Now let's kick it off. Till, you are now for Lufthansa Group for 86 days, and I think opening a Capital Markets Day for Technik within the 100 days is certainly one of the nicest things to do as a CFO. In that sense, over to you.
Thank you, Marc, for the kind introduction and a warm welcome to all of you. This is the first time in more than three years that Lufthansa Group is hosting a capital markets day. Today is a very special one. For the first time, it is not about our airlines business. Instead, today's focus is on Lufthansa Technik. Within Lufthansa Group, Lufthansa Technik accounts for 18% of our revenues and 24% of our employees. Over the past years, it has been the business unit with the lowest volatility in earnings and with the most stable and continuous growth path compared to all other Lufthansa Group business units. Lufthansa Technik is a global market leader with great potential, with revenues of around EUR 7 billion. Lufthansa Technik is the largest player, but still with a low market share.
The market is still very fragmented, leaving plenty of room for growth. This shows the enormous potential that still remains to be realized, both via above-market growth and inorganic expansion to expand Lufthansa Technik's footprint. Lufthansa Technik contributed 23% of our group's earnings in 2023, and it will be an even larger share this year. As such, Lufthansa Technik is, of course, a very significant contributor to the overall value of Lufthansa Group. So with every Lufthansa share you buy, you are buying a solid and growing earnings stream from Lufthansa Technik. This is the reason why today we want to provide you with more transparency about the company, its different business models, value drivers, financials, and strategy. We want to provide you with the opportunity to form a profound and in-depth view of the company and, of course, to incorporate this view into your analysis of our stock.
Allow me to comment on the relationship between Lufthansa Group and Lufthansa Technik. As Lufthansa Group, we are living in special times. Having overcome the COVID crisis, we are now facing a fleet renewal that is more fundamental than ever before in the group's history. This renewal is one of the key drivers for a more cost-efficient core business. However, like everyone else in the industry, we are facing unprecedented delivery delays from aircraft manufacturers. Hence, many other airlines must keep on flying aging aircraft. What does that mean? On the one hand, demand for MRO services across the industry remains high, driven by both service requirements for legacy engines as well as for next-generation engines, where Lufthansa Technik is ideally positioned to be the service provider of choice for its customers.
On the other hand, one third of Lufthansa Technik's revenues come from our own group airlines. So we are not only a shareholder, but also a very important customer in that. And in times of scarce MRO capacity, the criticality of this customer-supplier relationship is another reason why we are very happy that Lufthansa Technik is part of our group portfolio. And let me add, it is not a secret that we looked at the pros and cons of selling a minority stake in Lufthansa Technik in the recent past. We thoroughly analyzed our strategic alternatives, regarding Lufthansa Technik and examined how external stakeholders could contribute to this growth, and we held discussions with potential partners. In the end, we weighed the pros and cons of bringing in a partner, and we decided that Lufthansa Technik will remain fully owned by Lufthansa Group for the time being.
We are convinced that this combines the best of both worlds. First, we keep the strategic advantages of maintaining a close relationship with our most important MRO provider. In these uncertain times, receiving timely and best-in-class MRO services is as important as ever. Second, after the current phase with extraordinarily high MRO needs driven by OEM supply chain issues, long-term growth will be significant. No aircraft ever takes off without MRO, and Lufthansa Technik, of course, will be able to execute against this growth path, and we can benefit from this 100%. And thirdly, a clear and value-maximizing strategy for Lufthansa Technik has been developed, and you're gonna see that today. And we are convinced that the management team will execute on this growth plan, and Lufthansa Group shareholders will also benefit from that.
To fully realize its potential, Lufthansa Technik also needs the support of the group, and I can assure you that the entire group executive board is fully committed to the growth path we are pursuing. We have a clear perspective on value creation and cash generation, and based on these criteria, have, of course, included Lufthansa Technik's growth ambition into our group planning process, capital allocation considerations in order to ensure that Lufthansa Technik will achieve its Ambition 2030 plan. And over the next few hours, you will have the opportunity to learn a lot about this fascinating company, and I'm sure that by the end of today, you will share my view that Lufthansa Technik offers a truly compelling story from a shareholder's point of view. And let me add a couple of considerations in that regard.
First, there's simply no other MRO player in the market like Lufthansa Technik. Being number one in a long-term growth market is a huge competitive advantage when it comes to maintaining global leadership position. Second, a unique service offering and a highly skilled workforce are key success factors for Lufthansa Technik, just like best-in-class IP access for new-gen aircraft and engines. It is this access in particular that enables rapid growth in the company's core activities. And third, already today, Lufthansa Technik achieves one of the best margins among Lufthansa Group companies, and this trend is set to continue. Despite the normal inflationary cost increases and the ramp-up and investment into new business, we expect a steady increase to double-digit margins and strong EBIT contributions in the future.
And fourth, Lufthansa Technik is well positioned to expand beyond its core business into further higher margin areas as well, and you're gonna see that later on in the presentation. And finally, Lufthansa Technik management has developed ambitious targets which are based on a growing market share in a growing market, and Sören Stark and his team will provide more details on this throughout the day. And ladies and gentlemen, we as a group executive board take the future evolution of Lufthansa Technik very seriously. You can see that already from the fact that we are hosting these capital markets today, and you can also see that in the reorganization of Lufthansa Group's executive board earlier this year, with the current structure, Lufthansa Technik is receiving the focus it requires to take the company to the next level.
With Grazia Vittadini, a high-caliber, outstanding expert in the MRO industry with extensive experience from one of the most renowned aerospace companies, has joined the executive team. As a chairwoman of Lufthansa Technik's supervisory board, she closely advising and overseeing the company's initiatives, and she also serves as an experienced sparring partner in the management strategic discussions, and she ensures that MRO gets the attention it deserves within the group. When speaking about MRO, we are talking about a huge market. Airlines spend around $100 billion a year on MRO and modifications, the same amount they spend for new aircraft a year. With every additional aircraft, this market will obviously continue to grow. With Lufthansa Technik, we are the largest provider in this segment.
Finally, a new aircraft is developed in around eight or 10 years, built in three to six months, and then flies up to 30 years. During these 30 years, it needs to be continuously maintained, overhauled, or modernized, and Lufthansa Technik takes care of these 30 years. I'm looking forward, I'm looking forward to having now, together with you, a closer look at these 30 years. With having said that, I'm happy to leave the stage to you, Sören. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, dear guests, from my side as well, a very warm welcome to our first LHT-focused capital markets day. We are very pleased that so many of you have taken the opportunity to come over here to our base in Hamburg. Our aim for today is twofold.
Firstly, we would like to show you that MRO for aircraft is not only a stringent necessity without which no aircraft can take off, but also a lucrative growth market with the potential for high-end stable returns. And secondly, we would like to convince you that LHT is well prepared with a compelling strategy to almost double its revenues and adjusted EBIT, and thus to continue to be the undisputed number one in 2030, like we are already today. In the coming 30 minutes, I would like to familiarize you with following three topics. Firstly, the main characteristics of aircraft MRO. Secondly, how these characteristics translate into MRO market growth and volume. And thirdly, how LHT is positioned in this highly specific market. Moving to the first slide, MRO is not a nice-to-have, but mission-critical to every airline.
Of course, airline customers or airline customer perspectives and requirements towards the MROs can differ greatly in detail, but no matter whether big or small, low-cost carrier or premium carrier, wide bodies or narrow bodies, in essence, it all comes down to three key demands, which are the same for every airline, and that is safety, aircraft availability, and competitive MRO costs. Safety as the number one priority for every airline speaks for itself. Aircraft availability is the prerequisite for aircraft utilization, and you all know that aircraft utilization is one of the key profit drivers for every airline. This is all the more true today in light of the supply difficulties of the major aircraft manufacturers, and thirdly, with a cost share of 15%-20%, MRO costs are a major factor for the airlines and cannot be neglected.
On the other hand, to do MRO business for an airline, one of the prerequisites is to be accredited by the customer's competent authorities. LHT holds 135 approvals from 70 civil aviation authorities all over the world, which allows us to serve all major airlines worldwide. As far as safety and quality is concerned, we are very proud to say that Lufthansa Technik is considered to be the gold standard in the MRO industry and therefore is regularly invited to all major tenders. But high standards in safety and quality do not necessarily mean high costs. One of the key factors to support aircraft availability at competitive costs is regional proximity to the customers. And with 13,000 LHT Group employees worldwide, LHT or abroad, worldwide, it's almost 30,000, 13,000 employees working abroad.
LHT has an unrivaled global network consisting of regional production sites, logistics hubs, of course, sales and order fulfillment offices to support its customers on a local basis. Moving to the next slide. Before we come to the development of the MRO market volume, it's important to understand the areas of work which the MRO volume for an aircraft is comprised of. These areas of work also define sub-markets with different dynamics, success factors, and underlying conditions. This is the reason why you rarely, or if ever, find a major company that serves all areas of work equally. This sometimes also makes comparisons difficult and is one of the main reasons for the heterogeneity of the MRO market. The first sub-market is Engine Services. Engine services, the Engine Services sub-market is with almost 50%, the largest share of the overall MRO market.
Engines have to be overhauled after a predefined number of flight hours and/or flight cycles. Apart from the complete engine overhaul, this sub-market also covers smaller work scopes like parts repair or on-wing Engine Services and the like. The component services sub-market covers all removable components aside from the aircraft engine. Most components have to be either repaired or replaced after a certain type of incident or need to be replaced after a certain number of flight hours or flight cycles. The component services sub-market accounts for approximately 20% of the overall MRO market. Now, both areas of work have two important things in common. Firstly, access to the necessary approved maintenance data, especially for complex and detailed repairs, is not freely available. It takes some kind of license agreement with the OEMs to get access to the necessary data.
OEMs are increasingly restrictive and selective with regard to these license agreements, especially for the new-gen engines and aircraft components. Secondly, both Engine Services and component services have a very high share of material costs and costs of subcontracted services ranging from 60%-80% of the overall cost, depending on whether we are talking about components or engines, new-gen systems, versus legacy systems. But both of these aspects, broad access to approved maintenance data and access to repair materials at competitive costs or prices, are absolutely crucial for the success in these two sub-markets. Lufthansa Technik has a broad range of agreements with all major engine and component OEMs, securing such access to detailed repair data and repair materials at competitive prices. This is true in particular for engine and components of the new-gen aircraft, A320neo family, the 737 MAX, the A350, and the 787.
The third area of work is base maintenance. Base maintenance accounts for approximately 20% of the entire MRO volume. A base maintenance event usually starts with 500 man-hours per check and goes up to 50-60,000 man-hours for an A380 D check. Depending on the kind of check, these checks are scheduled every two to 12 years and have a very high degree of repair overhaul penetration depth. In contrast to the engine and component services, base maintenance has a relatively small portion of material costs of about 20%, whereas the labor cost part is by the biggest part with approximately 60%. On the other hand, access to approved maintenance data in this case is usually not a problem because the data is provided by the airlines. Finally, we have line maintenance.
Line maintenance is the maintenance airlines usually perform overnight at their operational hubs or at their line stations. It's more a matter of maintenance than repair or overhaul. Now, two things differentiate line maintenance from the three other areas of work. Firstly, line maintenance, especially at the main operational hubs, is usually performed by the airlines themselves. Secondly, the work has to be done where the aircraft are, where the airlines have their operations. We, as LHT, we do line maintenance for customers under certain circumstances. I would say if economically lucrative, for example, in the Philippines, but it represents only a very small part of our revenues and is not of strategic interest for us. Next slide. This leads us to the question, what determines the MRO market size?
In principle, one can say that once the aircraft have been built and sold, the development of the overall amount of MRO volume or work is largely defined by the number of flight hours and flight cycles. This is due to the strict aviation regulations, which actually dictate which MRO tasks have to be performed and when. To a certain degree, the economic ups and downs of the airline industry are mainly reflected by the passenger load factors. This obviously doesn't have an impact on the MRO volume. What does have an impact on the MRO volume is the number of flight hours and flight cycles. So this makes the MRO volume in total relatively stable and predictable. Of course, further aircraft sales might vary and thus the future fleet size. However, this is not something that happens overnight, as we all know.
This is usually known for months or sometimes years in advance. The same is true for the fleet maturity development. What can influence demand in the short term are events such as the metal powder issue of the GTF we are all aware of, unfortunately, or the two-year grounding of the 737 MAX. But in general, again, I would say that demand in the MRO industry is quite predictable compared to other industries. The third factor to calculate the MRO size is the price per MRO task or MRO event. Given that engine and component services account for roughly 70% of the overall MRO market size and given the high share of repair material costs for engine and components, component services, it's no surprise that prices of OEM repair materials or parts have a major influence on overall price development.
As far as base and line maintenance services are concerned, it's the other way around. Given the high share of labor costs, the development of prices here is strongly influenced by the development of labor costs. Next slide. The result of all these considerations is an MRO market size of $93 billion in 2023 and an expected average volume growth of 1%-2% per year until 2030, according to Oliver Wyman's Global Fleet and MRO Forecast 2024 to 2034. Again, this is only the volume growth without price escalation. Price escalation or price inflation is probably the most unpredictable factor in the entire equation and therefore very difficult to predict. You might be interested to know a little fun fact that the MRO market for commercial aircraft, including modifications, is as big as the market for aircraft sales.
Now, given the regular media coverage of aircraft sales, most people are surprised to learn that. And don't be confused by the $100 billion on the left side for MRO and the $93 billion on the right side, the figures on the right side again, without modifications. I'm pretty sure that in the light of these figures, some of you will now take our last year's revenues and we'll do the math. If you allow me, I would like to assist you before you come to your conclusions. With regards to our basic skills, LHT is, I would say, in principle, capable of covering almost all services and products of the overall MRO market.
But for certain products and services, we took the conscious and educated decision not to offer them, for example, for products and services which don't generate the targeted margin or which are not economically scalable or which are sunset technologies and therefore not future-oriented. Another aspect that needs to be considered is that for various reasons, certain MRO tasks are carried out by the airlines themselves. Most prominent example, again, the line maintenance at the airline airlines hubs operations. And thirdly, OEMs have also decided to cover a significant part of the aftermarket on their own. So therefore, this results in a significantly smaller relevant and achievable market for us. If we further break down the market by regions, we can see that the MRO volume worldwide is more or less, roughly more or less evenly distributed across the world regions.
And as a consequence, given our aspiration to remain the world's number one in MRO, this means we cannot afford to neglect any one of the regions, but need to be equally active in all of them. Again, today we are the world's number one among the OEM independent MROs by aggregated numbers, but on a regional level only in EMEA. And therefore, one of our strategic aims is to of course safeguard our dominant position in EMEA, but at the same time to become at least one of the top players in the Americas and APAC as well. Unfortunately, there's no one-size-fits-all strategy for all regions. Instead, we need to adapt our approaches to the specifics of the Americas and APAC.
When we look to the Americas, as you all know, one of the airline market characteristics for the Americas, or in particular for the U.S., is the high degree of airline consolidation. And this leads to a situation, just to give you an example of what that means for MRO, where the top four are so big that they are not interested in a so-called Open Loop component supply product, which is one of our biggest and best-selling products. Instead, they own the necessary spare parts themselves and award contracts for component repair services to many smaller specialized repair shops, sometimes called mom-and-pop shops, or to the OEMs. That's what we call Closed Loop business. And Closed Loop business accounts in the U.S. for 70% of all component services, whereas in the EMEA, it's the other way around. It's only 30%. APAC shows a rather mixed picture.
In comparison to the Americas and EMEA, OEMs have a relatively higher market share, and some airlines prefer to buy from the OEMs. Other airlines, especially new airlines, value the comprehensive offering of the OEM independent MROs like LHT. So this requires a rather selective strategy. And then, of course, we have China, and, we all know that China has a very strong tendency to do as much work as possible, either in-house, or at least in joint ventures situated in China. And given the strong, fleet growth in India and China, it's no surprise that APAC has the strongest MRO growth rate for the next years. Now, next slide. From market size to competition. In essence, we see four types of players in our industry.
The first group of players here on the left side are those airlines which have decided to do a certain part of the MRO work in-house. Again, the biggest part of that is certainly line maintenance. The second group of players in our industry, here on the right side are the OEMs, whether one likes it or not, since they own the repair IP and have exclusive production capacities for repair materials and components. They decide how much of the aftermarket they are willing to share with others. And then we have those we call in the middle, we call the MRO specialists. These are players which are either airline affiliated like Lufthansa Technik or Delta TechOps or Air France Industries, or airline independent like AAR, ST Engineering or MTU, for example.
Although we sometimes also compete against airline in-house solutions, for us, the main competition is among the airline affiliated and airline independent MROs. As far as the OEMs are concerned, this is a multifaceted relationship, I will put it this way, but of crucial importance for us, which I would like to explain to you later on in my strategy presentation in more detail. You probably can imagine that with all the overlaps and blurring, it's impossible to exactly distinguish between these three market categories in terms of market shares. But these rough numbers over there give you hopefully an idea, which portion of the market is more or less captive and which portion is accessible. On the next slide, we take a closer look at our competitors. Of course, the first thing that stands out here is that LHT leads the field by a clear margin.
This is all the more true as the MTU revenues, shown here, also include its OEM business. What's also worth mentioning here is the fact that compared to other airline affiliated MROs like AFI, KLM, or Delta TechOps, LHT has by far the biggest share of external revenues, 70%. In addition to that, like most of the other airline affiliated MROs, LHT's service offering covers the entire aircraft nose to tail, whereas the independent MROs usually focus mainly on one specific submarket. And last but not least, while most of our top competitors are only present in one or two world regions, LHT has a global market coverage like no one else.
But of course, there is another thing, that stands out here, and you have certainly noticed that if you roughly add up the revenues of the top nine OEM independent MROs shown here, you only get about a quarter of the total market. This, of course, inevitably, raises the question of consolidation. I'm personally very sure that the market will continue to consolidate, but I do not believe that this consolidation will take place between the top nine players shown here for the following reasons. As Till already mentioned, as far as the airline affiliated MROs are concerned, not only do the MROs benefit from their parent company, but the airlines also benefit from their MRO subsidiaries.
In some cases, I would even say the value of having access, especially nowadays, access to your own MRO capabilities and capacities can be significantly higher than that of your third-party business, especially again in times when aircraft or engines are scarce and aircraft and engine availability is absolutely crucial. Therefore, I cannot imagine that any of the airlines mentioned here would currently be willing to sell or to merge their MRO business. The second reason that makes a merger of these MROs listed here, in my opinion, rather unlikely is the respective business focus or portfolio. Consolidation has to fit and produce corresponding synergies. From our experience on a closer consideration, this is often not the case. We have run through this for ourselves in great detail several times, so therefore I would be rather cautious on this subject.
Where we will certainly see consolidation is with regard to the small and medium-sized MRO companies, particularly in the U.S., but also in the EMEA region. This is due to the fact that it's becoming increasingly difficult and expensive for these companies to get access to the required repair data, IP, and get access to competitive material prices, especially for the new-gen aircraft. In addition, the repair and overhaul of components of these new-gen aircraft types often requires high investments in licenses, in spare parts and tooling. So many smaller companies do not want to or simply cannot afford, to go in there. On the other hand, these companies often have highly qualified staff, are well-managed, and are specialized in specific technologies. When we talk about consolidation or inorganic growth at Lufthansa Technik, that's usually the direction, we are looking in.
One last thing that stands out here when looking at the competitive landscape. The names have been the same for decades. The reason for this is, I hope so, not that our business is not attractive enough to enter, but the high market entry barriers. These are, as we all know, government regulations, high investment costs, restrictive access to repair materials and repair IP, and of course, the requirement for very qualified and experienced staff. Last slide. Now, to summarize, the MRO market is a market of significant size of around EUR 100 billion. The MRO market has a stable volume growth rate of 1%-2%, again, volume, on average over the next seven years. The stable growth is mainly supported by the aircraft manufacturers' full order books and the result of strict regulatory airworthiness requirements.
Limited access to repair IP, high investment costs, need for qualified and experienced staff, and necessary regulatory approvals, all that represents high entry barriers. And this market, insofar as it relates to the OEM independent MROs, has a clear number one, and that's Lufthansa Technik. With this, I hope I have been able to give you an initial idea of how things work in our industry, and I'm looking forward to presenting you our strategy later on as to how we intend, also to remain the number one, worldwide. But before we come to this, I would now like to hand over to our colleague and COO, Harald Gloy, who will introduce you to our products in more detail. Thank you very much.
Yes, a very, very good morning to all of you.
It's my privilege and pleasure now to introduce the LHT business segments to you and to show you how we tackle this attractive MRO market, Sören has just described. Here you can see our business segments, which stand for a lot of manual work, a lot of brain work, and more and more artificial intelligence like AI coming into the game. We look at Aircraft Maintenance, where the whole aircraft is in one of our hangars to be maintained. We look at Aircraft Component Services, where hundreds of components come off an aircraft to be repaired in one of our specialized workshops. In one of those, we are right in here today, and we look at Engine Services, where the engines are disassembled in all their pieces, where the parts are repaired, and then, of course, at the end, assembled and tested for delivery.
We look at Digital Fleet Services, where we provide the airlines with a comprehensive software ecosystem to run their technical operation. And finally, it's Original Equipment Manufacturing and Special Aircraft Services, where we service the aircraft of our VIP customers and where we manufacture a lot of parts, a wide range of products, and of course, where we have and expand our defense business. And all this is possible only with the more than 20,000 people, more than 20,000 individuals located around the world, but all with the same professional attitude, with the same professional competencies and the positive spirit we have in our company. Engine services and aircraft components are the biggest contributors for our revenue, and that's why I would like to start here with Engine Services. I won't read out every information being on the slide, but just let me start with the market.
The engine market is growing up to €50 billion in 2030, excluding price effects, which will definitely come on top. And in this market, we are on our way with 12 facilities around the world, fully owned or JVs and more to come. With more than 4,500 employees in the engine area, we serve more than 2,500 engines under contract with us. The centers for the bigger engines, for the bigger work scopes, are here: Hamburg, Frankfurt, Alzey, all being in Germany. Then we have in Poland together with MTU and Arnstadt again in Germany together with Rolls-Royce. In Asia Pacific, we have Shenzhen, where we perform Mobile Engine Services, and we do parts repair, Engine Parts Repair in Malaysia again together with MTU.
In the Americas, it's Montreal and Canada and it's Tulsa, Oklahoma in the US, and there we have also serious growth plans to expand our capabilities, especially in Tulsa, and by the way, this will make us more resilient to whatever comes in the Americas. We are absolutely convinced that we are very well positioned with this, especially in the narrow body market, as you can see here, on the slides here in the middle. For 95% of the engines in 2030, we do have the capability in-house, and the biggest portion of this being the new, the modern engine types like LEAP and GTF, and nearly the same is true for the engines of the regional jet market, where we have a coverage of 80%, and now a quick look into the value chain of engine. Customers assign us with work to be performed on their engines.
This goes either into the MES, the Mobile Engine Services part of our segment or business in the upper part of the slide. Here we perform and work on the smaller work scopes, and usually this is done close to the customer, so near-shop activities, or even the engine stays on the aircraft on the wing, and we perform the work while the engine stays on the wing. Or in case of bigger events, bigger work scopes, the engine goes into the overhaul process. In the center of the slide, the OVH operation there. Simplified, what happens there is, of course, first a disassembly of the engine, then the repairing of the parts. That's why it says EPAR, Engine Parts Repair there. Or we supply the engine with replacement parts if a part cannot be repaired or is above a time-wise limit.
And then all this comes together again for the assembly and, of course, testing at the end. And since about 80% of the costs come from repairing of the parts or supplying the replacement parts, we see ourselves in a very good position because we do have a sizable in-house repair for a broad range of parts. And we do have favorable conditions with suppliers for new material if new material is needed. And we have a wide knowledge and experience to locate and source replacement parts, which have been used already, the so-called USM used serviceable material. And this all together gives us a serious cost advantage, and we are the biggest user in the industry of this used material. In the lower section of the slide, there are additional services mentioned, like spare engine leasing, and that's the way to go for us.
We want to become more and more a provider of asset availability, and now a quick run through our sites with some more data, like the number of employees. We have Hamburg, Arnstadt, Germany, and the site in Poland being the largest operations in the engine segment for us, followed by Alzey, Tulsa, Wrocław, and several more locations you see in the bottom of the slide, and I think now we can also add here the location we've just announced yesterday. Communication is out that we will start a new operation opening in 2027 in Portugal, which will be there for Engine Parts Repair and component repair, and now to bring it together, what is engine in essence for us? Number one, it means broad capabilities and experience with the relevant engine types.
Number two, it's an in-depth engineering and repair know-how to run efficient and compliant processes and to offer modular services as they need to the customer. Number three, it's our strong relationship we have with all the relevant OEMs. Number four, the IP access, the intellectual property access is secured for all modern engine types from our side. And number five, we do have global reach. And with this, let's move on to aircraft component services. Here we are talking a true market leader with components from small to big, from small valves to full landing gears, or these parts we see here, the radomes, what is the nose of an aircraft, from coffee makers to flight management computers. We repair close to 300,000 units and components in-house per year.
When we look at the market, this market is forecasted to be at approximately EUR 20 billion in 2030, again plus price increases. Within LHT, more than 4,500 people at about 40 locations work in this business segment. Customers within total about 5,000 aircraft awarded us to serve their aircraft with components from a single repair order to a full coverage service contract. Here we can see on this slide that on the narrow body aircraft components of the narrow body aircraft, we have virtually full capability, and we are getting close to this on the wide bodies and the regional aircraft here playing a smaller role. Most of our products in this area run under two product types or product families: the Open Loop and the Closed Loop family.
Open loop means, simplified, a customer contracts with us to get a part whenever and wherever his aircraft is in need of one. The customer usually doesn't own any own spare parts. We do own the spare parts, and we run a system of spares going, flowing back and forth to the customer. And that's why it's called open loop, because the parts go back and forth between the workshop and different customers. That's why it's an open loop system. Basically, this has many aspects of an insurance product, but it's asset-heavy on our side. This comes with challenges, but symbolizes also the market entry barriers for competitors. On the closed loop side, the spares belong to the customer, to the airline, making it asset-light for us.
Spares are dedicated for his aircraft, and he decides where the component goes for repair, again under a single purchase order, repair contract, or broader range service contracts. Now coming to this component pool, this component pool includes components worth more than EUR 2 billion. It's a fundamental production factor for ourselves. The spares which build this pool are distributed really globally. We can offer and reach any airline in the world. And as you can see there for the Airbus A320 family, they account for the biggest portion of our component pool. And this is a result of a year-long, and I would even say a decade-long sales success, especially with the aircraft model of the industry, the A320 family. Nobody else can incorporate new customer fleets, being a small or big one, as quick and as comprehensive as we can.
Of utmost importance is to manage this pool at highest efficiency. This means constantly defining the right number of parts in it. It means taking advantage of all possible scale effects, and it means analyzing always to find the geographically ideal location where to put each and every part and in which store to have it available for the many customers we have, and in addition, of course, it means realizing the shortest turnaround times for parts by relying on state-of-the-art repair processes in our workshops, which are also located around the globe in the big regions of our world, and it means relying on a high-standard, highly sophisticated end-to-end logistics system to and from the customers, which is made by Lufthansa Technik Logistik Services in-house, so to speak, by ourselves.
I think it's, yeah, needless to say, but very important that this system, this pool management, this flow of material is more and more run automatically with constantly increasing tasks taken over by AI. Now to summarize aircraft component services, our right to win comes from our extensive part portfolio, from being fast, from being globally everywhere where the customers need us, from driving scale effects together with operational excellence, and thereby to be always able to make attractive offers to our customers. Now I would like to go on with Aircraft Maintenance Services. Nearly 6,000 employees work in six locations worldwide on commercial aircraft, performing line or base maintenance or modification on these aircraft. The aircraft, sorry, the market is estimated to grow to about EUR 33 billion in 2030, again plus price increases.
For us, the base maintenance portion of this business is the focus area. Here you can see our main locations showing that Sofia in Bulgaria and Manila in the Philippines are our prime locations. Some locations are fully owned, whereas Sofia, Malta, and Manila are JVs under our control. The narrow body market, the market for narrow body, smaller aircraft, is a regional market, and we are present in all the regions of the globe. The wide body market is a global market. Wide body aircraft are flown long distances for the bigger checks to get there where attractive offerings are being made. We are with Manila and with Malta very well positioned in this market and for this part of the demand.
I would like to direct your attention to the benefits we see in our global network and the steering of it in the lower part of this slide. A big benefit for us is the market understanding we have about the demand, the capacities, and the status, not only ourselves, but also around us in the whole market. This brings us in the position to perform a sophisticated yield management in this market, which gives leverage to us. Another point, of course, is that we work with standard processes across the locations, and this is complemented by more centralized parts and components of this, of certain topics, for instance, material management or engineering. We are doing more centralized. With this concept being in place, we can easily take advantage of possible growth opportunities as they arise.
To summarize Aircraft Maintenance, we are convinced to be cost competitive with our network with these labor-intensive products. We are close to the customers with narrow bodies. We are cost-wise in the right position for the wide body aircraft. We can serve the full life cycle of an aircraft from overseeing the production of the aircraft at the manufacturer's side all the way to dismantling the aircraft, whereas the last part is not our core business. And finally, to mention here, we have launched a program called Digitize the Core in all business segments to digitize whatever can bring up quality and cost down. Also in base maintenance, we see the effects. The digital job card is one example for the outcome of this program. Now I would like to go on with Original Equipment and Special Aircraft Services.
In the original equipment part of the segment, we develop and manufacture more than 10,000 components per year. Here we are an OEM. Here we develop and manufacture innovative products, e.g., paying into sustainability, for example, the shark skin product we have. In the second part, in the special aircraft part, here we complete, maintain, and modify VIP and head of state aircraft, and especially their cabins. And in addition, our defense activities are located here. And all this takes place mostly in and out of Hamburg. And now in some more details. For the VIP aircraft, or nowadays even called VVIP aircraft, we offer the full range of services, beginning with the design and engineering of new cabins.
And believe me, the ideas of our customers sometimes don't have any limits for the whirlpool in the skies or for the stand for the Falcon, which has to be integrated in the cabin, and much, much more things we find solutions for. After the design phase of these aircraft or the cabins of these aircraft, we manufacture the interiors and the furniture in our work scopes. And in the original equipment innovation area, we are a well-known manufacturer for many products, for instance, for complete cabin management systems for business jets.
Or another example is what you have as your badge, the floor path marking in the aircraft, which guides you to the emergency exit if needed. So we are one of the biggest manufacturers for these products in the market. The special engineering services allow us to design all kinds of modifications to aircraft, being in the cabin, being in the cockpit, being to avionics, engine components, nearly all aircraft systems we can work on, and we can make developments on, and we have the approval from the authorities to do so. And I would like to mention at this point our broad engineering competence across the whole aircraft, including engine and components. This is a strong and synergetic connection between our business segments. In the defense area, we are doing business for many, many years with the German Air Force, starting with the special aircraft for the government.
But we have entered into a path to do much more. For example, we are already supporting the P-8 Poseidon aircraft for New Zealand, and we intend to do the same for the German P-8 Poseidon aircraft to come, and much more to come, and you will learn about it in the strategy part later on. So in brief about this segment, here we are in high margin markets. We have a strong reputation. We have long-lasting customer relationships, and Made in Germany has a value, especially in this business area. Let's move on to Digital Fleet Services. We have set up a real digital ecosystem, which already serves more than 11,000 customer aircraft and more than 800 employees work on the locations shown here on the map. And the domains of this ecosystem consist of AMOS, AVIATAR, and flydocs, and together they build this unique ecosystem.
AMOS is an ERP system for maintenance and engineering at the airlines. It's a market leader. It's globally known and valued by our customers. With AMOS, a technical director of an airline knows and secures that his Tech Ops is compliant and highly efficient at the same time. This is ideally complemented by our AVIATAR, our data analytics platform, for example, for data-driven predictive decision making. And I can tell you, we've been very delighted to see in the slides of the British Airways Capital Markets Days a few days or weeks ago that the AVIATAR was really mentioned there as something which supports them as customers of ours on the airline side. Not to forget about flydocs, our offering for record management, and I mean maintenance record management.
This may sound a little boring, but it's essential to have this professionally done, especially when the airline has to prove all this, when it's returning an aircraft to a lessor or when it wants to sell the aircraft. So this is all about value asset, value protection of high value assets, meaning the aircraft. Here we see it from a little different angle. The elements of our ecosystem go hand in hand. They cover and support most major functions in managing the Tech Ops side of an airline. The asset manager, the asset manager has always a transparent and proven status of his asset. The reliability manager always has accurate data and online data to demonstrate the effectiveness of his maintenance plan, which he is required by law to do. The troubleshooter can avoid costly aircraft on ground times by using the prediction coming out of the AVIATAR.
And the material planner can connect material demand and supply in real time. To summarize this segment, each element of our ecosystem is a market leader in its own. AI is being directly used in prediction and execution workflows. Our data access is unique. More database business models are to come. The ongoing combination of our engineering know-how and our digital know-how. This will drive our success. We are customer-centric with providing these solutions, but of course, at the same time, we are taking advantage for ourselves to digitally boost and enable our existing MRO products. And now please allow me a few words on one of our subsidiaries, which is Lufthansa Technik Logistik Services, LTLS. And surely you have assessed already how crucial logistics is for many of our products or even being a core ingredient of our products like the open loop products and component services.
That's why we have LTLS to organize and monitor all this end-to-end logistics processes. Thereby logistics is another strong connecting layer or glue between our different business segments. LTLS does not have big trucks or freighter aircraft, but all material flow is organized and monitored under LTLS supervision end-to-end, and I mean really end-to-end globally, which is not an easy one still today. This includes demanding things like customs, export control, and very many other compliance topics. Just to give you an idea, the number of transports going in and out of our premises is about one million every year. The only thing LTLS is operating directly is the warehousing at our prime locations because rules and regulations how to handle, to store, and so on, aircraft parts is demanding. Now at a glance to sum up, to wrap up the business segments.
With Engine, we lead the market for new generation engines. With ACS, we have always led the market with new ideas, innovations, and products. This will continue as well as the most efficient pool to be managed by us. With AMS, we are cost competitive, and we are always working on it. With OES, we make wishes become reality, and the saying "the customer is king" can be really found here. With the digital ecosystem, with the broadest digital ecosystem of the industry, our segment DFS will be a front runner and grow around the globe. And from my side to the point, despite all beneficial active portfolio management measures in the past and in the future, the broad scope of our services out of our business segments combines and leverages the value our customers see in the wide range of service offerings produced by LHT. Finally, our people.
This all would be nothing without our people, with our teams worldwide, without the right spirit and the right mindset in the LHT group with more than 20,000 people worldwide. And we think we have this right. A few figures. On the left, you can see the areas our people work in. In the middle, we show the entry programs just in Germany with more than 500 people in the entry programs just in Germany, 2023, and actually even more. On the right-hand side, you can see the years of employment with Lufthansa Technik. And all in all, we think and we see that we have a well-balanced staff composition. And it shows that LHT was and is a really attractive employer. We are able to adequately fill all our open positions. Many employees have worked with LHT for many years.
In addition, because of our recruiting success in the last two and three years, you can see a significant number of people being between zero and five years only with our company. Yes, this is a challenge, and at the same time, it's a chance. It's a chance to further develop the culture of this company for the generations to come. I'm deeply, deeply convinced that attracting new people, developing people, and retaining people is in the same way important for us, and that's why we do really a lot, and that's why you can see many different measures and activities and initiatives right next to the keywords on this slide, and in addition, I personally find one thing very remarkable. Our most successful single recruiting channel is our program Tell a Friend, where actual employees bring friends and family in contact, in touch with Lufthansa Technik for employment.
Again, this is the single most successful recruiting channel. I think this speaks for itself. Instead of now giving you maybe a full presentation about our purpose, mission statement, and so on, I would like to invite you to see, to listen, to grasp what drives us at Lufthansa Technik, and in German, I would say, "Film ab."
Welcome back to the second part of our presentations. We hope that what we have shown you so far has given you a first impression of who we are, what capabilities we have, and in which market environment we work. For the second part, we would now like to introduce you to our strategy and what we have planned for the upcoming years in our growth program, Ambition 2030, and of course, to the corresponding financials.
But before we get to that, allow me to share a few basic thoughts with you. We believe no matter what strategy you have in detail, to be successful in our industry, there are five critical aspects one has to take into account. This is what we call the five strategic imperatives, and these are, if you like, our guiding principles we always take into account in all our strategic considerations. The first one is direct and local customer access. Customers expect MROs to be as close as possible to their operations, and the reason for this is aircraft availability and MRO costs. Because the closer the MRO is to the customer, the faster the aircraft is ready to fly again, and the fewer spare parts are needed. That's why customers in the so-called closed loop component business, for example, prefer to go to local MROs.
Another example is Mobile Engine Services. It's of outstanding value to the customer if an engine problem can be solved still on wing, or at least at the customer's premises, or at the very least in a nearby Mobile Engine Services center instead of shipping the engine all around the world. The second imperative is relevance through global scale. Global scale is important for three reasons. Firstly, as just said, you need to have direct and local customer access, and that usually goes hand in hand with size. Secondly, the high investments that have to be made in our industry are only worthwhile above a certain company size. And thirdly, the bigger you are, the better you can negotiate with the OEMs or maybe even more important offer yourself as a partner to the OEMs. The third aspect is digitally enabled MRO offerings.
Given that we will not see any new aircraft or engine technologies for at least the next 10, maybe 15 years, we see the greatest opportunity for higher aircraft availability and lower MRO costs in the digitalization of MRO products and MRO processes. And fourthly, competitive costs, labor, and operational excellence. Now you might say, rightly say, this is not specific to the MRO industry. Fair enough. But it's an essential imperative in our industry as well. So the last strategic imperative, however, is very specific to our industry. I mean, every strategic imperative obviously is important. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a strategic imperative. But this last one is of such paramount importance to success as an OEM independent MRO that I would like to go into it a little further.
I've already mentioned that the cost of materials and subcontracted repair services represent about 60%-80% of the overall cost for engine and component services. In the event that new material is used, most of it in terms of value comes from the OEMs. Furthermore, many subcontracted repair services can only be carried out by the OEMs. And this applies in particular to components and parts of the new-gen aircraft. And last but not least, there can be no repair or overhaul without approved maintenance data, which usually also comes from the OEMs. So it's these circumstances that make the engine and component OEMs very special business partners for us. As you can see on the next slide, the OEMs take on multiple roles. Mostly, they are suppliers, obviously. Sometimes they are customers. And very often, they are partners.
As far as LHT is concerned, we are very proud of the fact that we have trusting business relationships with nearly all engine and component OEMs and with some of these even for decades. As a result of this, many of these initial customer-supplier relationships have developed into genuine partnerships with long-term partnership agreements. This applies again in particular to corporations on the new-gen engines and aircraft where access to repair IP and repair materials is crucial. And then, yes, sometimes we are also competitors, especially on the legacy engine and aircraft types, but that's also part of this multifaceted relationship. Now, our relationships with the OEMs is certainly one of LHT's strong points. But it's always good to have alternatives, right? Especially if these alternatives can create additional value for our customers in terms of costs and turnaround times.
In principle, there are four options to recreate the worthy status of an engine or engine part or component. One option, of course, is to carry out the repair in accordance with the OEM repair documentation using original OEM repair materials. However, this is not necessarily the most cost-effective option. This is due to the fact that OEM repair documents often stipulate the replacement of certain parts or sub-assemblies with new parts without considering the possibility of repairing them. LHT is an approved design organization with the permission to develop its own approved repairs, which then deviate from those of the OEMs. LHT has developed literally thousands of these deviating repair procedures over the decades, and these procedures generally lead to cost savings in the mid-double-digit % range, often combined with the use of LHT's self-manufactured and approved repair parts.
The fourth option is the use of entire so-called USM components, used serviceable materials, to replace the unserviceable one or the use of certain parts of these USM materials in our repair processes. Then, of course, there are combinations of these four options. Now, the thing is, no matter what you plan to do strategically, if you don't master these things, you won't be successful as an OEM independent MRO. LHT has hundreds of highly specialized and experienced engineers who successfully deal with these issues every day for decades. So this engineering know-how, as Harald has also already mentioned, combined with a wide range of profound OEM partnership agreements we have, have been key success factors for LHT for decades. And that's really important to know and to understand our business model. Next slide.
Now, LHT cannot only look back with pride on the capabilities it has developed over time, but also look to the future with a lot of confidence. Given that LHT has been able to secure repair licenses for all major new aircraft types and to conclude corresponding agreements with all major engine and component OEMs, LHT has secured access to the future MRO market for years in advance. However, LHT has not only invested in corresponding partnerships and licenses, but also in the necessary infrastructure, the necessary tooling, of course, and the qualification of our people, especially on the new models. And this puts LHT in first place among OEM independent MRO companies, not only in terms of sales, but also in terms of experience with the components and engines of the new-gen aircraft.
It was important for me to show you these things before we come to the actual strategic measures of our program, because what you've seen on the last four slides basically is the foundation for all strategic considerations and therefore for our future success. Now, let's move on to our strategy. Our strategy for the upcoming years and what we plan to achieve with our growth program, Ambition 2030. Our strategy, as you can see here, is essentially determined by three strategic vectors, framed by the understanding that we also want to and must make, of course, a contribution to a more sustainable and socially responsible world. Now, as far as the first vector is concerned, you will remember that I said this morning that today we are the world's number one among the OEM independent MROs by aggregated numbers, but on a regional level only in EMEA.
So therefore, one of our strategic aims is, of course, to safeguard our dominant position in EMEA and at the same time to become, as I said this morning, at least one of the top three players in Americas and APAC. I also said this morning that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for our regions and sub-markets. So therefore, we will need to adapt our approaches accordingly. And this also includes both organic and inorganic growth. This is to be achieved with the first strategic vector. Moving on to the second one, industry transformation through digitalization. We believe the next two decades will be the decades of digitalization in our industry. As I said at the beginning, we will not see any truly new aircraft technologies in the next 10 to 15 years. This makes digitalization the key lever when it comes to increasing aircraft availability and reducing MRO costs.
But it's not enough to work with just one portion of the overall data stream, such as flight data. To really leverage the full potential of digitalization, you need to digitize every element along the entire MRO value stream. This starts with the maintenance and engineering M&E system of the airlines' Tech Ops department and goes all the way down to the MRO shops. This is our conviction, and this is what we are working hard on. The third strategic vector is about new products, new markets, and new business models. Here, the idea is to leverage our existing capabilities and relationships with partners and customers to enter into new high-margin business areas adjacent to our core business. To give you a better understanding of what we specifically intend to do for each vector, I will go into more detail on the following slides and present you some corresponding examples.
And last but not least, we do the things we do not only because we enjoy them, which we do, but also, of course, because we are striving for financial success, and we believe that this strategy will allow us to almost double our revenues and our adjusted EBIT by 2030. Next slide, please. Now, the whole Ambition 2030 program has literally hundreds of projects and initiatives, all coordinated and monitored by our transformation office. What we show here on this page is a summary of the most success-critical initiatives that support the first strategic vector, so global expansion. As far as Engine Services is concerned, the LEAP engine is by far the most important engine model for us in the future, and that's why capacity and capability build-up for the LEAP is our top priority.
In this context, again, customer proximity and thus the establishment of Mobile Engine Services for the LEAP will also play a crucial role here. Lufthansa Technik is one of the few, I think we have five or six meanwhile, OEM independent MROs that has a fully comprehensive license for both the LEAP-1A and the LEAP-1B. As far as component service business is concerned, we also have a clear focus here, and that is the expansion of our closed-loop business, especially in the U.S., where, as mentioned this morning, the closed-loop business accounts for 70% of the whole component service market. To this end, we will expand our regional production site in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But of course, we will also continue to look for opportunities for inorganic growth to maintain our growth rate.
Thirdly, as far as Aircraft Maintenance Services is concerned, and when we talk about Aircraft Maintenance Services, I mean base maintenance. Here the focus lies on expanding our wide-body base maintenance capacity against the backdrop of a very strong demand, which we expect to continue in the coming years. This is for you. The next page shows some examples of projects currently underway to expand our global footprint. Harald already mentioned Portugal, which is on the second place, actually. The first one is North America, Mobile Engine Services. In view of the importance of customer proximity, we have decided to establish a third North American Mobile Engine Services center in addition to our Mobile Engine Services centers in Tulsa and Montreal. This Mobile Engine Services center will be specialized exclusively in LEAP-1B engines.
It will have an engine test cell, which is very important, a workshop area of approximately 20,000 square meters, and will employ around 100 employees in the first expansion stage. The contract negotiations for the land and building are almost complete, but only almost, which is why I can't name the location yet. However, I assume that we will be able to communicate the location before Christmas. In this context, we just recently signed an exclusive multi-billion-euro contract with a major North American airline for the repair and overhaul of all their LEAP-1B engines, which we will also be communicating shortly. Now, the second project, this time in Europe, is the already mentioned build-up of our new repair and overhaul center for engine parts and aircraft components in Portugal.
What makes Portugal particularly attractive for us is a labor market with a lot of young, well-educated people at very reasonable costs. The facility will have a production area of 50,000 square meters in the first expansion phase. And as Harald already said, we'll deploy around 700 employees. And the first parts are to be processed there starting in 2027. And LHT will spend around EUR 350 million in CapEx and project costs on the construction of this site. Again, I've already mentioned the topic of the closed-loop business in North America several times. Tulsa is not only one of our North American Mobile Engine Services locations, but also our main location for component repairs. Therefore, here we plan to double the capacity of our Tulsa component repair shop by 2030 with then 600 employees. And the last example on this page concerns our APAC-based maintenance operations.
Lufthansa Technik Philippines, you might have heard about this, was founded 25 years ago and is now LHT's center of excellence for base maintenance in APAC. LTP currently operates with 2,600 employees at Manila International Airport. In view of the lack of available space at Manila Airport on the one hand, and what we believe will be strong demand for wide-body base maintenance worldwide for the years to come, we are planning, let me put it this way, to expand LTP's capacities with two wide-body hangars at Clark Airport, 80 kilometers from Manila Airport, but corresponding contract negotiations have begun, but we have not yet, or they have not yet been concluded, so this is work in progress. That brings me to our second strategic vector, industry transformation through digitalization, and Harald has already mentioned parts of this.
As I said a few minutes ago, to achieve real added value for our airline customers from digitalization, it's not enough to work with just one portion of the data streams between the aircraft, the Tech Ops department, the MRO operations to really leverage the full potential digitalization as needed all along the entire MRO value chain. Now, to be able to offer digitally enabled MRO services and products, of course, we first need to have digitized our own processes, and to this end, as Harald also has already mentioned, we have launched a program called Digitize the Core two years ago, so since that start of the program, more than 200 individual projects have already been successfully implemented, and another 150 are either in progress or waiting to be started.
Yes, this comes at a price, but I can assure you the EUR 30 million we spend in this program every year have an excellent return on investment. The fact is that you don't buy MRO products and services like in a supermarket. Go to the checkout and pay. With MRO products and services, there is an intense, really intense exchange of technical and commercial data between the MRO company and the airline before the service is created, during the service creation, and afterwards. And therefore, if you want to get the full benefits of digitalization at the interface between MRO and airline, obviously, this means that the Tech Ops department of the airlines must also be digitized accordingly on its part.
To help airline customers with this, as already mentioned, from Harald, Lufthansa Technik has put together a unique, I would call it, software suite called Digitize, sorry, Digital Tech Ops Ecosystem, consisting of the three LHT products, AVIATAR, AMOS, and flydocs. So the idea here with the Digital Tech Ops Ecosystem is not only that these products work together seamlessly and optimally, but also that the digital ecosystem as a whole works seamlessly and optimally with the MRO operations. So with this, Lufthansa Technik offers both digitized MRO processes and a unique Digital Tech Ops Ecosystem, and thus creates the conditions for the full digital benefit to be realized at the interface between airline and MRO. Next slide, please. And this brings us to the third strategic vector: new products, new markets, and business models.
I think we would be making a big mistake entrepreneurially if we did not also use our unique skills, expertise, experience, and industry relationships to develop new high-margin businesses along the value chain. This approach is not fundamentally new to us. More than 20 years ago, we decided to develop and manufacture cabin management/IFE systems for VIP aircraft. Today, we are the world's number one, not only for VIP aircraft, but the world's number one in the market for cabin management and IFE systems for business jets. Another example, our partnership with the German Air Force began over 60 years ago with first work on government aircraft. Today, we provide technical support for the entire fleet of German government aircraft, something about 25 or 30 planes. I'm not 100% sure, something 20, 25 or so, under our own military continuing airworthiness management organization approval.
Another example, 10 years ago, we started the AVIATAR, a digital platform, like Harald also has mentioned, which supports the Tech Ops departments of our customers by data-driven MRO decision-making with predictive health analytics tools. Today, the AVIATAR alone has more than 4,000 aircraft under contract, and the applications of the Digital Tech Ops Ecosystem together have more than 11,000 aircraft under contract. No double counting here, representing approximately 45% of the commercial aircraft fleet worldwide. Now, as different as the individual examples may be, they have all one thing in common, and that is that we are inspired by the wishes and concerns of our customers. We think further outside the box and thus create new value-adding solutions together with our customers and partners.
Whether it's the new AeroSHARK aerodynamic film or the recently signed and communicated partnership agreement with Boeing for cabin modifications on the 787, we believe there is still a lot of potential in adjacent business areas. Now, as far as the topic of defense is concerned, many of you have certainly followed the press coverage with regard to LHT's approach to defense. For us, it's the logical next step or next development in our decades-long partnership with the German Air Force. We basically have the technical know-how. The technology is often similar, sometimes even identical, and the industrial players are often, not always, but often the same as those we already know from commercial aviation. We are currently part of the so-called industry team for the P-8 Poseidon, for the F-35, and the Chinook heavy transport helicopter, all entry into service projects of the German Air Force.
and we are taking part in the tender for the completion work of the AWACS successor aircraft, E-7, from Boeing. You see, there's a lot of dynamic in this new business field, and I'm very confident that we can make a significant contribution to all of these projects. Next slide, please. Moving on to the next topic, ESG. I said at the beginning that our three strategic vectors are framed by our understanding that we also want to and must make our contribution to a more sustainable and socially responsible world. When we talk about ESG in relation to LHT, I would like to distinguish between the content part and the reporting part. As far as reporting is concerned, we have decided not to set up our own CSRD reporting. Instead, we report as a wholly owned subsidiary in the overall reporting of the Lufthansa Group.
Therefore, there's no official external reporting from us and no separate external audits associated with this. But of course, that doesn't mean that we do not have our own ESG program with corresponding measures and targets. On the contrary, we have been pursuing our ESG program for some time now and have established our own line organization to implement this program and also, of course, to handle all other ESG requirements. So given the time, I won't be able to go through all the details on this slide, but the CO2 targets that we have set ourselves for 2030, especially for Hamburg, as you can see, are really very ambitious. And even though we do not prepare external CSRD reports, we are regularly assessed by EcoVadis. Last slide.
I hope I have been able to convey to you over the last 30 minutes that Lufthansa Technik not only has a clear strategy and knows which path it wants to take, but is already in the middle of the implementing, if you like, of this strategy with its Ambition 2030 program. This slide is actually only a summary of the last 30 minutes, and I don't want to repeat myself, but there's one thing mentioned here without which what I've presented to you would not be possible. This is our team. Whether in management, in the offices, or in the workshops, everyone at Lufthansa Technik is passionate about this industry. Once the virus gets you, it doesn't let you go. It's these decades of experience and management and engineering, mechanics, administration that really constitutes Lufthansa Technik's unique strength, something money simply cannot buy.
Thank you very much for your attention. And with that, I would hand over to my colleague and our CFO, Dr. William Willms.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Finally, the numbers in a company like ours, which is so focused on its engineering capabilities, operational excellence, the three of us, we try to avoid the 3:00 P.M. slot for the numbers part, but I hope and sincerely hope that I will get still your attention and interest for this part now. Let me start with what I would like you to take away today, almost our equity pitch. We show unparalleled scale and growth in a global market. We are clearly the number one in the independent market. We are outdistancing clearly and sustainably our competition. We show continued growth and participation in the consolidation of our industry. OEMs cannot do without us. They do with us. See, especially our engine-related JVs.
Two, we demonstrate sticky revenues. We have a high order book visibility, as I will elaborate later in more detail, especially on the engines and the aircraft component side. We provide long-term stickiness, which is countercyclical to the airline crisis possibilities. And we demonstrate a stable long-term market growth slightly above GDP. Third, we are committed to leadership enhancement in our core markets. We are leveraging our global footprint and OEM relationship. We are maximizing the digital tools development potential, and we are taking a lead in the technical solution service delivery evolution. And we are delivering highest quality for best price solutions. Fourth, we are going beyond this. We have a clear vision to expand our market presence through the consolidation of the EMEA leadership position, U.S. footprint expansion, and a broader presence in Asia.
We are delivering execution excellence across our product division, supported by operational excellence programs and utilization maximization, labor cost and efficiency programs, reduction of material price escalation, and especially networking capital optimization. Two more factors. We have a unique advantage through our capitalization of our large client, Lufthansa. Lufthansa provides high stability as anchor customer and as innovation partner, and the association with Lufthansa allows us continued access to intellectual property IP. Finally, we show a clear value upside with our track record of market outperformance, our proven ability to optimize efficiency, and our comprehensive value-accretive initiatives in place. All of this, we believe that Lufthansa Technik is a core part of the Lufthansa valuation. Let me start with a short back into our history. Over the years, we have shown a strong and consistent growth with before COVID crisis of 5.7% CAGR, slightly above market.
This growth was and still is supported by a diverse customer portfolio in terms of geographic allocation and business model. As mentioned by Sören, we are supporting legacy airlines. We are supporting equally low-cost airlines, cargo, government defense, but also OEMs and other MRO shops, all of which this diversification helps to provide us in risk and revenue diversification. And two, the reliance on the Lufthansa Group airline revenues has decreased over time and was outgrown by us by increasing our third-party revenue share. Whereas Lufthansa Group revenues represented still 40% in 2010, it was reduced to one-third in 2024, and we will reduce it further by 2030 to 20%-25%.
After COVID, we managed to achieve a strong and sustainable rebound, which was thanks to our RISE program during this time, a program which was focusing on cost improvement, portfolio measures, efficiency, and most importantly, on efficient cash management. As you can also see, we have a proven track record of sustainable margins in a very highly competitive environment. Overall, it can be said that during COVID, our business model has proven its resilience. We had a revenue drop of only 50% despite the fact that the entire aviation industry was grounded, and showed a recovery of our EBIT margin in 2021 already. We have a very different risk profile than all of our competitors. We benefited from our diverse product portfolio.
And we also have a very, very different business model than the airlines and were therefore less hit by COVID and had the ability to come out faster out of the crisis and even stronger. And indeed, we came out stronger out of the COVID crisis. As you can see, we are showing EBIT margins beyond pre-COVID levels due to successful management action and efficient contract management. The strategy Sören was highlighting and explaining to you is backed by clear financial targets. Let me take a closer look into our four financial targets. These targets, as defined in our Ambition 2030 strategy, are of equal rank. We will not push one dimension at the cost of the others. We are therefore committed to delivering all four targets. And by this, we are committed to maintaining and strengthening our position as independent number one globally.
In a little bit more detail, we will increase net revenues from about EUR 6.5 billion to over EUR 10 billion, thereby outpacing the market by more than three percentage points per annum. We will, however, only focus on profitable growth, which is margin-accretive and shows healthy free cash flow development at least on peer level. With this growth, we are planning to deliver an expansion of our market-leading position and showing continued growth momentum through our scale. Noteworthy, and I will elaborate this in a little bit more detail on the segment-by-segment section, a significant portion of our future revenues is already secured from existing contracts. Two, we will continue to deliver competitive margins on a high level, surpassing the 10% EBIT margin level by 2030. We have, however, the ambition of lifting the EBIT margin beyond the 10% threshold despite cost inflation.
Over the business plan period, we are therefore ultimately striving for margin growth and not only margin stabilization. We have all levers in our hand to counteract margin pressure, and relevant programs are either in implementation or are currently implemented. Further optimization measures with respect to our portfolio, digitization, material cost reduction measures are here key profitability levers. Further, we are striving for a highly attractive return on our capital, aiming for a ROCE of 15%, especially through further strategic and highly profitable investments and leveraging the core business. And finally, we have the plan to reach a strong cash conversion of about 50% by 2030. This provides a clear improvement despite continued investment in growth. And in our mind, this is a first-class level for an asset-heavy and growing industry.
As you will see, this ambition is backed by a clear financial strategy, a financial strategy which walks along six key dimensions. It is a balanced ambition portfolio and a balanced ambition profile across all our segments, backed by LHT's strength and track record, strong market position, our invested asset base, and strategic value-accretive expansion measures. I would like in the following to walk you through these six dimensions, including a segment-by-segment view and breakdown. Let me start with our top line. As mentioned, we are committed to strong growth until 2030, passing the EUR 10 billion threshold by 2030. Our target translates into a 7% CAGR between 2023 and 2030. The Lufthansa Group share will decrease in this time from one-third in 2024 to about 20%-25% until 2030.
The bridge shows how we will get from the EUR 6.5 billion as of today net revenue to EUR 10 billion or over EUR 10 billion in 2030. As mentioned before, we have a high visibility of our revenues. Over 40% of our aggregated turnover until 2028 is already secured through existing contracts. Let me walk you through the various buckets. The first one is simply growing with the market. This accounts for 40%-45%. It's effectively within our existing footprint and existing business model growing simply with the market. However, 50% of our growth will come from five key growth levers, which are beyond pure market growth. One, as you heard, new engines and aircraft will drive here 20%-25%, one of the key growth levers for us going forward. LHT has unparalleled access to IP and licenses for new-gen engines.
You heard about the LEAP and the GTF and component MRO for new-gen aircraft types like the A320neo or the A350. This growth is largely protected as there exist OEM-induced market entry barriers to prevent other MROs from entering into these fast-growing market segments. And as you have seen, LHT has secured access to this IP over decades by JVs and OEM corporations. Further, and perhaps most importantly, we have the production platforms in place to exploit this growth potential. Two, core growth on legacy technologies provides for another 10%-15%. This is growth with legacy engines, component overhaul, and core LHT products like APU, EPAR, or AERQ. Third, geographical expansion accounts for 5%-10% of our growth ambition. You heard about our ambition in North America.
Investment in closed loop is here o ne lever, but also Mobile Engine Services or in the APAC region, the opening of a new widebody facility in 2027. Two further levers, vertical and horizontal expansion. First, horizontal expansion. New business models account for 5%-10%. This has a special focus on our digitization efforts, our digital solutions like AVIATAR, AMOS, and flydocs. The underlying revenue model is SaaS, i.e., software as a service subscription model with recurring revenues. And finally, a vertical expansion, new market penetration accounting for another 5%-10%. Here, as you learned from my colleague Sören, we have a special focus on the defense business side. Our defense business today is still small in absolute terms and compared to the other market and other segments in our LHT, passing the three-digit million euro revenue threshold in 2024, however, with very specific opportunities to grow.
This is an attractive market with significant opportunities, long-term, 30 to 40 years, stable revenue streams independent from global aviation. As you all know, military spending has grown now for the eighth consecutive year. The NATO guideline of spending 2% of GDP is on the defense side will act here as a key catalyst for us. Between 22 and 28 European NATO members, defense spending is increasing by 60%. Certain opportunities have been mentioned: German Air Force, the Global 6000, the Chinook helicopter, the P-8 maritime patrol aircraft. But most importantly, here is to mention that we have the infrastructure in place from our civil business and our established civil business, which allows us and enables us to take this expansion path at incremental cost.
Further new markets we want to explore respectively grow further are our asset management capabilities and what you also learned before, expanding further our capabilities on OEM products like the cabin electronics side we are covering. Overall, however, we see opportunities to accelerate this organic growth ambition of 7% CAGR and achieving higher revenues. One of the options to do so will be M&A, and I will cover this in a separate slide. Bottom line, our target here is an adjusted EBIT margin of greater than 10% by 2030, reflecting sustained high profitability. Despite us, despite LHT being the largest independent MRO, competition and margin pressure remains strong. Increasing material and labor costs restrain a further EBIT margin increase in this plan. The EBIT bridge shows how we will achieve an absolute EBIT of greater than 1 billion euros in 2030, coming from approximately 0.6 billion in 2023.
Having said this, we have our key levers at hand to push our margin beyond the 10% threshold. In more detail, top line growth and cost increases are netted to 30%-40% of growth. Most cost headwinds and inflation are outside our control, i.e., if we were to do nothing, our basically top line ambition would result in a decreasing EBIT margin. Having said this, we are, however, used to permanently improve our cost position. What are now the management actions to effectively counter focus this technical decrease? There are four levers we have here in focus. One, material cost optimization counts for 25%-30%. This is on the one hand side, our purchasing power with the OEMs, leveraging our existing OEM agreements and our strong market position, our scale. And secondly, efficiency gains through alternative materials and repairs.
You learned about our ability to develop new repair procedures, our usage of used serviceable materials, PMA parts, sophisticated inspections. Two, portfolio optimization. We have shown during COVID and in the past that we are willing to optimize and reduce, if necessary, our portfolio. We closed our wheels and brakes facility in Frankfurt. We were selling or closing base maintenance facilities in the past, like in Shannon. In the moment, we are having two portfolio measures ongoing. We are closing respectively transferring the remaining line maintenance stations we have here in Germany, and we are closing a landing gear facility called Hawker Pacific in the United States. Two measures which will be finalized by the beginning of 2025. I'm explaining this because it shows you that we are a company who is willing to streamline and focus its portfolio effectively on a daily basis.
Therefore, we actively monitor always our portfolio to identify further optimization necessities or opportunities. Third, Digitize the Core, accounting for another 10%-15%. As you learned before, Digitize the Core is a comprehensive cross-segment process and digitization program with over 300 initiatives which are either finalized or currently in implementation across the entire MRO value chain. This program is backed by IT investments of over EUR 300 million until 2028, which are fully reflected in our EBIT line. This program is highly EBIT accretive and demonstrates very short amortization periods, almost mostly over one year where each project is finalized. We realize our bottom line impact here through faster and neater processes. One example is the so-called digital job card in our workshops, the integration of MRO data from thousands of aircraft under contract, and last but not least, more accurate planning and forecasting.
One example is here in our segment components, a forecasting and planning tool, which is basically enabling us to forecast expected removals, spare part requirements, and capacity steering. All of these investments are adding operational performance and therefore creating customer value, and last but not least, the exploitation of further high margin product growth. This is accounting for another 5%-10%. Noteworthy here are three special products. First, engine parts repair, or in short, EPAR. This is especially interesting for customers who try to avoid the purchase of new materials. Second, Mobile Engine Services, or in short, MES. MES can significantly extend the lifetime of an engine, as you learned before. Hence, pushing forward high cost full overhauls and reducing downtime for engines, and therefore, like EPAR, enabling double-digit margins.
Third, further our digital products derived from the Digital Tech Ops Ecosystem, which provide also double-digit margins from the SaaS business model. Overall, what we are demonstrating here is that we in a complex market growing by 50% and providing margin levels at basically stable levels. However, we are confident that there is potential for a further margin increase, and I will come back to this in the segment overview. Cash. We strive here for a cash conversion of over 50%, which is equivalent to a free cash flow of EUR 500 million in 2030. This represents an increase by 20 percentage points versus our cash conversion in 2023. LHT's cash conversion here is calculated, by the way, as you can see in the footnote, not on net profit, but on our adjusted EBIT. Key enabler is a cash-driven mindset and measures we establish throughout the entire organization.
We have identified five core action fields to improve our cash position. One, turnaround time optimization. Improving productivity by more throughput, resulting in improved fixed cost absorption, or reducing non-value adding times by better planning, disposition, and forecasting, thus reducing work in progress and buffer inventory stock levels. Third, accelerating processes. Examples are here automated inspections we invented for the CFM56-7B or a fan case scanner in the engine shop for the engine shop site. Two, operational excellence. Maintain seamless repair processes and avoid interruptions by integrating repair inflow, anticipated repair patterns, and inventory stock levels and lead times. Three, working capital optimization. Here, a strong focus on our customer and supplier contracts. Excellence in our billing ability, partial invoicing, or effective account management of customers in high-risk countries to reduce any trade receivables. Fourth, our network optimization.
The constant question we are asking ourselves, what do we do in-house? What do we do outside? What are we contracting to others? The make or buy decision. Further, a continuous assessment of forecasted repair cost, incoming parts, expected damages, available in-house capacities, which enables us the best economic decision through big data-driven tools. A further driver is the permanent work on the efficiency of our pool. Our pool is not included in our working capital. The pool you learned about accounts for 50% of LHT's capital employed. The pool has a value of EUR 2 billion, which on the one hand side is a strong barrier of entry for competitors into this market. On the other hand, however, optimized stock levels of our pool are key for our cash balance.
We have a very sophisticated planning and forecasting of component failures and stock levels in place, which enables us an improved utilization of pool assets and reducing CapEx by this. One of the examples I'm mentioning here is a newly introduced AI-based tool called DLP Next Generation. DLP stands here for Dynamic LRU Planning. This is the planning tool we are using for the stock level in our pool. It became necessary after COVID to re-basically program this tool because all historic data was effectively null and void after the COVID crisis, and this, so to speak, risk we took as a chance and we developed an AI-based, modern-based architecture on data analytics technology to forecast now in the future our pool planning needs. DLP Next Gen has a couple of elements I would like to highlight.
We can calculate and forecast demand and removals, logistic time forecast, and absentee hour forecast. And last but not least, we are exploring also in terms of our cash ambition, we are exploring the possibility of off-balance sheet home-based financings and LRU consignments with full integration of LHT-owned material or material funded or financed by third parties. Capital allocation. The LHT investment strategy is fully aligned with Lufthansa Group's strategic capital allocation. We are investing a total sum of over EUR 1.8 billion in key strategic projects until 2030, on average EUR 300 million per annum. Approximately two-thirds of this CapEx will go into investments in the EMEA region. This includes the facility we just learned about in Portugal, but also, of course, all the investments here in Hamburg, including DTC. And the rest then goes into our CapEx and infrastructure projects in the APAC region and in the Americas.
When we invest our CapEx, we follow a clear strategic path. We have the following dimensions always basically in front of any of our decisions we take. Footprint optimization. Here, the new best cost site in Portugal, which I've mentioned before. Footprint expansion. Additional wide body facility to be mentioned here in the APAC region. Third, new gen capacity expansion. A second Geared Turbofan test cell we are putting in place with our JV partner MTU in Poland. New product offering. New combined Mobile Engine Services center in Canada and the US to address and exploit new engines and the new engine market in the Americas. And last but not least, the international expansion. We have in mind the extension of our main component facility in Tulsa is here one example. And finally, we are strengthening our core here in Hamburg.
We have rebuilt a new facility for our VIP business. We have built a new or building currently a new building for our hydraulics business and are building a new multi-technology component building, which is fostering our ambition on the component side. And DTC, adding basically on the global scale, is part of this strengthening of our core. Let me provide you with a little bit of detail on DTC or Digitize the Core. We have a strong belief that digital leaders will excel the rest of the competition and the digital laggards by two critical dimensions: driving revenue growth and controlling cost. And in this slide, we are fully committed to the digitization of the entire company, which is then all bundled in our program, Digitize the Core. DTC is a leapfrog step towards data integration, seamlessly communicating systems, and harmonized user interfaces.
A core part is the usage here of artificial intelligence, which will be core of our digital DNA. Close collaboration with one of the leaders in AI will be announced effectively this week. Some KPIs to take basically and to recall on our DTC program. We have 16 DevO ps, development ops teams in place. We are achieving a digital target ROI of 72% on our projects. The left-hand side shows you the value streams we are focused on with our DTC projects. These are partly enabled given the sheer size of the number of initiatives this can be imagined, but the majority of the projects are core process betterments, which will result in overall betterment of our competitiveness and cost position, but are also value accretive in our customer interaction. The fifth dimension are our five synergetic business segments.
As you have learned, each of the five segments has a dedicated purpose. All of them are managed as entrepreneurial profit centers, and all five segments, as we have seen before, are synergetic to each other. Our setup as a nose-to-tail full-service provider drives value, reduces risk, and helps to balance industry cycles. We manage and realize synergies between the segments, which adds to a stronger, basically overall bottom line, and thereby creates additional customer attraction. In summary, also what you have heard before. Engines. Engines is driving our top line. Engines is the LHT powerhouse, maintaining critical mass and leverage for LHT in terms of economies of scale. Engine has shared resources with ACS, machining, plating, material management, MRO workshops, and engines is the front runner for new gen technologies, opening up opportunities for other segments, especially ACS. ACS, or Aircraft Component Services, is driving profitability.
It is LHT's stability factor. ACS, as you learned before from Søren and from Harald, is a multilateral integrator across airlines with its global customer base, across aircraft types, MRO workshops, and the spare pool, and across technologies with extensive OEM corporations. As said, ACS or components has shared resources with the engine business, and ACS shows a high resilience against demand fluctuations due to its flat rate business model. AMS, which is mainly starting 25, our base maintenance business. AMS is very commoditized, which requires a competitive cost base. It's here all about the utilization of the hangar and the throughput and the efficiency of our workforce. AMS is here basically our front runner, therefore in standardization, efficiency, and performance program.
With a very focused portfolio in place after the cleanup during the RISE program and the COVID crisis, AMS shows healthy margins and it has a strong footprint in the APAC region through our Lufthansa Technik Philippines facility at double-digit margins. Fourth, OES, original equipment and special aircraft services. Here we are leveraging the facility cost in Hamburg through our workshops and hangars. On the completion side, it's all about basically project and cost management. However, OES is a strong cash contributor with scheduled payments quite often upfront. And it builds up the new highly profitable products like adding to LHT's margin, EBIT margin, like being the nucleus for our defense business, focused high value VIP, and our market leading position in cabin electronics. And last but not least, the Digital Fleet Services side, the digital side of our business, opening new business opportunities for LHT.
DFS represents an asset-free business model, which is therefore easy to scale. We are creating synergies within the digital ecosystem and with LHT workshops by absorbing data from the repair process and giving back predictive models. DFS is also boosting cross-functional and segment collaboration as a data integrator within LHT in itself. It is opening revenue potentials therefore for other segments and vice versa, and our unique data pool from 11,000 aircraft in our ecosystem is a standalone competitive advantage to other MROs. Let me provide you in the following two deep dives on our two key segments, engines, and components. Engines. Engine segment is more than doubling its revenues by 2030. No other business of LHT is planning such a steep growth path. Engine segment will stand for basically over 50% of LHT's revenues in 2030 and about 40% of our EBIT.
Top line growth here is almost certain from the current exposure to GTF, LEAP, and legacy. We act therefore on an extremely strong market where available overhaul slots are determining the success of a company and we have these slots, this capacity, and these capabilities in place. What are the drivers of our engine development? First, revenue growth from increased volumes across all facilities. Hamburg, EMEA subcontracting, LTAA in Alzey are our new MES capacity in North America starting 2026. The LHT share is approximately one-third of our engine revenues. Overall, the EBIT margin appears to remain flat, which is reflecting the gradual transition from legacy engines with comparatively higher revenues being in steady state or approaching sunset and the new engine side of the world. New engines which have and show comparatively lower margins from ramp-up cost, allocated investments, and yet limited repair and USM capabilities.
The introduction phase for new engines will continue until the 2030s, with, however, increasing value potential. The GTF MO carries reduced margin potential due to the network structure, but offers additional upsides from scale with EMEA as potential largest MO shop for the GTF worldwide, repairs, and MES going forward. What are the commercial success factors? A high visibility of our contracted volume. Under 28, we're talking about 35%, and under 2030, about 30%. A high share of material cost of 75%. Having said this, we have all levers at hand to address material cost increases going forward. This stems from, one, our landmark agreements with basically all OEMs in place, and secondly, apart from this unique access to OEM material, our repair capabilities, USM, and PMA levers. What is the financial profile of engines? We have a diversified portfolio of different revenue streams in place.
The LHG share is decreasing from 40% in 2023 to about 20% in 2030. Second, a strong global third-party customer base relying on LHT's capabilities. And finally, the induction via our OEM offload agreements on the GTF family and others. Investment activity is medium. Only one-third of our CapEx goes into the engine side. As our network has been strengthened before the COVID crisis, we are now pushing for scale effects. Building a new facility here in Hamburg or entering into the JV in Poland, which we were building basically before the COVID crisis. And we are aiming at the global expansion on the LEAP business side, especially in the U.S. and Canada, but also we are looking for opportunities in the APAC region. Fourth, we are delivering our growth story by scaling our operations, especially on the turnaround time, TAT.
Here we see potential to reduce our T by double-digit % after the global supply chain crisis has been stabilized with recurring effects on our network and capital, and two productivity improvements also in the 10 percentage point range. We have the opportunity to improve our EBIT margin by adding capacity in products like MES and EPAR, which meets strong market demands at double-digit margins. Both products are seen to be growing by 10% CAGR until 2030. The second big pillar we have is the component side. It's our second largest segment and is delivering about one-third of our profit in 2030. ACS contributes stability and reliability through long-term contractual commitments and delivers stable margins. ACS is a true global player with MRO facilities across the globe, as you have learned. Hamburg, Frankfurt, soon in Portugal, Tulsa, Shenzhen.
ACS is in a market-leading position for the open loop pooling business and is focusing on maintaining a strong market position at double-digit margins. ACS is heavily asset-intensive, representing, as I mentioned before, about 50% of LHT's capital employed, driven by the spare parts pool, EUR 2 billion, and inventory for the repair processes, about EUR 0.5 billion in 2024. ACS is characterized by a slightly decreasing integration with Lufthansa Group, about 30% in 2023, decreasing to 20%-25% in the midterm. Key success factor here is strengthening the powerful global production network of MRO shops, pool locations, 24/7 global customer service, and first-class logistics network. We will transform this business model to a next level of efficiency, cash generation, and profitabilities along four key levers. One, ACS or components will defend its market-leading position at double-digit margins.
We will maintain market share rather than expand at the expense of EBIT margin. We will follow a smart expansion approach, I would call it, maximizing incremental margin by leveraging capacity, incremental investment, and bottom line. We will therefore and thereby safeguard ACS's role as EBIT contributor for LHT by conscious, purposeful, and highly profitable growth in line with market. Two, we will maximize the utilization of our pool assets. As mentioned before, through our digitization efforts, we introduced this new pool management and planning system. We will deliver TAT improvements across the entire value chain. One day of TAT improvement has a double-digit impact on pool assets, and as a result of our activities, pool and inventory are growing slower than the revenue despite the rollover to new aircraft types.
Third, we are expanding our in-house MRO facilities for comprehensive and competitive cost position and less dependency from third-party supply chains. Continued modernization and the expansion path is at an investment peak historically. Expanding the closed-loop MRO site is another lever in this respect, opposite to the pool business. This is more short-term opportunity-driven and doesn't need the CapEx heavy asset pool. And we will maximize synergies and coupling effect between customers with pool access or only thinking about single component repairs. And we will develop further the unrivaled integrator role of ACS, a superior position in data science from existing customer base over nearly 5,000 aircraft under component contract, ACS providing services across basically all technologies and OEMs.
And as you learned before, through our unique ability to scale, we are perhaps the one and only MRO in the world who can integrate into its pool and implement into its pool a fleet of 100 plus aircraft in an extremely short period of time. What are the key financial drivers? As I mentioned, revenue growth currently planned in line with market. This growth is coming from all regions. The restructuring effects I mentioned before, the closure of Hawker Pacific in the US, the closure of our Wheels and Brakes business almost accounted for EUR 300 million in loss of revenue, a gap we filled already in 2023-2024. We expect further revenue opportunities for ACS. However, they are not budgeted. We are characterized in this segment by a very high contracted volume, a very high visibility of about 60% in 2028 and still 50% in 2030.
All of our contracts have respective escalation or hyperinflation clauses in place so that we can react to respective market developments on inflation, material price, and labor price increases. Our EBIT margin is stabilizing at greater than 12% for this segment. Pre-COVID, we are talking about approximately 10%. As mentioned, our plan is a rather conservative one and it reflects growth in line with market, sustaining our market position in safeguarding profitability and, on a long-term basis, our cash targets. There is, however, potential for further growth in this market segment. This will, however, require us to invest further into the pool. We therefore constantly evaluate the interactions between profitability and cash flow when it comes to future campaigns. Further growth beyond our plan is therefore possible but heavily depends on the price sensitivity of the market. We will leave it to our competition to buy revenues.
I'm, however, confident that our competitiveness will allow us further highly profitable growth and that we can finance the necessary investments with it. And finally, the three smaller but less still extremely important segments: AM S, OES, and DFS. They are strengthening our portfolio. They fill gaps on the EBIT side and on the cash flow side, but they're not only important for our financial profile, but they are also adding to the value proposition of LHT as a nose-to-tail MRO provider. Historically, LHT's margins in these three segments have been diluted by an underperforming line maintenance business or startup cost for AERQ, which was also a cabin management digitization system, however, not for business but for commercial aircraft, and the AVIATAR. We have resolved this by effectively committed decision-making. As I mentioned, we are disposing, respectively closing our line-based line maintenance business site.
The termination of ARC, and last but not least, very promising, the break-even of our digital ecosystem in 2024. Very briefly, AMS is providing cash and sustainable profit after the restructuring, OES non-recurring profit and cash, especially after the investments made this year, and finally, DFS growing at double-digit margins until 2024, burdened by the startup losses from AVIATAR. DFS has upside potential from increasing scale and synergistic setup, has a high upfront development cost in the AVIATAR as now paying off, as I mentioned before. The digital solutions are expected to grow by 20% or over 20% year by year. A further scaling of the business model is possible at a minimal incremental cost. Horizontally, this is the contracted volume of aircraft, and vertically, the number of subscribed modules and products are the key success factors for our expansion in this business segment.
AVIATAR, flydocs, and Swiss AS, all three of them will mature as one ecosystem while maintaining the startup entrepreneurial spirit. 11,000 aircraft contracted in the ecosystem enables us to drive reliable AI-based decision-making. Finally, M&A. M&A will act as a key additional driver coming on top of our stated plan guidance. M&A is following clear financial objectives. They all have to meet our Ambition 2030 strategy, i.e., reaching a target margin for EBIT on 10% and more. They should achieve a ROCE of 15%, looking for a sustainable strengthening of our cash flow, i.e., all of them will and has to be value-accretive. Our strategic focus areas are twofold. One, extending our asset management capabilities, and second, MRO shops in the Americas, especially for components. Further upside potential we see on OES on the defense side.
AMS, we will talk more about partnering, and on the digital Tech Ops business, we are rather looking for a string of pearls, i.e., smaller acquisitions complementing the digital Tech Ops ecosystem. However, as always with M&A, strategy has to meet opportunity, but we are actively screening the market. To summarize what you just have learned, LHT will continue and deliver strong performance in the future. We will outgrow the market by three percentage points thanks to our leading new-gen capabilities. We will bring margins of above 10% despite inflation pressures and strong competition from OEMs. We will achieve an industry-high cash conversion of 50% by 2030. We will invest €1.8 billion of CapEx in value-accretive projects until 2030 and achieve a ROCE of greater than 15%. And we will remain a nose-to-tail MRO provider benefiting from the synergies between the segments.
Last but not least, M&A will act as a catalyst for further growth and value creation. Despite our strong historic track record, we have reached an inflection point for our performance. Simply continuing with our historic growth path is no longer enough in terms of time and scale. The LHT network, with an increasing number of production platforms and with the heart here in Hamburg, will be run differently by the three of us in terms of the delivery, operation, and strategic focus. In summary, and a little bit concluding today's management presentation, let me give you a little bit, so to speak, a summary of what Till mentioned in the beginning and how we look at our relationship to Lufthansa Group. We deliver strong and reliable EBIT to the group over the years and in the future.
LHT enables Lufthansa Group Airlines to maintain efficient and profitable flight operations on various levels. We have a strategic partnership in place. On the one hand side, we have a secured base load. On the other hand, there is a secured MRO supply. And we have a bundling power vis-à-vis the OEMs. Two, the customer-supplier relationship is based on arm's length. And third, we at LHT are the innovation partner for the group airlines and vice versa, the group airlines are our launching partner for new products. And finally, LHT, if I may say so, is a blue chip in the LHT valuation and the sum of the parts analysis. Many thanks, and over to you, Marc.