performance. In 2016, at the point of acquisition, our revenues were EUR 400 million, with a high level of profitability above 15%.
At the time, the sales weight outside of Europe was only 30%. Between 2016 and 2023, our endeavor was slowed down for a couple of years because of COVID. Despite it, I'm very happy to report a CAGR of ten percent over this period, maintaining the high level of profitability while we accelerated our investments to support future growth in ERP, in the product innovation, in the software development, and in the commercial structure. The most remarkable achievement for me is the international expansion. While we consolidated our position in Europe, which is more a replacement market of a single-digit market growth, we grew our market share in U.K.
We substantially grow in the two most important markets in the world, in USA and in China, but not only, also in Southeast Asia, in the Middle East, and most recently, we also see a lot of tractions in the Mexico market. Today, our out-of-Europe sales accounts for more than 50% of our total global sales. Let me share some records of our performance. We are a distinctive global leader in professional fully automatic coffee equipment, with 30% market share balanced between Schaerer and WMF. We are not only a global leader, we are also the local leader in more than 12 countries, including the three main ones: USA, China, and Germany. And by the way, we are also the number one in the fourth market, which is UK.
We are the leader with more than 65,000 customers around the globe and 450,000 machines installed over the past years. Our machines prepare daily around 30 million cups of coffee, and this number increases every day. Thanks to La San Marco, we have now a significant 10% market share in the traditional coffee equipment market. These numbers are not coincidence. They are a consequence of investments along the entire value chain, in innovation, in production, in commercial, but also in service and digital. Upstream the value chain in R&D, we are investing more than EUR 30 million into innovation with a community of 150 people. We register more than 160 major family patents, and this number is very significant and the highest in the industry.
We have five factories around the world with a workforce of 1,100 people. Three sites in Europe for fully automatic, one site in Italy for traditional, and 1 in USA, in California, for drip filter and HDSM categories. I'm sorry, I went too quick. 70% of our revenues are generated by machines and 30% by service and spare parts. Downstream the value chain, we are represented in more than 100 countries, directly in certain countries with our own market companies, and indirectly through more than 200 distributors. Our business model integrates service to a much higher degree than our direct competitors. In service, we have the highest number of technicians, 800 technicians on our payroll, and we add to around 2,400 full-time employees through our service partners. And this increases the customer satisfaction from end to end.
Last but not least, we have an unmatched, the largest installed base of connected machines, 140,000 connected machines, which are enabled for digital services such as fleet management, remote menu update, remote service control, and software update. Allow me to expand about complementarity of our brands, which allow us to maximize our growth opportunities. I am referring to the complementarity regarding the customer type, price point, and the use case. We cover all customer types mentioned on the top of the chart, from small offices to hotels and restaurants, specialized coffee shops, quick-serve restaurants, and convenience stores, as well as large offices, public spaces, and cruise lines. Professional fully automatic with Schaerer and WMF, and most recently Curtis, which stands for speed to serve, consistency in taste, and ease of use.
Traditional with La San Marco, with differentiated design and the best, the best-in-class Italian flair. American filter coffee with Curtis, which is historically synonymous for black filter coffee, which is now also available in the fully automatic, with cutting-edge European technology made in Germany. We also implement synergies with our consumer division, sharing consumer insight, designs, technology, and go-to-market, especially for the office segment. Our complementarity technologies enable us to fit different consumer needs, to accompany our consumers on their journey from morning to evening. Now, allow me to move on the next part of the presentation, which is talking about highly attractive market of the coffee and coffee machines. I will try to explain why this highly lucrative market will further increase its attractiveness. Coffee is a fantastic drink, and coffee out of home is most amazing industry.
Fresh coffee is on a structural change growth, and it's perceived as natural, fresh drink, energizing, and healthy. It is consumed all around the world, with strong acceleration in Asia, including some tea markets. Out of home, consumers can also try new creative recipes that can't be replicated at home. In many markets, drinking coffee is associated with convenient moments. This explains why out-of-home overperformance with 4% per annum in the coming years. When we look at the global out-of-home fresh coffee consumption, we see a blue ocean of opportunities with different triggers in different continents. First and foremost, there is a massive growth potential in China. There was an article published this week that talks about China. That China reached the highest number of coffee shops in the world.
China started to acquire a taste of fresh coffee years ago, expanding fast in the Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. At that time, it was mainly about the traditional coffee equipment, and Shanghai was called a capital of coffee. A few years later, with a strong acceleration of coffee chains and the seek for consistency, expanding into the Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities, we see an acceleration of automation, and we believe that this momentum is going to continue for some years. It is not captured on this slide, but we see a similar trend in Southeast Asia and India. Traditional tea markets increasingly discovering coffee culture. In USA, the consumption of coffee is already high, and the main lever is the equipment upgrade into the new technologies, with automation to prevail. Europe is a replacement market with a high consumption of fresh coffee.
In my opinion, we are going to see a consolidation from big strategic accounts, an increased level of automation driven by scarcity of skilled labor. What is your favorite coffee recipe? I guess the answer will depend on which continent you ask the question. Is it hot or is it cold? Is it large or is it small? Is it a black coffee or white coffee? Will it be a coffee drink or espresso is going to be used only as an ingredient? Again, here in Paris, my educated guess, it will be a hot coffee beverage, mainly black coffee. Maybe some of you will go for the white coffee. Me, as a global citizen, I enjoy different recipes around the globe. In Europe, I enjoy my espresso, and when I'm in Germany, I go for a good caffè crema.
But when I start to travel overseas in USA or in China, I'm more on the cold side, large sizes, alternative milks, trying new ingredients. Today, we serve some of these global recipes on the site, and I highly recommend you try some of them. I would like to say I've been fascinated by two points. First is fast development of the cold coffee, mainly served over the ice. In China and the USA, the leading chain of coffee are reporting almost 75% of the cold drinks out of their total beverage menu. The second is the creativity of the leading chains in China to change their beverage menu on the weekly basis, and thanks to their big data, within days, to assess the future success of the new recipes. Let's speak about unique customer benefits using a professional, fully automatic coffee makers.
Speed to serve, which is highly relevant especially during the time. Time is money, and our customers' top agenda is to minimize the wait time. As an example, for the preparation of cappuccino, it takes 25 seconds to prepare it with one touch fully automatic solution, opposed to 80 seconds with a traditional machine. And fully auto ensures consistency in taste. It does not depend on the barista skill. Very fast payback. In the high and normal traffic outlets, the payback is less than 6 months. When we take into account the life cycle of the machines between 6-7 years, we are getting a very strong ROI. High, higher beverage menu variety at the push of the button. You could experience it today, you know, during the demonstration of the coffee makers. And our digital solutions allow adapt remotely beverage menus to the season.
Visible permeation of fresh coffee beans. These data are from USA, and they are capturing the increase of fresh coffee beans between 2015 and 2022, growing from 48%-62%. Our consumers get reassurance with the fresh beans visibly stored in our hoppers. The last but not least, we are highly committed to sustainable goals, key agenda of our company, but increasingly also our customers, leading coffee chains and roasters. Full auto improves sustainability footprint from efficient use of energy, milk, and water. Important initiative is also reduce CO2 in the service area. We are using EVs for our technicians, and we are using our digital solutions, remote service desk, for example, to be able to resolve up to 20% of the service calls remotely.
We estimate that the equipment market will grow 5% in value between 2023 and 2026. We split the equipment into the four main categories: with filter coffee makers, traditional espresso machines, fully automatic, and the vending. We believe that filter will experience 3% growth, but remains a relevant technology in North America, Japan, and Northern Europe. Traditional coffee machines will trade up with more electronics and semi-automation, and will remain a relevant solution for leading coffee chains, full service restaurants, and hotels with true barista experience, and we forecast a CAGR of 5%. Vending, we believe, will stagnate. Key driver is a perception of lower quality, and we believe that these will be substituted but by full auto solutions.
The biggest growth will occur in fully automatic, driven by the expansion of coffee chains in China, by the trade-up in USA, by the renewal cycle in Europe, but also by the global key trends like hot and cold, plant-based milk, or scarcity of skilled labor. We forecast CAGR of 10%, which will make fully automatic the largest equipment segment. Now let me talk a little bit about our growth models and key success factors. Our growth in SEB Professional stands on three pillars. Number one, we have the broadest and most diverse customer groups. We are serving today seven out of 10 biggest chains, and I believe the eighth one will come on our customer list at the beginning of next year. We supply small and individual customers, and we have a very balanced revenue between direct and indirect sales.
Number two, thanks to our distinctive customer list and leveraging highest number of connecting machines, we have access to superior customer insight, leading to the right innovation, technologies, and digital solutions. Thirdly, we have a proven successful record to get the major deals. Thanks to our customization know-how, we run more than 200 customization projects every year. We are also, we are also successful, thanks to our comprehensive one-stop shop offer, consisting of fully automatic espresso, fully automatic filter, drip filter, hybrid, and traditional machines. And with the highest number of service technicians, we have major capabilities to deliver global rollout at the required speed. Let me share two examples of customer insight leading to differentiating innovations. I will demonstrate it on the brewing unit, which is one of the key components of a coffee machine.
most common size of a brewing unit is 16 grams -18 grams, allowing customers to prepare single or double shot. In China, working with key trendsetters, we understand that espresso is ingredient and speed of serve is critical. Based on this insight, we developed a large brewing unit up to 30 grams in a chamber to brew multiple shots in one cycle. This brewing unit is arguably one of the key success drivers of our blockbuster Schaerer Soul machine, arguably the most sold machine in the world. In the USA, a very different insight. Insight is that the black filter coffee taste is still the most popular drink, but consumers value the fresh coffee in large cups and on the go. So we use the large brewing, the 30-gram brewing unit.
We modify it to serve black fresh coffee, Bean to Cup, on the Schaerer Soul C , or bean-to-batch on the Curtis Skyliner. And now I would like to play a short video to showcase our most recent innovations and digital services. 40% of our sales are driven by innovation. I think it's quite staggering number. Our 65,000 clients base is very diverse, from large chains to small independent customers across all continents. We see our customers, most of our customers, in a good financial health, open to invest into store expansion and the new technologies. Let me share a few implementing examples. We are dominating quick-serve restaurants and convenience stores, proudly serving brands like McDonald's, Circle K, Shell, or in Eastern Europe, banners like MOL or Żabka.
We are also very strong in coffee chains, with Schaerer as a supplier of Luckin and WMF as a supplier of Tim Hortons or McCafé. Within bakery chains, it is worth mentioning our leading position in Germany and very successful cooperation with Greggs in U.K. Last but not least, we have a very strong ambition to accelerate our sales in the offices, where we are very significant with WMF enterprise range, creating a logical bridge between professional and consumer equipment. We are working with leading chains to support their international rollout. These leading chains are expanding from a country to a continent, from a continent to continents. International expansion is a matter of right local insights, adapting beverage menu to the local taste, customization, but also speed of rollout, technical and training.
Thanks to our global structure and the support of global account team, we are able to assist our leading customers in the international rollouts, we believe, better than anybody else. Here on the chart, few examples and few names to document our capabilities. Circle K, expanding from North America to Europe, or Tim Hortons expanding to Middle East and Asia, and most recently, Luckin, the Chinese leading chain, expanding to Southeast Asia. Let me talk a little bit about service. Service is important source of our revenues and profit, but it's also our window to customers for seven years after the machine is sold. The quality of service is one of the key decision-making factors to repurchase at the end of the life cycle. Our service model is a competitive edge versus our competition.
As presented earlier, we have the biggest service structure in the world, well-balanced between direct and indirect. This provides a more consistent customer experience from a machine sales to the installation, maintenance, and repair. We also invest in the field service tools in digital functions, like remote service desk, to improve our efficiency and minimize downtime with blended learning experience between digital and on-site. So allow me to wrap it up. Together with our customers, we are reinventing coffee as a life-centric experience.... We are a global leader working hand in hand with the most advanced trendsetters in the coffee-based drinks. We understand how coffee works, from Italy to Germany, from China to U.S. We see coffee as an ingredient, versatile, enjoyable, energizing, and our equipment delivering without compromise on quality and speed of service.
We have been only seven years in professional coffee industry, a very short time, but we are very excited by the prospects in coffee and beyond. We want to become a reference player in the professional space, leveraging our success in professional coffee. The story has just begun. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you very much, Martin. So the objective is very clear. So now that we have both objective, we have our Chief Financial Officer that will be on stage in few seconds, and he will give you, some very valuable insights, especially now that, the French, stock market, is, close or almost close. So you'll get everything you were waiting for. Please welcome Olivier Casanova.
Thank you, Cathy. Well, after such exciting product videos and fascinating marketing stories, it's a bit of a challenge to talk about numbers, but I hope you will keep up with me, and I'm sure that some of you are eagerly awaiting the midterm ambitions, so that will keep you, I'm sure, interested. So, I will present our financial track record and ambitions, and my presentation will cover three parts. I will first highlight how robust and resilient Groupe SEB's business model is. I will show you how we have deployed our strong free cash flow generation while maintaining a solid balance sheet, and then I will finish, as I mentioned, with our ambitious midterm goals. So let's start with how SEB has demonstrated a robust and resilient business model over the years.
Over the past 15 years, Groupe SEB's revenue has grown from around EUR 3 billion to today, around EUR 8 billion, and that represents a compounded annual growth rate of our revenue of some 7%. And it's been able to do that, to show this healthy rate of growth, while at the same time, maintaining a steady operating result margin, operating results from activity divided by revenue, as you can see, around 10% over that period. Now, this growth in revenue, together with a steady operating margin, has generated, of course, a substantial growth in operating result. As you can see, it's been multiplied by two between the EUR 342 million of 2008 and the EUR 690 million euro in the twelve-month period to September 2003.
During that period, we've been able to generate strong free cash flow to the tune of EUR 4.4 billion between 2008 and 2022. Now, of course, the strength of our business model has been tested during the COVID period. COVID has indeed brought significant volatility in demand. Here on these two charts, we have a consumer on the left-hand side and professional on the right-hand side, and we are showing the quarterly evolution, like-for-like revenue growth. You can see that the, let's say, trends were very different between consumer and and professional.
Starting with the left-hand side, you can see on the consumer side, we've experienced with the lockdown and a lot of consumers around the world being confined at home, that they, let's say, diverted a lot of their spend on improving their homes and their kitchens. Of course, that led to a very significant organic growth, as explained by Thierry in his introduction in 2021. Of course, after 2021 came 2022, and a significant reduction after this buoyant period. On the professional side, of course, the confinement led to an almost complete stop in the hotel, restaurant, and coffee chain business, in the early part of the COVID period.
Then with the end of the confinement period, people came out and we had a renewed growth of demand in hospitality and out-of-home activities, which of course boosted our business. This crisis also impacted significantly our input cost and currencies. You can see here the significant volatility of the euro-dollar rate, but also the significant increase in input cost being raw material, components, finished good purchase cost, but also, of course, ocean freight. Here we are showing the SCFI Index, the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index, and as you can see, it was multiplied by 5 between the beginning of the COVID period and the peak. All of this represented approximately EUR 570 million of headwinds that we had to face.
Incidentally, this was almost three quarters of our operating profit of 2019, the year before COVID. However, we think that the group business model was tested, but that we demonstrated the robustness and resilience of our business model during that period. As you can see on the revenue side here on this chart, our revenue, in fact, remained relatively stable between EUR 7.5 billion and EUR 8 billion during that period. Our margins were impacted, yes, with a low point of 7.8%, but we think that the impact was, in fact, quite limited during that period. And in fact, you can see that when there is a deviation against our historic standard of around 10%, we generally have an objective to go back to our standard within, let's say, the following year.
On occasion, as was the case indeed during the FX crisis in the middle of the last decade or during the COVID crisis, we can take 18 months -24 months to go back to our historic standards, and we do that because we want to manage, let's say, the right equilibrium between recovering our margins but also maintaining our growth in revenue. That is indeed what is happening at the moment. So on the left-hand side, you have the quarterly like-for-like growth of revenue, and you can see that after four quarters of negative growth, we have basically come back to a positive growth in Q2, and that growth accelerated in Q3 on the back of renewed growth in consumer, of course, but also, as demonstrated by Martin, very rapid growth in our professional segment.
On the right-hand side, you can see the evolution of our margins. Here we are presenting in dark blue the 2023 operating result margin, and we are comparing it with the light bar, the light blue bar, which is showing the median between 2015 and 2021, which we consider to be a good reflection of our historic standards. You can see that in Q1 2023, we were not only materially below the prior year, but we were also materially below the historic standards. You can see that in Q2, and even more in Q3, we have progressively caught up with the historic standards.
Now, this performance during the COVID period, during the last few years, demonstrates, we think, the robustness of our business model, which is based on several factors. Of course, first, our leadership positions and our strong innovation capabilities, which drive both volume growth but also price and mix improvement. And indeed, our pricing power has been demonstrated by our ability in 2021, and again in 2022, to increase prices in order to compensate for the increase in input cost. But equally, the strength of our business model relies on our scale and our cost competitiveness and our ability to adjust our cost base.
During 2022, we were able to demonstrate a lot of agility in adjusting our cost base, the cost of purchasing goods and components and raw material, but also our ability to adjust our production cost and to show strong discipline in our OpEx. And finally, the strength of our business model relies on the balance, the balance between professional and consumer segments, and within consumer, the balance between emerging markets and mature markets, and the balance between segments. So let's now turn to the strong cash flow generation and our solid balance sheet. As I mentioned, between 2008 and 2022, we have generated EUR 4.4 billion of free cash flow, and this free cash flow has been mostly used for two purposes.
The first one is to deliver a growing remuneration to our shareholders, and the second one, to accelerate our growth and value creation through M&A. So let's cover the shareholder remuneration first. As you can see, we were able to deliver a constant growth in dividend per share at a compounded annual growth rate of 7.3% over the last 15 years. In fact, the only exception in that curve, which is pretty obvious, is 2019, or the 2019 dividend paid in 2020. And at that time, of course, at the peak of the COVID period, we had to take into account the strong recommendation from the French public authorities and also professional organizations to reduce dividend payments during that time of hardship.
But we were able to go back to our previous trend quickly thereafter and go back to, let's say, our previous trend. And in fact, if you calculate the payout ratio over that period, it's interesting to note that we are slightly over 30%. And that growth rate over 15 years is, in fact, almost the same over the last 30 years, around 7%. The second use of our cash flow has been to fuel our growth through M&A.... This has been, as you can see, at the heart of our DNA. On this graph, we are showing the main acquisitions since the late 1960s, and you can see that it's been a mix of transforming acquisitions and more add-on, bolt-on acquisitions.
So on the transforming acquisitions, you have, of course, the acquisition of Tefal, you have Moulinex and Krups, of course, the acquisition of Supor in 2006, and more recently, the acquisition of WMF in 2016. But you can see there is also a long list of more bolt-on acquisitions, which are providing new platform for growth. And more recently, you can see that our acquisitions have been more directed to the professional segment, in order to support, to support our expansion strategy in this industry with the acquisition of Curtis, of course, Zummo, and more recently, Pacojet, which is taking us in the kitchen equipment area. Now, these acquisitions have been following a very clear acquisition philosophy.
On the left-hand side, on the consumer segment, we are looking complementarity, complementarity in terms of product, in terms of product segment, in terms of product nature, but we're also seeking geographic complementarity. And then, with the expansion in the professional segment, we are also now looking for business complementarity. Now, these acquisitions have boosted the organic growth and value creation of SEB. Here we are showing since 2006, we've obviously picked 2006 because it's the year of acquisition of Supor, and we're showing that the businesses acquired have brought in EUR 1.9 billion of revenue on acquisition. But you can see that over that period, even adjusting for the growth, for the negative effects, our revenue has indeed grown by EUR 5.6 billion.
So it means that the acquisitions, the organic growth that has been generated over the acquisitions and/or on the original scope, is EUR 3.7 billion. So a very staggering number. Now, all of this was done while maintaining a very solid balance sheet structure. Now, one way to look at it is to look at the net debt to EBITDA ratio, which is a very, let's say, traditional, ratio. And you can see that over that period, we have been, most of the time, between 1.5x and 2 x, which is, I would say, our comfort zone. Of course, for the right transforming acquisition, like the acquisition of WMF in 2016, we're prepared to go beyond that level to 3 times or sometimes even 3.5 x.
But it's on the, let's say, clear assumption and commitment that we will go back within a reasonable period of time, back to our comfort zone of 1.5x-2 x. Now, another way to, let's say, appreciate the strength of our balance sheet is the substantial liquidity that we maintain. We have EUR 1.9 billion of cash and undrawn committed credit lines, but also the well-balanced maturity profile of our debt. And finally, let's say the quality of the credit profile of SEB was also evidenced by the recent success in our new Schuldschein issue, which was completed just a few days ago.
As you may know, it was upsized from an original target of EUR 200 million to EUR 650 million, with a very healthy book of 37 international investors. After this issue, we're very pleased to report that we have been able to even improve the average maturity of our debt from 3.1 years to 3.7 years. Let's now turn to the third part of my presentation, which is our ambitious medium-term objectives, which I'm sure some of you are eagerly awaiting. We have set ourselves some ambitious targets. We want to deliver a like-for-like compounded annual growth rate of revenue of at least 5% over the medium term.
We want to achieve an offer margin close to 10% in 2024, but we want to go beyond that afterwards, and we have the ambition to go towards 11% in the medium term. Of course, we want to do all of that and continue to generate a substantial free cash flow over the coming years. Let me now take you through the different elements which are, let's say, sustaining this ambition. Let's start first with what is going to drive the growth in revenue in our consumer segment. Let's start with geography. We expect the growth in the consumer segment to accelerate over the coming years.
Growth will be driven in part by significant growth in emerging markets, that is Eastern Europe, IMEA, Southeast Asia, South America, which will be above the average growth of the group. In Western Europe and North America, we expect to return to growth, thanks to gradually improving economic conditions, of course, but also a very dynamic product pipeline. In China, as was demonstrated brilliantly by Vincent, we are confident in the mid to long-term growth prospects of the Chinese market, and we're also very confident in Supor's ability to outperform the market. So we believe that China will return progressively to a mid-single-digit growth. Our growth in consumer will, of course, be supported by our ability to drive our sales on all, let's say, distribution channels.
But in particular, we'll place a great emphasis on driving our online revenue. Now, from a product standpoint, we'll continue to drive generally the growth in revenue through innovation, which will drive in turn both a positive volume effect and a positive price mix effect. In cookware, our objective is to outperform the market, leveraging our very dynamic product pipeline and extensive product offer in non-stick pots and pans, in stackables with the famous Ingenio range, and also with our growing offer in new material, in new coatings, such as ceramic. We expect also substantial growth in small domestic appliances.
Specifically, in kitchen electrics, we think that the market will be, and our growth will be driven by very dynamic demand in certain product categories, such as, oil-less fryers, for example, or full auto coffee machine, but also by our ability to drive growth, in product categories where we have very dynamic pipeline, for example, in grills and multi-cooker, and also to drive, geographic growth in certain markets by increasing our penetration. In home and personal care, we expect above average growth, thanks to dynamic demand in certain product segments and our promising product pipeline, notably, in floor care, in versatile, for example, but also in all product categories of linen care, be it, irons, steam generators, or handheld, steamers. Let's turn to professional.
As demonstrated by, by Martin, we believe that this market will continue to grow, thanks to the growing out-of-home consumption of coffee, but also the increased penetration of full auto coffee machine because of all the advantages that they provide to our clients. In China and North America, growth will be specifically driven by specialist coffee chain, quick service restaurants, and convenience stores. In Europe, growth will be, of course, driven by coffee chains, but also by semi-professional clients. And of course, more generally, we'll leverage our leadership, our superior product offering, our ability to address all customer groups, especially in the mid to upper quartiles, and our differentiating digital offer, and our ability to drive service revenues.
And beyond coffee, as we've explained, we will continue to make selective acquisitions in order to expand in promising segments that will constitute new platforms for growth. And then we'll drive this organic growth through our innovation capabilities, our abilities to expand geographically, and derive synergies between consumer and professional. Regarding profitability, our objective is to continue to enhance our profit margin, and this will be done, of course, first through the continuous, let's say, positive volume and price mix effect, through our operating leverage, a further normalization of input costs. We've seen, of course, let's say, the bulk of this normalization, but there is still some more to go next year. And of course, over the years, the relative impact of the professional segment, which, as you know, has a higher operating margin than the consumer segment.
Now, this growth in revenue and improvement in operating margins will, of course, drive continuous strong free cash flow generation, as this expansion will not necessitate substantial new CapEx. Our dividend policy will continue to be guided by our aim to deliver a constant, reasonable dividend per share growth. Our M&A policy will be designed, as I mentioned, to bring complementarity to our existing product range and to drive our expansion in the professional market. And we will do this while maintaining our financial discipline and a strong balance sheet.
So to conclude, all in all, we believe that the group's investment case is very attractive and is based on growing and promising markets, the robustness of our business model, our expansion potential in the attractive professional segment, our strong free cash flow generation, our M&A strategy, track record, and M&A potential, our pioneering sustainable approach, of course, a strong group culture, which I think was evident from today's presentation, and highly committed teams around the world, and of course, a stable shareholder base with a strong family group, which is supporting the long-term vision. And with all of that, we are convinced that the group's SEB share have a strong rerating potential. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Olivier. Now, for the conclusion, we will have on stage our Chief Executive Officer, Stanislas. And after this conclusion, we'll have time for Q&A if you still have questions. And, next, there will be a drink on the lobby also. P lease welcome Stanislas.
Right. I guess there will be a few questions, so I will, I will try and keep it short. We started the day by reminding ourselves of the growth history and the growth story of the group. We started the day reminding ourselves of the long-term commitment of the group toward consumer centricity, toward innovation, strong commitment of the group to have a business that is growing sustainably and that is growing mid to long term. That business, as we said earlier on, has multiplied by four its turnover in the last 20 years. That is staggering. I think what we've tried to share with you today is a few things. The first one is we have an intimate understanding of how our market works. We know what our consumers want.
We are able to discern and detect what fits, what works for consumers in all the countries we operate in, that is, in most of the world. We have, I think, a pretty modern and up-to-date view of what it takes to appeal and to conquer and seduce consumers in all these markets, and I think that's why we are so confident in putting up this ambition in the next- in the midterm, the next three to five years. What you've seen today also, I think, is the team's determination to convert these market potential, market opportunities, the team's determination to convert this business model that has been so successful into successes today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow.
In fact, you've seen the leadership team, or part of the leadership team, the other parties are sitting on the front row as well, as well. That has a very strong mastery of what it takes to be successful in this industry, that has a very strong mastery of what it takes to convert market opportunities into sales, profit, and cash generation. I will stop my conclusion here maybe to say three thank you. The first thank you is for our shareholders. We have shareholders that, and Thierry reminded us in our introduction, that have been extremely loyal and investing in the group consistently. That is the family shareholders.
We have long-standing pillar shareholders in our capital, and we have the shareholders present in the room and outside of the room that keep supporting and investing in our business, and we're grateful that you let us do that on your behalf. I want to thank the leadership team and the entire teams of the group. I think business is made of and with people. Vincent reminded us that in Supor, in China, our people dedication, commitment, and loyalty is a key part of our success in China. I dare say that it's the same everywhere in the group, and I want to thank the Comex team for your ability to day in, day out, engage our teams in business units, in the innovation labs, in market companies to deliver those numbers.
The last thing is, to thank the organizers of today. I think today has been... You will tell me tomorrow if it's gonna be great, if it's been great or not, but certainly, it has been a lot of preparation and very intense work by many teams. You've seen Cathy on stage, but behind Cathy, you have, I think, tens of people that have put together this day, which I think has, and I hope, has allowed you to understand a bit better what SEB is about and what SEB is looking forward, to become in the future. Thank you very much, and now I will call Olivier and Martine back on stage to take your last series of questions. Thank you. We have mics?
Yeah, we have mics in the-
... Yeah, question here.
Yeah.
Oh, my God!
Uh, but w-
Oh, thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Alessandro Cecchini from Equita. So just, a couple of questions. The first one about the 2024. So basically, you committed about margins. I would like if you can provide, more color, about the top line, like for like top line, that, it's behind this kind of, target that we are saying in term of margins. Now, I will take this one, Alessandro. You are very, very kind. I remind you the way we guide the market usually, at the end of the first quarter, first quarter, we say: Well, it's the first quarter, this is our results. It is way too early, to give you any guidance on either top line or, or, bottom line achievement.
Mm.
So we haven't even finished 2023. I understand your impatience and eagerness - but I think it would be very new-
Okay.
I will not do it.
Okay, thank you. The second question is about... At the beginning, mid-year, you stated about a potential more promotional environment in the last part of the year, so this quarter. So I would like to better understand if this has materialized, or you experienced a better environment in terms of consumption.
I'll take that one, too. I think you're getting longer and longer term. The first one was on 2024, the second one is on 2023 landing. Which is great. I mean, maybe the next one is about next week's sales. What I can say... I mean, I understand your eagerness. What I can-
It's qualitative.
No, I understand.
Qualitative, yes.
Yeah. Come on. I mean, what I can say is that, we confirmed our guidance-
... at the end of October, when we presented Q3 results, things go along the way they were planned, so there won't be any major surprise between now and the year-end. What was described happened, and you will have more color to that, as you say, when we present our sales numbers for the year in at the end of January-
January
and the final results approved by the board of directors at the end of February.
Okay, thank you.
You're welcome.
First quarter at 2024.
Do we have other-
Thanks, Alessandro.
Do you have other questions? Yes-
Yes
... we have one
One at the back.
Yeah.
Mourad Lahmidi again. Just to come back on, on the slide on your midterm guidance of-
Mm-hmm
-eleven percent-
Mm-hmm
Operating margin. So I'm just wondering, how do you define the midterm? Because you showed previously 15 years. Then-
I've said it.
We-
I've said it, I've said it's 3 years -5 years.
3 years -5 years.
3 years- 5 years.
Okay. So in that context, given the very high margin and the high growth of the professional coffee business, we'd have expected maybe a little bit more ambitious offer margin. So maybe can you give us some more granularity behind that target in terms of the consumer and the professional? Thank you.
Okay. Well, in fact, you know, our—as we said, we think that long-term, the consumer business can deliver around 10%. That's what we've done historically, and the fundamentals of the industry have not changed, and the fundamentals of the company are still as robust as they were. We think, yes, the professional business has generally a higher, let's say, average margin of 15%, or in some segments, in fact, even higher. But it will depend, of course, on the speed at which we can grow that business.
I think we're very clear on what we can do in the professional segment, and as we said, we're also looking to make further acquisitions to continue to expand in that segment, to enter into new categories and basically acquire new platform for growth. So that's why it's difficult to have a precise view of, in three to five years' time, what can be the respective weight of our consumer and our professional segment. But these are basically the key points to have about each of these segments.
And this is why probably we keep it vague, midterm, instead of 3 years -5 years or 3 years or 5 years, because at the end of the day, I think you should take the positive messages. Consumer will go back at around 10%. Professional will bring an incremental margin and be relative to the rest of the group because it grows faster and because it's more profitable. So I think you should keep that positiveness of the message and allow us for take that flexibility over time to not get a very strong commitment on a given date or a given number. Okay? But I think you've understood exactly what we try to say.
Do we have other questions? Okay, so I think now it's time for a drink. Ah, no, one last one. Right here. Fourth row. Thank you.
About acquisition, you said that you are comfortable with a leverage ratio between 1.5x and 2x. Does it mean that you won't go for any acquisition which puts your leverage ratio above two?
No, as I've... Thank you for this question, Marine. As I've mentioned in the past, for the right acquisition, the right transforming acquisitions, we are prepared, and the group has been prepared to go beyond that, to a level of 3 or even 3.5. But it's on the clear understanding and commitment that we will go back with a strong cash flow generation, to our comfort zone within a reasonable period of time.
Reasonable period of time, that means 2 years -3 years?
That's what we have historically been able to do, as if you look at the evolution of the net debt to EBITDA ratio after the WMF acquisition, it actually went back very quickly to those levels, and that's basically what we want to do. The beauty of this industry is that it's very cash generative, as we've demonstrated. It is not an asset intensive industry, as our chairman pointed out, and therefore we can rely on this strong cash flow generation to manage basically the evolution of our leverage. But the strength of our balance sheet has been, let's say, one of the fundamental points in the investment case of SEB, and we don't you know envisage to change that.
Uh, one-
Fraser
-last question.
Thank you. Fraser again from Berenberg. I have a few, so I'll call them out, and I can always re-ask them if needed. So the first was maybe just if you could comment on the restructuring of WMF consumer and how you see the margin profile of that, because that's been a topic we've discussed over the years. The second is for the cookware business. I think you said you would expect to kind of outgrow the market. What would you consider a market growth for that segment? The third topic for Martin was just on the coffee side of things. What are the kind of different gross margins you see across different products? So is it, like, the large coffee machines make a very high gross margin, and the smaller ones a lower gross margin?
And kind of following on from that then, where do you see more growth also relating to the size or type of machine? Just be interesting to have more color. And then the very final one was just on Tefal. Could you comment on what the strategy is when it comes to the kind of materials you're using for your non-stick technology, and what the vision is there on a kind of five, seven-year view?
Okay. I'll take the Tefal, WMF, and cookware ones, and then, Martin, you'll take the ones related to coffee. Starting with cookware, we see the market as growing moderately, call it demographics. And we see that we'll beat margin in this market. Now, where it's where I'm not gonna give you a number or commit to the number, is that we see that the volume is pretty stable and linked to demographics, and then variations of price and variation of geographic mix can have an impact. I mean, what you sell in China, what you sell in the U.S., what you sell in France can be very different in terms of pricing and therefore influence the growth rate, so I will not go any further on that.
On coatings for our cookware business, in fact, we have a pretty simple approach. We want to be the leaders in every coating and in every material, in every market. And yes, we are very strong in the PTFE, as the best non-stick coating. We are convinced, and we know that this PTFE is totally inert in terms of impact on health, consumers' health or the environment. So we are very confident that this is the best coating for consumers, this is the best coating for nature. So that's... But that put aside, there are some noises or rumors or. And what we do is fight against those potential attempts to affect the ability to use PTFE.
But beyond that, we wanna be the best, the best worldwide and the best in every market in our ability to sell, non-stick coating, which is not PTFE. So in short, we see ceramic as a good opportunity, a good second-best alternative to a PTFE. We want to become the best in ceramics, period. And we are on our way to doing that with some pretty striking successes in some core European markets. We'll come back to that if you want. When it comes to the WMF, skyline restructuring, I think it's progressing well. We've reached an agreement, with our union partners, IG Metall in, in Geislingen, in WMF, and, Verdi in Frankfurt, in the Groupe SEB Deutschland , entity. We are now in the process of offering, new job assignments for the people impacted individually by this restructuring.
What we see is that this restructuring is progressing as planned in terms of timing, in terms of cost, and in terms of expected benefits. I remind you that we haven't communicated on the expected benefits, the financial benefits when we announced the plan. We are still not doing it. I think this is part of a process that aims at restoring or improving the profitability to closer to the group level of our consumer activities in Germany, and we are progressing on that plan. Martin?
Thank you. All right. The, the question, the first part of the question was about the individual margin of the different product categories. So the answer to that is, we are not commenting on the individual margins, I'm saying. The second part of the question is, where we see the incremental growth to come in the coming years. I was mentioning in my presentation that the automation will prevail, so it's going to be from the fully automatic espresso machines. We were mentioning on the chart that it's going to come mainly two-thirds of it, from the free markets: USA, China, and UK. In our 70% sales of machines, we have the sales split between the base business and the project. In the US, it is more about catching the big fish.
Every year we are trying to catch one or two big fishes, and we are quite successful with that. Since 2016, we have very proven successful track record on that. When it comes to China, it is more about the acceleration of the coffee chains. We see a huge potential that is going to happen in China. I maybe mention one number. Every month in China, there is 2,000 coffee chains opened. 2,000 chains. Oh, yeah?
Shops, shops.
Shops. Chain shops. So that's a huge number. Obviously, we are not filling our equipment in all these stores, but we are the market leader in China, with a very significant market share, around 40%. And we believe that this acceleration of expansion is going to continue. We see it in the coffee chains, and now we also start to see the acceleration. The big tea chains in China are entering also the coffee business, so we think that's going to be a second pillar in the coming years for us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. So now we will be closing this Capital Market Day. Thank you very much for being with us, and let's have a drink if you have some more questions or-
Or a coffee.
Or a coffee.
Yes. Well, a drink is kind, yeah, or a coffee.
Or a coffee-based drink.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Bye.
Thank you.