Mr. Chairman, dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure for me to give you an update on Huhtamäki's strategy and performance. First, I would like to give you a couple of words about our core business and organization. We have a complementary packaging portfolio, which gives us inbuilt resilience, serving both food on the go and food on the shelf around the world. We serve consumers through different channels: QSRs, food delivery, FMCGs, and retail. Our products deliver food safety, availability, waste reduction, and accessibility around the globe, which all are important attributes for today's consumer, especially as the future of the planet requires us all to ensure that the impacts of our products are positive. Our portfolio is based on three main packaging technologies. First, the paperboard conversion.
This is particularly for foodservice packaging, with products as diverse as paper cups, lids, plates, folded cartons, wraps, bags, paper straws. Our second technology is molded fiber packaging, using rough molded fiber to produce egg cartons, fruit trays, and cup carriers, and then the smooth molded fiber technology to produce Chinet plates, fresh, ready-meal trays, and fiber cups and lids. Our third technology focuses on flexible packaging with significant expertise in demanding barrier structures that extend the shelf life of food and hence the food safety and reduces the food waste. Huhtamäki has grown into a large global player in food packaging, reaching consumers across the globe from the West Coast of the U.S. all the way to New Zealand. We reached EUR 3.6 billion revenues in 2021 and an adjusted EBIT of 8.8% in 2021.
Our operational base in 38 countries supplies our customers from our 79 factories, thanks to the great work of our almost 20,000 employees around the world. I'm pleased to introduce our global executive team. This team has gained in diversity this year, covering a broader geographic and background diversity. The team is composed of Marco Hilty, President of Flexible Packaging, Eric Le Lay, President of Fiber and Foodservice, Europe, Asia, Oceania, Ann O'Hara, President of North America, Thomas Geust, our Chief Financial Officer, Thomasine Kamerling, EVP, Sustainability and Communications, Marina Madanat, EVP, Strategy and Business Development, Sami Pauni, EVP, Corporate Affairs and Legal, Ingolf Thom, EVP, HR and Safety, and Fredrik Davidsson, who joins the company on May 1st this year as EVP, Digital and Process Performance.
I am very pleased to be able to count on this strong team to drive the business and the execution of our 2030 strategy. Let me give you a quick overview of our 2030 strategy. We launched this strategy in 2020. In 2020, we celebrated our 100-year anniversary, grounded in an impressive legacy since 1920. At the same time, we started our 2030 strategy transformation journey and renewed our purpose, broadening our responsibility with regard to our impact. We believe in protecting food, people, and the planet. We also renewed our core values: care, dare, deliver, which are true to our legacy and drive a forward-looking mindset. We strongly believe in our responsibility towards the future of the planet. We believe in the essential nature of packaging and its true value to the society.
While many would consider packaging as an increasing problem with regards, for instance, to plastic littering, we consider that packaging for food is the right solution within a broader sustainability context. Why are we so convinced and passionate about the value of packaging? First, because packaging improves hygiene and prevents the spread of disease. Because packaging enables food and products to be available and accessible everywhere in the world. Because packaging safeguards food safety. Because packaging helps prevent food waste, which is by far the biggest impact on the environment, linked to 1/3 of the food produced in the world being wasted, and that represents 10% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions. Going forward, as a foundation of our strategy, it is important that we recognize that the world of food packaging is facing a number of trends.
There are four big transformative trends that gives us opportunities in food packaging: the next billion consumer, the future consumer, digitalization, and sustainability. When talking about the next billion consumers, it's important to note that the global population is growing and global urbanization continues. During the current decade, the global population will grow by 1.2 billion people to 8.5 billion in total. At the same time, the middle class will grow by 1.8 billion people, outpacing the growth of the total population. The next billion consumers will come from China, India, Southeast Asia, and also from Africa. These people will need safe access to affordable food every day, and this access is enabled by food packaging. This means that being able to provide cost-competitive food packaging locally will become even more critical than today. The second trend is defining the future consumer.
Consumption patterns are changing rapidly, and this impacts the types of packaging that are needed. For example, the consumer of the future will want more convenience and is very conscious of personal and environmental well-being. This means that packaging needs to be innovative, individualized, and sustainable. The third trend is digitalization. Digitalization will influence packaging and the way we do business. Digitalization is happening across our core business in operations and sales management, but it is now also touching packaging itself. Digitalization will allow our customers, brands, and retailers to engage directly with consumers. It enables the traceability of products and a more efficient management of the end-of-life cycle of packaging, for instance, recycling. So we believe digitalization will shape the evolution of business models in packaging. Lastly, sustainability. This is probably the most transformative and immediate opportunity we have. Sustainability will drive innovation and collaboration through the value chain.
The demands for solutions in circularity and plastic substitution are growing fast. We need to think more about circularity, which means collection and recycling. We built our 2030 strategy keeping these transformative trends in mind. Our strategy reflects our belief in our role in protecting food, people, and the planet. Our ambition is to be the first choice in sustainable packaging solutions. Our strategy focuses on growth, competitiveness, and talent, while embedding sustainability in everything we do, and we believe that all these strategic priorities will be driven by and accelerated by digital technologies and data. Let me give you some more granularity related to these four strategic pillars. We improve our competitiveness by pursuing world-class operational and process performance at a global and at a local level by creating efficient structures and driving scale in our core business.
We develop talent, which is key for our success in the future, by building required strategic capabilities in answer to the transformation I mentioned before, such as digital business intelligence, long-term innovation. We promote a high-performance culture. We develop something that we believe is extremely important, a zero-accident safety culture every day for everyone. We embed our value in the way we work every day and across the entire organization. We embed sustainability in everything we do and in all our business decisions. In particular, we focus on becoming world-class in environmental, social, and governance matters. We also prioritize innovation to develop sustainable solutions. We further increase the use of renewable materials and improve our operations' carbon impact. Finally, and most importantly, we want to drive circularity. The fourth pillar of our growth strategy is digitalization. This is the enabler and connector of all strategic initiatives.
We accelerate the digitalization of our operations, focusing on, first, the shop floor digitalization and all the commercial processes. For this, we have put in place a modernization plan for our IT system and infrastructures. We will also focus on digitizing our packaging, in line with our vision that a digitalized packaging offers greater value for the value chain. It enables consumers' engagement. For brands and retailers, it enables product traceability, and it will enable efficient recycling at scale. Let's now have a retrospective look at our performance 2021, which has been strong. The year 2021 has been a year of external disruption, with the continued impact from the COVID-19 crisis across all the world, the severe disruption of the value chain, with unprecedented raw material and energy inflation, and the continued geopolitical tensions disrupting the business operating environment during the whole year of 2021.
Within this context, we have delivered strong growth and solid profitability. The recovery on food-on-the-go packaging accelerated in comparison to 2020. The significant inflation in the cost environment impacted profitability despite an effective mitigation action. Overall, we have been successful in passing through the raw material inflation. However, it has been more challenging in emerging markets. We continue to focus on our sustainability priorities. Our science-based targets have been approved. Our global sustainability index continues to improve. More in detail now by business segment. In North America, demand for food service-related packaging has improved following easing of restrictions, particularly relating to schools, offices, and stadiums. Demand for retail tableware remains strong, and the ice cream market remained relatively stable.
Demand for food service packaging was negatively impacted, obviously, by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the closure of quick service restaurants and due to the restrictions on movement throughout the year. The demand, however, improved gradually during the year, thanks to vaccination deployment, and at the same time, restrictions were starting to be lifted around the world. Demand remained resilient through Q4, despite the acceleration of new COVID variants, and, in addition, demand for food delivery increased as people stayed at home more, reflecting emerging new consumption habits that may stay for the long term. Demand for food-on-the-shelf packaging, constituting of mainly flexible packaging and fiber packaging, remained relatively resilient to the effects of the COVID-19. The impact on the retail business and consumer goods products was limited, though the demand for eggs packaging softened against a very high 2020 comparisons.
Demand for flexible packaging varied between products, categories, and markets throughout the year, and the competitive situation remained pretty high, and some emerging markets continued to be disrupted, like India, for instance. During the year 2021, we accelerated our innovation pipeline and delivered new sustainable packaging solutions for our customers, and I'll give you a few examples. In the paperboard conversion first, we released new products for food delivery, as well as sustainable solutions, paper-based for FMCG products. In the molded fiber technology, we innovated both rough molded fiber for eggs packaging and in smooth molded fiber for fiber cups and lids, which have received international awards for their sustainability profile. In flexible packaging, we have also focused on delivering sustainable solutions. For instance, with tube laminates and new Push Tab blisters for the pharmaceutical industry, which are made of special paper, replacing plastic and aluminum.
In 2021, we delivered a solid performance on ESG ratings, recognizing our significant improvements in the ESG matters, which are at the center of our strategy. Sustainability has been integrated in the company incentive program, rolled out first to the global executive team and then to all employees. There is no question for anyone in our organization that protecting the planet is our key objective in doing business for the long term. On the renewable or recycled materials, the acquisition of Elif increased purchased plastic volumes pretty significantly, and that negatively impacted the KPI. This trend is expected to continue in 2022 with the full impact of the Elif integration. However, we remain committed to our 2030 ambition. On the certified or recycled fiber ratio, which we want to bring to 100%, it currently stands at 98%. Our mix was negatively impacted in 2021.
However, we have an action plan in place to secure progress. We have made good progress in our renewable energy goal, driven by, first of all, solar installations and some sites purchasing green energy from the grid. In addition, our renewable energy share will further increase in the next couple of years, thanks to the conclusion this year, 2021, of virtual power purchase agreements in Europe and in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2022. Absolute greenhouse gas emissions from the company decreased 7% compared to the baseline year, 2019, which is in line with our science-based targets. We improved waste management practices across several sites and benefited positively from the Elif acquisition, with very efficient waste management practices. We have our first site delivering zero waste to landfill. This is a site, Marion, in Indiana, a factory in North America.
We are making great progress as well in our water management plans and in our safety performance, which was solid and improved in 2021, although we have a long way to go in establishing what I call a zero-accident culture, which remains a key objective going forward for the company. We have announced important investments in 2021 to scale up our core business, both organically and inorganically. We have a new world-class manufacturing unit in the capital region of Malaysia. By investing in this strategically located facility near Kuala Lumpur, Huhtamäki creates a platform for future growth in the Southeast Asian region. We announced as well the setting up of a new fiber packaging capacity in South Africa. This investment will allow Huhtamäki to serve its existing and new egg packaging customers in South Africa with a broad range of locally produced packaging solutions.
The proximity, as well, of this new unit to one of South Africa's main export ports will allow direct access to markets across East Africa. We have reinforced our leadership strategy in emerging markets with the acquisition of Elif, a major supplier of sustainable packaging solution in the flexible packaging. We acquired Hihio-Art Packaging, a leading manufacturer of paper bags, wrapping paper, and folding carton packaging in China. With this acquisition, Huhtamäki continued to strengthen its position as the leading foodservice packaging provider in Asia, and expanded its product portfolio in China to better serve its existing and new customers in this exciting growth market. We acquired Elif in Turkey and Egypt as it complements our portfolio and because Elif is truly a trusted long-term partner for major global consumer brand owners in Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Elif is a leader in its market.
Elif manufactures consumer packaging for personal care, health care, and home care, but as well for food products. Elif brings to Huhtamäki state-of-the-art flexographic printing and a strong performance in sustainability. This acquisition reinforces Huhtamäki's position as a leading flexible packaging company in emerging markets, and it adds scale in strategic geographies, as well as improving our competitiveness. In other words, the acquisition of Elif presents many synergy opportunities on the top line growth, cost competitiveness, technology complementarity, and sustainability performance. With these two acquisitions in 2021, our leverage increased at the end of the year 2021 from two to three. And it is already slightly improving at the end of Q1 2022, as we start seeing the benefits of the integrated acquisitions.
The dividend proposed for the year 2021 remains within our long-term commitment of a 40%-50% payout, with a dividend of EUR 0.94 for 2021, representing a payout of 45%. It is good to underline that the 2021 dividend represents the 13th consecutive year of increase of our dividend in absolute terms, and it has been increasing in average 8% per year. Let's now have a look at our performance during the first quarter of 2022. First, underlining what we all know, which is that the operating environment has been highly disrupted in the first quarter. The COVID pandemic remains a reality globally and very tense now in China, for instance. It continues to challenge normal consumption patterns.
At the same time, the disruption of the global supply chain that started early in 2021 continues in 2022, with very high inflation in all input costs, raw materials, energy, logistics, labor. But in addition, it creates more and more scarcity of volume in the context of high demand. The Russian war in Ukraine has added a dramatic disruption to an already very challenging context. We at Huhtamäki condemn the war in the strongest possible terms, and we stopped at the end of February all our investments to Russia immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We consider that the current evolution of the situation and the outlook in Russia will prevent the realization of our growth strategy and long-term ambitions in the country. As a consequence, and as recently announced, we have decided to initiate a divestment process of our Russian operations.
We will, at the same time, continue to prioritize investments that capture the significant growth opportunities in the rest of the world, in line with our global ambitions and 2030 strategy. Our performance in Q1 2022 has been really strong. Our net sales grew 31%, 19% in comparable terms after adjusting for acquisitions. The growth is enabled by pricing recovery of the high inflation and by strong volume growth, consequence of the demand, but as well, consequence of the important investment we realized in 2021. The adjusted EBIT grew in Euro by 27%, very much in line with the sales, and the adjusted EBIT margin reached 9.3%, which is slightly below a very strong Q1 2021, which was before the supply chain disruption. And importantly, Q1 EBIT is well above the full year 2021 result.
We continue to invest in our capacity for growth, particularly in smooth molded fiber, where we see significant growth opportunity as a response to plastic substitution trend. Our results in the last years and in the beginning of 2022 demonstrate that we are very committed to our long-term ambitions, both in terms of economic ambition as well as sustainability leadership. We believe in contributing to create a better world, a more sustainable world for the future of the planet, and this is particularly important to us, and it is embedded in our growth strategy. We remain inspired every day by the belief that the future of packaging will be made of renewable materials, that packaging will be recycled, that packaging will be smart, including a digital identity offering benefits to consumers and the entire value chain, and that packaging will be produced through carbon-neutral operations.
This is what inspires us day in and day out at Huhtamäki, as we believe in protecting food, people, and the planet. Thank you for your attention, and thank you for your trust.