Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Capital Markets Day. It's a pleasure to have you with us, both those joining us here and those joining us virtually. Before we begin, just a quick note on some housekeeping items. There will be two dedicated Q&A sessions throughout the day. If you're joining us online, feel free to put your questions into the chat, and we will be monitoring it and do our best to pick it up during those Q&A slots. Today is also a very special day for me because, after several years as head of investor relations at Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, I will be handing it over to Sascha Donat, who will be introducing himself later on. I'm really confident that Sascha is a perfect choice, and I wish him all the best.
For now, I hand it over to Jürgen Otto, our CEO, to open this event.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Max. Welcome, everybody. Yeah, Max is a great talent for us, for Heidelberg. And so he's rotating, and Sascha is rotating back from other functions. I like these cross-functional rotations inside the company, it gives us more strength, more power in our competition. Yeah, we're celebrating. I think you saw it: 175 years. It's a great history, a long time for our company. Good to have you here. I think we're waiting for additionally five people, so I'm starting slow, but we are not waiting, we are starting. Okay, next page. This is our agenda for today: the party, of course. We show our strategy for the future, where we're coming from, where we want to go. David will be especially showing our business segment strategy, so he will get the details of going forward in our tough market.
[Foreign language]
Yeah, we expected some applause, but this was a present from us to us, this movie. I think this show is also part of our history, but also the future, focusing on packaging, on things to grab, on physical things. Yeah, again, good to have you here. Now we start with our presentation. Yeah, it's David and myself. I think we're sitting here. We started last year in July, and it was a jump start. I think we showed up also at the Drupa in May, I think May, June. May, June was the Drupa last year. This was our first contact to Heidelberg. It was my first, but I think he stayed already six years in the company at that time. We are the team of Heidelberg, the new team. I'm coming from the automotive business for almost 30 years.
We combine our strengths, I think, me from outside, pushing forward cost structures, efficiencies, productivity. I had my whole life, I had the circumstances of lowering pricing every year. We had to push productivity also year by year. Now to combine these activities is one of the success factors here at Heidelberg. This was our start. We had to face the brutal facts after the consumer restraints ahead of Drupa. Sales were down by 20%. After Drupa, we had a strong order intake, and we accepted the situation in the cost structures. This is what we did in the next quarters. I pushed on cost personally, personal costs, but cost structures in the whole company, in every detail. This was the year-end result after a really strong, strong quarter four. This is the fact we gained.
Efficiency, steadily increased production output, and this was the result out of that. We are looking forward, of course, to keep this track. The guidance, we reached the guidance on prior years' level. I think if you look at the top line, this is also a great result. We reduced the costs in the personal staff massively. We got some agreements also to lay off people, 450 here in Wiesloch. We reached also our contracts with all German facilities and organizations. The cash flow is strongly positive. If you look back to the first quarter, with EUR 100 million minus, I think a strong result coming back with a strongly positive free cash flow. This is also our ambition moving forward. The net financial position is also massively positive. Again, the free cash flow, the EUR 51 million, shows an improved free cash flow conversion.
Yeah, to tell more about our turnaround story, to get more into details. Our strength, of course, is the market position, the market leadership, the dominating position in the market. This is our biggest asset. We have the highest scales, so we have the highest resilience, if you look on that. Our global sales and service network works in 170 countries. The next thing is we have a strong, a really strong position in China. We have production in China, and this gives us the possibility to address this market, also this low-cost market. Also, if you see our turnover, we do not have any turnover right now in India. This market is completely open for us to address. Secondly, our market position also in China. We can move forward and, as I said, leverage our facility down there. The brand experience, you see it here.
You see it in Wiesloch. I think you can almost smell our brand here, the original Heidelberg. This is a truly, truly German brand standing for quality and reliability and using these machines for at least 10 years, 20 years, with a high, extremely high output. That is our market position. Of course, we had to face challenges. The high footprint in Germany, we had to address the costs, the personnel costs. These were too high. We had to get into touch with our workers' council and the IG Metall to find solutions to stop the higher costs for the future. As I said, we found some contracts with all the companies in Germany to address this problem. Lifecycle business. This is also one major part of our business. You see it here. Almost EUR 900 million were coming from the lifecycle business.
It is consumables, spare parts, service. This is a great future also for us, yeah, because it is coming and coming and coming year by year. As I said, we have this strong sales and service network in 170 countries. Yeah, this gives us the possibility to work with our customers really deeply in every country and address, again, with every new machine, new contracts on this area. We capitalize economies of scale. Yeah, coming from automotive, as I said, we have to use the economies of scale. We have the highest demand on plates, for example, on toners, on ink, on almost everything around the globe. To use these scales for every customer gives us the possibility to get a win-win situation with our customers. Yeah, win for Heidelberg and win also for our customers. This will be the future.
We are working on a global digital end-to-end ecosystem for our customers. It starts, of course, or the layer is the Prinect software. You see this here, the second here. This is the complete layer for the whole production process, starting with pre-press, the press operation, and, of course, post-press machinery. Our layer is our own software system, Prinect. We can, of course, adopt also machinery from other suppliers. This is a great offer for our customers. You have used machinery. You have other producers. We can integrate everything in our Prinect system. This is the basis also for new automation in the future and new digitalization. Using the data lake we are creating. Yeah, you will see the data lab later on in the PMC here, just around the door where we are opening today.
This data lab is creating, of course, massive data from a day-to-day operation in the plants. This gives us the opportunity to talk to our customer with his data in comparison to other data, to other producers. We have connected more than 11,000 machines around the globe via internet, where we're receiving the data in our data lake. Now we go into the comparison. Yeah, what is your performance with your latest machine? In what shift? With what person in the steering? Yeah, we can discuss with every customer in detail to gain his productivity. This is a huge offer. Many customers, of course, use this technology to gain more performance and productivity. Also, of course, more automation. People in the next future are a problem also in the print shop.
We can automate more and more our process. With our data-driven solutions here, we can have a very productive and automated ecosystems, as I said. You will see here, and David will go into details, you see all the different production types and press types. You have toner, you have ink, you have almost everything. You have sheetfed, you have digital. The whole plenty of possibilities are here in this software and hardware network in this ecosystem. Of course, our knowledge, you can imagine that. Of course, it is expensive to have a production, to have a foundry in Germany. It is almost a nightmare if you think about the energy cost. Yeah, but from the physical standpoint, it is there first. Not everybody should buy in China and ramp everything down in Germany. Yeah, we are glad to have it.
Yeah, because if you think back two years or three years, people started to fly these parts from China or from everywhere around the globe because there were no containers or the container costs went from EUR 2,000- EUR 20,000 in this time period. What we try is to use our foundry, for example, on a high level of capacity, 70%-80% of efficiency and production output. Therefore, we offer this capacity also to third party, to other industries, which are using heavy machinery parts. This is one of the aspects. The second is Heidelberg is one of the best machinery companies in the world still. Also looking forward, we will be one of the best machinery companies in the world. Our precision, our demand for precision is 10x higher than in the automotive industry, 10 x higher.
Yeah, with that kind of production speed, 600 m per minute, it's immense. It's immense. Not many companies in the world have these technical capabilities. There's none in China. There's none in the U.S., which our capability in printing. To use these capacities and competencies is one part of our future strategy. If you look at the different areas, we can, I have to come back, these areas we can use for almost every industry. We will come to that point later on. To keep this in mind, 10 x higher than automotive and really fast production speeds. One part of our network, and we had it before, it's the 170 countries with the service network. Yeah, and this is also for the future a big, big asset. All of you know that the service business is highly profitable.
We will scale this up also for other industries. We will come later on, and Sascha will tell you where we focus on that point in the, for example, Amplified business. This is a huge part of our future strategy. Our growth strategy, I think the anchor points are, of course, the core business with packaging. We have a trend for paperization coming from foil, will be also transferred to paper. Also in countries like India or China, you see this clear trend for more nature aspects and having the clean oceans. The paperization you see here, paper-based packaging is one of the mega trends we will focus on. The second is sales and service. Third is the vertical integration of packaging. What does that mean?
We focus and we tackle the whole process of packaging with pre-press and post-press and all steps in between with robots, with really a seamless automated process without any people in this production area, completely 100% automated. You will see this later on. We will stay this afternoon. Yeah, we will show you that, and you can feel the productivity, and you can feel the approach of a seamless, automated, highly software-dedicated also production. You will see these global trends for these mega companies, we call them. You see these Aldi and Lidls. You see the Amazon. Everybody is looking for scale. Everybody is looking for mass production. Everybody is looking for productivity and is cost-driven. Yeah, this is the answer. A highly automated, a highly integrated process for packaging.
Of course, Heidelberg Technology to capitalize our technological skills and also the capacities you see here in Wiesloch, one of the biggest production areas around the globe, at least for printing machines. We had this point at the beginning. Personal cost is my favorite, of course. I have to tackle that. I am the Arbeitsdirektor here in the company. Of course, we had discussions. We had to squeeze and to push for productivity. There is plenty of room for that, I can tell you. We made the first start. We have a good mood in the company. We are pushing. Sometimes if you are playing sports, you know that the success gives you another second push. If you have the discussion, the success is the most driver for the next success.
Yeah, so our workforce will be reduced. And our profitability climbed, of course, for that. We have a clear statement also for the future regarding personal costs. We want to drive productivity further on. Yeah, in every country, in every position here, also in every function, we are driving forward. We want to compensate every wage increase also for the future. Yeah, so there will be wage increases, of course, somehow, somewhere. We want to compensate this in our cost structure. That is a clear target. The future will be headcount reduction and a limit for wage increases. Yeah, and somehow I wish this also for other German companies because you know that discussion, yeah, there is somehow a discussion about bureaucracy or energy cost or something. At the end of the day, it is personal cost. This is our biggest problem in Germany and the productivity around that.
Yeah, and every company has to tackle this problem. We have done the first step with a layoff of 450 employees here at our headquarter. We have every site in Germany finalized with another agreement. We reduce headcount in Germany by around 600 positions and not losing any productivity. This is just pure cost reduction and filled up with productivity. Yeah, it is not only a cost-saving program. I think it is a new spirit that we share here in the company. It is a wake-up call we had last year, I think, or we made the wake-up call. You can feel a new spirit. If you see it, if you see our presentation a few hours later, it is a complete new spirit that people are, they woke up, I would say. We are pushing forward, but also they do not have the fear.
If you move, for example, production to China, what we did, this is also one of the pillars of our productivity story. If you move production to China, people do not have the fear here anymore. Yeah, they say, okay, in the big picture, it is the right step, what we are doing, producing local for local in China and Asia. We are looking for other things, and we found some. You will see that. Our improvement program, we will gain profitability. Of course, we will safeguard the resilience for the future turnover. This is for the next years, the estimate for the expected savings in million euro. It is a major part. Of course, we are pushing forward for the top line, David. This will be a double impact. We reduce cost and we gain for some top line or additional top line.
The peak will be EUR 80 million from our structural efficiency program. EUR 55 million will come directly from the headcount reduction for the future years. It is all about scale. It is all about international business and global perspective. This is what we need. I think this helped a lot in the turbulences of the last weeks and months. If you see what is happening in the U.S., if you see before the turbulences, the late turbulences from Corona or other stuff, some political issues, wars. You have disturbances every day. What helps us in the resilience is our global perspective, our global business approach with these 170 countries. Of course, you have somehow somewhere problems, but other countries are moving forward. Today, you will see in Italy, for example, there is a big push forward with an incentive program from the government there.
They are pushing. Our government, I think in the last days, also made an announcement for some incentive program and investment boosting or booster, it's called. We will have a look on that, but we are prepared. The strategy is to work local for local. Of course, we have our strongest production network here in Germany with big, big facilities like in Wiesloch. We have one in Brandenburg. We have one in Amstetten. Yeah, huge, huge companies. We will use this network and streamline it and use it also for third party, as I said. We push also forward in China. This is a big, big asset if you compare it to other competitors in the printing market. We have a footprint in China. This is for us, it's great.
It's just great to have a production base with lower costs, also with some global aspect in sourcing. Of course, we know the suppliers also for printing machines in China. Now we come back also with some imports for parts for Wiesloch and other facilities. We use this global network also for global sourcing. We defined a new framework, governance framework. We need more transparency. Still, we need more transparency for us. You see it in the last column here. We defined product areas. These product areas, like Sheetfed or White Reflex or Postpress Digital Label Software's lifecycle industry and charging, will give us a lot of transparent cost structure and also business opportunity. You will see later on, we will have a great brand new news from David will tell you on that.
I think if you want to work in corporations, if you want to step into joint ventures, if you want to buy companies, this structure will help us a lot because we see the market position. We see the cost structure. We see the efficiency, and we see the profit line of these product areas. This transparency will be in a much deeper phase than we had it before. This will help us to get the better decisions on the table. Yeah, I think this was my part. If you compare it to last year, the margin, this is margin. It's a correct figure. You see a lot of investments there also for the future. Sasha will show you where the money went. Okay, thanks for the first step. This is David now.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and also welcome from my side.
My name is David Schmedding, and I'm responsible for R&D, sales, and service. As Jürgen mentioned, I've been with the company now for seven years. Before joining the management board, I've been in charge for several functions in sales and service. Being in charge as Managing Director for our German business, European business, and last station before joining the board was Head of Global Sales. I welcome you, and it's an honor for us having you all here on site and also online. Welcome to the community. I have the honor to give you some more details about our strategy in the two core business segments. First of all, I will talk about the print and packaging equipment strategy, and later I go into the digital and lifecycle solution strategy.
To give you a better understanding of what we are doing, what we did over the last 12 months already. Yeah, there is a lot to tell, and there is more to come. Yes, Heidelberg, it is a transformation. It is the whole story of Heidelberg. It is a transformation story, being a resilience and strategic or having a strategic repositioning. We have successfully evolved from a company rooted in traditional print media to a global leader in packaging system integration. This shift reflects our ability to adapt to long-term market changes, not just react to short-term trends. Today, packaging represents our key pillar of our strategy, and we are well positioned in this segment aligned with global demand. While commercial printing remains part of our business, we see the future there in integrating digital printing into conventional workflows. Meaning we are talking about hybrid production.
Combining digital printing with offset printing in an intelligent way with the right software tools, being more flexible, more automated, and better suited to evolving customer needs. Our progress shows we can lead change, not just manage it. Mega trends and mega trends like aging population, rising wealth. This is all about increasing demand in healthcare, food, or general consumer packaging. We as a company have to find the right answers. One of the answers, especially talking about sustainability, is yet we have to find answers for sustainable packages because this is one of the key drivers for the industry today and in future. You as investors, of course, ask how we grow. The answer is always, yes, we have to grow in a sustainable way.
Yeah, and forecast shows that the average annual growth rates in this area, it's about 3%-5% per year. Yeah, especially in sustainable packaging. We have to find the right answers because customers and consumers are asking for the right solutions here. They're willing, and this is what we know from the market, they're willing to pay more if they can get a sustainable package. 85% of the FMCG brands have sustainability goals within the next years. Yes, and it's not about sustainable packages. It's about recyclability, compostability, and in general, material reduction. We from Heidelberg, we are focusing on lightweighting mono materials and replacing legacy plastics. Yeah, and sustainable packages supporting the premium pricing, margin protection for the brands, and customer loyalty. Yeah, and here consumers are increasingly mindful of the environmental impact. The real pressure for sustainable packaging is coming from the consumer.
We know around 80% of our consumers are seeking for sustainable packages. It is now mainstream. It is not a niche. Packaging is now a brand statement. You see a lot of different brands on the right-hand side. Later, when we go to our new home of print, you see directly in the entrance area a lot of brands, a lot of packages, and a lot of them are already made in a sustainable way. Yeah, consumer demand is strong, but regulatory pressure on packages is high. This is not just a European phenomenon. I think it is a global one. Here you see the share and also the mega trends by region. Looking around the globe, looking to EMEA share of the packaging markets, close to 30%, steady growth with close to 2%.
Key drivers here, you see it on the right-hand side, sustainability, of course, aging population. Going around to Asia and China, of course, in general, the population grows, aging population, the rising wealth, yeah, are key drivers. In total, Asia and China accounting for more close to 45% of the total packaging market. This is exactly where the music plays and where we have to exactly find the answers because not only here, it is the biggest market share, it is also the markets with the highest growth rates with close to 4%, a little bit more than 4%. Americas, 30%. Again, it is a market driven next to population and the aging, of course, by sustainability, customers and consumers looking for sustainable solutions. We have to find here the answers. Looking a little bit to China, and I just returned from the big trade for China print.
It was a fantastic show, a great show. Everybody was a little bit cautious. Going to China, what's going on? A lot of our customers are also depending on the development in the U.S. Some of the customers are supplying to us. Luckily, and this is the positive feedback, the show was great. We got great feedback, a lot of visitors. We had more than 100,000 visitors on our booth following our presentation. Finally, at the end, numbers are only counting. We got a lot of orders, more than 350 printing units have been sold during the show, which was a big success. That is in China. This is also one of the things in China for us. It is one of the important packaging segments.
We have a high market share in China, more than 60% market share in sheetfed offset is with us, which is good, mainly coming from the packaging segment. Within the packaging, especially tobacco and all the liquids, etc. The luxury packaging are key drivers for us and exactly fitting the demand of our solutions. Participation in China trade was a resounding success and showed again, once again, our leading position in China. Yeah, packaging is essential in our daily life when Heidelberg Technology supports food, pharma, consumer goods packaging. What the subsegments we are in, and you can see here an overview about the subsegments. Let's start on top with folding carton. Folding carton, the share of folding carton is about 21% of the total packaging market, solid growth rate of more than 2% per year.
We are by far number one in this market with our solutions, supplying the market with our products and services. The second mark from top is the label market, an important market, strongly growing by close to 3% annually, close to 10% market share. Again, here we are number one with our flexo and digital solutions. Clearly focusing on the label production here. Also, some nice examples here in the small icons on the left-hand side. The third market is flexible packaging, yeah, stable development, 2% annual growth rate, close to 20% share of the global market. Yeah, we are planning to entry soon. We are looking currently into the technologies and the different solutions. This is also something which will come next, what I'm going to explain here. Yes, at the end, not everything has to be done by yourself.
It is one of the other points we need to partner. At the end, flexible packaging, a really interesting market looking forward and something we need definitely to consider. Same with the next one, corrugated board, of course, one of the biggest single markets in the packaging world, mostly with simple printing topics involved. You see some examples. Everybody knows the boxes from Amazon, etc. Nevertheless, biggest market, stable growth rates. We, of course, looking here also, yeah, into an entry, how to do that and in what kind of way. Next to the few other markets, others 20% high volume markets, for instance, we are well positioned here with our new Boardmaster machine. We are going to see this machine up and running later on in our home of print, stable market, well positioned.
We have to, yeah, let's say participate here in the strong growth of more than 3%. What we did over the last year, it's an impressive, I think, track record over the last years, looking here into our order intake in the packaging segment over the last five years. We can see and we've documented that we are able to grow with the market or even above. We increased the order intake in our packaging segment over the last five years by annually close to 7% per year, coming in fiscal year 2021 from EUR 920 million now to close to EUR 1.3 billion. I think this is somehow a proven track. This is the beginning, I would say, more to come because at the end, and when we are talking about growth, it's coming from the packaging segment.
We from Heidelberg today, yes, we are well positioned in the Sheetfed segment. We have solutions in the Flexo segment with our label machines, but also with our Flexo machines for the high volume carton manufacturing. There are other opportunities we have to look in and we have to participate in the growth with new solutions. One of the biggest news today is that I have the honor, and Jürgen already told that I can talk about something new. Today, you are the first group we are communicating this message to. We will re-enter the very large format market again with the new Cartonm aster CX145. This is a smart approach. This is not a machine developed by ourselves. This is a machine where we have decided to base this solution on the MAN Roland 900 platform.
We will integrate this machine into our workflow. This is a smart way of doing cooperation for the future, helping us to, let's say, to tackle the high volume folding carton market in food, beverage, and consumer packaging. Yes, we from Heidelberg can make the difference with this machine. We will integrate this machine in our workflow software. We will integrate this machine in our customer portal. We will use our own service to keep this machine up and running, to keep the productivity for our customers because we know that our customers are looking, who are interested in this machine, who are looking for the highest productivity. The highest productivity comes along with a perfect service. We from Heidelberg, we are having this. This is one of the biggest news of the day. Not everything has to be done by ourselves.
In this term, it's coming with a smart collaboration. This is a very good solution. We are starting to sell this machine directly after this event this week. The plan is to have the first installations in the field already in this fiscal year. The good thing is here, no substantial R&D effort is needed for the time being. We just leverage our global network and workflow know-how. Yeah, one of the biggest news, and this is exactly this move, will help us to somehow make our picture here for our product portfolio a little bit more complete. I'm not saying it's completed now because there are still some empty spots, but looking now to the folding carton segments, we are now well positioned here with sheetfed offset in all formats, 50 by 70, 70 by 100, and now 100 by 145.
This in addition with our Flexo solution, the Boardmaster approach on top for the peak performance, 600 m per minute production speed. I think this is exactly the message our customers are looking for. We are now the only one, the packaging segment, who is supplying everything for our customers combined with solutions here for corrugated liner board applications. Yes, flexible packaging. I was talking about this before. Here also we are looking into possible entries. More to come, but for the time being, I think here, especially on the Sheetfed Offset side, now we are closing one gap we had now for the last five years. As mentioned before, it is not all about doing everything by our own. It is important to look always around to find the right cooperations.
One of the most important cooperations we have communicated to the market last year was and is a cooperation with Solenus. With Solenus, we have a cooperation looking for, let's say, sustainable packages for barrier coatings. We're looking into interesting solutions together with our Boardmaster. The good message is here, we are looking not just for a special coating. We are looking for a connection between a coating and our machine. Because at the end, if you find a connection, it's like a digital printing machine. You're supplying the coating with the machine, customer has a subscription, and at the end, yes, we have to participate from a continuous recurring revenue stream. This is exactly the way we are looking. It's not just talking about sustainable packages. It's more because we from Heidelberg, of course, we have to look into our revenues and the profits.
It is all about, at the end, finding the right cooperations, which helps us to drive, yeah, the packaging integration forward. Solenus is just one example. Of course, we are looking also in cooperation with the paper manufacturers. We have to look also in the recycling topics. There is more to come also on the converting and filling. We have started here, and I think I can tell that we are in the first discussions with some of the companies doing the filling because at the end, everybody is looking to Heidelberg because we are having a strong service network globally. At the end, if we have the vision to be the system integrator in packaging, then we have not to stop at the end of our print shop. We have to think abroad.
We have to think that we need to think also about how the final products are coming into our packages. We have to cover the whole approach to be the one and only in the packaging industry. Our packaging vision in a summary, and this is the most important thing, is, I think, the two hands in the right low corner at the end of the final. It's all about products, products for our consumers. The product is not just the printed folding box. At the end, it's the packed folding box with everything in here with some cakes. It's all about autonomous production. We have to have, of course, we have to supply our customers with an integrated value production chain. Here, the printing machine is in the middle, but at the end, you don't see any people in this print shop.
You do not see any people packing the stuff. At the end, everything has to be fully automated. For us, it starts from the packaging design left hand up to the filled boxes. This is somehow our vision, our view, how we look to the packaging industry and in which direction Jürgen and myself are working with our, let's say, single pieces. The BLF, the very large format announcement, is one of the pieces in the whole picture, which is closing one of our gaps. I thought here's a video, but there's no video in. Okay.
No returning.
No, it's okay. Good.
Returning to the Q&A. Returning to the Q&A. Okay. First of all, thank you very much. This was a little bit some insights about our packaging and print strategy before we go into the digital solutions and lifecycle strategy.
We have obviously some time for some questions.
Thank you, David, and also thank you, Jürgen. Just a quick remark to those who joined us virtually. Please type in your questions into your chat. We haven't received a question until so far. Let's start with the people attending here in person. Go ahead. I'm sorry.
What's interesting in this vision, the turnover of the day is this machine. Thank you. The complete rest is addition or potential addition in the discussion. This prepress, postpress, store box, automation, logistic. This is we are working on that vision.
Okay. Thank you very much. I take the first question then. Actually just on the very last, on the entering of the very large format again, you mentioned that the basis of the machine is the MAN ROLAND 900 . How much Heidelberg is actually in the new machine?
Will MAN ROLAND continue to, let's say, sell this machine in its own way also? This is a competitive. Do you offer yourself as the service and sales distribution channel to MAN ROLAND in this idea? That would be the first question.
Let me answer your question. First of all, this is a sales and service cooperation. There is nothing from Heidelberg in the machine, but the machine will have a Heidelberg design and will be fully integrated in our workflow. Only the Heidelberg machines will be integrated in our workflows. There is somehow a clear differentiation from day one. Nevertheless, this comes on top, but I have to underline also from a cartel law perspective, it is a sales and service cooperation for the time being.
Of course, we are looking also as part of the next step, also having all the cartel law topics in mind. We are looking into that, what can we do also more with regard, so that we are in a compliant way. First of all, customers, yeah, will go with us because we are the only one with the USPs, with the workflow, with the service. MAN will keep on selling the machine. Yes, we are a competitor, but we believe due to our strong network, due to our capabilities, that especially the large account. The question, of course, that came from the large account, from all the global players, from our customers into the direction from the customer. This is exactly why we believe that customers will go with us buying the machine from us in the future.
Thank you.
As an add-on, a little bit in the beginning with the new savings and the stepped-up savings program, are there additional layers in there? Are there also one-off costs connected to these new savings targets? Or is it, let's say, purely from productivity measures that we want to increase these savings?
The plan is to have no further layoffs in the future regarding our plan and business expectation. The one-off costs were in last year.
It is just simply a higher savings target?
Yeah.
Okay. You mentioned that there are 500 people who are going down.
600 in Germany, 450 here.
Reaching 8,500 at the end. Yeah. Is that ambitious enough? Or is there some further potential of decreasing even more?
See that if it is not enough, this will show, I think, in the next six months.
If you have to go in another discussion with the Workers' Council, we will do that.
The next point in that context is three sites in Germany, a global economy with a global business, not too complex to have. It comes from tradition, cultural history, how all the acquisitions were done at the time. I would say, I mean, in Central Europe, at least in Europe, one production site would be more than sufficient because, I mean, everything is so close and there is no need.
First of all, we made the first step here in Wiesloch, concentrating the XL106 here and giving the 6104 to China. This is one of the portfolio cleanup, I would say.
Next step will be, of course, the discussion, what is doing, what will we do also for third parties in the foundry and what will we do in Brandenburg, for example, also for third party, if there is a consolidation possibility or also a portfolio cleanup. The third point is Langens, of course. We will have this discussion also internally, and we will make up our mind and we'll get a decision, I would say, in September for the next steps. Everything is depending also on our growth story in industry.
Talk about that a bit more.
Talk about your, I mean, who are your outsourcing customers today? What percentage of revenue are they making? What are some of the, I don't know, biggest or maybe most prominent products?
Then talk about what we could expect maybe in the future, especially regarding, obviously, the elephant in the room question now, your potential defense partnerships. Thank you.
The second slide that the revenue share at the moment is at EUR 60 million of the entire group, which is a fairly low number, of course. We regard this as some kind of an incubator, as an industry approach. We have done quite a few changes when it comes to organization, when it comes to approaching the industry. As I said, I am going to go into detail on this a bit later, and we will have another Q&A session after that. Maybe we are allowed to push this a bit further.
I think this is enough for the first part, and now we step into part two.
Perfect. David, it is your turn again.
It is my turn again. Okay.
Thanks for your questions. I'm sure later on, we will have also some more opportunities for your questions. Let's talk about digital solutions and lifecycle, our strategy in this area. When we are talking about digital solutions and lifecycle, we are talking about mainly, of course, the digital products, digital portfolio printing products. We're talking about software, but also our label, Gallus machinery is also part of this area here where I'm now talking about. Digital printing itself, it's one of our biggest growth opportunities. Just looking to the market size and also the forecasts here, we are talking about a market in 2024 of EUR 5 billion, growing now until or up to 2029 by 8.5% per year, up to EUR 7.5 billion. It's a big market. Market potential is high.
We from Heidelberg need to find the right answers here to tackle this market in the right way. It is not just about hardware. It is all about recurring revenue models. We are talking about INGs, service, workflow, and also the licenses. It is more than just selling a machine into the market because every machine comes always with a recurring revenue, either with a contract or with a click charge. At the end, it is not just a machine. This helps us also to increase the resilience during economic downturns because it is linked to the utilization of the machines. How do we do this? Last year during Drupa, and I am sure you all know this, we announced a new cooperation here with Canon in the inkjet area. With Canon together, we joined forces to scale digital inkjet printing solution.
What we communicated now about one year ago, it was during Drupa time, during the first day, it seems to be that we found the right answer here for the market. At the end, we are well on track with, let's say, our plans. We communicated at the beginning. With our first Jetfire 50 solution, this is a small Inkjet machine. We started, we sold the first machines. First machines are up and running. Customers are happy, not only happy because they're having a digital Inkjet press. No, they have this machine from Heidelberg together linked with the offset presses, connected with the workflow software. Exactly the story we communicated one year ago. We see now the first cases in the field. What we are contributing here from Heidelberg is exactly.
We bring in our global sales and service network with a presence in 170 countries. We have a deep customer relationship built over decades. Yes. This is exactly the purpose we communicated at the beginning. We are coming from the top, from the high-performance print shop, asking. These print shops are asking for Inkjet solutions. We are having the relation to the customers. We are coming now in with the Inkjet solution at the right point of time. The product workflow once more gives us here the USP. It is not about the machine. At the end, it is a connection of the machine to a workflow combined with an excellent service network. We are the only one offering a seamless hybrid integration of now digital Inkjet production together with offset. This gives our customers a big advantage.
This enables immediate market access with a competitive digital portfolio. There is no need to develop everything from scratch. Heidelberg now offers the full range, reducing complexity for our customers. With the launch of the Jetfire Digital Series, Heidelberg becomes a true full-range provider for commercial print. The Jetfire 50 is just the first step. Jetfire 50 is B3 format. Next year, we are coming with the B2 format. This is exactly the next step. We are already in the preparation of the market, go to market approach. This will follow next year and more to come and later. When you are going to our home of print, you will see the Jetfire 50, not just as a standalone press. No, you will see it end to end. There is also post-press equipment directly connected with the press.
Giving customers the opportunity to have a final product at the end of the production, and this with volume one. Speed up. Okay, speed up. Okay. Okay. Here, exactly, our, let's say, full product portfolio. You see the new Jetfire family in the yellow part here. The Versafire business is a stable, solid foundation of our digital story with the Toner machines. Jetfire now, step by step, we are extending the portfolio. There is an overlap in the middle with the Speedmaster Anicolor. This is the XL75 press, so it is somehow a special machine for lower run rings. This is a combination between sheetfed and digital. At the end, and this is exactly the story we communicated last year, we have now a proven track record after one year. Yes, the first machines are up and running.
A lot of machines are in our backlog now, will be installed over the next weeks and months. Everything here on track. Let's say, yeah, somehow as predicted last year. Alongside our strong technology base, our lifecycle business is a second core asset of Heidelberg's business model. Let's say, Prinect, I think you were talking about the Prinect before. At the end, it's about the touch-free solution. Touch-free means the hybrid connection between offset and digital. I think I was talking about this. There is a possibility to link everything with one workflow software, AI-based, meaning that the software helps our customer automatically to produce the jobs in the right, not only sequence, but it helps our customer to produce the jobs in a most efficient and costly way. This is exactly the backbone of all of our solution in the digital area.
At the end, and once more, and this is important to underline, this is exactly the USP for our customers, the software. This is not just the machine. It is a combination, the connection of the machine with our workflow. As Jürgen already communicated, lifecycle business in our company is one of the key assets we are having today. We are talking about EUR 900 million turnover we are making with lifecycle solution. Lifecycle for us, it is everything which is at the end connected with the machine afterwards. Consumables business, service business, software business, everything in the EUR 900 million, pretty stable over the last years. The good message, the share of the recurrent revenue in this number is pretty high, steadily growing. This is one of our key strategic focuses.
We have to grow in the recurring revenue business with all the solutions. The good thing is here, we offer everything from a software subscription up to a machine subscription. Everything from one hand, everything in our portfolio connected with the machine and paid by customers in a recurring way. There is more to come. In 2030, yes, we want to grow. Digital printing is one of the growth areas. As Jürgen said, service is the next growth area. We all know how profitable the service business is. This is exactly the reason why we are looking deeper into this. Not just looking, we are doing something. We have defined a clear strategy going forward, not only for offset, also in digital. At the end, service is one of the key pillars moving forward.
Also, Sascha, I'm pretty sure he's talking about this later on. Also, service in the new industry areas we will use of. Recently, we launched our SAP or SAP Corporation. Here, again, service plays an important role moving forward. This is not just about core business, the service. It's about everything we are doing, clear focus to increase turnover and margin. This comment, you know. Yeah, service, I think we touched this already. Yes, there are high competencies, more than 2,500 people working in the service area globally. We have a lot of competency at 24-hour spare parts delivery. We have a high contract coverage with new machines, especially in industrialized countries where we are delivering almost every machine with a contract.
Since now, I think one year ago, we have introduced that every machine has to go out with at least a remote service contract. Every machine has at least a small contract, which comes with the machine. This is somehow to have the feet in the door of every customer site. Service, you see, we have a strong focus here in this area, with a high ambition. Ambition here, this is exactly talking about service coverage. This is exactly the way we are moving forward. We want to increase the service contract coverage worldwide. We want to increase the share of wallet in the service business because if we are able to increase here in both dimensions, then we are able, of course, to grow significantly and to increase our margins.
Yeah, and looking forward, and data is, I think, key, but we have three different actions in this field of digital and lifecycle. First of all, we have to talk about the portfolio. Here importance, and this is exactly in my role as also the Head of Sales. Yes, we have to listen to our customers. We need to understand exactly what do they need from us, what kind of solution is needed. If customers are talking about solutions, they're always not talking just about a machine because at the end, a machine doesn't help. They need a final product, the product produced in the most efficient way or in the highest quality way. At the end, we have to listen and we have to close the gap in our portfolio. The VLF is just one of the examples on the packaging side.
Here for the digital arena, it's the Canon Corporation as one of the answers. We have to look also into alternatives for price-sensitive segments. Price-sensitive segments, for instance, talking about markets, India is one of the topics and interesting wise. We just looked into the figures of last year. We had Jürgen Meisser, we have a clear focus to India because India, Indonesia, all these markets. We have to have an eye on because there is potential. Last year already, we could increase our share in India significantly times five. We sold more printing units. Now you can say, okay, from where are you coming from? Almost nothing. Yes, now up to 100. It was significant for us, but at the end, we need to find the answers for price-sensitive segments and customers.
Second topics, of course, and this is something where we are looking in and we are doing also something, is all about refurbished machines. We want to increase here because we want to have the market under control. Even in the segment of price-sensitive customers, we need to control which machine is going into which area to which customer because only if we have the machine, if we have the connected machine, then we are able to control the market. Portfolio. Second topic, of course, data. Data is key. We need to use data in every dimension. Yes, we have more than 11,000 connected machines. Yes, we are collecting a lot of data, but we are not collecting the data just for us.
We are collecting the data for our customers because we have to use the data to improve the efficiency of our customers. We have to consult them because at the end, we all know and we have to face reality. The consolidation of the market is ongoing and we have to support the consolidation. Data is, I think, one of the key elements for us to optimize the whole system. We have to use the real-time data, proactively identify service needs and sales opportunities. Yes, we are using the data also today, already today to identify sales opportunities and in future. This will be, I think, even more when we are talking also about other products. Today, we understand how much consumption the customer is having. What can we sell more? What kind of consumables comes in?
At the end, we can use the data in every dimension. Pricing, of course, pricing. This is something we did very well over the last year. We increased prices and I can just say it in this round, not probably later in our customer speech, but yes, we were able over the last years to increase prices significantly. Also this year, there is the next price round already, not only planned, it is in implementation. So far, so good. This is important because at the end, the pricing is, let's say, so crucial for us to be here always on a good level. Yes, and we have to introduce loyalty programs, incentives to improve retention and upsell potential. There is more to come, but there is a clear way, clear strategy in both segments from both of us. We are moving into that direction.
I think this was my part. Thank you very much for your attention. Question and answers later or? Yes. Okay, good. First of all, thank you very much.
Hey. Right. Jürgen Otto and David Schmedding have given you some insight really on the key strategic focus that we have at Heidelberg and which will eventually be the strategic focus for the years to come. I strongly believe that this will eventually lead Heidelberg into a position where we are able to address even more areas along the packaging value chain and giving us opportunities to also move towards areas like automation, for example, and the likes. While we are strongly focusing on that strategic area in the core business, of course, that does not mean that we are not actively developing other areas within the company as well.
I am very happy to give you a bit of an insight on what we are doing at the technology segment. Hence, my name is Sascha Donat. I am Head of Heidelberg Technology. As Max has laid out in the very beginning, I am going to also succeed him in his role at investor relations. I am very much looking forward to today and the near future. For those who are here, of course, there will certainly be the chance to have a little side chat during the tour that we have planned over the day. Right. Let us get back to the technology segment.
I am actually very pleased to be able to tell you a few things about what we have done over the last couple of months, what decisions we have taken over the last couple of months, because in the very end, it is about developing a business, right? With the ultimate aim to identify further growth areas for Heidelberg, making ourselves a bit independent from the core business and come up with new growth ideas because that's essentially what it's all about. What are the two decisive changes that we've done within the segment? Number one is we've adjusted the organization. One important thing in my point of view, we established an organization that has a clear P&L responsibility, a clear responsibility for developing the business, but also a personal development and responsibility within the segment.
This new setup, this new organization, I think, puts us in a position to systematically bring in new competencies, industry competencies outside print and packaging, which we have done already, right? We are currently in the process of recruiting and establishing a team of industry experts that will in the future drive the operations and drive the business in the industry area. The second thing really that we have changed, so to speak, is that we will understand ourselves as a provider of system solutions for industrial applications. It is really about providing comprehensive know-how, competencies as one value offering out of Heidelberg. Right. This is a bit of an overview. Essentially, empower your electrification. This is what we have given ourselves as somehow a value proposal.
I think that's a compelling offering that we can offer to the industry, starting from R&D to software to production and, of course, to sales and service in the very end. This will help us to, yeah, industrialize electrification in the industry area. Of course, also like making use of our structures, of our processes and competencies, we will also support our customers in internationalizing their business. Again, our aim is to provide system solutions for industrial applications, combining the competencies that we have within Heidelberg. That's the important piece here. With this fundament in mind, we have identified a range of industries, growing industries, which we want to participate in and we would want to address. Be it automation, be it the military area, be it off-highway, and of course, also e-mobility.
This is really the e-mobility sector, something where I would like to dig a bit deeper and provide some color on the recent activities and the measures that we have taken here. Okay. Basically, when we talk about e-mobility, we're talking about our subsidiary, Heidelberg Amplified. Basically, what Amplified has gone through is a twofold transformation. First, we fundamentally changed the business model, coming from a pure transactional B2C hardware seller, developing into a B2B service and infrastructure solution provider. The good thing is already today, we are offering that full service to customers and B2B customers that need it. Always, this approach comes along with a business model that is reliant on recurring business and recurring revenue models. This will be the fundament for us making business going forward in the B2B sector.
The other area where we have transformed Amplified is basically in the entire product portfolio. We started initially with AC wall boxes and have now developed into a provider of completely new DC fast charging software charging solutions, which we think are at a technological forefront. Having this in mind, really, and having this business model in mind basically puts us as Heidelberg in a position where we can provide a true ecosystem of services that meet a wide range of applications and a wide range of customer requirements. This, of course, goes beyond hardware. Already today, we are offering to B2B customers installation planning services, software solutions such as backend software, payment software, and it goes to the very end to financing solutions, right?
In case a B2B customer wants to ramp up its charging infrastructure, making use of our financial services puts them into position to do this in a financially very sound way. With this model in mind, I think what's more than worth noting is that with this new full service offering, we have managed to win SAP as a completely new account. To give you a bit of an impression of what that means, SAP is the largest corporate electric fleet owner in Germany with more than 10,000 electric cars and 2,000 charging points under management. These numbers are planned to be doubled, right? The important thing is due to the cooperation, Heidelberg Amplified is going to be the partner for managing this, right?
We are going to be responsible for integrating the e-cars, the employees into the backend, making possible that they can do the managing with their payment schedules. We are going to be responsible for ramping up the growing charging infrastructure, et cetera, et cetera. This really gives us the confidence that we are already seen and regarded as a true full service partner in the market of charging infrastructure already today. Yeah, simply speaking, if we can do this kind of work, this kind of model with SAP as the largest, let's say, e-fleet in Germany, I think we are in a very, very good position to do this with any other company as well, right? We are demonstrating this, to be very honest, right? The next corporate partnerships are underway. For example, financial services company MLP or even MVV Mannheim.
I think the message here is that we are continuing to deliver and continuing to progress on that business model. I'd like to come back to that ecosystem and the full service offering that we have and the decisive facts around that entire business model, right? I think that is something that's worth emphasizing because these are the key elements that Heidelberg brings into that role, right? That keeps everything together and which essentially gives us the right to play in an increasingly industrializing charging infrastructure market. I think there's two things. One is technology. We are in a position to build industrialized equipment. That is the DC solution in the variant. On the other hand, we are also able and capable of servicing that equipment. I think that's a very important factor going forward.
Looking at the hardware a bit, and for those who are present here today, we'll have the chance to visit Amplified in the afternoon and get a little live session and live feeling for the new solution that we have just announced. Therefore, I will not go into technological details at that stage. I think the key message around that system is that we are in a position to deliver a crucial element for industrialized charging infrastructure and for B2B customers, whether it is a key competence to, let's say, provide availability and provide uptime of the charging infrastructure for B2B customers such as CPOs or operators of electric truck or electric bus fleets, right? These kind of customers, these B2B customers, they are really relying on the availability of the charging infrastructure.
They rely on partners, on full service partners such as Amplified, that the entire system is running. I think that is a move in and that is the direction that the entire industry is going forward. I think we as Heidelberg, we are in an ideal position for delivering so and doing so. That is one thing, building industrialized or building equipment that lives up to standards of industrialized industries, with the heritage that we have at Heidelberg, building printing machines for decades, really. Also, again, the other aspect, providing a service there too. I think that is a very, very important thing. Speaking of service, which is really the second key element we have within Heidelberg.
I can promise you, I know what we are or what I'm talking here because prior to this job, I was the head of global service for our printing machines for more than three years. Therefore, I'm really close to what we are able to deliver in the service area. The industrial logic, the industrial rationale for Heidelberg to open up the service for increasingly industrialized market as the charging infrastructure market will become, I think that rationale is more than compelling and it will be a true differentiator for Heidelberg going forward. Looking at the use case, really, what we see, and in case you're driving an electric car as well, you will see at the moment outages of infrastructure. You will see unreliable service providers. You will see a long response time and downtime of the charging infrastructure.
That might be okay for private use. You just simply go to the next charging point. For B2B customers that are reliant on availability, this is a complete nightmare because the industry is changing in a way that B2B customers such as CPOs or fleet managers for e-truxes, for example, they lose money with every minute the infrastructure is down. This is exactly where Heidelberg comes into play with our structures, with our experience in providing service to industries. This is really something due to our global setup, the dense setup that we have. I think we have a differentiating point here that is second to none for the time being. I want to underline this.
Heidelberg is opening up one of its key assets, and this is service really to other industries, and in this case, the charging infrastructure, and thereby, of course, enabling us as a group to identify further growth areas and providing growth in the future by serving other industries as well. Right. In a nutshell, we are seeing availability and service as the key differentiator in an industrializing charging market. We also see that no market participant as of today is able to provide such service as Heidelberg does. There is no player with such a global setup, with such a dense setup of service technicians, with such, let's say, short reaction times, and also with such a logistics infrastructure which is able to provide parts within 24 hours on a global scale.
I think these are all elements that are very crucial to the charging infrastructure industry and that put Heidelberg in a very good place. This qualitative reasoning, I think, also, of course, opens up a true opportunity for Heidelberg that is more than promising. What makes us believe that this is coming that way? We do see demand already today in the market. To speak numbers, based on the projections that we see for DC charging points alone in Europe, we do see the market for e-service, as we call it, growing up to EUR 1 billion in 2030 for Europe alone. What makes us believe that this is coming that way? We are in discussions as of today, as we speak with CPOs.
We're all with other participants in the charging infrastructure on how to cooperate, on how to involve Heidelberg in that industrializing area where it comes around. This, of course, is our main goal in that area: to become a major player in the industrialized charging infrastructure industry and thereby, of course, opening up additional growth fields for Heidelberg Amplified and for the entire group as well. Right. I am very confident, to be very honest, and I am very sure that there is more to come out of the technology segment, be it in the area of industry, be it in the area of e-mobility. I will stop here for today. Thanks very much for listening. I look forward to your questions. As I said, very much looking forward to having a discussion one-on-one over the course of today. Thank you.
Y es. Thank you, Sascha.
We will turn to the last item of today's agenda. It is the last Q&A session. Let me start with two questions we received from the chat before handing it over to you guys again. The first one is on the very large format. I guess David's question is for you. Could you please give us some color on the sales potential as well as if there is a pricing difference between our solutions and the MAN solutions? This is the first one.
Okay. Yes, thanks for the question. We are targeting a double-digit million euro figure, I think medium term. This is our target. Yes, there will be a price difference reflecting our premium and especially our integration into the workflow software.
Thank you, David.
The second question is on the consumables business and whether an expansion of this business segment does mean that it will dilute the group's everyday margin.
Okay. Thanks again also for this question. No. Our target is here consumables for the digital area, so with higher margin, and this is exactly will not dilute margins in the total company.
Okay. Thank you. There is another question that just came up from the chat. This one is for you, Sascha, or for you, Jürgen. The question from Sven Sauer. When do you expect the technology segment to turn profitable again?
No, so basically, the technology segment consists of different areas and different activities that we see. We also say, or we also see the technology segment as some kind of an incubator. Therefore, there are some activities that will lead to success.
There are some activities that we see a bit of a slower upfront. Of course, we do have a lot of investments at the moment. To give a glimpse on, for example, Amplified, we had a pretty successful time during the subsidiaries, right? Once the German government ended this, I think it is well known that the market had a difficult time in that. We did some restructuring. For this fiscal year, we are expecting, let's say, revenues in the upper one-digit million area, but we are also expecting a break-even in that fiscal year. Probably we will really have to differentiate between the different activities that we see and that we have. For the ones that are steadily growing, we do have cost measures in place and we do work towards profitability.
Now I'd like to hand it over to the crowd here in the room. Any additional questions from you?
Maybe you can elaborate a bit more on the DC chargers. Do you have a technology advantage versus your competition and how you are going to compete on a global scale with Amplified based in Germany, high-cost structural disadvantage?
Okay. Right. The first question is technological advantage in terms of the DC. What we see at the moment in the market are the so-called monolite systems, right? Everything is in one equipment. Everything's based there.
What we do now is to provide a so-called split system where we split the power electronics into one area and then work with different satellites, up to six, eight, or even 12 satellites connected to one power station, which eventually gives B2B customers and also us a better basis for scaling up in a cost-efficient way because we've got all the power electronics covered in one place, so to speak. The ramp-up of up to 12 charging points is available on a rather cost-efficient basis. That is one. Of course, we do see other market participants also coming into the market with split systems. That's no question. However, we have made up our mind very clearly on the use cases that we see.
Therefore, you will also see that the, let's say, the size and the makeup of the entire satellite system, this one is closely related to application chances in the retail area. At a Lidl, at an Aldi, etc., etc., where space is scarce and B2B customers cannot afford to lose parking spots. This is one very dedicated application. The other application is, of course, for fleets, right? Bus depots or truck depots where also you have limited space available and where you have the chance by consolidating and identifying or centralizing the power electronics, you can work with up to 12, let's say, satellites, thereby charging 12 trucks at one moment in time. That is one thing.
Of course, we do have the best cost sourcing and the best cost production. Not 100% of the value add will be mounted here in Wiesloch.
That's crystal clear. We focus on the service, the installation, the software, and as Sascha mentioned, the technical concept, which is the differentiator.
Kind of repeating my question from the first time. EUR 60 million of revenue within technology. You just said, if I heard you correctly, high single-digit million revenue for this year from charging from Amplified. Talk about the remaining EUR 50 million. What big blocks are, if any, in there? Thank you.
These numbers basically come up together through the different services that we provide out of Heidelberg, right? One is really the foundry where we have external business with companies out of the automotive sector, out of the industrial sector, out of the building sector, for example. Others are where we do the production of, let's say, electronic components for the industry as well.
The third thing is also to have assembly services around here. This is all, and I want to be very clear on this, this is all some kind of a heritage business, right? You will also ask the question, okay, how can you be competitive on these kinds of services? The question or the direction here, and I outlined this in the very beginning, it's not about doing sporadic utilization-driven activities in the future anymore, right? This might have been done in the past very clearly. Our approach now is really to build systems and to talk to industry customers on how to, let's say, replace existing parts only, but in turn this into entire systems which can find place in their end product, so to speak.
The clear strategic direction is not to sell single services out of assembly or out of production or whatever it is. It is about creating a product. Therefore, we are assembling, as I said, the industry experts, bringing in people with industry expertise from outside to discuss with companies out of the single industries that we currently have contacts with on how to integrate and how to establish a true product rather than just doing low-value services for these companies.
Two questions indeed on this Heidelberg technology sector you just described. The first is you mentioned you want to grow it from EUR 60 million to EUR 100 million roughly this year. How much resources do you allocate there in terms of money, in terms of salespeople, in terms of efforts, and so on? Because as I understood, I mean, it is a minus thing. How much do you have there?
What can we expect and what are the goals for 2030 to reach? Because I'm... That's the first question. The second question, you mentioned a part, the EV charging infrastructure you're going to look at, agricultural solutions, off-highway solutions, green energy, military solutions. I've been working or I've been doing corporate development at big companies, Daimler and Airbus, for some 20 years. They also had good ideas, what the consultants wrote on the charts. None of them, none of these things have ever made any money. Also, like you telling us, we have sales efforts, we have salespeople, and we want to reach external customers. What makes you confident that you really reach these external customers and reaching goals, at least this year, roughly some EUR 70 million- EUR 80 million would also be a good success? That's the second question.
Probably it's also something for you as a CEO.
Maybe I start first. Today we hired Michael Wellensohn. He is a former board member of Deutz and ThyssenKrupp. He started today in this segment. Second answer, today we are producing parts where our customers are not able or not willing to produce this. I say they are not able to produce this complexity. Therefore, of course, this is a value also for the future that we can produce parts where nobody is able to produce it, at least in Europe. I think nowhere in the world. We have a special competence in special segments. Like Sascha said, we want to create a kind of ecosystems with these competencies, competency in mechanical engineering and mechanical production, but also electric, electronic. We will see this production here also in Wiesloch, electronics. To combine this in the ecosystem, also serious software with a whole ecosystem.
We did it for charging, and we can do it also for different other things. We invented some years ago also the software or the air updates. Maybe we invented it at least for the printing machines. Today we have 11,000 printing machines connected to us here. There are not so many companies who are able to run such a system with such a complexity and such a mechanical competence. The idea is the more complex, the better for us. This is what we want to use in different cases. We have a lot of interest. Some we can tell you. With military, it's top secret. We can't tell you. Of course, the competence is evident that we have. If you compare it to other companies, we have 50-ton cranes. We have huge halls, 50 tons, 30 tons, 20 tons.
You will see that. We have the infrastructure. We can start tomorrow, and we started to use this equipment. This is a complete difference to other companies. We have to invest. We have to make a plan, a project. We are able to run today. That is a big difference.
Let us see if I can touch on one of the other topics that you... These as a consequence of investment. That investment has to be made. Until the result comes, there is three to five years to come. This storyline should be elaborated a little bit more, actually, when we do an investment related performance like you do today. Because it is a little for me as an investor of Black Box.
In terms of investments, yes, of course, you are true when it comes to investments. However, there is a lot existing here, as Mr. Otto has outlined.
We can make use of the existing things, right? Again, it's about... We framed it as power your electrification. We do have contacts with the industry at the moment. What we see as feedback from the market is, of course, we are always able to talk about assembly or manufacturing, and then, but then always we come into that direction when it's about price. This is not really the case and the business model we're going to do forward. What we receive as feedback and also as inquiries from customers is really based on the electronic competencies that we have here. We're in diverse discussions with customers when it comes to DC-DC modules or with electrifying equipment or vehicles that today run via diesel. There are use cases in the market and there are contexts in the market.
Again, the only means in doing so is to really bring in expertise outside print and packaging, which we have now started. This will be, we will continue and then gradually grow up the business, right? In terms of the financials that you just outlined, we are planning to dedicate a double-digit percentage amount into the area when it comes to DC, when it comes to developing further areas. We are gradually shifting into areas that promise more growth or have a bigger growth aspect. That is the plan for this year.
I had a question on the one presentation, two presentations ago on the packaging market again. Your entry into flexible packaging, you said, would be in due course or you said it enters soon, it says here. What are the potential options?
I guess none of your competitors is selling their business to you. Are you planning an organic step or, as in the past, maybe a cooperation with others? I guess the same question would be maybe a bit more further down the road for the highly interesting corrugated market as well. Thank you.
I think, honestly speaking, we are looking in all options. First of all, organic options with our Boardmaster machine, with our WCC business in Weiden. I think we are well positioned and we can further develop this machine to be more in the flexible texture, paper-based flexible packaging, not so far plastics. This is also a clear focus. Nevertheless, we are looking also in other options, so outside, not organic options.
Anyway, topics, we cannot talk about this, but everything is on the table and we are looking into everything which is possible because at the end, we need something here. This is clear. This is a clear focus to close this gap in future. As you can see with the other corporations, Wiesloch, Hippekam, and with Manolo, we want to be the biggest player in the market. We want to use the scale. We want to use the competence. We want to be the best partner for our customers. Open, open-minded, also technology-wise.
For us, it is clear packaging is one of the key pillars for growth. This is what we've tried to show you is we know the potentials, we know which market will grow, and now we understand our gaps. This is exactly what we now are aware of.
Now we need to fill the gaps. The VLF is one of the first steps in the packaging arena. Now let's look ahead and probably be sure that we will come up with some news pretty soon.
We need to keep an eye on the time. You need to go to the press event, which will start in five minutes. Maybe a really, really quick final question, but then we need to come to an end. Okay. I mean, we... Yes, we will accompany you through today. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much also.
for your interest.