When you think about to protect an aircraft at all time of the flight, that requires quite some know how and knowledge. So, to come up with an innovative solution, it requires also a very deep understanding of that particular industry. You also need a very deep understanding how an aircraft is designed. And of course, you do need to understand, our customer specification and processes. And most important, you do need access to a complete set of technologies.
So what's the solution? It's a composite structural film adhesive adhesive. But more important, the, qualification before you finally can commercialize the solution takes usually 3 years. Before that time, you have probably, with the solution of that type, a 2 year development work. And during that time, of course, you do run very extensive programs, testing programs with our customers.
And on top of that, this solution might require for your standard manufacturing processes, some adaptations. So a design change, a process change, during that time needs to be done in parallel. And if that all works out and very smoothly, 1st year sales of a solution of that type is around 2.5 or €5,000,000. And then over time, of course, you can scale that solution, making certain modifications, And it has probably a peak value of probably around 30 to 50000000. So why did I take you through the process and gave you that example.
So that is, of course, just one example for the aerospace industries. Industry. Keep in mind that on an aircraft, we have around 100 different applications. And you will see and hear many, many more applications in very attractive markets throughout the day. And, of course, not all our applications are as dramatic as this one.
Of course not. But the process how it works is exactly the same. And we felt that this gives you a good feel and understanding how it works and what we do So we provide our customers with high impact solutions, and there are basically two ways how to think about So either we create a new application together with our customers, either by developing a new process or introducing new materials which can be bonded, sealed, or coated, or overall rethink the entire design where before no adhesive sealant of functional coding was used. The other way how to approach is take an existing application and simply make it better. Make it either more efficient, reduce the waste, or solve a problem.
We provide solutions always with a very high performance impact and with a very low cost impact. Almost all our solutions represent less than 3% of the bill of materials of the finished product of our customers. At the same time we create significant value, through the performance of our product. And even more important in case our solution doesn't work, the risk and the cost of failure is very high. Of course, the valuation and the differentiation differs quite a bit by application and markets.
But across all almost all solutions, the performance, the value of the performance is always significant higher than the cost of the solution itself. Customization, there are very, very few drop in solutions. What does it mean drop in drop in means? You take a product off the shelf, and without running any testing programs, you can introduce that to the customer. Almost every solution we provide have to deal with very very complex situations.
Complex, first of all, that almost every application is different, even for the same customer at a different location, You have to take into consideration different materials, different specification of the material. Is it gonna be used in Asia, or is it gonna be used in Europe? And of course, the way how the solutions get applied are very, very, very different. So we always talk about complex solutions and we always customize the solutions towards the requirements of our customers. When you look at the entire portfolio, customized solutions represent roughly 50% of our entire portfolio.
And what is important when we talk about customization, the customization is always built on our technology platforms. Our high impact solutions very often set the standard and drive specification. That is on the one hand side, of course, very important for our customer because our customer can scale, but it's also good for us. We have a very, very high customer proximity. And, our go to market model is always based on being very close to our customers.
Of course, you need trust, and you will see that with many, many, many of our very good customers, have a relationship which goes back 50 years. So for very, very close and complex, customers, we even go a step further. We put in so called resident engineers trying to be available for the engineers of our customers at all time. And of course, being the natural go to person when it comes to solve a problem or come up with a new design. So being, and that is important, the incumbent at a customer application is a tremendous competitive advantage.
And of course, it's a big advantage for our customer because there's always somebody to go to. So for those not so familiar, you hopefully get a feel What we do, let me share a bit who we are. So we are the global market leader for solutions around adhesives sealants, and functional coatings. 2018, we generated throughout our portfolio, 9,400,000,000 in sales. In a market of around €65,000,000,000 to €70,000,000,000.
Always very difficult to find the exact number, number for the market itself. Because as you probably know, it's a very, very fragmented market, fragmented in terms of segments, applications, or technologies. Same holds true for the competitive landscape. The, top 10 competitors more or less represent 40% of the total market, and you will find thousands of small and midsize companies. However, you won't find any of our competitors offering and serving the entire industrial market.
And we are not only the global leader From a worldwide perspective, we have also a leading position in all our six regions. And even more important, we do have a leading position in all our industrial or in most of our industrial markets and verticals. Therefore, the overall market size gives you just some sort of a direction. More important is obviously to go one level below and basically look at the different industries and the verticals we serve. And most important, what is the attractiveness of those verticals or applications within a vertical in terms of growth potential but also in terms of profit pool.
And do those applications at those verticals are supported by long term growth trends. Therefore, to give you this answer and, to show you where we stand and how well Henkel adhesive Technologies is positioned. We build very much the entire day around the megatrends and how those megatrends have an implication, of course, for our customers, but certainly also for Henkel and, representing significant opportunities. We serve 130,000 customers direct, and we serve millions through distribution. We have very long lasting relationships which, go back 50 years.
And you will find a solution. Yesterday night, we had, a conversation, in almost all OEMs for Automotive, you will find Henkel Solutions in almost all aircraft You will also find solutions with pretty much all the leading electronic manufacturers and I can go on and on and on with the Packaging industry and such. We are a very customer centric organization. White color, roughly 6500 of our colleagues, experts are customer facing. Spending roughly, you know, a million more or more than a million visits per year.
What do they do? They consult, help to identify opportunities either to change the design or make an existing application better. And of course, they do support our customers and run line trials. We have 2400 scientists in the field and in the lab. Running tens of thousands experiments and trials.
Always the objective to come up with a perfect solution. And last, we do have a global footprint. And when we talk about global fit footprint. We're not talking only about our number of sites spread throughout the region. We talk also about a global footprint along the value chain.
Across many, many countries, you will find Henkel adhesive Technologies represented with a large part of a value chain, being a sales expert, sales engineers, technical customer service, product development, or business development. So the key message I want you to keep in mind, adhesive technologies has tremendous assets in place, being at our very strong customer partnerships, our people, our expert network, the know how, and the infrastructure for local supply. And that represents a very great value for our customers. And of course, when you look at the market, it is not easy to replicate, and it's, of course, a strong competitive advantage. So how do we operate and what do we do different versus competition?
How does the value creation work for Henkel? We are a know how business, with a with a large number of experts. Again, always very close. We call it a high touch business. Our experts are very often specialized on certain industries.
And in many cases, even very much specialized on a certain application. And the knowledge goes far beyond the application and the product and the solution itself. It's always comprehensive, always tried take into into consideration, what is required for the customer to come up with a solution, to create value, change the design or solve a problem. So to a large part, our go to market model, particularly for our B2B businesses are direct. And even for our business, which goes through industrial distribution, Even there, we maintain direct customer access because almost all our solutions require demonstration and testing.
So at the same time being in such an industry, you need to have a very strong network of partners. Again, the solution is usually a very complex one. So we have very strong relationships with almost all leading machine equipment application manufacturers because that is crucial to apply our solutions for the different processes of our customers. And of course, we do have also very, very close relationship with the materials we either bond, seal, or treat. When we talk about creating value through cut optimized and high impact solution.
For those solutions, we access a very broad portfolio of different technologies. You heard that probably many times. What does it mean? When you look at our space, There is a certain amount of technology you need to solve a problem. And Henkel has a toolbox for simple terms which includes all potential technologies to come up with a solution.
Many of our customers operate with just a few technology platforms. So for us, technology is not the driving force. For us, it's always the customer and what is the best solution for that particular case. We are also able to scale our solutions and that is, very special, across different industries. You will see couple of very interesting examples where we take a certain technology from one application and scale it into other industries or for other applications and other customers.
The reason why I picked the Aerospace example, you saw it takes a while to get a product commercialized, 2 years development work, 3 years qualification in between the teams have to make sure that we are finally also able to produce And yet, the application for the 1st year is 2a half 5000000. And 2a half 5 to 2a half to 5,000,000 is for us also already a big application. And that goes across throughout many, many, many of the use cases you're gonna see because that is a bit the nature of our business. But at the same time, we are able to scale those applications, being it either through the industry Across the Globe or taking those solutions and leveraging those solutions across other industries. Again, keep in mind, our solutions are based and built on technology platforms.
And usually those solutions require some modification when you leverage them somewhere else. And that put us in a position, in many cases, to be more innovative, of course, also faster and creates, quite a competitive advantage. Let's talk a little bit about our portfolio serving attractive markets. We are organized by verticals, for those join joined us in 2013. That was the time when we changed the way how we went to market from a very regional perspective into a very industry vertical organization.
And, that puts us in a position to scale and drive synergies along those verticals for different industries and different markets. You will get the sales breakdown. Don't worry. You will get the sales breakdown, throughout NS on this presentation of our different business areas. And by the way, we will share, of course, all the material anyway, after the, investment Analyst Day with you.
Key message here, we run the business, not as a whole, we are very, very much focused on verticals. Our teams are set up into verticals, and that's basically how we differentiate. And that's how we pretty much look at our entire market. The second message is that when you look at our portfolio, we more or less cover the industrial, the industrial production space at all. So you will find most of our verticals covering the entire space of industrial Manufacturing.
So the second piece is equally important. When you look at the vertical, You get, of course, significant insights, but you need to gay you you need to go a step further. So managing that type of business, you need to figure out what is the right level of granularity because even within a vertical, you can find applications which are highly attractive in terms of growth. And profit pool. And we will talk about that pretty much throughout the day.
And you will also find applications and segments which grow significant less or are even at the end of their life cycle. So we always try to focus on the most attractive markets and applications, and there are in almost all our businesses very attractive pockets of growth. And of course, those growth applications help us to balance different and volatile market environments. Over the last year, we talked quite a bit about active portfolio management. So at the end of the day, it is about managing the business on the right and allocating our resources towards those applications, which help our customers create the largest value.
And of course, those applications where we see the greatest, growth opportunity. And that is pretty much how we run the business since 2013. We have established a very rigid process to make sure that on the one hand side, we have a longer term perspective, which goes always beyond 3, 4 years to see how certain markets, applications, and customer groups gonna develop. But we do a review pretty much also every year, and that is the baseline for setting targets always for the next year to come. Having that said, of course, we do look at markets and adjust at a time if certain things and assumptions change.
So strong portfolio And, let me share with you some additional thoughts. And of course, some of the question almost everybody, I guess, has on his or her mind is how is that portfolio able to cope, with different market developments and, with a potential slowdown. So of course, and to state the obvious our business depends on demand of our customers. So if, demand goes down in a certain area, of course, we also feel that in our sales development. And looking at the portfolio at all, at a hole, you see we cover very much all the industrial manufacturing space.
Of course, if industrial production slows down, We also see that in our sales development. But having that said, even In a market where overall there is a slowdown or the market is soft, you will always have opportunities to capture growth and to balance to a certain degree, certain overall market developments. So We have, when you again, Anna will share with you the breakdown by region, we do have a fairly solid and good, regional mix, and diversity. We do have a good mix when it comes to so called non cyclical and cyclical businesses by definition. And we do have a good mix when it comes to customer portfolio and application.
So as I said earlier, if a market is down and we talk quite a bit about the opportunities in the automotive industry. And I'm not sharing with you any secret that the automotive industry is facing some challenges from a market development. But you will get get very tangible examples how even then we are able to position adhesive technologies to participate in attractive growth opportunities in pretty much that market, but that applies very much across most of the industries we serve. When you take a look at our business model, And, we believe that the business model and the way how we go to market, creates significant value for our customer and is a key competitive advantage. It helps us, of course, to scale throughout our portfolio smaller applications being it in the vertical itself or being it across different verticals.
We believe that, you know, We have, a very good combination of how do we run the business and, what is our portfolio And as a result of that, we believe that we are very well positioned for sustainable and profitable growth. And of course, I'm pretty sure you heard that many, many times. But we do have a proven track record. So when you do look over the period of the last 6 years, I just picked the events when we had the Investor Day we had, throughout that period, couple of years where we had tailwind when it comes to market development, but we also had couple of years where we had headwind. And, of course, the same also applies for currencies.
Nevertheless, throughout that period, we were able to generate profitable growth. And, I have to admit, I don't recall exactly, but I believe that applies very much for all our business areas throughout that period. And Most important throughout that period, we created substantial value for our customers and helped them to succeed. We also generated throughout that period quite a significant amount of cash, and we kept our net working capital as a percent of sales at a low level comparing that with our peer group. And also important throughout that period, we kept investing into our business, roughly €300,000,000 CapEx per year, and we completed couple added value acquisition.
Let me just, basically mention 2 One, you might remember our acquisition in the US with Burkris. It's a great company. At that time, we acquired Burk risk predominantly to support and strengthen our electronic business. But we also acquired BergWIS because they do had a very strong position about thermal management, talking about mobility, talking about arising and emerging application, that position is helping us tremendously now to leverage that technology into other applications. The other one, just recently, 2 years ago, was diurex, diurex was for us again, a very, very important acquisition because again, it strengthened, the position of some of our verticals.
It increased the value chain we offer to our customers. And, since then, both businesses are very successfully integrated, and they help us to contribute to the profitable growth of our business. And let me also mention because we don't cover it throughout the day throughout that period, we also set up our corporate venture fund and, adhesive technologies was if I may say to a certain degree, a front runner, not because we, you know, like to experiment so much. We do, but in that field, and we had a clear strategy. So our investment, and we invested since then 41,000,000 Part of that investment went into material science funds.
Why? Because we felt that this is a perfect opportunity to scout the market. Before that time, we had our own scouting teams on top of our 6500 customer facing experts But we felt that being invested through a material science fund, 1 in the US, 1 in Europe, more or less, and 1 in Asia, gives us a perfect opportunity to see if emerging technology comes up. And then of course, either agree on a joint development approach or, have a minority share. So even during that period of time, we did some investment into funds and we did, 6, I guess, 6 investments into promising technologies, early stage, with the minority share.
Let me basically come, to moving forward. So let's change gears for a second. And let me talk about, strategy and priorities. So you will hear all day long how do we leverage mega trends does it mean? How do we translate that and what are the opportunities for adhesive technologies?
So we will talk a bit about our innovation pipeline, and, how do we make substantial investments, into our capabilities to even bring our innovation to the next level. And, when you look forward, digitalization plays a very important role. I will come back to that. And most important, we do have, also a very customer focused organization. We are very proud, of, our 12,000 white color, if you will, for a better, for a lack of a better term, experts who serve customers day in, day out.
And of course, we're also proud of our 14,000 blue color worker making sure that, our products get produced and shipped But the key message we wanna get across, we feel, and we are always very reflective. We feel we have a great customer centric team, but we just started, to even organize ourselves to get even more customer focus throughout the organization. In simple term, objective We wanna even further reduce interfaces. So to really, really zoom in on the different verticals and make sure that we are always the front runner. So leveraging mega trends, Of course, those mega trends, as you know, they do not only change the specific industries.
Of course, they also, change the world. But what is important, why we change to bit the gears and how do we present our business to you today versus some of the other investor days in the past? Because we believe that sustainability, connectivity, mobility very much is relevant for almost all our customers and all our industries. And coming back to the previous statement I made, we are, in many, many cases, the incumbent the incumbent with all our 130,000 direct customers. And that puts us, of course, in a very, very good position to be the go to park, to be the go to person, to help them, our customers, to manage and master the transformation of the different industries.
So we are in a know how business and, we are in a poor position. Accelerate through innovation. So just a few quick facts. When we think about innovation, we have an NPI rate of 30 end. So 30% of our sales are products which we launched over the last 5 years.
We always have the objective when we launch a new product, that the product in its product line is accretive. So being it by creating more value for our customers, or being it by producing it. So, we have a very healthy pipeline. And of course, we wanna you know, leverage that pipeline even moving forward. And, yesterday, we had, some sort of a chat about our 3 d printing business, Michael, you're gonna use 3d printing, as an example because it gives you a good feel in how do we do innovation.
How does innovation work, and how do we apply all our assets through a certain application, and within in that particular space. Just to be also very clear, 3 d printing will not move the needle over the next few years. The reason why we spent money and the reason why we think it is important because it is relevant for almost all our customers. And we do believe that 3 d printing, the space and the application we cover, is gonna be very relevant for our company probably 10 or 15 years ago, in the future. So the last piece and you had, clips and you're gonna see a bit more is our investment into our innovation capabilities.
When you looked out of the window, you saw our €130,000,000 investment into our new innovation center. So this is not why we, you know, like to build buildings. So the idea is very simple. So the idea was born when we, you know, reviewed our innovation workshops, we do quite a lot for our customers. So what does it mean?
We ask customers, to reserve 2 hours of their time. We come with all our basket of different technologies in our portfolio. And we ask the customer to put, you know, as many engineers, design engineers through that innovation workshop. And, in every single case, we work, we walk out of that workshop, with a meaningful, at least one new application or new solution, we can then further develop. So investing 130,000,000 is about creating basically an innovation workshop accelerated, if you will.
It's also about making sure that we recruit the right talents because the environment and how do we work with each other is going to be significant different than some of our laboratories. And last, you heard us often talking about leveraging technologies So we wanna make that natural by having particular for Europe a large part of our scientists altogether so that naturally we're gonna leverage ideas because that's what we believe new ideas will happen. Let's talk about digitalization. Quickly, we believe it's enabler to increase our competitive advantage. We do not have a digital strategy itself because we believe that digital is an enabler of pretty much what we do.
So when we talk about leveraging platforms, technology platforms, product platforms, We believe that, digitalization is for us the next platform to scale our business to the next level. We do have a very complex business. We have to manage very, very huge amount of information all the time. And we believe that information technologies and tools cannot only help us to bring our knowledge business to the next level. We also believe that digitalization with its tools and technologies will help us to enhance our customer journey experience really differentiate in a B2B world and of course, driving efficiency.
So with that, let me basically come to the key takeaways. So we are the global market leader with a very strong portfolio serving attractive markets, and you will see all day long the different applications, not as dramatic as one on the aircraft. But, for us, very exciting. We do have a business model which is able to create sustainable value for our customers, but of course, also for us, We do have a track record throughout many, many years to deal with markets going up and markets going down. And we have a very clear strategy and priorities.
And with that, we do believe that we are very well positioned to create value in a sustainable way moving forward and most important. And you're gonna get a very good view on that. We do have, and I'm admitting I'm a bit biased also the best team in our industry. So thank you very much.
Since 20, 15 since we last met for the Investor Day. Since then, we have added 400,000,000 in sales. Now in 2018, we achieved 9,400,000,000 in sales. The growth rate that we, delivered over the past 3 years since 2015 was clearly above the, industry production growth and clearly means more than one point. Over that period of time, we were also able to, once more, continuously increase our margin and now reached a level of 18.7 percent last year.
And with that, we delivered an absolute EBIT of almost €1,800,000,000. Janduk promised that I would give you a couple of details on our portfolio So you see here the breakdown by business areas as well as by geographies. So looking at the business areas, as mentioned, we have, 5 business areas in which we basically run the business. The largest one being the packaging and consumer goods 1 was more than 30%. And then 2nd largest transport and metal, 24%, general industry, 15, consumer craftsmen and building, 19 and electronics with 11% being the smallest, but still more than a 1,000,000,000 in sales.
The market itself is set to deliver consistently around 2 to 3% growth over the cycle every year. But within this market, there's clearly attractive growth pockets that allow for an even faster growth. Looking a bit at the geography profile, clearly the US is our largest country. But Asia in total is our largest region with 28%. Out of the 28%, approximately half is contributed by China.
I think that's also an important information these days. Western Europe is our 2nd largest region, and here, our Germany accounts approximately for a third of Western Europe. Overall, our emerging market share is around 50%. So with that, we're also perfectly set, to capture growth in emerging markets. Let me now look take a look at our growth profile since 2015.
Over that period of time, we achieved an average growth per year. Organic sales growth of 3.9%. But you also see the impact of portfolio development in this bridge pretty clearly. We added approximately 500,000,000 in sales with the most prominent acquisitions that were mentioned of Derek and Zonnoff. But also, we did a couple of divestment over that period.
Some of them pretty small so that we didn't even talk a lot about it. But actually pretty important because yesterday evening, we also had some conversations. So why would the margin improve also quite a bit over that time? Because the portfolio composition at first glance hasn't changed dramatically since 2015. That's perfectly correct because the 5, business areas themselves they still have pretty much the same weighting as 5 or 3 years ago.
But within those segments, we also, of course, did a lot Portfolio Management. And just to cite some examples in Mike's electronics business, we divested a couple of businesses that had reached the end of their life cycle and were not contributing to profit at all, which, of course, helped us overall also to drive the margin. Total amount of business this post was something like 200,000,000 over that period of time. In those last three years, we were also hit significantly by negative FX development in total on a top line level approximately even a 1,000,000,000. Ending then at 9,400,000,000 of sales.
Talking a bit about profitability increase, So since the last investor day, we were able to add 160 basis points in margin. How did that happen? So mix was one thing, as mentioned, was the both organic moves, sorry, inorganic moves that we made acquisitions and divestments, but also portfolio management within by focusing on the most attractive segments of the market. In that period, we also had a pretty volatile environment when we talk about material costs. So in 20 16 is the, characterized by decreasing raw material costs, but then steep increases in 1718.
Over that period of time, we have been pretty much able to compensate for the raw material price increases, or respectively, at the beginning of the cycle, keeping very well our sales price levels intact. Then one other important contributor was all our fund growth initiatives. And that on both ends, so when we talk about gross margin impact, operations, and supply chain driven, but also on the G and A cost. Next one on profitability increase, taking a bit, of a deep dive into operations and supply chain. So Iandong mentioned that every year, invest something like 300,000,000 into CapEx for our business.
And with that, we still consider ourselves as an asset light business. If you compare us to chemicals industry or to specialty chemicals. So CapEx in percent of sales pretty low. Nevertheless, we drove quite a bit our profitability upwards in the past years. If you look at what we did in manufacturing footprint optimization over that period of time.
And here on purpose, we put, how our factory landscape looked in 2004. 133 sites. And then you see how many we acquired. A large part of the 100 that we acquired, of course, with the National Starch position in 2008. We also built a couple of new ones, 25, and then you see how many we closed or divested more than 100 so that today we operate 141 sites.
And with that, at the very right, you see the productivity gain arising from this So sales per factory, if you wanna do quick gorilla mass increased from 32,000,000 per site to more than 67,000,000 side. Now coming a bit to cash, networking capital, Jan Duyke and Carsten mentioned it already. So over time, and you see here, the periods of the last investor days, 2012, 15, and 18, we were able to keep our net working capital at a pretty low level if you compare us with our peer group and with the market. Nevertheless, we still see levers for further improvement over time, there will be, of course, some fine tuning, like, if production shifts are now over for some of the big new plants that we're building inventories are gonna go down a bit, but that's not going to be a step change. It's a step change.
We're probably more likely we're gonna see if we implement professionally new digital tools. And that is why digitalization for us is so important. And you're gonna see a couple of examples also. Later in the exhibitions. So one important point, for example, on inventory management, would be that we get better in anticipation of demand swings.
So when markets go up, we are better prepared for it. And what when markets go down, we also not only rely on statistical forecasting, but get that done better. Key takeaways on our financial performance. So we have a very attractive market, with nice growth rates and attractive profit pools. And we have a very unique business model to capitalize on it.
Portfolio Management, and we see portfolio management also as a very important part of value creation going forward. What do we do with this? We drive the resource allocation to drive the profitable growth. And as mentioned before, by Angela, we also continuously look at our structures and adapt them to the market environment.
So when we talk about mobility, there are basically 3 sub trends, and some of you, I'm sure, pretty familiar for you. There is the emergence of alternative energy vehicles, whether those are plugged in hybrids or fully electric vehicles, There is a trend towards autonomous driving in different degrees, which is combined with another, effect that drives the content of electronic components in a vehicle. I will talk about that one as well. And there is a trend that is prevailing already for many years in the automotive industry And that is a need for lightweight structures to compensate some of the additional weight that has been put, on a modern vehicle over the life a couple of years. So let's start with, alternative energy vehicles.
So when we talk about alternative energy vehicles, we talk about full plug in hybrids and fully electric vehicles. And there is obviously a big discussion about that topic, and the electrification of the power train is probably the single biggest disrupt the automotive industry has experienced over the 100 years, of its history. Talking about autonomous driving, and there are different degrees of autonomous driving. And we are not suggesting that in a few years, we see completely driverless cars. But, the level 3, level 4 of autonomous driving is becoming a reality.
And what is accompanying this trend is the demand from us as a consumer for more more safety and comfort features. All of those trends result in an increase of electronic components and sensors that are built into the latest generation of, vehicles. And the 3rd sub trend is lightweight. Clearly not a new phenomena in the automotive industry. Automotive OEMs are thinking about how to take out weight or at least to counterbalance additional weight that goes into a into a modern vehicle since many, many years.
But the two trends I elaborated about before make a challenge even harder in order to comply with the emission standards that have been put out by the different governments. A full electric vehicle carries a battery that weighs 6 up to 700 kilos. All the electronic components that I mentioned before add additional weight to a vehicle. And that needs to be at least in parts be balanced out. As a consequence, we do see an increase of lightweight materials.
We will see plastics in some specialty areas, probably composites, but we will see especially lightweight methods and first of all, aluminum. So a typical car body, which used to be a pure steel construction, will move to a multi material, set up And that creates significant challenges which represent again an opportunity for a company like Henkel. Classical fastening methods like welding, which was standard practice for a pure steel body are not possible anymore. And with this, the demand for struck adhesives is increasing significantly when we talk about the multi material body. So how does this translate into the value opportunity for Henkel.
And what I put on this slide is a comparison against the value put in that we would see if we would supply all our solutions into a classical car with a combustion engine And usually we quantify that value around €100. And when we talk about a fully electric vehicle with a battery size that I mentioned before reach 400 to 500 kilometer, 600 kilo in weight, that value goes up to €270. So that is truly an exciting growth opportunity, a highly attractive pocket of growth for our business. So what are those solutions? And, I don't have time to illustrate the entire breadth of our portfolio.
So I just, picked a couple of examples how we shape the future car. Starting at the bottom right of the slide, We are delivering a the latest generation of infotainment systems. In an reliable, you can imagine the displays are getting bigger and requirements over 10 years of the lifetime of a vehicle are pretty significant. So, the solutions that we provide need to ensure that those displays and infotainment systems work in a very, very reliable way. We also deliver all kinds of materials that protect electronic components, which you see on the bottom left of the slide, Those include potting materials encapsulation materials, electrically conductive, adhesives to not only produce the sensors and electronic components, but also to protect them again across the entire lifetime in an electric vehicle.
Key takeaways and key messages. There are unique growth opportunities in the area of alternative energy vehicles, autonomous driving, more electronic components hitting the modern vehicle. And by the need for on those opportunities. We have a high ability to win with very strong customer relationships, but especially with our unique portfolio and an in-depth knowledge carried by our experts. And with this, we feel that Henkel is actively helping our customers to shape the curve the future.
So we think this is absolutely just a beginning. Soon, we really believe we're gonna have a fully connected world. Okay. Let's expand that mobility example just a little bit more. The cars are talking to each other and the traffic control systems, traffic And large cities is gonna get a lot easier and gonna be much more efficient.
Connected cities. Connected cities will better be able to manage their grid. The better, better be able to manage, and conserve resources. Connected governments They'll use connected sensors and big data to help them predict and manage natural disasters. California is actually doing that today with wildfires.
Okay. On the B2B side, a fully connected smart, smart factory is gonna make things much more efficient we're gonna have significantly more efficient supply chains. We're actually already seeing that today in a lot of our smart factories. So that's gonna make everything much more efficient. And Henkel is partnering with all the companies that are making that happen.
We are working with them to build that technology. And because we're active in the development of all these technologies, they're gonna make a fully connector world. We see what's coming out. We see what they're about ready to launch. We see the technology is gonna come out in a year or 2, and it's pretty exciting stuff.
And that's why when we see all this stuff, we believe the inflection point is now. We think we're right on the edge of really getting a big jump in connectivity. K? And the biggest driver behind this whole inflection point, it's gonna be 5 g. So the 5th generation of a wireless system.
That's the new latest wireless pro co protocol. It's the 5th generation. So a lot of times in Europe, you're getting 3 g and 4 g. And the 5 g systems are very, very fast. It's a hundred times faster than conventional systems.
The 5 g systems can handle a lot of data. They can handle 100 times as much data as the current systems, and they're quick. They have a much faster response time. It's often called latency. So they're ten times quicker than our current systems.
So what does that mean for you? Well, you'd be able to at least download a movie in 3 seconds. Okay? But developing all of that technology. Developing all that technology that enables connectivity is not easy.
And it's gonna take a lot of advanced materials to make it work, and that's where Henkel comes in. Because we are working with them to help enable and shape all this technology. And we believe by developing New materials for them, that's gonna create a €1,000,000,000 incremental market for us with that total market growing roughly 10%. So a €1,000,000,000 to help enable connectivity systems. But that's not gonna be a €1,000,000,000,000 easy to get.
Right? We're gonna have to work pretty hard for that. Our customers in this space are very large global companies. They have very high quality standards, They have very high specifications. They are extremely demanding very, very high standards.
But I think that's actually good for us. That gives us the ability to differentiate. And then when we differentiate, actually the more we differentiate, the more we're able to price making that €1,000,000,000 incremental opportunity a pretty attractive segment for us to be in. And we're also working to get a good handle on where that billion euros is because it's pretty fragmented. So we're spending a lot of time running all of these opportunities through a market attracting and ability to wind filter, and you'll see a little bit more about that, to be really clear on what exactly are the best opportunities in that fragmented market.
And then we wanna make sure we resource those opportunities correctly, because that'll give us the best ability to win. But bottom line, we think this is an absolutely really perfect market to be in. Okay. Now let's get a little bit more into the details. So how do you, how do you build a fully connected future?
Well, these are the 3 major building blocks, smart devices, infrastructure, storage, and processing equipment. So let's go through each one of these. So smart devices, that's easy. Everybody knows the mobile phone, but you have a lot of cameras and sensors as well. And by the way, you have cameras and sensors, as Michael knows, and factories a lot too.
So a lot of cameras and sensors with the phones are sensing. They're interacting. They are also generating a lot of data. Infrastructure. Okay.
That's antennas, that's base stations. That's basically 5 g. That's the backbone that helps connect everything. Storage and clock, storage and processing. Okay.
That's servers. It's storage equipment. That's basically the cloud. And that's where a lot of our data gets stored. Also, where a lot of the data gets processed.
So there are about 50 companies that are basically directing this market, making the majority of it happen, plus their supply chains, but there are literally hundreds 100 of very unique applications, all requiring a high degree of customization. So to plan this market, it is a very, very high touch business. So now, I get a little bit more into the details. So developing that technology I just showed, that all that technology that enables connectivity That's not easy. Our customers have some very big challenges.
So high speeds, either data speeds or processing speeds that creates issues, electrical interference, and it makes that equipment drive, generate a lot of heat. Miniturization, that results in assembly problems. How do you put all that stuff together? K, especially when you have all these tiny components in small spaces. Reliability is a big deal.
This is 20 fourseven. Everybody wants this stuff to work around the clock. Okay? We help our customers innovate in this space. And we help them innovate in this space by solving these exact problems.
So now look at the solutions on on the right side. So miniaturization, that can typically only be done with ultra strong adhesives. You're bonding all those little tiny components into very, very small devices. Adhesives are the only way to make it happen. Our electric grid, conductive hees make durable and reliable connections.
We have adhesives that protect electronics from environments. So here you see an example of our waterproofing technology, and then we've talked a couple times about thermal management from Birk that helps our customers manage heat. Yeah. And we have a number one position in each of these solutions. And we have a number one position in each of these solutions because we have won a big inno team.
So about half of my team is in the tech service or our, engineering chemistry part. Probably 80% of the team has got, deep industry technical background. But we have a big team, and they are experts in our customers, and they are experts in every single one of those challenges. They have deep expertise on how that equipment's put together. Why it's designed the way it does and how we can solve the problems.
And that, combined with our Henkel experience, really is a unique combination, and that's not easy to build. You don't get those people directly out of college, and that's also not easy to replicate. That's also helped us build a portfolio of 20,000 very specialized formulations. And approximately 80% of those formulations are for very specific applications. And that's exactly why Henkel is a solution provider for the connect connected future, and we're working with industry leaders to solve today's challenges
Consumers drive the change. We drive the change. And we are at a tipping point where the industry, I mean, the question is not whether you act on sustainability, but how fast you act. And, there is no single meeting with customers in the meantime. I mean, since quite quite many years, We were talking with them about food safety because that was a big topic in the past years.
We showed it in, I talked about it in the last investor day as well, how we think about food safety as one element of it. In the meantime, that became a much bigger topic. And why does it matter? Because consumer not only talk about and not only protester with Fridays, out there on the street, but they are voting with the dollars against those brands and companies who are not acting on sustainability. So it does make a commercial difference.
It does make, you know, data suggests that in the meantime, 45% of the consumers do base their purchase decisions on sustainability commitment of the brands and the companies behind. And that means economic success. That means you can make a difference. And that means at the end of the day, it drives brand loyalty, or it drives consumer to switch between brands, which is very, very important. Coming here to the circular economy, so all around the ultimate target would be that this one way chain, which we have today, you know, where at the end of the year, you make, you you produce, you make, you take you use and then you dispose, get broken down again with the recycling channel, as usually most of the plastic packaging materials that are causing the problems today are in fact very much fit for recycling if we have a system behind.
Coming from here now, why hanker? And you would say, okay, we we don't produce plastic, but we deal, you know, we deal pretty much on everybody, and Yandig mentioned it. The who was who of the first moving consumer goods industry. We deal with all of the food manufacturer, all of the beverage companies, we do see day in, day out all these challenges. So the first element, and I And I can only repeat is, you know, that kind of incumbent position, the the proximity to the customers, the trust which we developed with them together.
They are trust that we understand the the problem, and we are able to develop solutions is one of the key element why we believe we are very, very well, good, goodly positioned together with them to solve some of these challenges. Yeah. So you will we talked about the 6500, customer facing people, I mean, only 1500 of them are going into that industry, fast moving consumer goods industry. Globally, we talk about the 141 manufacturing sites, well, most of them or many of them do produce those products which are going into that industry. So we have a scale, we have a size, we have the technologies, we have know how.
It's about making it, you know, and using it with the customers to find the solutions. We will not be able to do it alone. That's the other argument why Hankl, because at the end of the day, the topic is so complex. You need to build ecosystems. And we have proven it around food safety.
We brought regulatory in it. We brought associations with it. We are mobilizing here for sustainability. A lot of our strategics pliers and partners who do produce plastic, who do produce the raw materials for us. And we are talking, and we are monitoring ourselves.
In the meantime, only if you take, you know, the 95 list and the 26,000 materials of going concern, you know, in order also to cope with the future challenges of what is the packaging of the future in terms of interaction with food safety and in terms of, packing, food material. And then the last but not least, the high impact solutions I want to talk about this in a different aspect. We always talk that the atezes at a relatively small value has a big influence And it's at least 20 times higher influence on the material, on the final material. Yeah? And if you take Christian with the light weightings, relatively low value influencing the whole weight and the sustainability aspect performance of the car.
It's very valid on the on the consumer goods and packaging customers, we enable potentially that those packaging materials which are today difficult to recycle, which are not possible to recycle, which are not corresponding to what needs to be, suddenly possible to recycle or where customers talk about CO 2 for the footprint reduction, and we have them on their journey to move forward. I think, that the fast moving consumer goods world is is moving on it is is visible, and that is, I don't think, no way back on it. It has the scale that was the other part of the interview. It has a scale of an industrial revolution to large extent, and it goes as a speed of a digital revolution. That's the beauty of it.
So it's a high speed. It's happening now. And I'm very, very happy that Henkel has said the forefront of this movement can during the value driving the change. Thank you very much.
I'm here to talk about digitalization, and Jan Durkel has framed it a little bit. Digital itself is not a strategy in itself or standalone. It's really a core part for the entire business what would we do in adhesive technology? And you probably heard that as a buzzword, a 1000 of times in the industry and so forth, But for us, it's really important. It's really ingrained in what we do.
So as you've already seen, we operate in a very fragmented market. It's a very knowledge based business. We have a lot of touch points. We have different technologies. We have great customer intimacies.
And with that now, how on expertise, we're generally able to generate value and deliver that value to our customers. And we can do that globally, which is also something which is important for our customers. And that creates a lot of value. So I think we have proven that we have a successful business model. But the question for is, how can we accelerate that and take that to the next level?
And this is where we see a lot of upsides by using digital tools, looking at the challenges from a different angle and to see how digital can help us. We have a great interaction with a lot of large key accounts. We have the network. We have the understanding. We have the solutions.
And we have 6a half 1000 customer facing colleagues, but there's a limit to what they can do on every single day. This is limited by geography, and also there are literally 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of small and medium enterprises. Which are active in certain fields, which are not necessarily aware that there is a chemical solution out there. And Christian illustrated to go away from welding, well, for an automotive OEM that might be more obvious to a small mom and pop shop that is not how can we educate them? How can we reach them?
And I think here, digital, can help us significantly. The same is about to know how that we have about our technologies. How can we spread that word further so that people understand what can be done and offer better solutions? And thirdly, also in a B2B environment, there's an expectation to have more consumer like experiences. We talked a lot about customized solutions, and Jan Deke emphasized that taking example of of a plane.
To say, k. Takes 2 years internally plus the customer sign. And we see this across all the different areas. So the question is, how can we accelerate that time? How can we at least accelerate the internal part?
But then also have a more efficient interface with our customers so that they are able to approve it also faster. Because the fastest they can get a better solution to the market, it allows them to differentiate and capture more value. And the idea is to make the pie larger. Similarly is how can we make a more customized solution? How we positively influence the degree of customization?
Cause then it sets the solution of our customers apart, but it also obviously for us creates an entry barrier. And then overall, how do we get the entire speed going faster overall? The 3rd aspect is you've seen also through the sites and honest presentation, we have a global footprint, and it's really important that we do have that global footprint and can supply our customers the global reach. And we have seen that that has some complexity. And the question is, how can digital help us to overcome some of that complexity?
How can we have even more efficient operations? And we've seen we've talked about networking capital. We are best in class compared to our peer group, But how can we take that to the next level? And we feel here that overall digitization really creates a lot of opportunities for us. And it can really drive a competitive advantage.
Another aspect talking about customized solutions. And you've heard today that having a lot of customer insights creates a lot of value. So that we have especially sustainable solution for our customers. So how we can do here with the base information that we have, we can understand the desired performance, we understand what materials are involved. And with that, we can use AI algorithms to have really AI powered materials design.
And that leads to a much more precise formulation. That has a lot of benefit. The easiest one is we need 65 percent fewer experiments. So that accelerates the amount or accelerate the time that we need. But much more important, this algorithm proposes solutions that we normally would not think of.
So it gives us a better solution. It's outside of our space where we normally look at, and that's extremely powerful for us. And obviously then extremely powerful to our customers. Digitalization for us creates a lot of new opportunities. We strongly, we feel it's a competitive advantage across the entire value chain.
You've seen that we have an established, proven business model. And we can scale this further through digitalization, and that really creates a new barrier to entry for our competitors. And that is really something that we love. So for us, digitization offers a huge stepping stone to really scale that business and to make that even faster and a more profitable business. Thank you very much.
The factory of the future sounds very interesting, and you will see throughout course, of my presentation, how we actually leverage operations and supply chain as a competitive advantage for our customers and ourselves. So we are one of the integral part of that whole supply chain, and we see ourselves since more than 2 decades as one of the major players, for PACE and Filamentes is for the aerospace industry. Going forward, we made the decision and we opened up this year a new site in Montonese in Spain close to Barcelona for film and paste adhesives for the aerospace industry. This is a total state of the art factory, fully laid out by lean principles following the flow, with, the utmost technology in regards to manufacturing or film. This machine is the first and unique film machine made only by or according to our knowledge we gained over the last 20 years in filming.
And it was made by the market leader. We have automatic mixing ratio adjustments, to avoid any discrepancy during the manufacturing process. The factory is fully traceable, so all products are automatically recorded, documented, And what I just said before, whenever there is a problem with one of our products, by a push of a button, we have all the information available. So the there is no delay in getting the information. Even more so, and I come to this now in a second, we can even give the customer online information.
One of the newest technology, and it's the first time for Henkel, that we applied that technology and As far as I know, it's also the first time in aerospace Industry at all that that technology has taken place. We call it the digital twin factory, and as and maybe what you see is two pictures that look very much alike, they should. But on the bottom, you see a digital picture, which is a just classic picture that is a shot from our factory, and this is actually the film that you see. This is a full high precision 3 d scan of the entire factory. What that means, I mean, you all know these little puppets of yourself properly as a 3 d scan.
That is the entire factory. So you can go around the factory. You can isolate single mesh you can rearrange machines. You can share all the information, of the entire factory. You can click on machines, get more information.
And even as a customer, you could get access to this if we allow, right? And you can start communicating with us based on facts. And it's no more like I need to go there. And that's my point of, okay. I mean, there's hundreds of visits.
It's nice to have the customer in our plans, but with this, we can even avoid or better prepare the customer visits on the customer So a technical visit, they can first have a look in our factory and they don't need to need to to get themselves prepared, on-site. They can do that up front. So that is totally fascinating, and it also enables us internally to optimize our production and to, of course, exchange much better information between our sites. This combined with, a full digitalized production, so manufacturing execution system we are collecting literally every data point. We need to make a perfect product.
And I said before, it's about perfect product and not less. That means we have not only a continuous data collection, but we even have predictive features. So we can based on raw material data based on environmental data based on the data of the machines, we can predict the quality level of the product that will come out And why is that so important? Because this will loop back and we can adjust the machine. So we don't wanna make a bad product.
We wanna make a product even better. This will also ultimately lead into shorter lead times. And we do this also by optimizing our processes significantly due using these tools. Last but not least, the smart decision making. So having all this transparency in data enables us to make really the right decisions on time real time together with the customer.
And that is so important. One example So here it is. This one is an online camera that constantly, makes a picture of our film adhesive during production. What you see on the right hand side is the monitor that records then the defects, or the or if in case there are defects, monitors and flags the defects in the film. As you can imagine that film keeps on going, you don't want to stop the filming, but if there is a defect, you don't want to deliver it to the customer.
And that is what happens here. Furthermore, you have a control loop back to ratio. So when you see effects that you can avoid by adjusting the machine, that is automatically done. That team made it happen that this is the 1st site in Henkel at all, which is zOT in neutral, and it is the 1st site in, Spain at all in not only for Henkel for the entire industry that is, awarded with a gold award of the DGNB. That all was possible because people think a bit a little bit more.
People think a little bit more at the beginning and therefore it doesn't really cost you more. Intelligent light systems, LEDs, easy, but biomass boiler to have all the heat supplies for our production is already a bit more fancy and a bit more advanced. Smart metering to know exactly where's my consumption coming from. And last but not least, of course, all the energy is renewable. You see the photovoltaic which covers, about 5% of the entire and the remaining pieces is, sourced by renewable energies.
We will leverage all these technologies and everything that EVF seen, in our entire network of experts. And digitalization gives us really the right tools to make that happen, to really exchange and to really get to the next level and to the 2nd stage of value creation. With this, thank you very much.
The application I'd like to talk about is 3dprinting. So you've probably all heard a lot about 3 d printing. 3 years ago, in fact, at the investor day, we first introduced our growth platform for developing materials and solutions for 3 d printing. And I can tell you since that time, it's been pretty amazing to see the new materials coming forward, but also how our customers are so interested in this new technology. We've been able to leverage our customer access our broad technology portfolio as well as some key partnerships to now bring what we call end to end solutions to our customers for 3 d printing.
This includes engineering and design. I mean, from the very beginning, our customers are asking, how do I design a three d printed part? It then takes the next step into unique new materials development. Of course, that's where Henkel comes in. We also help our customers in actually producing 3 d printed parts.
And finally, and this is sometimes missed is you now have a 3 d printed part. What do you do with it? We also sell solutions for co using, sealing, bonding, and assembling those 3 d printed parts. So let me take you through a bit of a journey to describe how this process works and how we've gotten now to the point where we are in bringing these solutions to the market. It first begins with our customer.
A 130,000 customers. And I think you heard earlier with our technical customer teams and our technical experts, we are visiting and engaging over 1,000,000 times per year with those customers Those are critical touch points every year where we're able to introduce new technologies such as 3 d printing. How do we do that with our technologies? You've heard from the prior presentations that we have this broad portfolio of technologies. In fact, we have the broadest technology portfolio over 40 technologies that we leverage across our current organization, across our current markets, and we're able to take that know how from those technologies and now apply it to 3 d prints We leverage a incredible database of over 70,000 existing formulations of technologies that we can leverage And you've heard about this engagement touch point with the customers over and over again.
Every time our engineers are talking to an engineer, at our customers, they're learning about how do they assemble and manufacture their products. We've documented now over 10,000 use cases how our customers use our materials, and we can then use that information combined with our technology portfolio to bring new solutions to the market. Speaking of excited teams, this is another excited team. Molecule Corporation you may have seen a recent press release about our acquisition of molecule. This is a startup company in California that has truly revolutionized the way we innovate in 3 d printing.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say 3 d printing is truly digital in to end. So, if you're familiar with how this works, you start on a computer and design a digital model of a part that you want to manufacture. That digital model is then transferred into a printing machine where digital data is used to actually create digital materials processes which then ends up with finally a part in your hand. What molecule recognized early on was that by combining that digital data from these multiple sources, they could predict before ever making the first part or by designing any new materials, what kind of performance was required for a part and what type of materials were required. And using this smart intelligence, we talked about this earlier Mark had in his presentation the artificial intelligence for formulation design using this smart intelligent system we can reduce the design time for new materials for three d printing significantly in a recent customer trial, we were able to generate a brand new medical part using a a new chemistry technology in a matter of 3 weeks.
Now, to put this in perspective, Jan Derek talked about 2 years development time the world is changing. We can't wait 2 years. So, in a matter of a few weeks, this team using software systems, we're able to accelerate the design time from what was probably previously months, maybe even a year down to a few weeks. So in summary, by bringing together, our technology know how, our access to our markets, these touch points with our customers we're able to realize now new technology innovations that will change the future for our customers and this is not the only place we're doing it. Take this process and now repeat it.
Mike talked about 5 g and internet of things. We talked about sustainability. We talked about mobility and, of course, new technology areas like printed electronics. Over and over, we repeat this process, but I think what's important to understand is that this isn't an r and d team in a laboratory with the doors closed. This is customer interaction working with partners, really codeveloping innovations together.
And with that, I think I can't miss the opportunity to talk just briefly about this big construction site next door because innovation is collaborative. This new building, once it's opened, will be Henkel's largest and most technically advanced innovation center in the world. Here in this space, we'll bring together our sciences, our technical experts, along with our partners, and our customers inside we need actually that environment. We cannot develop these technologies alone, as I said. So this represents a huge opportunity for us to further accelerate innovation and bring these new technologies to life.
Just do a quick recap of what you have seen today. Let me just, give you a couple key messages and then we open the Q and A. So we are the global market leader, with a very strong portfolio serving attractive markets, and just state the obvious, when we talk about the global market leader, that is not a value by itself. So really, we really try to use our global position and you heard Michelle talking about it to be the go to person when it comes to innovation and when it comes to leveraging and care factoring new initiatives and mega trends. The business model, how do we create value for customers, how do we either create a new application where adhesives sealants or functional coatings were not used, or take an existing application and make the application better, thanks to our solutions.
We have a proven track record to perform in a volatile environment. Anna took the last 6, 7 years where we had different market movements. And over that period of time, we were able to grow the business and increase profitability. We have a very, very crystal clear strategy and priorities moving forward. And at the end of the day, we do believe that the business is well positioned for sustainable, profitable growth.
So then let me take that opportunity. Again, thank you very much. Spending all day. And for those, spending the evening with us, I can tell you the team is excited because they all had great conversations, in between the different sessions. And, again, thank you very much for coming to Dusseldorf.
And, see you again in 3 years, I guess. Gusten, right? Yes. Thank you.