Mr. Teo, we will now present the company's annual results. All the financial figures in the presentation are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. Mr. Teo, please.
Thank you. Good afternoon, friends. It's been a while we have this physical meeting. It's been four years. Thanks for joining us this afternoon. As usual, we will go through the presentation by looking into our corporate profile, industry dynamics, financial, and business review. Slides will be accompanying this. For business review, as an established container manufacturer, leasing, and logistics service provider, Singamas currently operates five factories in China. Our total capacity is now about 220,000 TEU, or 20-foot units, of dry freight and ISO-specialized containers, and 20,000 units of tanks and customized containers. Apart from that, Singamas is also running eight container depots across seven major port cities in China and one logistics company in Xiamen. We now talk about industry trends and the outlook for our dry freight container.
From the bar chart on this page, page seven, we can see from the gray bar that the total number of containers produced in 2023 was 2.3 million TEU, up more than 16% from the initial market expectation. This was largely due to the result of owners ordering boxes end of last year over fears that the Red Sea crisis could cause supply chain disruption and lead to a shortage of equipment in Asia. Drewry research expects output to increase to about 3.6 million TEU in 2024 and then rise in most years up to 2027. Over this period, the production will be largely fueled by replacement requirements. The chart on page eight shows the ASP average selling price trend of 20-foot dry freight containers and related average steel costs over the year.
Due to the oversupply of dry freight containers in the market, the ASP for 2023 dropped by 26.8% year-on-year, to average of $2,075, while average steel price decreased by 25.3% year-on-year. Lower production volume led to high overhead costs per unit as a result of profit margin of dry freight production declining in 2023. Leasing companies faced challenging times in 2023, with initial long lease rates for dry freight containers declining on average by 20%-30% compared to 2022. However, the market holds an optimistic view for this sector going forward, anticipating that the lessor will order more containers than the transport operators or the ship owners, including ocean carriers over the period concerned. Lease rates are also predicted to rise.
For example, a 40-foot high-cube container lease rate is forecast to increase from $1.02 in 2023 to $1.18 in 2027, while 20-foot boxes will increase from $0.61 in 2023 to $0.67 in 2027. Over the forecast period, ICR initial cash investment returns are expected to remain within the range of 10.3%-10.6% for 20-foot dry freight and 9.6%-10.2% for 40-foot high-cube containers. Now let's move on to the financial revenue section. The group business performance was impacted due to weak global trade and overproduction in the last few years, resulting in a decline in the group revenue by half to about $383 million. Consolidated net profit attributable to owners of the company decreased by 58% to about $19 million, including interest earned from bank deposits of $40 million over this period. Singamas' basic earnings per share was $0.82 for this year.
At the end of 2023, our net asset value per share was $23.16, compared to $25.01 as of the end of 2022. The drop was mainly due to the distribution of $61 million dividend, including the payment of $51.9 million during the year. A final dividend of HK 0.04 per share has been declared for the year ended December 31st, 2023, together with the interim dividend of HK 0.01 and the interim special dividend of HK 0.17 per share for the company's 35th anniversary. Total dividends for the year came out to be HK 0.22 per share, representing a payout ratio of 344% for the year. If special dividends are excluded, the payout ratio is about 78%. Let's move on to the business review section. Manufacturing and leasing segments recorded revenues of $355 million, which amounted to 93% of our total revenue. Segment profit before tax and non-controlling interest was about $19.5 million.
In view of the sluggish market demands, Singamas has applied strict cost control and suspended all capital expenditure apart from necessary ones. During the year, we continued to prioritize CAPEX for safety and environmental protection, customized container projects with high growth potential, and automation projects with short payback periods. Furthermore, renewable green energy has also been applied to our plants. With R&D and craftsmanship advancements and the advantages of lower costs, high mobility, and faster deployment, many traditional facilities, such as energy storage systems and water treatment systems, have been containerized. With new Singamas' strong R&D and one-stop customized service, Singamas' customized containers are well received by the market, and its customer base is growing very fast. This slide shows the breakdown of container units sold under different product categories and respective revenues generated.
The table on the left shows that Singamas sold around 96,000 TEU of dry freight containers during the year. The pie chart on the right shows that the sales of these dry freight containers made up 53.5% of our total revenue for manufacturing, much lower than 81.5% last year. For customized containers, a total of 8,159 units were sold. Revenue contributed by these containers was 23.7% of total revenue, much higher than 7.5% last year. Within these customized containers, we have 4,341 energy storage systems, which recorded an increase of 173% year-on-year in quantity and recorded an increase of 16.4% percentage points year-on-year. The revenue mix in 2023 demonstrated our new Singamas' success in brown-to-green transformation. These improving product mixes will continue to bring a healthier revenue structure, which is less influenced by international trade performance.
Singamas is a major operator of container depots in China with over 30 years of experience. Our logistics operations continue to deliver strong, solid performance and contribute stably to the group. We currently run eight container depots in China and one logistics company in Xiamen. You can find more details about our depot in the appendix on page 25. Our logistics service business strives to strengthen its warehousing capabilities, improve its digital operations, and increase its network coverage so as to enhance our customer engagement. Page 21 shows us more data on our logistics service business. The overall logistics service revenue was $27 million in 2023, with segment profit before tax and non-controlling interests at $8 million, up 44% year-on-year. Financial performance of this sector improved significantly due to improved operating efficiency, better cost control, and higher interest income earned during the year.
On the appendix, pages 22-25 of this presentation contain what shows our income statement as well as our factory and depot data for your further reference. With that, I conclude my presentation today. If you have any questions, we Rebecca and myself, we will be happy to answer. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Teo. If you have any questions, please raise your hand, and our colleague will pass you the mic.
I will be happy to answer in English, Mandarin, or Cantonese if I can.
Yes.