Dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, good morning to all of you. It is really a great pleasure for me, as CEO of the company, Huhtamäki, to give you an update on the company today. I will take probably a little bit longer and about 40 minutes to give you this update. I will take a little bit longer than it is usually the case for the CEO review because we are in a specific context with the COVID-19 crisis, where we believe that it is important to give you a comprehensive update of how we are managing through this period of time. At the same time, before that, I will take the time to reflect on our legacy, where we are coming from as a company, what are the foundation of our success, and the foundation for going forward in the future.
I will, of course, give you an update on our performance 2019 as well as on our performance published today for the first quarter 2020. I will take a few minutes outlining the key strategic priorities that we have going forward for the company. Without further, I would like to take a few minutes to present the company and where we are coming from. You all know, of course, that we are a, we have become a global leader in food packaging. Our portfolio is a diversified portfolio for food packaging, which is basically dedicated to two main channels. Those main channels are food-on-the-go packaging and food-on-the-shelf packaging.
We are handling the business through different channels of customers. At the same time, we have different products, a broad portfolio of products addressing many different attributes and values for the consumers and the society and the world in general, using 3 different types of packaging and the related technologies. Which are the food service packaging using paperboard conversion, mainly as a technology, a molded fiber technology, both rough molded fiber and smooth molded fiber, and the flexible packaging technology. Over the last 10 years, we have become a real global player with a global footprint, reaching EUR 3.4 billion with an adjusted EBIT margin of 8.6%. We have done this throughout the world by operating in 81 factories located close to our customers in 35 countries, where we are operating with 18,598 employees at the end of 2019.
We have been operating over the last years with four different and empowered business segments: Foodservice Europe-Asia-Oceania; North America; Fiber Packaging; and Flexible Packaging. We have made the decision to integrate, as announced more recently in the month of March, we have made the decision to integrate the two business segment, Fiber Packaging and Foodservice Europe-Asia-Oceania. Effective 1st of June, we will actually operate the business through the following three business segments: Fiber and Foodservice Europe-Asia-Oceania; North America; and Flexible Packaging. The rationale for this change and this integration of the two business segments is actually answering the need of the market and the need of our customers, particularly linked to the trend of sustainability that is requiring much more combined access of our customers to both technologies, fiber packaging, at the same time as the paperboard conversion technology.
To give this access to our customers in a combined way, we have made this decision to integrate those two business segments. There is a second reason, is that there are obvious synergies that we see from an organization point of view, as well as from a growth point of view, and that will unlock some financial benefits from the synergies that we see going forward short-term and midterm. However, during the year 2020, we will continue to report, as we are reporting this morning, our Q1 2020, according to our organization in four business segments, and that's to make sure that we are in full transparency, the comparability of our performance 2020 versus the previous year, 2019.
To introduce my leadership team, the executive team of Huhtamäki, and saying that I'm very pleased and honored to lead such a strong and diverse team, which has been reinforced over the last couple of months with four new members that I would like to take the time to introduce to all of you. Arup Basu, who has taken the role as President of Global Flexible Packaging. Marina Madanat, who has taken the role as Executive Vice President for Business Strategy and Business Development. Antti Valtokari, who is our CIO, Executive Vice President for IT and Process Performance. Thomasine Kamerling, who joined the company very recently on the 1st of March, to take the responsibility as Executive Vice President for Sustainability and Communications.
As I said, extremely honored from my side to be leading this very strong and diverse team that is based on the legacy of a very strong team, is adding additional capacity very recently. Looking at 2019, this has been underlined already in the introduction of our Chairman of the Board, we have made three acquisitions during the year 2019. We have continued with our investment for growth, with around EUR 200 million of organic investments. We have continued our agenda for acquisitions, and we have acquired three companies. One in South Africa, Everest Flexibles, making a revenue of approximately EUR 40 million. We have invested further in India, in our Flexible Packaging business in India, with the company Mohan Mutha Polytech, that is located in the south of the country in India.
We have invested further, more recently, in the company Laminor, which is the tube laminate leader in South America, based in Brazil. Those three acquisitions have in common that they are strengthening our competitiveness and our position in the emerging markets where we are seeing an important potential for growth. We are extremely happy about these acquisitions and now integrating them into our company. This leads me to give an overview of the results for the whole year 2019, and it is fair to start by looking at each of our four business segments with which we were operating in 2019. To say that all of them have something in common, they have all contributed to a very strong performance in 2019.
With the Foodservice Europe-Asia-Oceania, with a comparable growth of 4%, very solid, reaching an EBIT margin, improving the earnings to reach an EBIT margin or adjusted EBIT margin, sorry, of 9%. North America has been certainly the highlight of the year 2019, the highlight in terms of growth, 9% comparable growth, but as well, highlight in terms of improving the earnings. We've been very pleased with the development in North America because this has demonstrated the relevance of the investment that had been decided in the year before, in 2018, for launching a new factory in Arizona that has allowed us to further gain market shares in the West, supplying our customers and consumers in the west of the country. Flexible Packaging, where we have had a relatively moderate growth of 3%.
I would like to say that here in Flexible Packaging, we have particularly prioritized in the year 2019, the improvement of our profitability, which has been a very good approach because that has allowed us to improve significantly our profitability to a level of the adjusted EBIT margin of 8.1%. This prioritization of profitability has been particularly through our portfolio of products, particularly in the geography of India. Important to say that we have had another highlight in the year 2019 in the flexible segment. That was the launch, back in May 2019, of our new blueloop concept, which is the umbrella in the portfolio for recyclable flexible packaging.
This blueloop concept offers the same specifications or properties as the traditional flexible packaging for the products that we can package into them, but using still multilayer technology, but of a mono material, that makes them recyclable or easier to recycle and adding more value into the recycling value chain. Fiber Packaging business segment, where we have been growing a healthy 6% on the back of the capacity that we have been adding in the company in this business segment, but as well on the back of a trend, a sustainability trend that is both in food service as in fiber, driving plastic substitution and creating a higher underlying growth for that market.
We've been progressing the net sales by 6%, at the same time as we were improving our adjusted EBIT margin to 11% on the traditional business of molded fiber, this being slightly moderated down to 9.9% for the full year by the development and commercialization cost of our new sustainable product called Fresh, which is standing for ready-meal sustainable trays, made of smooth molded fiber, replacing the plastic trays, particularly in the market in the U.K. This is the view of 2019 through all of our four different business segments.
That consolidates into a very solid performance, adding to the legacy of strong foundations of success with a comparable growth of 6% for the full year. That's very much in line with our long-term ambition in terms of growth, as well as adding 0.5 points of profitability at the level of the adjusted EBIT margin, moving from 8.1% in 2018 to 8.6% in 2019. We have kept the balance sheet extremely healthy with a net debt over EBITDA ratio of 2.0, which is really at the low end of the corridor 2 to 3, which is our long-term ambition for the balance sheet. The dividend payout was proposed by the board to be fixed at 47%, even though there has been another proposal from the board, which is to postpone the decision on the payout subject to the AGM approval today.
This performance 2019 put now into the perspective longer term of the last five years, from 2014 to 2019, is quite impressive and represents a very good foundation for the future. During these five years, we've been able to grow our net sales by a very healthy 52%. We've been increasing at the same time our earnings at the adjusted EBIT margin level by +67%. Our cash flow at the same time was improving 248% and the dividend payout accumulated of the five years by a 48%. That is a strong legacy as entering into the year 2020. Now, first quarter 2020 as published this morning. Here are the results by business segment. As I said before, we continue to report our performance 2020 according to the four existing segments.
In presenting the results, it is fair to say that linked to the new circumstances in which we have entered in the first quarter with the COVID-19 outbreak, clearly we see that we have a diversified portfolio that is resisting fairly well to the context, where food-on-the-go packaging is obviously more affected by the context because of the lockdowns in the different economies across the world. At the same time as packaging for food on the shelf has been really resisting very well with actually a strong demand. If I take you through very quickly each of the business segments, Foodservice Europe-Asia-Oceania, as anticipated, has been suffering the conditions of this first quarter and has been suffering first during the first two months, mainly in China and in Asia. Whilst during the first two months, we were growing very healthily 4% to 5% in Europe.
However, with the virus outbreak spread further into the rest of the world in Europe, Middle East, Africa, and then in North America, we have suffered during the month of March, meaning Foodservice Europe-Asia-Oceania has a decline in sales in Q1 of 4% with an EBIT margin slightly reduced to the level of 8%. North America, in line with 2019, has continued to deliver very strong performance. That is a mixed picture because, of course, the foodservice packaging we have in North America has been suffering like in the rest of the world during the month of March.
We have seen in the rest of our portfolio a continuous very high demand, and that has allowed us to end the quarter on a 9% comparable growth and to increase our earnings at adjusted EBIT level by 40% in the first quarter 2020 compared to the first quarter of 2019 to a level of 10.6%. A very solid performance in North America altogether. Flexible Packaging, a moderate growth of 2% for the comparable growth of 2% for the quarter. The reported growth is actually 8% thanks to our acquisitions that I mentioned before in this session. 2% comparable growth, that is a mixed picture of a demand on food on the shelves, healthcare products, as well as basic hygiene products, which remains very high during this crisis.
We have seen that very much in Europe where we have a healthy growth of 6% during the first quarter. We have seen the very strict lockdown and restrictions implemented on the 23rd of March in India hampering our performance. That has meant that despite the growth in the previous part of the quarter in India, altogether, this has reduced slightly our performance for the quarter and impacted as well the EBIT margin to a 7.7%. Fiber Packaging is again a good highlight for the quarter with a comparable growth of 9% on the back of plastic substitution, as I was explaining before, that continues. On the back of the capacity that we have continued to invest recently in different countries, out of them Russia, for instance, and that delivers well. At the same time, the demand during the crisis has been increasing.
We have seen that particularly since the month of March for eggs, for fruits as well, and based on Fiber Packaging. That has given a very healthy quarter in fiber with an adjusted EBIT margin growing to the level of 11%. When we consolidate all this at group level, it gives a net sales of EUR 845 million, which is a growth of 5% reported. This growth has to be broken down. 3% is the comparable growth compared to Q1 2019, 1% is coming from the acquisitions in the Flexible Packaging, and 1% is coming from the currency translation that short-term are slightly positive for us, particularly coming from the USD valuation. That has translated into adjusted EBIT margin improving altogether to the level of 8.7%, and that's an increase of 0.2 points. We have kept, during this time, our balance sheet very healthy.
We have managed, of course, our CapEx to the most reasonable level when the crisis really took a certain magnitude. That has allowed us to end the quarter with a net debt over EBITDA ratio of 2.1, which remains on the low end of our ambition. This leads me to give you a few words of update on the crisis impact into our business and importantly as well, how do we manage through this crisis. The first thing I would like to highlight, and I think it's extremely important for all of us in Huhtamäki, for our employees, for our customers, as well as for the authorities in the countries, is to understand that we are in the food system industry. Together with our customers, we are making sure that food is available to all consumers in the world, everywhere in the world.
Second, food packaging is enabling several other values, which are emphasized even further during this crisis. For instance, it helps securing food safety, which is extremely important for everyone in the world, even more in these times. It is as well enabling, emphasizing the hygiene standards. Without packaging, we can't have this ambition. Thirdly, it is as well extremely important to remember that in a broader context of the sustainability agenda, that we should not forget is still extremely important for the world going forward, food packaging is the number one answer in order to reduce food waste, which is the biggest issue when we think and speak about sustainability impact from the food system on the climate change, for instance.
Really, lots of values around the food packaging industry that we need to permanently highlight, not only to our employees that are very conscious of it, and very proud about in working at Huhtamäki, but as well to the authorities. That has been extremely important during this crisis to make sure that we could continue to operate in our factories despite the restrictions that were happening country after country in the world. Reflecting further on the impact now of the crisis on our business, I have, of course, suggested quite a little bit of it into the Q1 results presentation.
Really coming back to the fact that we are serving this broad portfolio of food on-the-go and food on-the-shelf, it is very fair to say that our food on-the-go packaging is directly affected by the crisis, simply because of the lockdowns that are happening in the countries. When restaurants are closed, then QSRs, quick service restaurants, are closed, and that is, of course, a disruption to our value chain. Even though in that part of our business, there are some mitigating factors, like the food delivery that is increasing, or the drive-through concept that is extremely strong in the U.S., but in other parts of the world as well. However, it's only mitigating factors, meaning completely transparently, it's not offsetting the drop that we see linked to the restaurants closures.
On the contrary, on the food on-the-shelf packaging, we see a very strong demand. That's very positive for the company and for us. Let's remember that this is more than 50% of our business. We're talking about retail tableware products in the U.S., for instance. We're talking about consumer goods packaging. We're talking about our Flexible Packaging. We're talking about all our Fiber Packaging as well. All this is resisting very well during the crisis, the demand remains high. Something extremely important, I have emphasized it already twice in this meeting, it's the healthy balance sheet that has been managed through the recent years of Huhtamäki, and particularly in 2019.
This has been extremely important for us to enter in 2020 with such a healthy balance sheet because it gives us the confidence to be able to navigate through the crisis while still being prudent on the investment, but being resolute that we need to continue investing for growth and for short-term efficiency. All this is a context which is, of course, very stressful from a business point of view, but as well, where we have the confidence to navigate through pretty well going forward. Moving on to maybe have the ambition to take a little bit of a holistic picture on the way we have been managing the crisis since end of January, and trying to reflect on what have we done during that time, and how have we tried to manage it the best way we could.
I would be mentioning that we have been working in different phases, and those phases are now all working in parallel. We started, of course, with the first phase that I would call the initial shock. The initial shock when the first virus outbreak started in China. There has been a second shock is when it spread into the rest of the world. During this first, let's say, two weeks, we have been immediately putting in place all the required crisis management processes at global level, at the top level every day with the executive team. At the business segment level, at every local level, we have a daily crisis management. Our priority during this initial shock was to initiate all the process and procedures possible to protect our employees and to protect the business continuity for the company.
Once we had the feeling and the facts that we were managing this in order, we moved very quickly to the second phase, which I would call managing the crisis, not as a new normal, but as the reality that we have to manage during a couple of months. This has meant putting in place a lot of containment actions. Of course, since the beginning, making sure that we have a daily cash management that is extremely tight because liquidity is obviously the most important during such a tough and turbulent period of time. We have as well put in place a phased approach to containment actions in terms of cost, in terms of investment.
As I said before, investment reprioritize, if I may say, to keep only the investments that are dedicated to immediate growth or immediate efficiencies, the rest being more put on hold for a little while, as well as planning and implementing in a phased manner some cost reduction action depending on the evolution and the length of this crisis. We have moved into a third phase, and to be fully transparent, this has been a pretty recent move, about two weeks ago, where we have started to say, now that we have this under control as much as we can, it's all about planning ahead, because there will be an after crisis, and this after crisis will, in some respects, will be the same as before, in some respects will be what we all call a new normal.
We believe that it's extremely important to analyze from one side what will be the long-term impacts on our business. There may be negative, there may be some positive. As well, what are the other insights we can find on the market, on the consumer intelligence, on the society changes? For instance, increased focus on hygiene is an obvious one probably that we can foresee for the future. Increased awareness on food safety, which is very good for food packaging. Increased need of personal protective equipment, for instance. There will be an increased use of e-commerce by consumers. There will be certainly an increased requirement from consumers on traceability of products of what they consume. This added to e-commerce will mean probably a need for more or more rapid digitalization.
There will be requirements as well, increasing on food delivery process, meaning we could foresee that consumers are going to be worried about the food that they receive didn't have any human contact. This will have some impact potentially on the packaging as well. We believe as well, or we foresee that there will be an increased focus on local supply, which may be to our advantage as we have a very clear global footprint with manufacturing units close to our customers. This planning ahead is something extremely important so that we are not only suffering the crisis, but we are thinking about what the future will be and prepare the company for, number one, the bounce back, second, for the longer-term trends.
Whilst we are doing all this in parallel, we have been as well thinking about our citizenship role, meaning, I have suggested a little bit of it around how essential is food packaging industry in this period of time for the society, for the consumers everywhere. As well, how can we play a role in helping where it really matters and where there is a need for help? That has driven to some global as well as local initiatives that we have taken as a company. That will reinforce our equity, as well, play a clear social role as a company in this turbulent world. A few examples of what we have been doing, I have no intention here, that would be too long, to give you all the examples of local initiatives we have been taking, but one has been global.
We have decided, reminding that thanks to all of you in the AGM 2019, we were allowed, you have approved in the AGM 2019 that we would use our 100 years anniversary in 2020 to make donations of up to EUR 3 million into good causes through NGOs or non-profit organization. We have decided very recently in the month of April, because of the needs linked to this crisis, to give back and to redirect EUR 0.5 million of the allowed amount for the COVID needs. We have made a donation to the Red Cross through the Red Cross into specific countries where the Red Cross has advised us that they will spend the funds because there were more needs in countries like India, Bangladesh, to give only a few examples. Local initiatives have been terrific as well because this has been the motivation of our local teams.
What we have done locally is to use our products and donate some quantities of our products, for instance, paper cups, for instance, tableware kits that make life more convenient to people who are under much stress, particularly the healthcare employees that work tremendously during this period of time. We have been giving some products in order to, as well, raise the equity of the company and show how much products like the paper cups or the tableware kits can add in terms of convenience, but as well, in terms of hygiene and food safety. In the photo that you see right now in the center of the slide, this is a healthcare staff in a hospital in Spain. On the right-hand side, you see an employee of Huhtamäki that is wearing a protective face shield. This is something we are very proud of.
Our team in Northern Ireland, in our factory in Belfast, has been thinking that during the crisis, we have some equipment that is made idle by the situation of the demand. They have found equipment that we could redirect to produce different kinds of products, and this is those protective face shields that have been dedicated first to the NHS healthcare employees in Northern Ireland, then in the U.K., now that we see the huge needs that there is around many countries, then we are trying to scale up a little bit this production and spread it to further countries. Those are really a few examples of what we have been doing during this crisis in terms of raising the bar of our citizenship role as a company, I think we can be very proud of what we have done.
This leads me to conclude this COVID-19 update by saying that these unprecedented times have been really reminding us and reinforcing our commitment to our priorities, which are to protect people, to protect food, and to protect the planet, which we are very proud of and gives me a clear transition to give you a few words about our strategy going forward. This strategy, as I explained before, is really based, and we should never forget that, on a strong legacy, very solid foundation of success, as well as very clear strength, strategy capabilities that we need to build upon. At the same time, we need to understand the world in which we are entering. This world for the next decade, 2020-2030, is a world in transformation. Many transformations are happening.
We have been analyzing what are the most relevant transformative trends happening for the food systems, and particularly important for the food packaging. There are four trends that I would like to highlight and that we are really considering strongly in our strategy going forward. The first one is what we call the next billion consumers. It's, of course, clear that the demography in the world is increasing. The population is urbanizing more and more. Demography is going to be 1.2 billion more people. That's the provisions for the next 10 years. However, even more relevant probably as a number from a consumption point of view, is to know that the middle class in the world is going to actually increase much faster than the overall demography.
The middle class is going to increase by 1.8 billion people in the world in the next 10 years, from 2020 to 2030. What's interesting is to understand that this 1.8 billion people more in the middle class will come from three different geographies, China, India, Southeast Asia, which gives a clear understanding of, as well, where a good part of the market growth is going to come from. Considering that those markets are very much developing markets, it gives a clear implication that packaging and food systems will have to be available everywhere, but at the same time, affordable for the consumers of those economies. Second very important transformation that we see happening is what we call the future consumer or the consumer of the future.
It's very clear that what's happening in the world right now already, even more going forward, is a lot is changing in the food system in terms of what we eat, where we eat, when we eat, how we order what we eat, how we get supplied as well, what we eat. All this is going to transform a bit the food system ecosystem. The consumer of the future is, as well, a consumer that is very much willing to see or aspiring to more convenience in his life. Very aware, much more than in the past, about his personal as well as the planet wellbeing.
All these trends means that for us in food packaging, it will mean that the packaging will have to be probably in the future, more innovative, more individual, and certainly more sustainable. Third, a major transformative trend that we see happening going forward, that's digitalization. I should say it has started already. Digitalization is, of course, extremely important for the operations of a company like ours, but it's as well going to touch packaging in what we would call the smart packaging, and digitalized packaging will mean lots of values for the value chain, for the society. Giving you a few illustrations, it will enable our customers to engage much more interactively with their consumers.
It will as well answer one of the requirements that we foresee from the consumers, which is to have a better understanding and a better trust, I would say, on the traceability, and that's extremely important for food safety. Something we probably don't speak much about yet is digitalization. We see it on smart packaging having an impact on sustainability. Why? On the end-of-life cycle of the packaging post-consumption in terms of collection, in terms of sorting, and in terms of recycling of the packaging. We see digitalization as clearly influencing the way we will do business in the future. The last major transformative trend, and probably the most transformative and probably the most immediate, is sustainability.
Because of legislation, and legislation is extremely important for sustainability, because we see that in history, the countries having developed the best sustainability systems are the countries where the legislation was imposing certain rules and regulations. Sustainability legislation is very important, and it is developing very rapidly in those years. Second, the awareness and the aspiration of consumers is increasing very fast. Therefore, we will need, through our packaging, we have started. I have given you a few examples of innovations in more sustainable solutions we have launched in 2019. We will need in the future to have an innovation together with our partners. It is not a game that we can play alone.
Together with our partners, we will need to make sure that all innovation is for better sustainable solutions, as well as securing the circularity so that the end-of-life cycle of the packaging is ensured and adds value, together with having a more renewable packaging or material. We will come back to this. I have taken a little bit of time to give you this understanding of the way we are thinking, because that is extremely important to set a strategy that is based on what we foresee as important trends going forward. Landing into our strategy and our strategic focus for the future, we really have a belief is that we will be having a role as Huhtamäki in shaping the sustainable future of the world in offering wellbeing, more convenience lifestyles, as well as responsible lifestyles to billions of people everywhere.
We have the ambition to be the first choice in sustainable packaging going forward. To do that, we have a strategy that is set in four main strategic priorities. Growth, we want to remain this growing company that we have been in the last years. To do that, we will need to emphasize and enhance further our competitiveness. We will need to develop further our talent. We need to embed sustainability in everything we do. Then obviously, in all this, we will have to do that with very strong values, which are fully linked to the legacy of Huhtamäki, 100 years of legacy with these strong core values, care, dare, and deliver. Let me give you a little bit of granularity on these strategic priorities, these four strategic priorities that I was mentioning just now.
We will grow more in the future by scaling up further our business, particularly scaling up in North America, scaling up in Europe, but as well expanding in our strategic focus, which is the emerging markets. We will grow as well by developing much more sustainable solutions going forward. We will grow as well by emphasizing and developing packaging for food delivery. That is a trend that we see rising very fast. That will mean altogether enhancing our long-term innovation as well as venturing. We will improve our competitiveness as a company by scaling our operations so that they are as efficient as possible. We are implementing methodologies to drive productivity and world-class operational performance as well as process performance. As well, we will introduce digitalization much more in our operations to make them more efficient.
We will develop talent in the company, first of all, with something that is a very clear priority we have set from the start in this strategy. That's safety. We want to develop and nurture a zero-accident safety culture in Huhtamäki. This will be certainly a long-term journey, all specialists would say it takes five years to make such a journey successful. We are embarking with ambition on that safety culture ambition. We will as well develop our strategic capabilities that, of course, needs to be based on the strategic capabilities we have, the strength that have made the foundation of the company. As well, we need to include or develop further strategic capabilities that are made necessary by the transformative trends that I was mentioning before. We're going to develop and nurture a high-performance culture while embedding in everything we do every day, our core values.
Very important is across all our businesses and functions everywhere, we're going to embed sustainability as a number 1 priority in everything we do. That leads me to explain you and present you our ambition as a company. We are raising the bar. We want to be the first choice of in sustainable food packaging. Our long-term ambition in terms of financials is to grow 5% plus our net sales per year, is to reach 10 plus % of adjusted EBIT level for the profitability. We want to remain in the corridor 2 to 3 for the net debt over EBITDA ratio, and we want to remain in the 40%-50% corridor for the dividend payout every year. Now, we have as well raised a lot our ambition for sustainability, and that ambition is set for 2030. By 2030, and we have defined six main targets.
By 2030, we want to have 100% of our products designed for being recyclable, compostable, or reusable. We want to have more than 80% of our raw materials being of recycled sources or renewable sources. We want to have 100% of the fiber we are using coming from recycled and certified sources. We want to make sure that more than 90% of our industrial waste will be recycled or composted. We want, by 2030, to have 100% of our electricity being renewable electricity, and we want, by 2030, to make our production operations carbon neutral. As you see, a very ambitious but necessary change and upgrade of our sustainability ambition going forward for the next 10 years. This is going to be as well supported by, as I said before, a high-performance culture. This high-performance culture is not just about results. High-performance culture is about results, of course.
That's why we believe a lot into our strong core values, care, dare, deliver, that we defined in the following way with these great employees that are figured out into the pictures. Care, with the example of Melody Wilson from our factory, Hammond, in the U.S. She has 42 years of experience at Huhtamäki. We care for each other, for our customers, for our partners and communities. Dare as well. Dare, what a better example in dare to speak about this protective face shield that we just introduced, based on equipment that was made idle by the crisis. We dare to innovate, grow, and have an impact back to the message I was giving as well on the sustainability. We want to have an impact. Deliver.
We commit and deliver solutions to our customers with integrity and as a team. We want to be ambitious and strive for high performance. If we can deliver on top with a smile like our employee of the factory Springs, the fiber factory in South Africa, then it's even better. Caring is about what we want to do in this 100 years anniversary of Huhtamäki. 2020 is a huge milestone in the history of the company. We are reaching and celebrating 100 years this year. Thanks to the AGM approval last year, we are making donations up to 3 million EUR to good causes in the world. I mentioned already the donation made already in the middle of April to the Red Cross for the immediate need of the COVID-19. It was really about caring immediately. The other donations have not been done yet.
You will learn more about them in the next coming weeks. They are all around caring for the planet. We want to have an impact on the sustainability going forward, and all of them are directed towards sustainability, circularity, and innovation for the future. We have phased in 3 different concepts through different nonprofit organization and projects that we are initiating with those nonprofit organization. One is about acting today, and that's very much linked to plastic littering in rivers in India. You will learn more about it in very short time. Second, it's about educating for tomorrow, because really sustainability is about, as I said, legislation, but as well about a lot about education.
We want to educate through this donation in countries that are in need, and the NGO with which we are working, we have defined different countries in Africa, India, as well as in Southeast Asia, where we will have an impact on this. Then it's about innovating for the future. There we are working with a nonprofit umbrella organization for promoting and assisting startups, companies that will be working on sustainability and circularity development. A lot of actions, as you see, really about caring immediately, acting today, educating for tomorrow, innovating for the future. This is the way we are using this celebration of 100 years to give back to the community.
This leads me to end this update on everything I wanted to cover, and I know it was certainly a little bit long as a presentation, but the circumstances probably dictated to give a more of an update on the COVID-19. I would like to now thank you for your attention, and most importantly, I would like to thank you for your trust and confidence in Huhtamäki and in the management of Huhtamäki. Thank you very much.