A very warm welcome to everyone. I'm delighted that you can join our 2022 Digital Capital Markets Day. Stora Enso's purpose, to do good for people and the planet, is more important now than ever before. Every day, we hear about the urgency to break our world's dependency on fossils and move towards renewable and circular solutions. Our people, customers, and our partners are all committed to this mission, and we firmly believe that everything that's made of fossil materials today can be made from a tree tomorrow. This is what drives our growth opportunities, value creation, and shapes our innovation agenda. Our products and solutions are renewable and circular, and the CO2 they replace and store helps to mitigate climate change for a sustainable and renewable future for all. Before we go deeper into the presentation, let's take a look at today's agenda.
I will start by giving you an overview of our overall progress, performance, and strategic direction. We will then continue by diving into our growth businesses, packaging, wood products, and biomaterials innovation. Our focus will be on our key drivers of growth and our opportunities. This part will be presented by my team leading these businesses, Hannu Kasurinen, Lars Völkel, and Johanna Hagelberg respectively. After a short break of about 10 minutes, our CFO Seppo Parvi will kick off the second half of this event, giving you a more detailed overview of our financial performance. We will end by inviting you to listen to an exciting panel discussion moderated by Annette Stube, who is driving our sustainability transformation. She will be joined by external collaboration partners and customers from Tetra Pak, Bouygues, and Northvolt, who will give their views on key trends and future developments.
We will then conclude with a Q&A moderated by Anna-Lena Åström, heading our investor relations, and you can already now submit your questions at the bottom of the webcast page. With that, let's kick this event off. When I reflect on my two and a half years as CEO, quite a lot has happened since we had our last capital markets day roughly two years ago. I believe, as a result of our chosen strategic direction and strong execution, we now have a much more attractive and resilient investor proposition. We have delivered on our promises and taken decisive actions to focus, position, and accelerate business for higher performance. Our new decentralized operating model allows for fast decision-making, close to the market and customers. This empowers our leaders and organization to drive commercial and operational excellence.
Our profit protection program is completed, delivering ongoing cost savings of more than EUR 400 million. We've also formed a new forest division, including the acquired Swedish forests and implemented market-based valuation. We have really seen the benefit of our flexible wood supply network. It has been crucial in these turbulent times, securing high quality, cost competitive, and sustainable wood. Another key step has been our decision to step out of the structurally declining paper business. After restructuring and turning around the retained business, it is competitive and ready to be divested. Therefore, I'm now very glad to present the first divestment announced today, and I will shortly provide you with more details on this transaction. As you can see, our exposure is now significantly reduced and represents only a small part of our total sales. This transformation has made us more efficient and less cyclical company.
Our focus, resources, and investments can now be allocated where we have the best business opportunities for profitable growth with leading market position and strong competitiveness. I'm happy to say that we're also delivering on our strategic roadmap to accelerate growth organically and through selective M&A. Last time, we introduced our three focus areas, packaging, building solutions, and biomaterial innovations. In renewable packaging, we're doing capacity expansions in existing production sites and converting selected paper assets into high quality, cost leading packaging production. Last week, we also announced our first acquisition in a long time, and Hannu will share more insights with you later. To grasp the market growth and improve competitiveness in wood and construction market, we have invested in operational efficiency in our sawmills, in capacity expansions and service offerings in our building solutions business. Lars will describe this more in detail.
Lastly, in biomaterials innovations, we are making progress with our Lignode products and have recently signed a significant joint development agreement with Northvolt to build the world's greenest battery. Johanna will shed some more light on the progress we are making. All together, these actions will generate almost EUR 2.7 billion to our top line. Our decisive execution is also visible in our financial performance, and I'm proud that we have delivered some of the strongest numbers in Stora Enso's history during, I would say, quite extraordinary times of turmoil and disruption. In the last 12 months, we reached a year-on-year growth of 30% versus our 5% target excluding paper. For operational return on capital employed excluding forest, we reached almost record levels of 22%, significantly above our 13% target. Also, our balance sheet has been strengthened.
Net debt to operational EBITDA is for the first time at 1, below our target of 2, and our net debt to equity ratio has significantly improved to 21%, far below our target of 60%. For the first time in a long time, we have the financial muscles to accelerate both our organic and M&A growth actions, and we have the resilience for more difficult times. Within sustainability, we have set ambitious science-based targets with a focus on the three areas most critical to our business. For CO2, we have a target of 50% reduction in absolute emissions in Scope 1, 2, and 3 by 2030. We are well on our way. The last 12 months, we have reached 20% reduction. In circularity, our target for 2030 is to offer products that are 100% recyclable.
We will reach this by adopting circular design guidelines for all our products and collaborating in the value chain for recycling of fiber-based packaging in Europe. On biodiversity, we have set a target to have a net positive impact by 2050. Here, we are using science-based indicators to track progress in combination with advanced precision forestry tools. We have a detailed action plan, including biodiversity services we can offer to our forest owners and other partners. If you are more interested, you can follow our work and progress in each of these areas on our website. Sustainability is our business, accelerating our growth, enabling margin expansions, and opening up new business opportunities. Megatrends such as urbanization, climate change, and resource scarcity underpin the key drivers for a profitable growing business. Circularity is necessary as resources become scarcer to reduce waste and to improve material use efficiency.
It is driving consumer behavior and demand for sustainable and recyclable products. Carbon neutrality creates a significant need for both our products and sustainably managed forests, which act as short and long-term carbon storage. Renewability calls for fiber-based packaging to replace plastics and wooden building solutions replacing concrete and steel. Being biodiversity positive for us means promoting the health and resilience of our forest and ecosystem for the long term. We are responding with an increase in new end use and customer innovations. As a result, fiber-based packaging is for the first time expected to grow faster than plastics and other materials over the next 5 years globally. The global wood-based building solutions market is expected to expand more than 10% between 2021 and 2030. We are creating the foundation for a renewable future now.
Our products store CO2 and replace and displace fossil-based products, and this is the foundation to the growth potential that we see with our products. Looking first at our foundation areas, the forest is the base for everything that we do. It is the essential basis for our sustainability credentials. The traditional wood products is the base for developing higher margin value add building solutions. Pulp is a strong cash generator with high-quality assets. It supports our growth in packaging, generating sales into highly specialized end users such as tissue or hygiene, and it is also serving as the source of innovative solutions based on lignin. In our three strategic growth areas, we see the greatest potential for scalable innovation and commercialization of new products. In packaging, we see high demand for plastic-free and circular solutions. This growth is driven by both brand owners, consumers, and regulation.
Within wooden building solutions, we are a global industry leader, and the construction market is shifting more and more towards less labor-intensive and modular way of building. Here, we are in a great position to capture a larger share of the value chain with our products and value-added services. When it comes to biomaterials innovations, we target high-growth, high-margin, and product markets. All three focus areas are closely interlinked with our innovation agenda. As we have communicated earlier, paper is not a strategic growth area for us. Four out of our five paper production sites will be divested, while one site will be retained for a potential conversion. This divestment process is progressing well, and we have several interested buyers. Each site will be divested individually to maximize shareholder value and to find the best match with buyers.
The sales process has no immediate effect in our paper operations. We continue to serve all our paper customers. I'm happy to say that we have now signed an agreement to divest our site in Maxau in Germany to Schwarz Produktion, part of one of the world's largest retailers, Schwarz Group. The enterprise value of the transaction is EUR 210 million, and is expected to be completed in the beginning of 2023. All 440 employees will be part of the transaction, and I'm personally very satisfied to have found a new long-term home for this site with the possibility to thrive under the new ownership. Now over to one of our growth initiatives. A few days ago, we announced our acquisition of De Jong Packaging Group with close to EUR 1 billion in sales.
With this step, we more than double our packaging solutions business, and it is fully in line with our strategy to primarily grow through M&A in this business. De Jong Packaging Group is based in the Netherlands and is one of the largest corrugated packaging producers in the Benelux countries. The team in De Jong has a strong track record in profitable growth, organic and through M&A, and we expect the transaction to be closed at the beginning of 2023, subject, of course, to regulatory approvals. Hannu will share a little bit more information later, but this is a significant step for us that will accelerate revenue growth and build market share in renewable packaging in Europe. As you can see in these charts, we have done a tremendous transformation of our product portfolio.
You can see on the left that in 2006, 70% of our sales were generated by paper. Today, 60% comes from growth businesses, and in 2030, our ambition is that 80% of sales comes from high margin growth businesses. Another ambition by 2030 is to reduce earnings cyclicality by half. I've already elaborated about exiting paper, and as we grow our building solutions, which Lars will talk about later, we reduce the cyclicality impact from our classic sawn business. Since most of the growth will come from the packaging business, we naturally reduce our long market pulp position, and we can increase integration by using more of our pulp internally, for instance, eucalyptus, instead of selling it to the market. Lastly, we are developing more value add and specialized pulp products in less cyclical segments, as Johanna will explain later on.
All in all, our target is to have a significantly reduced market pulp exposure going forward. There are few businesses, if any, that can claim that they have a positive climate impact. Well, we can. Our value chain emits just above 10 million tons of CO2 yearly, and as I shared earlier, our targets are to reduce that by 50% by 2030 and to be net zero by 2050. When growing, our forests remove and store 1.5 million tons of CO2. Our products also store carbon, leading to another 2.5 million tons of net removal of CO2. The biggest impact, however, we have when our products substitute fossil-based products or products demanding high energy consumption. Every time a steel frame is replaced by a wooden one, every time a paper packaging is chosen instead of a plastic one.
In total, these substitution effects are the biggest, more than 17 million tons of CO2 per year for our current business. In essence, the more we manage our forests sustainably and the more we grow our renewable business, the better the results are for the climate. This is what motivates us, business and sustainability going hand in hand. In summary, what will Stora Enso look like in 2030? Through our growth initiatives, we will increase our sales by 30% compared to 2021 with a healthy 15% EBIT margin over the cycle. Our packaging business will represent more than 60% of our sales. We will increase our share of building solutions to 40% of wood products and increase the operational EBITDA of the business by 75% over a cycle and have more than EUR 1 billion business from new lignin-based materials.
We also target to reduce our earnings cyclicality by half. Lastly, we want to deliver between 5 and 10 terawatt-hours of wind power on our own forest land, and Seppo will share some thoughts on that in his section. We have high ambitions, and we are realizing our renewable future today. With that, I would like to hand over to Hannu that will take us through the fascinating world of packaging.
My name is I'm responsible for packaging materials division. I have a long career in the company, and the last 10 years I've been working in the packaging roles. Today, I'm presenting how we drive growth in packaging, both packaging materials and packaging solutions. The world is looking for new alternatives to plastics, and fiber is part of the solution. Did you know that 20 million tons of plastic packaging is wasted in Europe every year? Globally, the number is 400 million tons. This is horrible. 25% of this plastic could be substituted by recyclable and low CO2 fiber-based solutions. This is fantastic opportunity to our industry. Substitution is happening, and fiber-based packaging is the fastest-growing packaging format globally. I will go through this journey with you during my presentation. We have the broadest portfolio in the industry.
Our business is split into two segments: consumer board, container board, and packaging solutions. Consumer board is very stable. It has to do with our daily needs. We need to drink, eat, take the medication. We have five different businesses. Liquid packaging board, it's about fresh and aseptic liquid packages. We have a food service board. It consists of cup stock, i.e. paper cups, trays, and plates. We have coated unbleached kraft. I call it the brown consumer board, and this is fit, for example, when eating burgers, and the clamshell is made out of brown board. Solid bleached sulfate. It is SBS, and it's actually the most pulp-containing board we have. It has fantastic visual appearance, and therefore it's often used in luxury end uses. When you walk around at the airport, duty-free uses loads of our SBS grades.
comes, last but not least, folding box board. It's really the fighter grade. It is fit for the pharma packaging. It can be used in direct food contact, and that's actually the fastest-growing packaging grade of our portfolio. Container board. We are dividing into virgin fiber business and recycled business. Kraft liners are virgin fiber. You can have a direct food contact. Typical end uses are that we pack, for example, fruits, vegetables into this, and the board performs also in very demanding hot and humid conditions. Whereas the testliner is recycled, typical application is a corrugated box, for example, for the TVs. We have semi-chemical fluting, which is the curly liner between the two testliner layers, what you see when you open up a box. Packaging solutions is our converting business. It is a regional business.
We mainly produce corrugated packages. E-commerce is a big driver there. Then we have a new business portfolio. We are commercializing our innovations. I will get back to the new businesses in a while. We have a strong market position in Europe, but most of our products also travel globally. We are one of the top ten players in the world. We have premium products and services for most demanding end uses. Our kraft liners, our flutings, are global premium niche segments. Like said, corrugated packaging is rather local fragmented market, and we've been growing through organically and also with acquisitions like Annica was already presenting. In our consumer board, we have these leading market positions. In liquid packaging, we are global number one, and in food service boards, we are European leader. Here, our strategy is minimum maintain the growth, i.e.
Grow at the same speed as the market does. We have these two following grades, folding box board and CUK, the brown board. Here we actually see the best substitution opportunities in short to medium term. Hence, our strategy is to outgrow the market. Comes SBS, the luxury board. Here, actually, we see a little bit opposite trend. Even though we continue to offer SBS in the luxury end uses, the best quality folding box board is actually taking market share from SBS. In container boards, we are regional leaders. We've been growing the virgin fiber kraft liners through successful conversions, and we have a strong position in Europe, and now we want to then fine-tune our offering to the customers. In semi-chemical fluting, it is the niche curly liner, as I said, and here our intention is to stay with the current position, i.e.
One of the European leaders. The real growth segment now in container board are these recycled liners, where we are planning to grow in Western Europe. We already have a strong position in Eastern Europe, Poland. In the packaging solutions business, we are number one in the Nordics. We have a strong footprint also in Baltics, Poland, and now through the De Jong acquisition, we are becoming one of the leading players in Benelux. Few words about integration benefits in our core regions. It's good to understand we have integration benefits creating synergies inside the mills, between the mills, and between them our board machines, board mills, and corrugated converting units. In Nordics, which is really the home base for our fantastic fiber, we have multiple big mills, obviously in the remote areas where the trees are growing.
We call these big mills mega sites. Typically, a mega site is a mill where you have a pulp mill, maybe multiple board machines. You may have a sawmill there and further processing like sheeting, coating. We simply have the size of the scale of size creating economic benefits. This is something that is very much creating the competitive advantage, especially the energy that we can get out of the pulp mills is a major player. We also have smaller sites which are unintegrated. There we have been successfully creating niche product concepts where we can get premium prices and then afford a little bit higher cost level. We are optimizing the product mix. We can do it inside the mills and between the mills.
As an example, we are planning now to make a big conversion in Oulu, northern Finland. We are converting a paper machine into folding box board and CUK grades. By doing that, we can actually transfer some of the CUK production from Skoghall mill in Sweden up to Oulu, and we can run more liquid packaging board than in Skoghall. This creates less SKUs, more efficiency, more output. Similar action can be done in Imatra mill in Finland, where we are then moving folding box board from Imatra to Oulu and running more food service board. This gives you an idea what kind of benefits we have between the mills and in the integrated. Going Eastern and Western Europe, we have a very strong footprint in Poland.
We have recycled a mill in Ostrołęka, Poland, and it's actually serving our converting units in Poland. This is a winning combination. Our intention is to take this winning combination to Western Europe through De Jong and the planned Langerbrugge conversion. We also have a beverage carton recycling ongoing in Poland, and we are looking into repeat this model in connection with Langerbrugge mill. In China, we have a little bit of a different position. We have state-of-the-art consumer board mill in Guangxi, southern China, where we also have the plantations. We have four folding carton converting units roughly 2,000 kilometers northeast.
The physical distance is a little bit too long, hence we have less kind of volume synergies, but we've been working actively with our China packaging solutions converting to do the product launches, testing, qualifying, and the ramp-up of Beihai Mill was very much supported by our packaging solutions. Let's review the recent acquisition we announced last Thursday. This is really the growth driver for our packaging solutions business. We are talking about De Jong Packaging. It's a Dutch company. It's founded in 1996. It has 1,300 employees, EUR 1 billion sales. It's a sizable packaging company. The margins are healthy. EBITDA, roughly EUR 114 million is the estimate. What's very important is the synergies. We are planning to capture synergies of EUR 30 million annually over the business cycle.
We can actually start to harvest the synergies when the transaction is closed by starting to supply them board from our existing board mills in Poland and Nordics to De Jong corrugated plants. What makes this really exciting is that there's actually ongoing investment program. EUR 275 million will be invested mainly at the De Lier site in the Netherlands, and then there is an additional investment in the U.K. We are talking about EUR 275 million, as I said, but this will then increase the EBITDA by EUR 40 million by 2025. When you now look at the map, our local presence is key.
We have started in Nordics, we have come down to Baltics, we are strong in Poland, and now we are stepping into Germany, in Benelux, where we are number 3 position, and then moving over to U.K. This sounds really good, but there's even better to come. We have an excellent fit with our potential Langerbrugge conversion. In Langerbrugge, in the Port of Ghent, Belgium, we are planning to convert a major size newsprint machine into recycled container board grades. The decision should be taken during the first half 2023, and if we go forward with that one, we have a mill up and running in 2025. Here we have actually rather unique combination possibility.
We would convert Langerbrugge, the most cost-efficient containerboard site in Europe, together with De Lier production site, and this is planned to be the largest and most modern corrugating site in Europe after ongoing expansion. I sincerely believe that this is one plus one is more than two in this case. Very excited about it. We have the very close physical distance between these two units, 160 kilometers only, so it gives us additional opportunities then for commercial and cost integration benefits over the business cycle. For example, when we would be then ramping up Langerbrugge containerboard, we would have a strong internal customer who would be willing to qualify, give us continuous feedback, and this has been successful in our other conversion cases. We have delivered profitable growth. The sales have now exceeded on combined basis EUR 5 billion landmark. Packaging Materials has been driving this.
We have been quite successfully increasing our production. We have new production records. We've been successful with the pricing, whereas packaging solutions has had a little bit of a different roadmap. They have been restructuring their Nordic operations, and then we had to exit from Russia. That explains a bit why the revenue development is different. However, we are now obviously turning a new page in the case of packaging solutions. Operationally a bit, I'm extremely proud. We actually have been able to improve the margins, and this is again due with the right pricing, with the cost control, and then obviously the Oulu conversion of the first machine has impacted both sales and margins. Now, operational ROOC. We have been given a tough target, 20%, and why I say tough, we are heavy asset division which is under growth mode.
You have to understand that this 20% ROOC is over the cycle. In our packaging solutions division, we have now reset the target from 25% to 15% level. Seppo Parvi, our CFO, will discuss that in his presentation. Like Annica was already referring, we had a trend shift, and for the first time, board has the highest predicted growth rate. I think this is really exciting. What's behind this interesting trend is that we, you, the consumers, I mean, we are effectively preferring fiber-based packaging over plastics. 7 out of 10 consumers think that packaging should be actually based out of fiber. The global packaging market is huge, EUR 1,000 billion, and the best thing is that it's actually growing by 4%, and this is much faster than the overall GDP growth in the economy. Now when we look at the.
How has the value of a package developed during the last years. From 2016 to 2021, different plastic grades were growing roughly 4%-5%, and board was only growing 3%. Now we have seen for the first time the trend changing. Actually, board is taking the lead, going forward 5%, and the others are growing between 3%-4%. I've been waiting this data for a long time, and now it's happening. This is simply awesome. We are well-positioned to capture EUR 1.5 billion additional sales in consumer board and container board. We've been discussing about our Oulu mill in Finland, where we have had successful container board conversion of the first paper machine. Timing was perfect. We were ramping up the asset into very, very good tailwind, and it's been a major success.
Now we are looking into the second machine conversion. We are planning to convert that into virgin fiber consumer board. The products, folding box board and the brown board CUK, are planned to be produced in Oulu. Estimated sales would be roughly EUR 800 million, and we are expecting to make a decision by end of this year, which would allow us then to start the production in 2025. We've already discussed about the Langerbrugge. Yes, we have a feasibility study ongoing. Decisions would be made during the first half of 2023, and the estimated annual sales around EUR 350 million. How do we plan and implement these massive growth projects? It's very important to remember that we are planning the asset life at least for 30 years, and the capital in question can be EUR 1 billion.
It's very important that we actually spend enough time with the planning. It all starts from feasibilities, pre-feasibility study, which takes roughly 6-9 months. In this pre-feasibility study, we are assessing all critical parts of the project. Lot of focus into markets, commercials, technology, where do we get the raw material, what kind of energy balance, how do we get the CO2 down, and so on and so forth. Then it all boils down to the financial calculation. If the calculation looks feasible, we go into the feasibility study, which takes roughly 12 months. In the feasibility, we are going into details. We are reconfirming all the findings of the pre-feasibility study. We start to apply the environmental permits. Often we make the project public, and then our suppliers are working with their binding offers.
If feasibility study still shows positive outcome, we go into the construction phase, which normally takes 2 years. During the construction time, or let's put it this way, time can depend what is the order situation by the main suppliers and what is the complexity of the project. Once construction is over, we go to ramp-up phase. The most successful, fastest ramp-ups, like with this Oulu first machine, took only 1 year. If we are ramping up more kind of a complicated demanding products like liquid packaging board, it easily takes another year because simply the liquid packaging qualification process is very structured, number of stage gates, so our converter customers can't really let it happen faster. Then we go to full production. You can say that the overall project takes somewhere between 6-7 years.
Capital spending happens mainly during the construction time. It's important to remember that when we put a lot of capital and the payback doesn't happen immediately, this is then putting pressure on our ROOC, and therefore, the ROOC is over the cycle, as I said. Our planned new board assets are among European cost leaders. I think this is impressive picture and is illustrating how the planned cost position of our product delivered from the mill location to Frankfurt, in this case, how does it look? The further left you are on this curve, the more cost competitive you are. On the left-hand side, we have Oulu folding box board delivered to Frankfurt, and I'm happy to say that we have the lowest cost position, and this makes me feel very good. Our existing assets are there with the dark blue in the middle.
I think this Oulu will be a real player in the market if we go forward with that one. In Oulu, we have obviously the benefit of an existing integrated. We have raw material available. We have deep sea port there. Very important factor is to remember that the conversion of the second machine would not only benefit this machine, but also it would be benefiting the rest of the integrateds because we will have more revenue to share between them, and share between the costs in the integrated. There you have, again, integrated benefits. The Langerbrugge case looks even better. There we are in the heart of Europe, nearby Ghent. We actually have 80 million consumers consuming corrugated boxes day in, day out, and even more importantly, they are recycling them.
We have access to the customers, but also to raw material. We have, again, strong integrated synergies, but the exceptional benefit in this Langerbrugge case is the energy solution. We are burning local municipal and industrial waste. We actually get paid for that. Imagine now when vast majority of our competitors are using natural gas in their boilers, so the difference is significant. Actually, I think this cost curve would be much steeper. With the blue one, we have our Ostrołęka mill in Poland, which is also well-positioned. I'm very much looking forward to these two growth projects. Value chain collaboration driven by sustainability. Today, we partner throughout the value chain. Sustainability is the common denominator for all the players. Traditionally, Stora Enso was very much focusing on the buying-selling relationship with the converters. Today, we are all over the value chain.
We have strong synergies with our group. It starts from the forest ownings, wood supply. We have internal pulp supply coming from Johanna's pulp mills. We have significant energy assets. The PVO exposure is very valuable to us. We do have strong sourcing and logistics organization. We actually are one of the biggest customers to European carriers. Then we have the valuable internal converting through packaging solutions. We have a natural access then to the brand owners and retailers through packaging solutions. The strategic collaboration with converter customers has developed tremendously during the last few years. We are sharing, learning, trusting to each other. There's a lot of innovation activity. We are working with the recycling. We are working with our sustainability communication. With brand owners, we have two ways to interact. Normally, we want to at least be specified with the board.
If Nestlé wants to have three suppliers for their Nespresso package, we better be one of them. The other alternative is that we have a direct deal with the brand owner. We agree the commercial terms, and then Nestlé simply assigns the converting job to a converter. The role of retailers has become very important. They have the data about the consumers, their buying behaviors. Retailers have their own private labels, hence, if they want to move, they can do it very quickly. Retailers can also then put pressure on brand owners to say that this and that objective actually needs to be substituted from plastic to paper. The whole value chain collaboration is the key. Plastic substitution opportunity will be captured through innovation. I have three examples here to present how we are working with these end users and the customers.
On the left-hand side is the food end use. Here we have an example of formed fiber. This is one of our new business, portfolio products, and it's actually kind of a compressed pulp. Here we have replaced in the salad application a plastic package and the lid, and there's a lot of demand for this kind of applications. In addition with the food service cases, paper cup is a good example. Traditionally, we have had rather thick layer of PE on the top, can be also on the other side, on both sides of the cup. Now we've been able to reduce the plastic layer, so we are well in compliance with this 10%, maximum, ruling that European Commission is introducing.
We also have new type of technologies, so if a customer doesn't want to have PE, we have water-soluble dispersion coatings. What's very important thing what we are now starting to activate is to organize the collection and recycling of paper cups. Normally, paper cups are thrown in the waste bins, so recycling is not the problem, but it's the problem to get access to them. You will hear about this in the near future. In liquid packaging, we have a very good starting position. Did you know that this actually has 47% lower CO2 footprint than PET? We will improve. We are going to now reduce the plastic layers. Our long-term plan is to take aluminum away from the aseptic liquid packaging and replace that with fiber-based barrier. It is maybe the most demanding task we have, but there we are working with our customers.
We are also getting active with the liquid packaging recycling, as I said. In the world of transport packaging, here, I think the first thing we want to solve, and we're actually selling services to brand owners that how a brand owner can improve their efficiency of the supply chain. A good example is that often the package is oversized. It's simply taking too much weight on the truck, space on the truck. It has a too high weight, and therefore we can tailor-made the size of the packaging for the respective product. We also have very interesting new material then to safeguard, protect the valuable item inside the packaging called Fibrease. This is fully fiber-based, a material that is used as a cushion material. This is actually replacing polymer foam.
Guess how much is the CO2 saving? 80%-90%. Pretty impressive. A few words about our growth plan until 2030. We are working with both organic and acquisition route. We've been growing roughly 6% per annum from 2016 to 2021. As you have heard today, we have a lot of actions in the pipeline. We have the De Jong acquisition, which is expected to increase the top line by EUR 1 billion. We have these ongoing feasibility studies, another EUR 1.1 billion. We have multiple other projects which we haven't announced yet. There are certain projects that are ongoing, like we are rebuilding one board machine in Skoghall. It's a EUR 100 million investment, and it will increase our top line by EUR 100 million in 2023 and 2024.
I'm actually convinced that the nice growth will continue. Finally, let's review then our ambitions by 2030. We want at least grow the sales by 60% versus 2021. We want at least double our EBIT during the same time period. This leads into highest industry margins. We also want to be fully integrated with our board capacity towards internal pulp. This would mean that Johanna's market pulp exposure would be reduced. We want to maintain the leadership position in sustainable packaging design and innovation. We are also committed to reduce our carbon footprint by 50%. We have a lot of actions and investments in the pipeline to do that.
In circularity, what we need to do first is to adapt our circular design guidelines, making sure all the products can be recycled, and that leads into the fact that we will have 100% recyclable products by 2030. Thank you, and now I hand over to Lars.
Thank you, Hannu. Wood Products is mainly active in the construction and building market, an industry which I have worked in since 20 years. Never until today have I seen such big changes happening. This industry must become more sustainable, digitized, and increase its share of prefabrication. These changes create opportunities for Wood Products, and coupled with our plans, this will enable us to increase our operation EBITDA by 75% over the cycle. My main three objectives of this presentation are, first, explain why the marketplace for Wood Products becomes increasingly attractive. Secondly, present our range offering and our already delivered performance in the marketplace and regarding our financials. Thirdly, share with you our plans for the future in order to reach our ambitious goals for 2030.
Let's start with the marketplace, which we are active in, and why this market will become more attractive for us. Here you can see why the industry is under such high pressure to reduce its CO2 emissions. Did you know that building materials account for 11% of the total CO2 emissions worldwide? Today, approximately 85 billion m² of global building stock is installed already, and this building stock grows by roughly 2 billion m² every year. If we were only able to build these 2 billion m² with wood instead of concrete and steel, we could reduce carbon emissions by approximately 500 million tons every year. This is equivalent to the total annual CO2 emissions of the countries of France and Spain combined. Material substitution for building materials can make a substantial positive impact on climate change and therefore underpins our growth opportunity.
I will now show the straightforward logic for this substitution benefit. As mentioned before, climate change can be mitigated with wood construction, and the benefit of substituting concrete and steel with wood is rather straightforward and simple to measure. If you replace 1 cubic meter of concrete with 1 cubic meter of wood, 1 ton of CO2 will be saved. If you replace 1 cubic meter of steel in a building with 1 cubic meter of wood, even up to 2.5 tons of CO2 will be saved. These sustainability benefits of buildings with wood are widely accepted by scientists as a solution to make a substantial positive impact on our global CO2 emissions. Thus, they are also more and more supported by legislation.
Two examples for legislative support of wooden buildings as part of the European Green Deal are the EU Renovation Wave, which focuses on resource-efficient renovation of 35 million buildings until 2030, specifically promoting the use of wood. Secondly, the New European Bauhaus initiative, which focuses on developing competencies across the entire building sector how to better build with wood. An initiative directly sponsored by the European Commission President. Many plans to battle climate change are rather complex and difficult to implement. Substituting the building materials of concrete and steel with wood, rather simple. Now I'd like to show you that building with wood, both for small residential houses but also for multi-story buildings, is a proven technical solution already. We have delivered more than 15,000 wooden buildings already. It is a proven solution. Here are some examples of our beautiful multi-story building projects.
On the left-hand side, you can see a wooden skyscraper, an 18-story high building built with one of our many partners. Today, the demand for multi-story buildings is mainly coming from our European clients, but demand from other markets is on the rise, and successful references are always a key enabler for growth in new markets. One example in the bottom center of this slide is the beautiful office building in Brisbane, Australia. Another example is an ongoing major project in Singapore, where we are in the process of completing the 40,000 m² big Nanyang Technological University, a true flagship project for the Southeast Asian region. There is a big chance that if you walk past the wooden headquarters from global brand leaders, that it's built with our wood. In summary, our marketplace of wooden construction looks bright and is becoming increasingly attractive.
Now to the second part of the presentation, our range offering, market share performance, and financial results. Our range offering is split into two strategic pillars, which enable financial stability and resilience. First, traditional wood products, representing approximately 80% of our sales, which is placed in a mature big market with a market size of over EUR 100 billion and an expected annual growth of 3%-4%. Secondly, building solution, which this year represented approximately 20% of revenues and which is operating in a developing, fast-growing market with a market size of over EUR 1 billion and an expected annual growth rate over 10%. A key benefit of having these two pillars is that this setup strengthens our resilience in a volatile marketplace. Why? Traditional wood products are placed in a commodity market with rather volatile demand and pricing.
Building solutions, however, is placed in a building project market, which has longer contractual lead times. This helps us to maintain prices and volumes when the commodity market of traditional wood products is down. These two strategic pillars strengthen our resilience in growing markets. Now let's talk about how we performed in the market. We have achieved leading market positions both in traditional wood products and in the building solutions market. Our market position and the sustainability megatrends will support our profitable growth ambitions. On the left-hand side, you can see that in the mature traditional wood products market, our market shares are rather small. This market is highly fragmented. We are the European market leader, even though our market share is only 4%, and we hold a global top five market position.
Our strength is that we have established a strong global sales and distribution network, which helps us to benefit from regional supply-demand opportunities. In this market, it is all about competitive wood supply and operational efficiency, capabilities which we have invested in over many years. On the right-hand side, you can see that we have also achieved a leading market position in the fast-growing building solutions market. This market is not as commoditized, allowing for customer-relevant differentiation. Our wide range of products and services in building solutions is market-leading. This wide range and capacity, coupled with our financial strength, makes us a very competitive supplier, especially for bigger construction projects with international partners such as, for instance, Bouygues, which you will hear about later during the panel. We have established strong market positions, especially in the growing attractive market of building solutions.
I will now show how we performed financially so far. As you can see, we have delivered profitable growth over the cycle. We have grown both sales and our operational EBIT. Especially, I'd like to highlight our return on operating capital. What are the main three reasons for this strong performance? First, the COVID crisis led to a peak in demand, and we have been able to increase prices more than variable cost increased. Secondly, our ability to benefit from regional market opportunities via our global sales and distribution network. And last but not least, our continued focus on operational efficiency. We've not just tried to optimize our short-term results. We have used the last years to also invest into our strategic capabilities for improving our operational efficiency and strengthening our value offerings for the fast-growing building solutions market.
This will bring benefits to us also in the years to come. In summary, we have a resilient range and achieved leading market share both in the traditional wood products market and in the fast-growing building solutions market. We have delivered strong financial results while at the same time strengthening our ability to take advantage of future opportunities. Now let's talk about our plans for the future. Our target for 2030 is to grow sales by 40%, especially with building solutions, which we plan to triple in sales while delivering strong margins. To achieve this, we will focus on three areas. First off, traditional wood products by continuously improving the competitiveness of our asset footprint and operational excellence. Secondly, in building solutions by capturing a larger share of the value chain and increasing our capacity further.
Thirdly, and as a new attractive growth opportunity, we also focus on the market of special infrastructure, where we are partnering with wind tower turbine builders to use wood instead of concrete and steel. Let's move to our three growth plans, starting with traditional wood products. In our traditional wood products business, we have improved our competitiveness to achieve profitable growth. Why has it improved? Going forward, we will have a competitive advantage compared to other players in the market. Demand will continue to grow long term, but access to cost competitive and sustainable wood supply will become a key differentiator for us. Supply for many of our competitors will become tighter. For instance, German competitors will increasingly struggle to source wood as the German forests have been overharvested due to climate change effects.
Our supply is less affected due to our more sustainably managed and climate-resilient Nordic forest assets and our ability to source wood in Central Europe from higher altitudes. Also, we've just completed our biggest ever operational process efficiency program, which ran for the last 2 years, an area where we expect to outpace competition and add additional capacity to our existing footprint. These improvements will also benefit our Building Solutions and provide integration and synergy benefits for Packaging Materials too. On the M&A side, we constantly review available targets. Opportunities might arise, but right now we consider our internal options being stronger. We will now talk about the second and main area of profitable future growth, Building Solutions. As mentioned before, Building Solutions is operating in a fast-growing market, and we will accelerate our profitable growth here. How?
We don't just offer cubic meters of wood, but we have developed solutions which provide benefits to our clients across the entire building life cycle. This brings additional revenue and margin opportunities. It also helps us to differentiate ourselves. We have the resources and capabilities to develop, for instance, digital tools to support this growth which smaller competitors do not have. The four steps on this slide explain the high-level building life cycle for which we have put in place specific solutions already. In the plan phase on the left-hand side, we offer, for instance, specific building concepts for architects so that they can plan the building using proven and material efficient solutions without having to reinvent the wheel every time. The construction process in the build phase is largely inefficient today. It requires manual labor-intensive work with risks of lower quality on the construction site and complex logistics.
All of this creates inefficiencies and high costs to the construction process. Prefabrication can add value by industrializing this inefficient construction process, and this is what we offer to our customers. In the living phase, we are also developing solutions for the building owners for digital smart living. Here we offer, for instance, moisture sensors, which can be integrated into the building's smart home applications to ensure efficient, low-cost maintenance of wooden buildings. There is an additional opportunity at the building's end of life. We offer solutions to reuse wooden building materials. Thereby, we do not only extend the carbon storage lifetime, but also increase the residual value of the wooden building materials. We are one of the very few who can offer such solutions across the entire building life cycle. We are moving beyond just offering a price per cubic meter.
We support our clients with solutions resulting in bigger cost savings across the entire building life cycle, strengthening our differentiation and competitiveness. Let me give you an example of how we move from commodity to prefabrication. In this prefabrication example, you can see how our product offering changes from being a commodity offering towards being a true solution for fully finished wall and floor elements. We can support the financial attractiveness of prefabrication by industrializing the process of completing walls, floors, roofs, construction beams or stairs. Today, a wall made from concrete is in most cases manually built on the construction site, brick by brick, one by one window and door fittings, electric wirings, linings, paintings and so on. The construction industry has therefore not delivered significant productivity improvements in recent decades. We are step by step insourcing these manual activities if we can industrialize them.
Already today, we offer high precision, efficient, automated cutting of walls and doors, as you can see in the middle picture. In addition, in the third quarter of next year, we will launch the world's biggest automated coating line for approximately 500,000 m² of walls and floors. With this, we can much more efficiently apply high quality, and by the way, water-based protection against moisture, sunlight, insects and fire, and offer colored visual surfaces too. Automated and high-precision cutting and coating are just two examples how prefabrication can deliver lower construction costs, higher industrialized quality, and how we can support our clients to solve their labor scarcity challenge on construction sites at the same time. By offering building elements, we transform ourselves from offering commoditized cubic meters of wood towards being a true building solutions partner with fully finished tailored building elements to our clients.
Let's summarize the main benefits of both our clients and ourselves when building with wood. The construction industry has an opportunity to double the industry's rather low profit pool from 5%-10% if improvements via mainly digitalization and prefabrication are implemented. Together with our partners, we can jointly benefit from these incremental margins improvements already today. Our building solution range supports our clients with digital tools which can reduce design, planning, and maintenance costs. As shown before, an increased share of prefabrication improves productivity and quality, and specifically for wooden buildings, reduces the time for building erections by 70%, resulting in less time of capital tied up and reduced logistics cost by up to 80% less truck deliveries on site.
There's also an opportunity to even increase property prices for wooden buildings as scientific research proves that in office buildings with visible wood, employees have a lower heart rate and less sickness days. This results in an 8% increased productivity of people working in wooden offices, a tangible benefit which does justify higher prices for wooden buildings. Last but not least, and as already mentioned in the beginning, building with wood reduces carbon emissions by up to 70%. In summary, our building solutions offering is unique and can support the industry in making a step change in their own sustainable and financial performance. Now that I've talked about our building solutions as our main driver for profitable growth, let's talk about the third growth opportunity for which we can also use our building solutions products, building wind turbine towers with wood. Wind energy will grow.
Now imagine renewable energy from wind turbine towers made from renewable materials. How great is that? Together with two partners, we have embarked on this journey and already realized one 30-meter-high wooden wind tower. Building wind turbine towers with wood doesn't just bring sustainability benefits by substituting concrete and steel, but also delivers financial benefits. How? Demand for higher wind towers above 100 meters will increase as they produce energy at lower costs than smaller towers. If these higher wind towers are produced of steel and concrete, the transportation of it becomes a real problem because the diameter of the base elements are very wide and heavy and will in many cases not fit under road bridges. With lighter and modular wood elements, which you can see being built on the right-hand side, standard roads can be used for transportation.
This does not only result in lower transportation costs, but in many cases will be the only feasible solution to actually deliver high wind turbine towers to their designated installation site. We have a first-mover advantage with a proven technology here, and we will be able to develop and build on this emerging and profitable market opportunity. I will now explain how we'll ramp up our building solutions capacity to deliver on these growth plans. In the growing building solutions market, we are the leading provider of wood-based building solutions. On the right-hand side, you can see our production footprint. Our mills are located close to both our own forest assets and our main building solutions market in North and Central and Western Europe. On the left-hand side, you can see our building solutions capacity.
In the next month, we will inaugurate our fourth CLT mill in Czech Republic, benefiting from both a close proximity to our biggest building solutions market and low-cost labor. With this latest ramp up, we will achieve close to 500,000 cubic meters of building solutions capacity, making us a leader in the building solutions market. We continue to investigate further organic and M&A growth opportunities too. I've now come to the end of this presentation. I will share with you our ambitions for 2030. To summarize, first, we are positioned in an increasingly attractive market. Second, we have already delivered strong financial and market-related results. Third, we have clear plans for the future how to profitably grow our traditional wood products, building solutions, and special infrastructure business.
Our 2030 ambitions are to grow our sales by more than 40% and to increase our operational EBITDA by more than 75% over the cycle. Our main growth will come from building solutions, which we plan to triple in sales and which will contribute 40% of our revenues in 2030. We will also further explore additional growth opportunities with wind towers and plan to support erection of 25 wind towers by then. Last but not least, we'll improve our own sustainability performance and contribute with 50% Scope 3 carbon footprint reductions by supporting the construction industry to substitute concrete and steel with wood. We will continue to lead the industry both with a competitive production footprint and with a superior operational performance. During the past two years, we have proven that we can deliver strong results.
We've also used this time to invest into our future because the future for Wood Products is bright, and we are ready for it. Thank you for your attention. Now I'd like to hand over to Johanna, who's leading the Biomaterials division.
Thank you, Lars. I'm Johanna Hagelberg, leading Biomaterials division. My background is foremost commercial, having worked in automotive, construction, and utilities. Cars, buildings, and energy is my backyard. I look forward to describe how we are driving growth in biomaterials innovation. We focus on new applications and markets for renewable materials. I will also touch base on pulp, which forms the foundation of our business. It all starts with a tree. Trees basically consist of three materials. Lignin makes up one-third and offers a new world of possibilities. As you see in the chart, first, the stems become logs. Lars just talked about some of the beautiful wood products he makes from them. Then the smaller diameters, branches and thinnings, go to our pulp mills, tomorrow's biomaterials production sites. There, the one-third cellulose become pulp, which is the basis for our fiber-based products.
Today, Hannu makes packaging material from it, and we produce fluff for hygiene products. Tomorrow, we foam it to make inserts in boxes or spin it to sustainable textiles. Broadly speaking, the other two-thirds, lignin and hemicellulose, have been used as green energy. This is where our opportunity kicks in. With new technologies, we can extract lignin at scale, similarly how we have extracted biochemicals like tall oil before. Lignin is the natural binder of a tree. Otherwise, trees wouldn't be able to grow up tall or stand wet weather. With our research and development based on lignin, we can make anodes for batteries in cars, or we can reduce building material's carbon footprint with bio-based binders, nature's glue. With our biomaterial innovations, we aim to use the tree for new renewable products. Let's look at our current products and sales mix providing the foundation.
Our products and sales mix today is to majority pulp, and we find our customers in growing segments like packaging, tissue, specialties, and hygiene. We are the leading fluff producer in Europe and among the largest pulp producers in the world. Our pulp grades vary from hardwood-based, like eucalyptus, to softwood, like spruce. The color ranges from traditional bleached white to natural beige. These less or non-bleached grades are especially interesting for the future, being a perfect fit for the eco-aware consumers. Right now, we are improving the fluff production in Skutskär. It's a EUR 40 million investment, reducing the product carbon footprint another 5%. This is possible through process improvements that lower the chemical consumption. We also serve the biochemicals market with green oils, such as tall oil and turpentine. Further refining these and extracting, for example, green methanol has potential.
Next, let's take a look at our footprint. With our sales, production, and distribution footprint, we have a global market presence and reach customers worldwide. Of special interest are the yellow dots, our innovation center in Stockholm, where we have since 2015 gathered the leading edge of biomaterials research. Combined with our pulp competence centers in Karlstad and Imatra, these form the inner circle of our innovations. Also to note, among the green production dots, we already have lignin extraction in Sunila, being the largest kraft lignin producer in the world, and here we intend to expand further, and I will come back to that later. From our footprint to financial performance. We have a strong financial performance in biomaterials. We have been able to grow our sales based on well-run production and continuous optimization, but also manage logistics constraints well.
Our agility, product mix changes, and customer dialogues have been key, first, throughout the pandemic, and lately, during the Nordic wood supply challenge caused by Ukraine war. Higher prices have generally been compensating the higher cost. Hence, our financial performance has been very strong over the business cycle. We have an average EBITDA margin of 27% in the timeline shown, and we have been above our return on capital target repeatedly. We are confident that we can continue to perform. Pulp will be the foundation, creating the base for the group. We will further reduce our long pulp position and increase integration as packaging material grows, like Hannu talked about. Thus, we create stable demand and supply internally. We expect this to further smoothen our performance. Our growth will be driven by new innovative products with even higher margins and less fluctuation.
This is what I want to spend the remainder of my time on. As you see, the new biomaterials based on lignin offer significant growth opportunities for us. Since the start of the innovation center in Stockholm, we have accelerated the research and development of lignin-based applications. We have several platforms and patent families in our innovation pipeline, and today I will cover two of them, anode material and NeoLigno. The growth in anode material for batteries is driven by the demand for electric vehicles. Only in automotive, more than 200 giga battery factory projects have been announced. Other drivers include renewable energy requiring battery storage as well as mobile equipment. We expect 25%-30% average growth rate and margins of potentially 50%. The growth of NeoLigno or simply put glue is driven by construction industry's ambitions for sustainable building materials, which Lars just talked about.
Let's dive into this. Biobinders offer a much better carbon footprint than traditional fossil-based ones. Based on lignin, nature's glue, as you remember, we offer a range of binders today. They have high bonding strength and water resistance. The end uses vary like the binder in the particle board you see here on the picture. Our customers call it the zero board, being 100% renewable. Another application is in insulation for walls or ingredient in dyes for clothing. Lignin can also replace bitumen in asphalt. Last week, one of our customers paved roads in Håbo with good performance. Improving footprint for roads will be important for municipalities to meet their climate agenda, and less friction will increase the range of our electric vehicles. We continue to develop the product portfolio to become first choice of eco-aware customers in the potential EUR 20 billion market.
We are at the starting point. With the heavy fragmentation of binder applications, we are growing our market share step by step. Binders will also be our base application for lignin. It is an important product to optimize lignin production and grow lignin as a market. On this, we will then launch the even more advanced end uses like batteries. Let's move to the other area, lignin for anode material in batteries. Most of us think electrification is great. However, to run anything mobile on electricity, you need a battery. Today's batteries still rely on non-renewable or fossil-based materials. For example, the anode in today's lithium-ion batteries is made from graphite. This is about 20%-30% of the battery weight and 50% of the carbon footprint of an electric vehicle.
If nothing changes, the anode material will come from graphite mines or be made from oil with 95% of supply from China. Hence, OEMs and the battery manufacturers are looking for materials that have clearly better sustainability footprint and regional supply. In Europe alone, the anode demand is expected to be close to 1 million tons by 2030, and this is where we come in with our perfect combination of lignin and anode, Lignode. How do we do that? In practice, it is quite advanced. We build on our 10-year research and development with 7 patent families granted. We extract the lignin at our biomaterials production sites, currently called pulp mills. Next, we refine it with our patented technologies into powder for anode material. This is the product we call Lignode. The Lignode powder is then processed into foils by cell manufacturers and rolled into cells.
The cells are stacked by battery manufacturers to compile the battery packs. These battery packs, depending on specifications, are used in multiple applications, for example, in electric vehicles, stationary energy storage, or electric-driven products like handheld tools. A single electric car will have 50-100 kilos of anode material. With the planned scale up, we target at least 10% of the European market. Sustainability is not enough. You also need superior properties, and with Lignode, battery performance is better. How much better? Well, it offers faster charging and discharging capabilities, often referred to as C-rate. This is extremely important as faster charging will reduce the demand for infrastructure, but also get you and me back on the road again with our electric car or back screwing bolts with our handheld tool. You see the better low performance in temperature, where we bring benefits related to electrolyte versatility.
I think we all have experienced how our mobile phone battery dies in cold conditions, and this can be reduced with Lignode. The increased cycling stability means more charging cycles with the same battery before it degrades. The open, less dense structure of Lignode makes the anode much more stable against swelling. In practice, this means longer battery lifetime. Another important property is energy density or how much energy the battery can store in relation to its size. At lowering charging speeds, Lignode has a disadvantage due to its more open structure. However, at high charging speeds, it exceeds pure graphite. This means you can get a lasting battery with an option to make it smaller or give it a longer range. Finally, Lignode offers an unmatched sustainability performance.
It's made from trees, will have low supply risk, and remember what I said about the 50% footprint of electric vehicles. However, our Lignode is not only good anode for conventional lithium batteries where it can be mixed with graphite. It is also suitable for next-generation batteries like sodium-ion or in combination with silicon. Now you are asking, "When will we be on the market?" Right now, we are accelerating the development and scale-up with customers and partners. Let's start with the upper part illustrating the production scale-up, the timeline we can control. We are currently industrializing the production process of Lignode but also taking lignin extraction to the next level. Lately, we, for example, took a larger coater into use for better control of surface treatment, and we will start up lignin granulation now in autumn for improved customer handling.
These important experience are fed into the ongoing design of our industrial production. Construction is scheduled to start in 2023 and be in operation by 2025, pending the investment decision. Beyond 2025, we will continue to expand and are already investigating 4-5 sites internally and externally. First stages, we need around EUR 200 million-EUR 250 million CapEx per site already included in our strategic investment plan. For this, we are well-financed with our cash flow and financing capabilities like green bonds. If you move to the lower part of the timeline, the commercialization. We are in active partner dialogues with both cell manufacturers, battery producers, and OEMs of the different end uses. The aim with all partnerships is to accelerate the development and scale-up as fast as technically and commercially possible.
We are after specific complementary technical knowledge and customers wanting to use Lignode in existing or coming products. In July, we proudly announced our first public partnership, joint development with Northvolt to make a sustainable battery. Our role will be to develop and supply Lignode material for the anodes, where Northvolt will do battery development and manufacturing. Given the nature of these relationships covering, among other, intellectual property and brand-new products in development, you understand we have to be restrictive with information. With Lignode as a product, we have since spring entered into customer testing phase. A significant number of customers have received samples, are running tests, and providing feedback. This is highly confidential, interactive, and iterative. We refine samples according to their needs. They retest, and so forth. There is great interest, and we have moved from sample sizes of grams towards several kilos.
The next phase for us together with customers will be qualification of products. Qualification is all the tests needed for a product to be proven for use. This is expected to start in 2023 and will pave the way for new product launches later. The period is expected to be 3-5 years for automotive, 2-4 years for stationary battery applications, and 1-2 years for other electrical products like handheld tools. We will work with easier and more demanding applications in parallel. These activities together bring in the significant sales potential for Lignode together with the selected partners in the battery supply chain. To summarize, for 2030, I am very confident we can meet the needs of tomorrow's customers. Coming from the automotive, construction, and utility industry, I even dare to say our new innovative materials are essential for them.
We determinedly work towards reaching EUR 1 billion in sales from our portfolio of new biomaterials. Together with our partners and customers, we accelerate the development and scale-up of Lignode. We will also continue to develop the sustainability of our products with special focus on reducing our carbon footprint by 50%, in our case, from good to great. We further reduce our market pulp position through the growth in packaging materials for smoother results over the cycle. We also aim to retain our leadership position in Europe for fluff with a natural beige becoming the new white. All this while maintaining our strong competitiveness, seeing side streams like lignin become mainstreams, serving customers worldwide with new sustainable solutions. Thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to your questions later. First now, a break.
This goes out to all you choice makers, to all you eco-evolutionaries, to you thought leaders with groundbreaking ideas, to the choices that reflect your hopes, not your fears, to you optimists always looking for new solutions, to you who are up for a change that matters. We have the materials and technology to create a better future, a future where we don't just reduce the harm to our planet, but restore and rebuild it by replacing fossil-based materials with renewable solutions. Together, we can realize eco-friendly lifestyles, helping consumers reclaim their right to choose the way they live and the way they consume. The brave ones, thought leaders, optimists, choice makers, tomorrow makers, they've made their choice, and so could you. We help you get chosen. Stora Enso, the renewable materials company.
Welcome back from the break. My name is Seppo Parvi, and I have been CFO of Stora Enso since 2014. My background is from packaging industry, both conversion side and board making. This film we just saw sets the scene for future, and it is future-proofing our business. Millennials make up a quarter of the world's population. The new generation pays more attention to the sustainability issues relating to both environmental and social issues. 84% of them feel that it is their generation's duty to change the world. 71% want brands to be environmentally friendly and ethical, and 61% of them want to connect to cause or social issues. They drive our sustainable growth now and into the future. I will now give you an overview of our track record and key drivers from a financial perspective.
We are protecting our margins by building a less cyclical business, as demonstrated on the graph here, which shows our profitable growth path since 2020. We have reshaped our business portfolio to reduce volatility and to make it more resilient to market fluctuations. We are growing in our three focus areas in renewable materials: packaging, building solutions, and innovative biomaterials. High self-sufficiency in wood and energy is one of the drivers for the profitability this year and going forward. We will reduce our market pulp position over time and divest our paper business, as it is not a strategic segment for us. Not to forget new revenue streams matching millennials' expectations in the future, like Lignode, wind power, and carbon credits. We have the balance sheet to grow through both capital expenditure and acquisitions.
We have rapidly reduced our net debt and leverage from the peak in 2019. This after the forest ownership restructure in Sweden and COVID-19, and thanks to our strong cash flow and improved profitability. Our debt ratios are clearly below target levels today. We have acquisition firepower even after the recent De Jong acquisition that increases our net debt to operational EBITDA ratio to 1.4. We can look for opportunities for further acquisitions in packaging and wood products to meet growth targets that both Hannu and Lars were referring to when and if cycle turns and companies more vulnerable to the turn of the cycle than we are for sale. We have released EUR 1 billion in operating working capital since 2018, from a 20% ratio to sales to just slightly over 10% today. We have a strong focus on inventory management, payments, and receivables.
These are key working capital focus also going forward. High self-sufficiency on energy reduces our exposure to external cost instability, as Hannu mentioned in his part. We have about 80% self-sufficiency in energy in total thanks to our own energy production and ownership in Pohjolan Voima in Finland. In fuels, we are 76% self-sufficient, excluding paper. All this has enabled strong performance this year with resiliency to energy price increases, and it gives a good base for the future, also with increase in self-sufficiency after the new nuclear power station, Olkiluoto 3, starts up in Finland. Our self-sufficiency in electricity shall increase to 97% after Olkiluoto 3 and the divestment of paper. Our sustainable growth is enabled through a strong financial position. New performance level has been reached and is visible on our long-term financial targets. Strong sales growth well above targeted 5%.
Efficient use of capital combined with improving earnings has increased returns on capital to the 20% level and above, clearly above the targeted 13%. We have a solid balance sheet with strong debt ratios. Net debt to operational EBITDA at 1 is clearly below our target level of 2. Net debt to equity is also clearly below the target level. This is a good base to build on to implement our growth strategy. We drive shareholder value through a focused and disciplined capital allocation. While ensuring increase in dividends to our shareholders, we focus our capital allocation to profitable growth on packaging, building solutions, and new innovative biomaterials through both capital expenditure on organic growth and M&A activities. Good examples are Lignode, CLT, and packaging. De Jong acquisition is the latest step on our strategy implementation, where we look for long-term value creation and synergies.
Our input in profitability has also ensured positive development of the dividend to our shareholders. We allocate capital expenditure to our key strategic growth areas. Capital allocation has been shifted to be more focused on the growth businesses and strategic direction. We expect to keep total capital expenditure at the same level with depreciation over the cycle also in the future. In the past, we have consistently proven that we can bring capital expenditure down after heavy investments, strengthen the balance sheet, and allowing us to ramp up investments. On the right-hand side, you see how the share of strategic capital expenditure is expected to grow during the coming years compared to the past, to about 50% higher. Increased profitability and cash flow has tripled dividend payouts since 2008.
Our dividend trend follows our policy to pay 50% of earnings per share, excluding fair valuations over the cycle. As said, our profitability and cash flow makes it possible. We are committed to long-term divisional targets. Packaging materials, biomaterials, wood products, and forests are all above or at their targets today. Packaging Solutions profitability has suffered from the loss of the profitable Russian business and investments in the development of the new businesses. The target for Packaging Solutions has now been reassessed after the announced De Jong acquisition, with the new ROOC target set at 15%. We have an action plan to reduce CO2 emissions towards our 2030 targets. We are well on track to reach our CO2 reduction targets through various actions. CO2 targets are always also important part of the capital expenditure assessment.
Worth noticing is that this can be achieved with relatively low additional CapEx. About EUR 70 million has been decided already to be invested over the three-year period shown here. Some examples are investments in changing fuel types and energy efficiency improvements. Our ambition is to be net carbon positive by 2050. We are considering market transaction-based valuation of the Finnish forests. This would bring it in line with the principles already used in our Swedish forest, which gives a more accurate valuation of the forest assets. Market prices in Finland have increased steadily over the years. This could increase valuation by some 20% or EUR 200 million in our books, as demonstrated on the right-hand side. We create value through our forest assets, both through positive valuation development and operational benefits.
The value of our forests is over EUR 8 billion or 10.4 EUR per share in our books. We are 30% self-sufficient and can secure tactical flexibility in wood sourcing, harvesting more if the wood market is tight and less when wood availability is better. We also run the largest wood sourcing organization in Baltic Sea region. As we already use the market transaction-based valuation method in Sweden, our sensitivity to interest rate changes is low and will be even lower if the valuation method in Finland is changed. Today, one percentage point change in the interest rates would have an impact of approximately EUR 200 million compared to the total valuation of our EUR 8 billion today. As we saw in the film, millennials are setting the direction for the future. Long-term growth opportunities are fast emerging in new revenue streams.
These can reduce volatility and bring new growth opportunities. Some examples, innovative novel materials like Lignode and carbon fiber, renewable energy solutions such as wind, solar, and nuclear power, and other revenue streams like carbon credits. Wind power opportunities are emerging. Lars already told us earlier about building windmill towers, but wind power opportunities do not end there. We have a great opportunity to develop wind power production on our forest land and to significantly increase our involvement in the sector. This is what the millennials, the new generation, also expects. The total theoretical potential for wind power production on our land in Sweden is 75 TWh, and 30% of this potential can be realized in the foreseeable long term as they are long projects.
This brought a significant new income stream and a value creation opportunity that we are putting more focus on and effort into going forward. Our ambition is to cover 5% of the Swedish electricity demand by 2030. In conclusion, as Annica already mentioned in her part, we have high ambition levels for the future Stora Enso, including an ambition of 30% sales growth with reduced earnings cyclicality, a 15% EBIT margin over the cycle, an increase in share of packaging in the portfolio, and significantly reduced market pulp exposure. Also, by adding Lignode and wind power, we will further drive growth in areas underpinned by global trends. I personally believe that we are in a better position than ever in our company history to implement strategy and to reach our ambition level thanks to strong cash flow and balance sheet. Thank you.
I now hand over to Annette and the panel. Looking forward to an interesting discussion.
Hello, my name is Annette Stube. I'm heading up Sustainability at Stora Enso. I have 25 years of sustainability experience from international pharmaceutical and transport and logistics industries and I'll bring some external views and perspectives today. In a few decades, we will know if we as a global community have been successful in preserving our ecosystem in such a way that we can continue to live the lives we want. 1.5 degrees or not, biodiversity recovered or lost, it's clear that the pace of action, investments, and improvements need to be vastly increased and targeted for long-term solutions. Our perspective is that the only businesses that are going to thrive are the ones that offer products that both meets the need of the planet and deliver positive financial results. Products, not just production processes, that essentially make the world better.
We live in a world where 90% of materials are used and consumed in a linear fashion. This is bad for climate change, it's bad for biodiversity, and it's simply bad for business. This is not our business. For instance, construction-related CO2 emissions can be reduced up to 75% by building with wood. Our direction is clear: not to deliver less bad products, which has been the incremental strategies of some industries, but to deliver 100% regenerative products by 2050. Now what does that mean? For us, this means being carbon positive, biodiversity positive, and fully circular, offering products that can store carbon or replace fossil materials as my colleagues have shown today. The only way companies can truly create a scalable, positive impact is through the products and services they offer, and this is our ambition.
We are already designing our innovation pipeline, our operations and supply chain, our CapEx investments that Seppo mentioned, our talent and incentive programs, and our growth strategies to drive this ambition as you have seen today across all presentations. We need the market environment to establish principles for material use which ensure that raw materials, once extracted from nature, should be reused and recycled for as long as possible. The world has capacity limits, and we must use our materials wisely. A shift to circularity will be absolutely critical. As we all know, we can't do this alone. This is why it's never been more important to work across our value chains and with our business partners, as you'll see from our panel.
For companies and the finance community to come together to provide clear long-term signals that sustainable change is a business imperative, and there is no such thing as business as usual anymore. To build on these points, we've invited three customers and partners in here to the conversation, and they bring different perspectives on what we've just been talking about from different industries. We have Patrik Andreasson, who is Vice President Strategy from Northvolt. Welcome, Patrik. We have Fabrice Denis, Managing Director from Bouygues Construction. Welcome. And finally, Laurence Mott, Executive Vice President for Development and Technology from Tetra Pak. Welcome, Laurence. I would like to ask the panel here just a few questions that really goes to the heart of the sustainability challenges that we're all facing and what we can do as solution partners.
I'll direct the first question to you, Laurence. What does the societal demand in your market, which is packaging, what does that look like, and which trends do you see with your end consumers?
Thanks, Annette. Well, I think the drivers in packaging are fairly clear, right? By 2050, there's gonna be 9 billion people on the planet. Approximately 60% more food is going to be required, and the challenge is to make sure that that food is available safely, that it's available broadly, so it can be broadly distributed, of course. Then there comes the added pressure now, of course, of sustainability. Let's not forget that roughly one-third of emissions are in some way connected with the food industry overall. Our customers and consumers, they are very, very aware and cognizant of this challenge, and of course, that creates a significant demand and pressure. Demand from customers and consumers and regulatory pressure.
The challenge will be pretty clear that we have to design for circularity, and it means using much more sustainable materials than those currently used today from a carbon perspective, namely polymers and aluminum foil. There will be a huge pressure there to reduce the quantities of plastics and aluminum foils, metals in our packaging overall. Enter, of course, paper which has a huge potential and promise for us right here.
Thank you. Very interesting. Fabrice, from the construction perspective, where do you see the market go?
We all are in the building sector. We are in a context of extreme urgency and at the same time contradictory injunctions. On one side, there is this absolute urgency on environmental issues, climate, carbon, waste, scarcity of resources, urgency on biodiversity. At the same time, we have increasing needs in terms of housing, equipment, health, schools, student accommodation, and senior housing. At the same time, we have this increase of cost and stagnation of productivity in the building sector and scarcity of competencies, especially the blue collar. In fact, we have to build more and better but with less. That is to say we have really to build differently.
This is all the more true that governments and public authorities are pushing it towards more and more stringent regulation. We have really to work differently, to build differently, and this is where our customers are expecting from us a big change. All the more, and this is the last point, all the more that building low carbon is more expensive. We have at the same time to bring down the cost through industrialization, through offsite construction, through repetitiveness, through digital, and at last, we have to move from a traditional project approach to a product approach that you know well, you industrial players, you know that very well.
We have still a lot of progress to do in the building sector on that side.
Thank you. Thank you, very interesting. Patrik, going to your industry, which is batteries, which is playing right into the sustainability agenda directly, well, how do you see? Where do you see the market going and the consumers?
I think what's interesting if you sort of look back, I mean, we've been talking about the second electrical revolution and the shift to electric vehicles and electrification for the better part of at least a decade if not more. What was fundamentally different now if you look back sort of at the 18-24 months that have passed and also during the pandemic, we really sort of are past the inflection point. I mean, there's no discussion if this is happening or when it's happening. It's happening now, and I could go over statistics for the better part of the day, but I'd bore you to death with that.
Just to give you a little bit of sense, I mean, the number of EVs sold worldwide doubled in 2021. If you look at just sort of the share to reach somewhere around 10% or so. If you look at Sweden, just the past few months, you're starting to see us getting close to 50% of electric car sales, with half of that being fully electric cars. You're seeing the U.S., they're coming out numbers as we speak, but starting to get into sort of 10% territory up from basically nothing just a few years ago. This is happening during a massive supply chain crisis, right? That is impacting, I'm sure, everyone around this table. Lead times to receive electric vehicles are incredibly long, right?
Even so, and much longer than combustion-fueled cars. Even so, consumers are choosing to go electric. Consumers are really sort of driving the electrification through what they're expecting to see from producers and manufacturers. In addition to that then, and I think we're gonna be talking a lot in the years to come about stationary energy systems or stationary storage systems. It's not only, or it's definitely not due to the energy crisis that we're seeing now, but it's maybe exacerbated and sort of pushed forward even faster due to the energy crisis.
As we try to introduce more renewables into our grids, as we manage sort of peaks, and demand balance demand and supply, and as we move towards sort of microgrids and distributed energy storage systems, this is gonna be a massive topic in the years to come. All of this is happening now. There's no longer a discussion about that. Back to a few of the points that I think Laurence made here in the beginning. Now the big question is: How do we want this transformation to play out? You know, what requirements are we putting on the industry? If we wanna meet the demand, there's gonna be a lot of batteries having to be produced in the coming years and decades. How do we want that transformation to happen?
What demands do we put in terms of circularity, ethical and sustainable supply chains, where this industry is built up and who controls those supply chains? Those are the real questions now and it's gonna be a lot harder to sort of change that footprint once it's defined. Now is the time to focus on that and not be caught napping.
Thanks, Patrik. I think that's very fascinating to look at the enabling environment as well in terms of making these things happen. Focusing in on the materials, Fabrice, what plans do you have in Bouygues to drive innovation in materials that will help mitigate climate change, restore nature and so on?
We have a target because Bouygues Group. We have the target of reducing by 30% our carbon emission by 2030. This is what we call our Scope 3. The levers to reach this minus 30% are not so many. We have no choice. We have to reduce the use of concrete. Whatever low carbon is as a concrete, we have to reduce the quantity of concrete used. We have to increase the use of bio-sourced materials, especially timber.
For example, at Bouygues Group, we are targeting 30%, one third of our projects built with timber by 2030. For the time being, we are at 5%, so we have to multiply by six within six or seven years the quantity of timber construction. At the same time, you mentioned, Patrik, Laurence, the circularity. We have so much to do in terms of circularity in the building sector. As you know, for the time being, we build a building, a new building, and then it is demolished, and then we build a new one. That has to be changed.
We have to create the conditions of the circularity, building as a bank of material, and this is where there is a lot to do and timber and other bio-source materials are fine to be circularized, provided that the design of building is suitable for this circularity. This is where we have to go. Bio-source material, circularity, and last point, renovation. Renovation instead of new buildings using what is existing to create accommodation, schools and so, offices and so on.
Thanks. I know circularity, Laurence, is a big topic for Tetra Pak as well. How do you see this?
Well, I mean, It's used a little bit glibly, but I would go back to a little bit of Patrik's comment before. I think circularity means a massive transformation for our industry. You know, by the very definition, of course, packaging is largely single use. Customers really want us, they demand that we support their sustainability ambitions, the consumers are exactly the same. Really for us, material simplification is the key. Yes. Today, packaging is a very complex structure, you know, with a lot of, you know, carbon intensive materials used within it. We know from our own consumer research, for example, that 40% perhaps of respondents claim that they would be, you know, much more motivated to support circularity and recycling and collection in particular, if the packages were only made from paperboard.
Of course, if you take away at least the aluminum foil layer in most packaging, it reduces the, you know, the carbon footprint of the package by, let's say, between 25%-50%, something like that. We have a huge job to do in order to be able to reduce the amount of aluminum and fossil-based polymers used in our packaging material. The paperization is perhaps the key for us. This will lead us somewhere to our ambition, which is a package which is made from fully renewable material and which is fully recyclable. It's difficult to put kind of global targets on that.
The challenge, I think, for us, is to look at that as the individual parts of our portfolio and, a huge part of our portfolio contains, aluminum foil today. As we've been very public about, this is our first big step, which is to get rid of that and to replace that with paper.
Thanks, Laurence. Yeah.
We produce roughly 200 billion packs a year, so you get the size of, you understand the size of the challenge.
Yeah. Absolutely. It's massive, and that also means that if we succeed in doing this, we will have a massive impact, and that's of course what we are going for.
Absolutely.
That's what's needed.
That's exactly the case.
Yeah. I think your business, Patrik, is buying right into this as well. How do you see this innovation part as driving mitigations for climate change, for instance? How do you come at that from Northvolt's side?
Materials efficiency in general is absolutely massive in the battery industry, and to some extent for obvious reasons. There's no secret that some of the input materials required to produce batteries have been through some pretty hefty price hikes and elevated pricing in the last sort of 24 months or so. Again, as the industry scales, our industry is scaling massively, we expect to continue to see some of those bottlenecks before sort of things stabilize. I think for Northvolt, someday I hope to be able to say that I'm as ambitious as Laurence.
We have a target of 50%, so not 100% yet, but 50% of renewable content in our batteries in our long-term targets around 2030. Getting to that, I mean, clearly recycling is the key thing. The big upside here is it's one of those areas where doing the right thing, if you will, is also a meaning sustainability and battling climate change and being very careful with resource extraction, which again, is something that needs to happen as this industry scales. Those incentives are fully aligned with economic incentives because when you see the pricing that you see today in the raw materials market, I mean the case for driving recycling is absolutely a must for any sort of battery manufacturer at scale.
It's one of these silver linings to some extent where you see the economic and the sustainability incentives fully align. Again, recycling becomes absolutely critical also to make sure that we make the best use of the resources that exist and that we use the most ethical and sort of solid resources that we are taking out. I think the other part that I would add is more on what I'm calling repurposing. In addition to sort of recycling the end product in a way, also making use of what can be formerly seen as waste or residual products in industrial processes and repurposing them into new means. One example for Northvolt is we have sodium salts as a by-product in battery manufacturing.
We're working with the fertilizing company, striking a partnership there to make sure we create a new and circular fertilizer product. Clearly also we have a little bit of a partnership going on with Stora Enso on creating a next generation sustainable anode being a key component for a battery. Again, to my understanding here, using something that could previously have been seen, lignin in this case, have been seen as a residual product, repurposing that into a new product. Again, economic and sustainability incentives fully aligned, and I think that's the key theme here, and I hear that also in what Fabrice is talking about earlier.
Thanks. I think there's a lot of commonalities across the industries, even though the industries are quite different. I mean, we're all subject to the external pressures that we see. It just pans out in this way, which is quite interesting, I think. Now, of course, this is Stora Enso's Capital Markets Day, so I'll just finalize the round here by asking you what your expectations on Stora Enso in this context. What do you need from us to drive the innovations that you need? Let me turn to Patrik first, if you would head off, please.
Sure. High expectations for Stora Enso, of course. No, but I think number one is to clearly continue to see that you're staying on the path that you have now charted. Coming with a long and fantastic history, sort of industrial history, and being one of the largest forest owners in the world, that puts you at the very much the intersection of what climate change is about and battling climate change, right? It's been inspiring to see sort of transformation moving into a renewable first company. I think a bit more specific maybe for the battery industry, as I've said a number of times now, the battery industry is growing up right now.
We can still decide sort of what that footprint will look like in the future. If we want to have today, you know, most of the industry, both the supply chains and manufacturing is in East Asia. If we wanna have a European battery material supply chain and battery manufacturing, one thing we absolutely need, and it goes for Northvolt and beyond, is we need partnerships between large industrial players with strong industrial expertise and experience, partnering up with some of the startups that you're starting to see grow up, because there's a lot to gain there. I'm very happy about our partnership with Stora Enso. I think there's much more to come there. It's partnering and helping to sort of build up this value chain in Europe.
Thanks, Patrik. Fabrice, how do you see this?
I think Patrik said a lot I wanted to say. In fact, with Stora Enso, we have a partner. Of course, Stora Enso is the producer of CLT, of glulam, of LVL for us. This is, of course, for us, I would say the security in terms of providing what is needed to go from 5% of timber buildings to 30%. We need this strong capacity of production. Not only with Stora Enso, we need a strong input on the engineering of projects and we know that Stora Enso is strong at engineering.
concepts, solutions, innovation, helping us to move to convince our clients, but and that was mentioned earlier to help us moving towards industrialization, considering a building as a Lego game made of bricks that can be used across several projects and that can be one day dismantled and reused. Maybe last point, we need also from Stora Enso experience and efficiency on logistics and especially the low carbon transportation. In one word, we put a lot of hope on Stora Enso to help us progressing toward being more virtuous and carbon efficient.
Thanks, Fabrice. We are ready to help you there, of course, as best as we can. Finally, turning to you, Laurence, how do you see this?
You know, Tetra Pak's ambition is to lead the sustainability transformation, and we know what that means now in terms of a transformation. It means the old partnership of kind of supplier-customer, customer-supplier, which used to be very linear. It's gone. It doesn't work anymore. Now, in order to bring products to market quickly and as efficiently as possible, you need to work in all parts of the value chain all at once. We have a great collaborative relationship. I would say we have a partnership, as well around our development. This needs to extend now. You know, we need to have very clear views about how we're not only going to develop the technology, but about how we're commonly going to establish supply chains, how we're going to establish common business goals, synced up investment plans, and so on and so forth.
It's a very collaborative way of working, I would say, which is quite iterative. We're working towards that. We couldn't be happier with the way that the partnership is progressing. There will be definitely challenges in front of us that we just can't imagine yet. Perhaps the key here in this transformation is both partners keeping an open mind as to how this is going to develop.
Fantastic. Thank you very much, Laurence, and also for the kind words that you all provided here. Much appreciated. It's my job now to sum up what has been the key points from this presentation, and I think, in some ways, it's easy, in some way it's difficult. It's easy because there are so many commonalities. We're all talking across industries about recyclability, and reuse, and designing for circularity as well. It's difficult because there are also many complexities, as we all know, when we do this. It sounds easy, but there's lots of complexities in this.
To lift this, what you're all pointing to is partnerships with your suppliers, not just for strong supply, but also for strong input for innovation, towards delivering on those targets that you've all set across your industries. Thank you very much for participating here. It's been a very interesting, good conversation. Quite frankly, also quite encouraging for all of us here, thank you very much. I'll now hand over to Anna-Lena and the Q&As.
Thank you for joining Stora Enso's Capital Markets Day. We hope that you gain more insight into the company's role in today's global bioeconomy. I'm Anna-Lena Åström, Head of Investor Relations at Stora Enso. This is now your opportunity to ask our management your questions. You can add your questions to the website at the bottom of the page. I can see that we have a lot of questions coming in, so please keep them coming. We have a first question here for Annica. How confident are you that you can reach your full year guidance considering a high inflation and a looming recession?
We are very confident that we will be able to reach our target and our guidance, as reiterated from our June quarter two report. We will come in higher than last year's result of EUR 1 billion, just above EUR 1.5 billion. We see still solid demand for our products for most of the segments. As we've said before, we see a normalization within the area of wood products and in container board. All in all, we are able to still pass on price increases and mitigate the inflationary pressures that we see.
Thank you, Annica. Johanna, here is a question for you on Lignode. You mentioned that the European anode material market is expected to be approximately 1 million tons in 2030. How much market share are you expecting to take?
Thank you. We are expecting or aiming for 10% market share. You just heard Patrik Andreasson from Northvolt talking about the need for sustainable battery materials, and that's where Lignode comes in. 10% is what we aim for.
Thank you. We can take a follow-up question on that, straight away. Do you have enough lignin internally to meet the EUR 1 billion sales target, or do you need to start buying from the market at some point?
Yes is the simple answer. We have enough lignin internally. We are already the largest kraft lignin producer in the world with Sunila, and we continue to investigate then other sites, like we have said. Naturally as well, if you look at the total pulp market in the world, there is still also plenty of lignin to extract. As we grow, I'm sure we'll also get to look at that. Simple answer, yes, we have enough for the first stages internally.
Thank you, Johanna. Here is a question for Hannu on recent actions. You have just made the De Jong acquisition. Can you elaborate on the strategic rationale behind the deal, please?
Sure. Let's start from the market. I mean, there is growth, there's growth in packaging materials, there's growth in the packaging as such, and we want to now utilize this growth, and don't forget the substitution. We have well-tested business models in the Nordics, Baltics, Poland, and now it's time to move on. This is obviously a fantastic platform investment for packaging solutions, so we are becoming sizable player in the middle of the Western European market. For packaging materials, we are actually going now into recycled fiber. I see this as a new growth area. I think that's really the strategic rationale.
Thank you. Lars, we have a question for you here. What are the main benefits of building with wood compared to steel and concrete, and is it cost competitive?
Oh, thank you for that question. Yes, it is beneficial to customers. Firstly, there are the undisputed sustainability benefits. As mentioned before, if you use wood when building with wood, you can reduce carbon emissions by up to 70%, and you can also store carbon for a longer time. There is also an opportunity to increase property prices because it contributes to the health and wellbeing of the tenants. There are clear cost benefits. One is via prefabrication and digitalization, you can reduce the process costs in construction, for instance, in design and planning, which actually makes up for 20% of the total construction costs. You can also reduce the actual material costs.
The material costs are actually, you know, a real opportunity for us because we support architects by using less wood for building. That the actual material costs go down because of volume reduction, not because of a price reduction, and that helps us to be very competitive.
I have a follow-up question on that one. You may be competitive, but the global construction market is slowing down. How will this affect your division?
Yeah. Firstly, we have already invested into growing building solutions at a part of our division which is much more resilient because it has longer contractual lead times and is not as volatile as the traditional commoditized market. Secondly, we have a global sales and distribution network, so we can actually use regional opportunities. Already today we are delivering roughly 40% of our revenues outside of Europe. We are also a relatively light asset division, so we are quite agile in demand reaction. Last but not least, overall the market may go down in construction, but the share of wooden construction is still very low. Just for Europe, multi-story wooden buildings only make up for 1% of the European market.
While the total construction market may go down, the wooden share may actually go up. A good example, and if I may just say that as well, is that, for instance, in France, as of 2022 already, legislation has been put through that every new public building has to use at least 50% renewable materials, mainly being timber. As you've heard from Bouygues, there is a growth opportunity with our partners, even if the construction market should go down.
Thank you, Lars. Hannu, one for you on today's news that we increase the return on operating capital. Why have you changed the target?
I was expecting this question. Packaging Solutions has had a rough ride during the last few years. They have been now successfully restructuring their Nordic platform. They have been obviously forced to leave Russia, which has been the high-margin business. We run our innovation business in Packaging Solutions, and as we all know, it takes time to ramp up, so you have the cost before revenues. Now, last but not least, the operating capital is going up tremendously, and we also have the sizable investment program ahead of us, so I think it's more reasonable to have 15% target.
Just to add on that.
Mm.
It has to do, of course, with the investment of De Jong.
De Jong.
Where there is a heavy investment.
Yeah
Expansion.
Thank you very much. We have a question for Annette Stube on following up on today's panel. The requirements for products to be circular came across quite clearly from your customers in the panel. What is Stora Enso doing to meet this demand?
Yes, circularity is obviously one of our top priorities. Starting from the inside, we have circularity design guidelines that will help our innovation and product development actually make our products more and more circular. We are already at 93% of all our products that are fully circular at this point in time. Of course, the key thing for all of us is to make sure that the products are actually being recycled in reality. For paper, for instance, this is happening to a large extent.
One difficult grade to recycle is used beverage cartons, and here we have a partnership with Tetra Pak that you just met in Poland, where we are now upscaling our facilities there so that we can actually already by next year cover the entire Polish market and some adjacent markets. What's interesting here is, of course, pointing to the feasibility study in Langerbrugge where we, if we are successful with this, will actually be able to do the same thing for Benelux.
Thank you very much. Seppo, we have a question for you on recent actions as well. You've just made the acquisition of De Jong. The strategic direction seems right, but is the timing right?
That's a very valid question. We still have very strong balance sheet and acquisition firepower and headroom left in the balance sheet of about EUR 1.5 billion for further actions when it comes to M&A or capital expenditure. De Jong was an excellent fit to our growth strategy. It gives us a strong position in Western Europe in addition to strong positions we already had earlier in Eastern Europe and Northern Europe. Having this position now in Europe, we are in excellent position to capture the growth opportunities in future. There are very good, strong long-term growth opportunities that Hannu was also referring to. That also means that if there is a recession, we are really in a pole position going forward to capture the growth opportunities.
Thank you, Seppo. Talking about that, growth and competition for Hannu, there is a lot of capacity in container board coming on stream in the coming years. How are you going to compete in this market?
It's a good question, a question I get often internally and externally. It's all about cost competitiveness, and when we were presenting our expected cost position of the Langerbrugge investment, we are the cost leader, hence that's really the requirement. When you have the cost leader, you can go into the market. It's very important to remember, as I already said, that when you have the growing market with the substitution benefit, we are not afraid of this one.
Thank you. A question for Johanna. You mentioned last year that you expect EUR 1 billion sales in Lignode by 2025. Are you still confident that you will be able to deliver on that? If not, what has changed since then?
Thank you for the question. EUR 1 billion still stands. We have had the supply chain disruptions, the pandemic, and also geopolitical challenges, so we have revisited the commercialization timeline. The industrialization is ongoing right now, and we expect a decision on the first Lignode unit, industrial one, next year. With customers, we are in sample testing, moving from grams towards kilos. As I said, a car includes 50-100 kilos of anode material, so we are moving in the right direction step by step.
Thank you. A question for you, Lars. Could you provide some insight into how you work with Lendlease in your CLT, cross-laminated timber building materials proposition, and also how you compare with traditional building methods?
Firstly, our leading building solutions capacity, our financial strength make us great partners for big international groups such as Lendlease or , Bouygues, who you've just seen before. With Lendlease specifically, we have a partnership that is really focusing on a R&D partnership where jointly we're developing standardized building components and elements so that we can improve the competitiveness of the product and that we are also looking into jointly developing projects outside of Europe, as Lendlease is very strong also outside of Europe. We've realized a project with them, of course, also in Europe, but for instance, also in Australia. So it's also a great partnership to increase our global share of sales in building solutions. To the second question, building methods. Building methods must change.
It is today still in the construction industry too manual and inefficient, all happening on the construction site with less and less labor, available. The trend to digitize the construction value chain and also to increase the prefabrication via industrialized solutions is a really big disruptor and an opportunity for the market.
Thank you, Lars. Hannu, one for you here on the packaging materials. Why do you want to grow in packaging materials through conversions? What other options do you have when the conversions are done?
We have plenty of options, but conversions are today the fastest and most cost-efficient way to grow, and I'm so happy that we can actually give another life to our paper assets. We have capable people. We have normally energy solution. We have all integrated benefits, being the pulp mill, et cetera, and that gives us the flying start. When we do this analysis, we always make comparison between conversion and greenfield or brownfield. Then the point is that when we are looking at other cases where we can then have greenfield or brownfield, they are not at all excluded from our agenda. Now it is time to do the conversions and then move forward.
Acquisitions definitely are on our radar, but I would say that in the short term, conversions are the focus area.
Thank you, Hannu. Annette, here is one for you on the biodiversity. How can you harvest to your production needs and at the same time safeguard biodiversity in the Nordic forests?
That's a good question. I think it's important to say that Stora Enso has for many, many years been committed to sustainable forestry, and biodiversity has been part of how we have managed our forests through many, many years. We plant more trees than we harvest. We have a sustainability certification covering 99% of our forest and leased land. Actually it's not technically possible to get to 100%, because there's always some land being traded. So 99% is sort of the real number for that. In the later years, we've ramped up further on the biodiversity efforts that we are doing and doing a host of different things to improve biodiversity and to find out what the right things are to do.
Just one of the things that I want to point out here that we feel is particularly promising is using the precision forestry tools in the service of biodiversity as well, because that will enable us to learn where is the biggest impact so that we can focus our efforts. This is really the key thing for us. We have developed a systematic framework around this so that we can measure not only our interventions, but also the impacts of the interventions. We've laid this out on our website, so anyone is invited to go in and take a look and be inspired by what we do.
Thank you, Annette. Seppo, here is a very hot topic for you. You've already mentioned the high self-sufficiency in energy and wood. Can you continue to increase prices to fully mitigate higher energy and wood costs considering the strong inflationary environment?
Yes, this is a question we get quite often nowadays. First of all, I want to highlight our new operating model, which means that our divisions are more independent and more agile, and I think we have seen a proof point of that, new organization model working well if you think about the COVID-19 crisis in the past as well as what happened with energy and wood supply earlier this year. If you look at our energy position, we have very high self-sufficiency when it comes to energy in total, about 80%. After Olkiluoto 3 starts and paper is excluded, our
Self-sufficiency on electricity is about 97%. We are also working on operational efficiency improvements to lower the unit costs as well as on recipes, changing, adapting recipes to the changes in the cost structure, looking for new opportunities. Obviously, I'm very confident that our sales force is on top of the things, and they will be able to pass on cost pressures to our customers also when it comes to input costs.
Annica, I think you want to add something.
Yes. I would just want to add that, in addition to what Seppo was saying, that comparing kind of our position on energy and the control that we have of our wood supply, which are the major cost drivers, for businesses in general, and especially today, we are much more competitive compared to other players that do not have these assets in their control. Yes, we're able to pass on prices. We have high-margin type of products that are resistant. For instance, your area, Hannu, you're delivering to food and kind of products that we use in our everyday life, but then also kind of the structural footprint of our company.
Thank you. Another question on energy for you, Hannu. How will higher energy costs in Europe versus Asian and other packaging suppliers affect the business, and what is your long-term competitive position?
In China, we have a competitive position, so I think we are definitely in line with the main competitors or even better. I'd say that's under control. In Europe, like Seppo was just saying, the situation with our energy sufficiency is good, and it's getting better, so in that respect, I'm very comfortable. Vast majority, obviously, of our operations is integrated, and then we know that whereas vast majority of our Central European competitors that don't often have pulp mills, they have totally different situations. I think on relative terms, we are actually getting stronger.
Thank you, Hannu. Johanna, you have some
Yes
Yeah.
I would love to add, you know, because one of our products today is also green energy, so we have pulp mills like Enocell and Montes del Plata that have surplus energy that we sell regionally, and they form, of course, especially in these current conditions, a very important part for the energy supply of the local communities around them.
Thank you. Lars, one for you on your ambitions here. You're targeting 75% increase in EBITDA and more than 40% sales from Building Solutions. This implies strong margin expansion. What is driving that?
Yeah, the good news is we are in an increasingly attractive marketplace, that's already helping. The second thing is, within this marketplace, which is increasingly attractive, we have strengthened our competitive position already, both in traditional wood products, or for instance also with, you know, superior access to wood supply compared to some of our competitors, but also with an operational efficiency program. Also by growing the Building Solutions market, which is really growing by more than 10%, and taking within this growing market a larger value share by offering solutions and not just cubic meters, we have a real opportunity not just to grow sales but also to improve margins, I'm confident we will reach it.
Thank you. Hannu, on liquid packaging board, how much of your liquid packaging board production is recycled today, and how is it possible to increase that share?
This is again excellent question, and short answer is that we have no recycled fiber in the liquid packaging. However, there's a lot of discussion that should all packaging materials have minimum recycling content. We don't actually think that it makes too much sense to blend recycled fiber into those grades where you have the highest food safety requirements. We can't really rely on the fact that, you know, there wouldn't be new needs. Hence, we are now working with our pulping technology, how we can really purify, make recycled fiber fit for the liquid packaging, but this day is not yet here. Let's see when it will be.
Annica, please.
Yes, I think you can also elaborate a little bit on how much is recycled because that, I think, was the question, how much liquid packaging board is actually recycled today.
Yeah. Today, liquid packaging board in Europe has a recycling rate of 50%, and it's actually on the low side because on average, fiber-based packaging is recycled at the level of 80%, which is already above the European Union standards. This Ostrołęka recycling case Annette was presenting, it's increasing the recycling rate from 50% to 55%, so it's a big step. If we go forward with Langerbrugge, we'll maybe have a 10%, and then we are not the only ones who will do it. I think there will be also other companies who will go for it. We have to remember that this used beverage carton, the fibers are fantastic raw materials for our recycle grade, so there will be activity.
Thank you. Johanna, I have two questions for you. We'll take one first. Can you elaborate the growth possibilities for your Lignode product and how it currently competes with traditional batteries?
Thank you. Back to the properties again. You might remember, or I think you do remember actually, me talking about the C-rates, how fast you can charge, the low temperature performance, and the sustainability footprint. With traditional batteries, we actually believe we are excelling in performance. Of course, you know, depending on how you blend it, and also for the future battery generations, we intend to continue in the same direction, so not only offering sustainability but also higher performance.
Thank you. The second question is for you, Johanna.
Oh, yes.
How much more expensive is Lignode anode material versus pure graphite?
That I could expect as a question. We intend to be competitive with graphite long-term or sodium-ion or silicon. However, of course, we also intend to price Lignode for the value it's worth.
Thank you. Question for Seppo. On the divestment of today's announcement of Maxau, what was the pro forma EBITDA in 2021 of paper excluding Maxau?
Well, when it comes to Maxau mill divestments, the sale of the mill was EUR 250 million last year. When it comes to more financials and deeper analysis of figures, as a policy, we don't go more into details when it comes to our separate mills.
Thank you. Annica, here is one for you on wood. You seem to currently source wood for 30% of your business out of your own woodlands. How would you see this going forward?
Well, excellent question. I think, first of all, there are very few companies that have such big portion of the wood supply in their own control. This is clearly a competitive advantage for us. Secondly, we have a very strong supply network. We are the biggest buyers, for instance, in the Baltics, having the biggest and most developed supply network in that region, also in Finland. If we look at kind of our forests, we constantly evaluate where we own our forests. We try to optimize the footprint so that we have our own wood and our own forests closest to our operations and mills where we have kind of the best growth opportunities and so on.
If you look then how we choose to use harvesting in our own forests contra buying externally on the market, we optimize that to make sure that we have the most cost-competitive kind of wood going to Lars' and Hannu's operations and Johanna's operations. This is kind of the strength of both owning and then having a very well-developed supply network like we do.
Thank you. Hannu, the next one is for you. You called out 60% sales growth and doubling 2021 EBIT by 2030. How will you achieve this?
It's a question I was expecting. Needless to say, it's a tough target, but our ambition and targets, they need to be tough. If you think that, yes, we have well kind of a defined roadmap with those two big growth cases we've been discussing today, Langerbrugge, Oulu, then we have actually quite a few other investment projects in the pipeline. Packaging Solutions, definitely they've been now obviously having a rather modest profitability. Now we expect them to get on the right track. Then comes the very interesting piece of information that we were already touching, operational efficiency. In our division, we actually have quite a lot of room for improvement, get the operational efficiency up. Those tons, they are already fixed cost free because they already been paid.
When you start to put these bits and pieces together, I'm actually convinced that the 60% EBIT is not unreachable target.
Thank you. Lars, here is one for you. Wood Products have a history of volatile and weak profitability. Do you see a structural change in profitability? If so, what is behind that structural change?
Yeah. Firstly, we have been developing our Building Solutions business as an increasing business to also reduce the volatility of our business. Secondly, we have invested into our 16 sawmills to become more competitive. As I've said, last but not least, the market overall becomes more and more attractive. I'm quite confident that, you know, with those actions and the huge growth opportunity we have, especially in Building Solutions, we will be continuing to deliver good margins.
I would add here that if you look past, say, 10 years, performance of Wood Products has been a lot more stable than in the past if you go further back into history, so I think it's already visible in the performance.
Yes.
Thank you. One for you, Johanna. Of the EUR 1 billion sales in innovative biomaterials, how much would be Lignode out of that? And what other products make up the difference? And what margins do you see for these versus the 50% EBITDA margin you expect for Lignode?
Thank you. Well, let's start from the binder's perspective. You know, binders is already out there on the market, NeoLigno, which forms the basis of our product portfolio based on lignin that we are now growing step by step, as I've said. On that, we expect then to launch the Lignode products. Then beyond. Well, while that grow, we further then at the same time have further lignin applications in our innovation portfolio that I foresee also being launched further into the future. There is solid base, next step set, and then we continue.
Thank you. Hannu, here is one for you on recent actions. What is the level of virtual integration at De Jong? The presentation mentions 380 kiloton container board capacity to feed the 560 million m² , sorry, converting. How many tons of third-party liners of container board are you expecting to displace through internal board from Stora Enso mills?
It's a good question, and what we haven't mentioned today is that De Jong Packaging, it's not only 17 corrugated converter sites in Western Europe, but it's actually one recycled fiber-based container board mill. This mill was acquired by De Jong Packaging only a year ago, so it's actually still today selling quite a lot to other container board companies. In theory, there's a possibility to start to then supply the corrugated units. Once we get access to the company, we will then try to see what is the kind of a sweet spot for the portfolio. But definitely there is a significant integration possibility through this one container board mill and then our other mills in the Nordics and Poland.
Thank you. Hannu, another one, while we are in the area, can you elaborate on the energy supply for Langerbrugge, please?
Yes. It is my favorite energy concept. As I said, actually, let's start from the use of natural gas, and we do use maximum up to 2%, and it's mainly to heat up our boilers and, you know, use as a backup fuel, so you can say it's non-existent. The rest is this, you know, residential fuels, industrial waste, and then we burn quite a lot of industrial sludge from our processes, so it is very strong, as I was already explaining.
Thank you very much. I think we have time for one more question. Lars, is wind turbine towers out of wood possible to build at sea?
Yeah. Short answer, yes. The good news is the technology is basically the same whether they're on or offshore. It could be a hybrid solution so that in this salty, underwater, area, could be done with concrete, and above it could be using wood. Yes.
Interesting. This now concludes the Q&A session, and I hand over to Annica for closing remarks.
Thank you, Anna-Lena. I'm very satisfied with our performance and the execution of our strategic roadmap. We have taken decisive actions to focus our company, prioritizing our efforts in driving growth and delivering strong financial and sustainable performance. Our high energy self-sufficiency and the strong wood sourcing capabilities that we've discussed makes us even more competitive and resilient to cyclicality and other market fluctuations. Our decentralized operating model has allowed quick decision-making close to markets and customers. All of this is visible in our financial performance. We have consistently shown improvement, and this year we exceed all our group long-term financial targets. We are well positioned to capture growth, driven by the sustainability mega trends in renewability and circularity. We have the financial muscles to capture these opportunities.
In our selected growth businesses, packaging and building solutions, we have leading market positions and competitive industrial footprint, as well as strong partnerships in the value chains, as you have heard of today. In biomaterials innovations, we are building a new high-margin sustainable business. In terms of our climate circularity and biodiversity agenda, we have ambitious targets, and we are delivering ahead of schedule. In Stora Enso, sustainability is our business, and we are delivering the renewable future now. Thank you all for listening and for your engagement.