Good morning, everyone, and you're all very welcome here to our Technology and Innovation Center here in Beloit, Wisconsin. We have an action-packed day in store for you today where you're going to see a little bit of our world. That's the food and beverage industry, and why we are the go-to when it comes to solving our customers' and the industry's most complex challenges. I'm going to kick off here this morning with the main hall presentation. That will be followed by a number of deep dive interactive breakout sessions.
Then Marguerite will bring us through the financial targets of the medium-term plan, and then we'll close out the day with a Q&A session. Starting first with my key messages for today, and there's three of them. Firstly, we operate in a highly dynamic market, particularly for Kerry. Whereas you might see the headline market data may not be overly exciting, the level of innovation and renovation opportunities across categories where we operate in, they really provide tremendous opportunities for growth for our organization.
Secondly, we have the industry's most relevant technology portfolio and business model. We are the best in the business when it comes to solving our customers' problems. Thirdly, we're very much in execution mode, delivering on our strategy, delivering on our financial performance. Now let me take you through what Kerry looks like today and how we got here, both through the lens of strategic business development and our financial performance. When we talk about strategic business development, it has been very much centered on making our business fit for future.
Strategically and systematically building out our portfolio, evolving our portfolio to be that top-of-mind partner with the capability to solve the food and beverage industry's most complex challenges. We've completed our portfolio transformation, as you're all aware, just under two years ago, becoming a pure play B2B taste nutrition company. We've built out our biotechnology capability, establishing our new center of excellence for biotechnology in Leipzig in Germany, expanding capacity and capability for enzyme manufacturing across three regions, and embedding biotechnology right across our organization.
We've expanded our global footprint, especially in emerging markets with new locations in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East, and LatAm. We've developed new and next-generation technologies. From Tastesense, sugar and salt reduction technology, our industry-leading protein masking capability, new enzymes, new pre and pro and postbiotics, and new to the world natural food protection preservation systems. We further developed our food service business and continued to evolve building out our retailer go-to-market. We initiated Accelerate 2.0, which is all about optimizing our footprint while at the same time expanding digital excellence right across our organization.
In conjunction with that strategic business development, we've also been delivering strong financial performance. We've delivered revenue volume growth of 3.8% over the last four years. Over 300 basis points of market outperformance. On EBITDA margin, we've expanded margins by 320 basis points since 2021, and we have an EBITDA target of 20%-21% by 2030. On EPS, we've delivered high single digit constant currency EPS growth eight of the last 10 years, including 2024, 2025, and we're on track again here for 2026. Volume growth, EBITDA margin expansion, high single digit plus EPS growth. That's our algo.
Now let's take a look at our business and look at our business profile today. Firstly, looking through the lens of geography. Over half of our business is in the Americas, and we have a fantastic track record of industry-leading growth in this region over many years. For those of you that have been here in the past, you know a big part of this is the capability, the energy, the passion of our people, and I think you're going to see that come to light again today. At EUR 2.2 billion, we're one of the largest in emerging markets, and our business model is particularly relevant to customers in emerging markets. On end use markets, we work right across all categories, all end-use markets across food and beverage.
On customer segmentation, we're split pretty evenly across global, regional, and local customers. We get asked this question from time to time. The reality is, we have been growing our business across each of the customer segments for the last several years, and we continue to see opportunity to grow our business across each of the customer segments for the next years ahead. From a channel perspective, again, we've a phenomenal track record on food service. We're as excited as ever about it.
The opportunities in retail are as strong today as they ever have been, primarily driven by the renovation opportunity. On technology, we have a dedicated session today on our taste leadership, and Albert will shortly bring us through how our biotechnology capability is driving our innovation platforms. We're designed to master complexity, but how does all this come together and translate into value for our customers? Our differentiation is based on three key elements.
Firstly, our extensive technology capabilities. We have a broad and deep technology portfolio. What might be underappreciated is how our technology portfolio is integrated between taste and biotechnology, and how biofermentation and biotransformation are key underpins of our portfolio. Secondly is our holistic food and beverage application expertise. Our focus and dedication has always been on food and beverage. We know final product better than anyone else in the industry.
Our customers put huge value on this, and the customer examples that you're going to see throughout the course of the day, that application expertise has been a key unlock in solving their challenges. Thirdly is our integrated solutions leadership. We have that ability to layer technology, not just to layer it for layering's sake, but to layer it to create incremental value, to create incremental benefit for our customers.
You will see through the course of the day, we have dedicated channel specialists and experts across every aspect of new product development. We're built to master complexity, and it's the combination of these three elements that really set us apart in the industry. You might have seen from the video earlier how the market landscape shifts are really driving more opportunity than ever. Dynamics like health and wellness, regulatory, GLP-1, the digital consumer. All these elements are pushing customers to improve the quality of their products.
The impacts from inflation means that consumer affordability is a key priority for our customers and a key priority for our customers to address, while at the same time not compromising on quality or not compromising on taste. The geopolitical disruption, the supply chain disruption, are adding even more pressure, forcing customers to look at their formulas, something they wouldn't even have dreamed of done a number of years ago. All these industry dynamics are leading to an increased level of innovation and renovation, and all these market shifts provide opportunity for Kerry.
Firstly, looking at innovation, John and Elizabeth are going to take us through some of the key dynamics here in North America. They're going to talk to us about innovation with CPGs, innovation with retailers, innovation with emerging brands. Mac and cheese ice cream and cottage cheese everything. Renovation, it's increasing across all markets, first and foremost driven by the consumer. We are the go-to in the industry when it comes to renovation. We've sized our addressable value-add specialty ingredient market at about EUR 87 billion.
We see this market growing to over EUR 100 billion in the next 5-10 years, primarily driven by that renovation opportunity. We operate in a highly dynamic market, and at Kerry, we're particularly well-positioned to capitalize on that opportunity. Now here comes the really exciting part of the day. I'm just going to outline here the five breakout sessions that we have in store for you today. The first one is Accelerating Innovation through Biotechnology. You're going to see a number of exciting and potential game-changing innovations, how we're using next-generation modulation for nutrition health.
How we're using biochemistry to solve the raw material scarcity challenge. How we're using biofermentation to create new clean-label solutions like natural colors, preservation without sorbate, and taste without flavor. Next is renovation for dynamic market needs. We talked two years ago about the penetration opportunity and how that renovation opportunity was becoming a bigger part of our pipeline. Today, here in North America, renovation is greater than half of our overall project pipeline. We're seeing it across all customer segments and all EUMs.
We've grown our snacks business by 17% over the last two years, primarily driven by that renovation opportunity, primarily driven by salt reduction. Despite all this, 80% of the products in the snack category still contain sodium levels above WHO guidelines. So, a huge opportunity continuing to be in front of us for out into the future. You will see through the examples throughout the course of the day that renovation equals complexity, and we're built to solve complexity. The next breakout session is pioneering for next-generation taste. We have the broadest taste technology toolbox in the industry.
But what really sets us apart is how we integrate flavors with food science, with biotechnology, and our application expertise to deliver next-generation solutions. You're going to see examples like Xperience, our natural fermentation-based taste enhancement system, our Tastesense sugar and salt modulation technology, our industry-leading masking technology, protein masking technology, and we have a real leadership position when it comes to protein masking. Solving one of the biggest barriers to consumer adoption, and that's making high-protein food and beverage products taste fantastic. Next is food service and our structural tailwind.
We have a fantastic track record here, growing on average mid-single digit over the last 10 years. We're as excited as ever about the food service opportunity. We're in a completely different league when it comes to food service, and our business model gives us a sustainable right to win. Then finally, it's about how our digital transformation is enabling our business strategy and our financial delivery. We've piloted and proven several initiatives right across the organization.
Now, it's about scaling. Scaling across commercial, R&D, supply chain, manufacturing, and business functions. It's about accelerating value delivery, and it's about solving real business challenges better, faster, more efficiently. I'm going to hand you over now to Dr. Albert McQuaid, our Chief Science and Technology Officer, who's going to talk to you about innovations that we're using to solve today's challenges and also talk to you about the next generation of new technology that we're developing to solve future customer challenges. Over to you, Albert.
Thank you, Edmond, and again, welcome to Beloit to everyone. As Edmond has mentioned, our consumers and our customers are facing a lot of challenges. With those challenges, they need a partner. They need a partner that can help them win and help them solve those challenges. Over the last 10 years, we have invested over EUR 3 billion in our research, development, and application ecosystem. We're currently investing EUR 315 million in RD&A, and that's to support over 1,300 scientists that are working with our customers wherever they may be.
We intend to continue this. We intend to continue to evolve. When we go forward, we intend to move our investment in R&D, which is circa 5% today, to 5%-6% of revenue. What's really important in this is this will allow us to connect science, technology, and application for growth in various categories, channels, and geographies. You'll see later today our digital session. We're going to use digital and AI to allow us to capture the commercial knowledge, the formulation knowledge, and the analytical knowledge that will allow us to expand our capability.
That enablement of our capability will allow our scientists to focus more on solving customer challenges for the future. Edmond mentioned our broad technology portfolio. We have a leading taste technology portfolio that's built on vertically integrated natural products. 40% of that taste portfolio is delivered through biotechnology. We've complemented that with our biotechnology solutions portfolio of enzymes, of proactive health solutions, of biopharma technologies, and food systems. What's really important is each of these portfolios is powered by biofermentation and biotransformation.
This allows us to create integrated, scalable, sustainable solutions addressing customer challenges. As Edmond mentioned, these technologies are already being used today. We have the industry-leading sodium reduction portfolio. We combine fermentation knowledge and flavor science knowledge to allow sodium reduction going to those WHO levels. We've best-in-class sugar reduction technology. We combine advanced lactase technology with our Tastesense sweet portfolio to allow customers to reformulate products. We have the most advanced protein masking solutions. This allows our customers to formulate nutritional-dense products.
You'll see a number of these masking solutions today as you go around the breakout sessions. What's really critical and what is really unique about these systems, and this is feedback that we've had from our customers, what our systems allow is customization at speed. We are the only flavor house that offers customization of masking systems through a unique sensory and analytical process to pinpoint specific off-notes that need to be addressed. We've best-in-class green technology. As a from food, for food company, we use natural substrates, not solvents or chemicals, to deliver the masking. Thirdly, we have the industry-leading production stability.
Our masking portfolio can withstand extreme processing conditions, such as high heat, high-pressure extrusion, or UHT, and this is due to the unique production process, how we develop the products. We're developing the next generation of clean-label preservation, and this is being rolled out in bakery and meat and into dairy and beyond, and we'll show later into beverage. We've new-to-world fermentation taste solutions, our Kerry Xperience Portfolio. This is a new-to-world savory solution. It naturally restores the authentic taste and complexity that you may lose in large-scale food production.
We have these, and you're going to see these today. But we're looking for the future, and we're looking to what is needed for the future. We have identified five key areas of focus for the company, and each one of these has the potential opportunity of over EUR 50 million for Kerry. Firstly, we are looking at modulation for advanced nutrition. Make healthier products taste better. We're looking into fermentation and how we reimagine natural, using biotechnology to replace ingredients while maintaining safety, quality, and shelf life.
We're exploring the biochemistry for tomorrow's scarcity, creating new solutions for a world facing increasing pressures on raw material and resources. We're looking at future-proof preservation. We're using science and data to predict and prevent and reduce food waste across the food system. Lastly, we're looking at food as a therapeutic, how we can develop nutrition solutions that can play a more important and more proactive role in human health.
Later today, we're going to have an innovation session, and we're going to focus on three of these key areas, and we're going to talk you through technologies that we're developing that will be the next generation of technology that we want to bring to the market. In summary, we're increasing our investment in R&D. We're deploying it better, faster, and with greater precision across the global food and beverage markets. We are solving the challenges of today, but we're also building the technologies that will address tomorrow's challenges. This is how Kerry will continue to differentiate, innovate, and grow. With that, I'll hand it over to Elizabeth.
Thanks, Albert. Welcome again to North America. Here, we live in an incredibly dynamic market, and here, every day, we have one job, and that's to answer the question of what will 385 million consumers want to eat and drink next. I can tell you here, at least, the answer will keep surprising us. For example, we live in a market where a drink can be launched at a soda shop down the road at a mom-and-pop restaurant, and within weeks, it's a national phenomenon. We live in a market where a chain restaurant with 40 locations can desire and demand to have 400.
We also operate in a market where something can be popular on TikTok on Tuesday and end up in a project brief here in our building by Friday. And while that might seem incredibly wild and different, here, we just call it an average Wednesday, and that's what you're going to see here today. What makes this market so exciting is that it's fast-moving, it's fragmented, and it's constantly reinventing itself. This pace is staggering for us. New flavors, new sizes, new collaborations, new products appear on the shelf every single day. Over the last two years, 17,000 new products have been launched across 4,400 brands. That means 26 new products a day can be tried by consumers every single moment.
These new products can be enormous. When something here launches, it scales fast. Circana's top 200 new retail product launches amounted to $6.2 billion in sales in the first year alone. For emerging beverage brands in particular, they can explode overnight, and you'll see many examples here today. A category can emerge, a challenger can appear, and they can become very meaningful businesses. What we say here is, today's niche can easily become tomorrow's category. This is also changing how consumers discover these new products.
Today, 1/3 of American consumers are discovering these new products using AI. Only a few years ago, discovery would have happened on the shelf or on the menu, and now discovery of these new products can happen anywhere. So whether it's a social post, it could be a content creator, a viral trend, it can show up on the shelf and menu in hours. So the distance between inspiration to purchase has never been shorter, and the speed that these trends travel has never been faster. But we also know the consumer here is challenged. It is a challenging environment, and 79% of our consumers here are trading down.
But all this complexity and disruption is creating a very different consumer. So while 79% are trading down, 40% of those are also splurging. So the same consumer that's buying a retailer brand pasta is also buying a $4 functional soda. So they're trading down in one category, and they're spending in another. So it's value and premium, it's not value or premium. What that means for us is consumers are becoming much harder to predict. But what makes it also fun is that they're becoming far more interesting to watch.
When 385 million consumers here start redefining what they want, some very unusual things start to happen. So I'm going to give you a few examples that you'll see also throughout the day, but that are part of some unusual disruption in our businesses. First, let's take refreshers. It's probably one of the most exciting things happening in beverage right now. A decade ago, this was not even a category, and today it's one of the most fast-moving beverage dynamics we have. It's hard to define what is a refresher. Is it an energy drink? Is it a tea?
Is it a functional beverage? And the answer is yes. It's all of these things. So consumers took bits and pieces of all their beverages they enjoyed, and they made something completely new. It's fascinating actually, just how quickly this has happened. A category that barely existed a couple years ago is now everywhere. Every food service operator wants a refresher strategy, a QSR, a fast casual chain, and even casual dining, and you're going to see that here today. What's interesting about this dynamic is this means consumers aren't actually buying a beverage.
They like refreshers because they are buying an experience. It is a pick-me-up, it is a reward, it is a moment, and they are willing to pay a premium for it. They did not just adopt a new product that launched. This has created an entirely new opportunity and a new beverage occasion. We could not talk about dynamics in North America without talking about protein. I hope you all enjoyed your baskets in your hotel room that were a little protein loaded, you might have noticed. 10 years ago, protein meant a tub of powder at the gym.
Today it is protein coffee, it is protein lemonade, it is protein chips, cereal, and even protein water. I am confident most Americans would put protein into everything that is not nailed down. Underneath this humor about protein on the shelves, the important thing to know, though, is this demonstrates a huge shift. Protein has escaped sports nutrition. It has become breakfast, it has become snacking, it has become indulgence, and it has become a lifestyle. What is really important here for us is a single ingredient has now become a daily consumer expectation.
Then we have pickle. Maybe one of the best flavor trends of the year is pickle. Pickle chips, pickle popcorn, pickle ranch, pickle sunflower seed, and even pickle beverages. I am confident no one sat in a meeting 10 years ago and said, "I have seen the future and the future is dill." But here we are, and consumers are not just buying flavors that they love, like pickle, they are buying discovery. They are buying things that are interesting enough to talk about with their friends. Apparently, sometimes that means they are buying pickle as well.
Innovation also does not have to be, "here is something new." It can be sometimes America collectively gets together and decides something that is old is cool again. Take cottage cheese as an example. It was a forgotten product and ingredient in the back of your refrigerator. Then social media happened. Suddenly, the entire American population woke up and said, "Wait, it has protein in it?" Now we have cottage cheese ice creams, cottage cheese dips, pasta sauces, and breakfast bowls. Now we have desserts, pints of frozen desserts with 40 g of protein per serving.
What this represents is that health and indulgence used to occupy different ends of the supermarket, but now consumers are asking, "Why do I have to choose?" Lastly, my favorite, we have macaroni and cheese ice cream. Yes, macaroni and cheese ice cream, and it should not work. But that is the point. Consumers now do not define categories in their traditional sense. They do not define categories the way we define categories. All they care about is whether the product is delicious, interesting, relevant, and worth trying. Beneath all this fun of pickles and macaroni and cheese ice cream, there are three main takeaways for us and for our business.
First, all of this change in the market creates incredible opportunity. Every shift that is happening with consumers, channels, economics, regulation, creates an opportunity for innovation and renovation. Secondly, all of this complexity drives the value of partnership with our customers. Our customers rarely need a single ingredient solution anymore. They need a full integrated outcome, something that works for the consumer, something that works on the label, something that works in the manufacturing process, and also, of course, works economically in today's environment. Lastly, and most importantly, speed wins in our market.
In a world where today's niche is tomorrow's category, identifying these trends and these opportunities is not enough. You have to commercialize it, and you have to do it very quickly. That means this is a very good market for Kerry. All this opportunity and all these new dynamics only matter if you're prepared and you've built a business to capture it. I want to turn it over to John now, who will talk to you about how we've done exactly that. John?
Good morning, and welcome to Beloit. Over the last 25 years, I've had the pleasure to work across all of Kerry's developing markets and developed, and I had the privilege to lead three of the regional businesses. Elizabeth and Edmond, they spoke about how dynamic North America was. Not only is it the most dynamic, it's also the most exciting and scalable market on this planet. I keep getting blown away with the level of opportunity that exists here every day. Today I'm going to bring you through three things. The first is an overview of our business profile in North America.
The second is bring you through some of the challenges that our customers are having every day. Finally, how Kerry is partnering with our customers to help solve those challenges. Over the last number of years, Kerry's had industry-leading growth here in North America to build a business that today is over EUR 3 billion. It's a diversified business that constantly is evolving in this market. If we look across our end-use markets, our customers, and our channels, both food service and retail, we have a breadth of business that gives us, in North America, a unique view on where acceleration of growth is happening and where disruption is also occurring in this market.
Regardless of the segments, the customers, the same realities exist across the whole spectrum. Customers' expectations continue to increase. Innovation cycles are getting shorter, and the complexity that our customers are facing every day is increasing. The best way to understand this is through understanding the challenges that our customers are trying to solve. I'm going to bring you through now three of those challenges that our customers are facing, and the first one is retailer brands. Retailers' brands of the past used to follow national brands, used to follow the CPGs. Today, they're competing directly with them. 80% of consumers are buying retailers' brands regularly.
Retailers are building these brands. They're investing in quality, they're investing in improving the nutrition of their products, and they're investing in innovation. For the CPGs, this is a completely different competitive environment to what they faced only a few years ago. It also raises the stakes for the retailers. They need to improve the quality, the taste of their products. They need to improve the nutrition of their formulations. They need to innovate faster, and they need to differentiate their products from the national brands.
We're going to move now from retail to food service. In the past, restaurant growth was measured in decades. Today, it's measured in years. Finally, consumers have been rewarding smaller, fast-growing, niche brands. The challengers have been coming for their share of the pie. Over the last three years, these challenger brands have taken 1.5 percentage points of market share from the CPGs. The market share is switching, and they're winning because they're identifying consumer needs, and they're creating occasions for the consumer. They're building communities of new consumers even before they scale their business.
They're winning. They're winning because they're reshaping the category, and they're moving faster than the incumbents can move. All these examples, they may look very different. It all comes back to the same facts. Change in North America creates opportunity. The complexity, the more complex this market becomes, the more our customers, regardless of the size, regardless of the category, they need to partner with us. Solutions at speed wins, and that is where Kerry is at its best. Thank you.