So good morning, and welcome here to Newark. So thank you very much for coming. We are thrilled to have you here today. So today, we are going to talk about two key operations: our supply chain operations and our services operations. I hope that you're going to leave today impressed by the scale, by the capability, by the resilience and the agility of our supply chain. Simon will talk more about that and what we've lived over the last 3, 4 years, and how that makes us confident for the future. I hope you will leave here today having seen our repairs and returns operations, recognizing the unique capability that we have. Unique as a vertically integrated repairs operation that sits within our retail business, powered by colleague entrepreneurs.
Now, we're operators, we're not marketeers, so when we talk about colleague entrepreneurs, we really mean it, and you're going to see some of that later. And I hope you're going to be wowed by what they do and what we can do as a result of them. The fundamental underpinnings to everything you're going to see in here today is four things. First of all, it's about customers. It's about how we, in the operations, we underpin the U.K. and Ireland strong performance that you've heard about from Alex and Bruce, and how we do that through delivering choice and value for our customers, and how, despite the challenges, we have continued to improve that customer experience year on year. It's about our colleagues. It's about how we empower and engage, educate, and have expert colleagues that really are our secret sauce.
They're what drive the success of Currys, and certainly are absolutely essential to the success of our operations. It's about you, our shareholders, how we can demonstrate, and we will demonstrate today, about the recurring high margin revenues that our services drive for our business and the capability that sits behind that, but also the efficiency within our operations and our capabilities around driving out cost to offset the headwinds, which has been something, really quite significant over the last three years, and particularly in the last 18 months with the inflationary drivers. And last but not least, it's about the underpinning of sustainability from a future, from a now and a future perspective, in terms of our three commitments around net zero, building the circular economy, and around offsetting and, and adapting to digital poverty.
So that's the framework, and we'll come back at the end and you can challenge me, but I'm hoping what you are going to see in here throughout this morning is references to all of this. And, and it's not or, it's and. The ambition that we laid out as a team at the very beginning was we had to work for our customers and our colleagues and our shareholders and our communities. Makes it more complicated, makes it more difficult, but that's our ambition, and I think what you're going to see today demonstrates that we've achieved quite a lot. So how does this all link back? You've seen the video, you've heard Alex talk about how we help everyone enjoy amazing technology. So I'm going to bring to life for you today, particularly focusing on the enjoy. That's where the operations really come into their own.
We talk about how tech is absolutely essential, and I don't need to tell you, we're all consumers, we're all tech users, that tech has become absolutely essential for all of us in terms of keeping us connected, productive, entertained, fed, clean. Which is great, except what that also means is customer expectations have never been higher, the demands on that tech have never been higher, at the same time as their tolerance for getting it wrong has never been lower. That's the context in which our operations function today. How does this all tie in? We talk a lot about the four strategic priorities of our business. How does that then map into the world that you are going to see and hear about today? Well, the first is clearly capable and committed colleagues. I talk about them being our secret sauce, and they absolutely are.
But I'm not gonna... I could wax lyrical, I really could. I'm super passionate about this. I genuinely believe that this is one of our key differentiators, but I want you to judge that for yourself. As you hear from the team, as you walk around today and you hear from colleagues, I'll let you judge for yourself just about the quality that we have. Some of the colleagues that you will see today have years of education and experience, not weeks, not months, but years that we are benefiting from and drives so much of what we do and how we do it. The fundamental responsibility we have is to ensure that we make our business easy to shop. So what does that mean?
Well, clearly, we have a national footprint, which allows us to reach out to 90% of the, 99% of the population. But actually, what it's really about is enabling our customers to shop when and how they want, and the supply chain and service operations that sit behind that, keeping the promises that we make to those customers as a business. Customers for life is pretty much the heart of what we're going to talk about most of this morning and a lot of what you're going to see today. So I'm not going to kind of dwell on that, other than clearly, Steve will tell you this, Alex will tell you this, the customers that use our services are our happiest customers. It's actually the more customers that use our services makes for happy shareholders as well.
So that's a really critical part of what we do, and what you'll start to see today is some of the ways in which we're starting to differentiate some of those service offerings. Keep a lookout when we get to the repairs lab for the RepairLive. Wow, 'cause no one else can do that, and it's something that genuinely our customers really, really value. Last but not least, clearly, is all about growing profitably. I've touched upon this in terms of offsetting significant cost headwinds. We'll go through that in a little bit more detail in a moment. But also, we have a responsibility not just to manage operations and cost, but to drive adoption, to support services that enable charging, and to ensure that we're helping to build that circular economy.
So this is how we're gonna frame, and I hope these themes will become consistent for you throughout the day. So services, listen, I've talked about how this all fits with the strategy and with our strategic priorities. We're gonna zoom in and talk a bit more about services. You will have heard this slide presented by Alex on numerous occasions. I'm not gonna repeat that. You've heard the key messages in the video. I guess the good news is, what we can see is more customers are buying our services, and that we deliver those services in a depth and a breadth and a scale that no one else can, and Simon and Steve will talk about that a little bit later. So today, we're really gonna focus in on two of the four services.
These are the operationally enabled services: delivery, installation, and setup, which is largely in Simon's world, and we help give your tech longer life, protection, repair, refurbish, trade-in, and recycling. All of these things you're gonna see in action today, so I'm not gonna spend too much time talking about them. I don't wanna steal the thunder from the, from the team either. But navigation, that's where we're going, is focusing very much on those services and how we execute them. The importance of this is to try and back up, I guess, our statement that no one can match the depth and the breadth of the services that we offer. But it's not just that.
We have expert colleagues every step of the way, and we leverage that expertise, whether that's in giving advice, demonstrations, product setup, through to delivery and installation in customers' homes, collection services in stores, through to recycling, repair, trade-in. Every step of the way, every service is backed up by expert colleagues. That's incredibly important because our services, as well as our products, can be confusing. Let's jump into a little bit of the two operations. The first operation I'm gonna talk about is our supply chain operations. I guess the important thing to start with is that our supply chain operations are all about keeping these promises. We talk to our customers to make it as easy and convenient as possible for them to shop. Shop how you like. You're all consumers, you know it.
Our customers shop online, they shop in store, they browse online, they browse in store, they buy in various different ways. It's essential for us to make that easy, convenient, and adaptable to each customer. Then we have a supply chain that has to deliver on those promises, whether that's carry-out in stores or delivery to your home or collection in store or installation. Every one of those promises has to be kept, and kept consistently. There's a big network. Simon will talk to you about it. It's big, and it's comprehensive. Some of the scale of what we do, I don't know how easy it is for you to imagine 3 million big box deliveries. That's enormous. When we see some of the stock in the get, you'll get some sense of what that means in terms of the size and the scale of it.
So the network is large, it's relatively complex, but that's what's required to give that reach to 99% of the population. It creates physical challenges. I've been out, and I've done it. Any of you who've tried to maneuver American refrigerators around your home will understand just how difficult some of those physical elements of the job are that we do. The skills diversity. Any one of our colleagues going into a customer's home could be asked to do a simple delivery or an installation of a washing machine, which, to be fair, is pretty straightforward. I could do it. Could I wall mount a TV? I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, and I sure as heck can't install electrical or gas appliances. These require years of accredited training and development to be able to do these.
So you've got to understand the complexity and the dependency we have on highly skilled colleagues to be able to execute those services right. It's really not easy. I'm not looking for sympathy here, neither will Simon be, but it's important to understand just how difficult it is to get that right. And the team have consistently delivered improvements in that quality and in right first time, and they've only just really started. There's still loads more to go after. Services operations. So repairs and returns, the lab. The first time I saw this operation, I was wowed by it, and I come back on a regular basis, and I'm wowed every time I come back. It's, I think, one of the greatest assets we have as a business. Why? It is vertically integrated.
We are the only retailer who has this capability within their own control. And not just that, what you're going to see today is Europe's largest repair center. So we have the capability, and we have the skill and the capacity and the scale that goes with that. But it's not just about the repair center. We actually carry out repairs in home. We carry out repairs in store. And what you'll see today, we can also carry out repairs and support customers themselves through the use of video. So it's about really taking that to the customers in the way that we possibly can. But it's not just about repairs. What you're going to see today, and what David will talk about, is that we've taken that repairs capability, and we are leveraging that to transform our returns from a problem to an opportunity....
And that's something I think that is fairly unique and incredibly special, but I won't steal any of David's numbers on that. What underpins all of this is a culture of entrepreneurs, and I genuinely mean that. Most of the progress, most of the ideas that you will see in action and executed, have come from our colleagues, who are fundamentally proud to save money, proud to do the right thing for customers, and proud to look after the environment and the planet that they work on. So what does it all add up to? So I'm an operator, you'd know.
I always say, "Come back to the numbers." We can talk about what we've done, but fundamentally, our numbers tell you that in the context of probably the toughest 3 to 4 years I have ever experienced, and I've been doing this stuff for about 3 decades, I've never known a tougher supply chain context than we have over the last 3 to 4 years in terms of the volatility. Not just COVID, but post-COVID supply and demand volatility, geopolitics, the impact of the Ukraine. Everything has basically created the most turbulent, most difficult 3 and a half years I have ever seen. Despite that, the teams that you're going to meet today and hear from today have delivered. They delivered for their colleagues.
Despite all of that pain, all of that challenge, we have consistently improved colleague engagement year on year. We've consistently improved our colleague, our customer experience year on year as well, and we've done that at the same time as delivering significant cost out to offset the inflationary headwinds that we have faced as a business. And while we were doing all of that, we did it in a way that actually progresses our sustainability ambitions and our targets. So I'm going to be really upfront. I'm incredibly proud of the team, of my team, and what you're going to see today. I'm not going to repeat this slide that I started with. I'm going to hand over to Simon in a moment.
He's going to talk about supply chain in a bit more detail, then Steve and David will come and talk about services and the services operations. What I would like to draw your attention to is our mantra: more and better for less. Again, we're not going to win any awards for marketing, but fundamentally, this underpins everything that we do in the operations that you'll see today. It's not enough to do more, it's not enough to do it for less, it has to be better as well, and that's the acid test I'd ask you to apply to everything you see and hear today. Are we delivering on our mantra of more and better for less? I think we are. Simon, over to you.
Thank you. Very good morning. I'm Simon Boss. I'm Director of Logistics and Home Delivery. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about our supply chain. As Lindsay says, something that I think you are going to be impressed by. I'm going to talk to you about what we do, how we do it, but I'm also going to talk to you about why you should be excited about it. Lindsay talked about our supply chain. It's large, it's robust, and it is reliable. It is the beating heart of our operation, and it employs 2,400 colleagues. In our 1.5 million sq ft warehouse, and you've seen that as you've arrived, it is huge, we have a whole range of services.
Now, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the next five or six slides. It's really about orientation. But I guess what you need to know is here we are in building two, and this is the home to our small box operation, which is distributing our pods, et cetera, to customers' homes or to stores. It's also home to our store pick operation, so everything going out to our stores. Over in building one is our home fulfillment center. We simply haven't got the time to go around all of our operations, but that's where we host our big box products, and that is for delivery of our American fridge freezers, all our big, bulky products into customers' homes, where we will deliver and install them. And as Lindsay says, it's also home to Europe's largest repair center, which you will be seeing later.
So just to run through, I guess, some of the key operational slides, we receive 26 million units of stock a year. That comes from 276 suppliers. What you're going to see when I take you around there, it's pretty manual, but it's pretty manual for a reason. So we, we fill the containers, or the containers are filled to over 99% capacity. That's important to us when you're paying about $1,600 for a container. Even more important when it's, you know, touching $15,000, as it once was through COVID and through cost of living crisis. So, you know, it is important that we're absolutely maximizing that asset. We then distribute our stock to stores and to customers' homes. Now, I'm going to talk about capacity, and I'm going to talk about flex later.
We've got a real enviable track record of being able to flex this operation to meet the demands of our customers. But we'll send about 300,000 units of stock to stores a week, and we will send a 100,000-ish units of stock through our carrier partners to customers' homes per week. And again, we talk about Black Friday, we talk about our promotion periods. That flexes, and we will talk about that more later. But it's not all about Newark. So Newark, while it is the center of our operation, is supported by three external distribution centers. Why have we got them? Well, it's really simple: they hold 600 of our fastest moving big box lines. There's frankly just no point bringing it all back to the center to distribute it all the way back out to the regions.
So it's good for cost, it's good for efficiency, it also gives us quite a lot of flexibility. And our warehouse operations are supported by 18 main home delivery depots. So I'll talk about this more in quite a bit of detail later, but these people and these colleagues are the face of Currys for a number of our customers. If you're buying an online product, it will be our delivery crews can be the only people that you will actually see through that transaction process, so really important. And they are strategically located, so 99.9% coverage of the population, with a pretty competitive lead time, for our customers on a next day or day two basis.
And we also have a huge network of stores, so 300+ stores, and they are much, much more than a logistic point, clearly. But for customers that simply can't wait, three-quarters of our customers can be there within 15 minutes. So we love our stores, and we absolutely love our stores. They are not only efficient, but they are a really cost-effective distribution channel for us. So you bring all that together, and what does it actually mean? Well, it means that we've got a scale that just cannot be matched. We are about 2.5 times bigger than AO in terms of our footprint, but we're managing revenues that are 5 times the size of our nearest competitor. So our scale is huge, but what's also impressive is our ability to flex.
So we can and we do flex up by circa 50% as we move into our peak periods to be able to handle that volume efficiently. And while I'm not going to trot out the usual COVID stories, I think it's really important, but what COVID really taught us was the sheer flexibility and the resilience that we've got in our supply chain. So you know, our normal volumes were 2.5 times, and our peak volumes went up to 6.5 times our normal volumes. So our ability to flex as stores closed was something that we did virtually overnight and in a very robust way. So you've heard about the scale of our operation, but what that actually means for customers is a set of options that just simply cannot be matched.
So within small box, we offer a great choice based on price, speed and convenience, 9 PM cutoffs, but it's really in big box where we truly excel. We know we've got the privilege of going into customers' homes, and it truly is a privilege to be able to offer that service. But we deliver a range of services, which could be anything from a basic TV delivery into a customer's room of choice, all the way through to a gas cooker in a time slot that is convenient to the customer, that we will install, and they will take away, and then we will recycle their product. So it's the whole gamut of services that we offer. And in fact, our range of services, again, can't be matched.
Your eye naturally drawn to the one cross that is on the slide, naturally. That is for refrigeration plug-in. We can do it. We simply choose not to because the manufacturer guidelines is that we shouldn't, so we don't. So we've talked about what we do, we talk about how we do it, but I also want to talk to you a little bit about the improvements that we have made. And Lindsay talked at the start around our enviable track record. We think of offsetting our cost headwinds and the savings that we made across our business. And one of the cornerstones of that within our logistics operation is the outsource of this facility, the ERDCs and our bulk transport to GXO. So we kept our home delivery operation. That is still an in-house function.
We kept that because we know that it's that customer experience that's, that's really key to our customers. The engine room of our business was something that, at scale, we knew that we could outsource to one of the global leaders. So we take advantage of the scale, we take advantage of their experience. And what that means as we, as we come on, when we talk about the transformation journey that we're going on, some of the automation, some of the processes that we're putting in place, if we were to do this ourselves, it would be the first time that we would be doing it. GXO have done this multiple times, do it with experience, they can transform faster. That means we can share in the benefits. And we've seen a lot of benefits of working with GXO.
It's about reducing cost, it's about increasing flexibility, and it's about reducing risk. So just, as an example, some of the work that they've done very recently in terms of shift patterns and in terms of multi-skilling of colleagues, took a 7-figure number out of this business. But also what it did was mean that we had a 40% less reliance on agency as we went into peak. You can appreciate in a tough labor market, that's really important to us. Other examples around how we've transformed our pay-and-collect business, putting it through our home delivery network rather than our, carrier network, has meant that we can not only do it cheaper, we can do it with a service that stores really appreciate and drives a better customer experience.
So when you go around, the supply chain element of the tour, what you're going to see is an operation that doesn't miss a beat. The service is sound, the costs are controlled, it is managed well. However, you are going to see an operation that still has lots and lots of opportunity, and for me, that's really exciting. So three examples of those opportunities. First of all, you will see, I will point it out as we go through, we are just investing in a small box piece of automation. It's a packing piece of automation, and what that will do is pack and label our products... might not be terribly exciting, but what that will mean is we will need 22 less people at the end of October than we do today, and we will need 43 less people going through peak.
We'll also take you into our store, RDC operations in chamber two, and we will, we are just investing in, I guess, its bigger brother, so the same thing for our store pick, and that will take out 43 people on average, and 100 people across Black Friday. Again, tough labor market. These are important metrics, not just from a cost-saving point of view, but from a resilience of service. We're also rolling out our in-cab technology. Very simple. It's just going to give us better route planning, and it is going to get us better notifications to our stores. It's not just cost and resilience we've improved. Lindsay talked about it. I'm hugely proud of this. We've made massive strides in terms of our colleague experience.
So we're in the top 10% of companies globally, and, you know, our supply chain operations are leading the way, in that. So, you know, we, we have got there, not just because we're nice people, but through an absolute relentless focus on doing the right thing for the colleague. So a couple of examples of that would be, we've invested in three state-of-the-art training centers across the UK, that is, that is great for our colleagues. That does a number of things. So there's a mock flat in there. So instead of these big, empty rooms where anybody can move a washing machine, negotiating your way around the types of things you would expect to encounter in a customer's home is important.
We will also have in there wet rooms, so, you know, we will rather cruelly, I suppose, we will create floods in the wet rooms to see how our colleagues react. But that's important, isn't it? You're in a customer's home. You need to know that if it goes wrong, that we can recover, and I think that's really key. The second thing, the second example is we've taken our on-the-road colleagues and our frontline colleagues out of our corporate UK&I bonus scheme. You know, a lot of the feedback that we got from our colleagues was, "Can't quite get the connection between my individual work to some of our corporate measures." So we took them out of that, and we brought the measures closer to what they do. So they're now measured on things that they can control.
So that's Right First Time, so delivering it first time in full. It's delivering a really great customer experience. So based on the Net Promoter Score that that customer gives you, are you smiling? Are you happy? Are you giving them the right level of service? And then when you bring the product back, bring it back intact, make sure it's not damaged. These are all things that they can control and that are important to us. So I guess I'm going to talk to you a little bit now about what we've done for customers, and in particular, around Right First Time. You're going to hear a lot about Right First Time, but before I do that, I just want to share our Mission Possible video. It's an internal video. I love it. I hope you do.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it.
We are building a stronger business. We've made a ton of progress here. We need to go further and faster, and that means a big focus on Right First Time. If anyone can do this, it's you.
Protect products, grow profits, make everybody Currys happy. I know just the team.
This needs everyone across the customer, sales, and services team to own it.
To work together.
Put our customers first.
So, Right First Time, it's a big program for us. Might sound simple. If it was simple, we'd have done it years ago, but this adds real value to our customers and to the bottom line. You know, you can see on the right-hand side, the track record we've got in terms of reducing our repeat rates, the number of times that we will revisit a customer. That needs to improve. We've made really great progress and will continue to make progress. There's a lot of reasons that things can go wrong with customers. It could be that you go into a customer's home, and they need some remedial work before we can install a gas or electric appliance.
Might be that they've not given us the right contact details, or it might be that we've not quite got the address right. It could be that when we arrive, the customer is simply not in, they've forgotten that we're coming. All of these things are expensive to us and drive a really poor customer experience, but with collaboration across the business, and it is a true collaboration across the business, we're really starting to drive material benefits with that. Taking our colleague engagement and right first time really then just sums up into our overall, our overall benefits. You can see our Net Promoter Score continues to increase, we're up 4 points year on year. You put those two things together, and that is the secret sauce to be able to drive these results.
But why do we do all that? Well, we do all that because it's all around driving profit. So direct cost savings, there are huge cost savings that we've made and that we continue to make, but also delivering services that we are simply just able to monetize. And you can see on the right-hand side there, we're able to charge more for our delivery service. We're able to charge more for our delivery service because it is a great delivery service. So I guess, to summarize, we are a large, robust operation. We are highly relevant to the business, and we continue to make improvements. I'm really looking forward to showing you around the operation shortly, but now I'm going to hand over to Steve, who's going to talk through services.
Thank you, Simon. So good morning. I'm Steve Pendleton, and I look after services. So that's the commercial propositions, sorry, the customer propositions and the commercial performance of services. The things that really leverage and make the most of the fantastic capabilities that you'll see right throughout the two buildings today. So I'm going to talk a little bit about our approach to services, propositions, and what makes those different. So look, you've seen this before. You've seen it again today even, but this really is, is key and fundamental about, you know, I think everybody understands services are profitable, recurring revenue for us, but also a really important part of our, our strategic pillar, pillar of how we build customers for life. So, if we move on to start to talk about some of the differentiations.
It starts really with the way that we design and build our products. We own the products that we sell, which is pretty unusual in this market, and we own them all the way through. So what it means is we truly can look at customer needs, and we can design our products to meet them exactly. The kind of things that we hear our customers tell us are around peace of mind, straightforward pricing, not hassle when they come to me to use the service. We keep the promises we make. Not surprisingly, our propositions are filled and filled out with the things that kind of chime and resonate with this, because we can, and we've got the capability and the freedom to be able to design our products and decide for ourselves what they are.
If you think about the vast range of products that we sell as hardware, we go a step further as well. So, those needs are different for different use cases of how a customer uses a product. So a big difference between a fridge, freezer, and a tablet. So having one vanilla type of protection product, overall, really just wouldn't cut it here. So we take the generic ask, but then we tailor it very much for each type of product and product use that the customer will have. So, that's pretty unique, pretty much a differentiation. Not having the vanilla products, we're the only ones to be able to do that, but that only comes from having all the capabilities at our disposal to leverage that you'll see today. Okay, next slide.
So look, not surprisingly, the way in which our products are designed and the way in which they deliver for our customers, yes, they're profitable, but they're also very much something which is now the better we get at this, the higher we see the difference between a customer who takes out a services product or doesn't take out a services product, in terms of even influencing that purchase decision of whether the hardware is bought in the first place, and definitely their propensity to return as well, to spend again. So very profitable and very much in line with how we get these customers for life. Because what we do is listen to how what a customer's asking us for and the demand that they have, that means it's an always on kind of process. We're always listening.
We refreshed our camera repair product a couple of years ago, and last year, the customer feedback for tablets and other more portable products started to drive the need for a separate insurance product. Bringing capabilities like accidental damage or theft and loss. Not so appropriate for maybe some of the larger appliances, where a customer is not as concerned about accidental damage happening to a fridge freezer, but very appropriate where it is a different product, like a tablet which goes out the house, and theft and loss, and all these other considerations. Where we're different and where we've done this differently, and back to this ability of tailoring products, is we don't want the washing machine customers to have to pay for accidental damage if that isn't the, you know, the thing they're concerned about.
So that's why we tier these products and have them separate and different to meet those different needs. You don't have... You know, it's not vanilla. You don't buy one product, and you get a load of stuff for it, even if you didn't want it, because that's key to how we remain competitively priced. So, I'll just briefly mention tablet insurance. So we did that September last year. Real key differences in this is the theft and loss cover, the accidental damage, the replacement tablet delivered the next working day. All of this very much from the customer insight, very, very detailed customer insight of what customers were looking for by introducing this product. And we are-...
Absolutely on it to make sure we deliver against that, and then set ourselves the challenge of how do we remain profitable when we do those things? So we start with what's the right thing to sell, and then we come to how to remain profitable with doing so, and you'll see a lot of the reasons why we're able to do that in the fantastic operations during the tour today. All of the things you will see around parts harvesting, different ways of doing things, are all the reasons why the cost of our product is very competitive in the market, yet offers a richer feature set than others. So it's not by luck, it's by design.
If I start to kind of bring that to life a bit in terms of what does a customer get, what does a customer receive, when we design in this way? We'll start with the washing machine. You'll notice what we're not offering is accidental damage, but we are offering lots of other rich feature sets. Particularly, what resonates with our customers in MDA is our valet service. We're not selling this product, this protection product and hoping nobody ever uses it. We want customers to use our product. We want it to be a plan which helps them with their enjoyment of their technology during life and matches their ownership cycle as well.
So the ability to use this plan to get someone to come out and clean a cooker, to clean the washing machine, it's one of the highest reasons why customers take this product, along with the hygiene factor of protection support. The other point to note as well is about, we make our promises. So another thing from the key customer insight was you make your promises, then you've got to deliver against them. We're pretty unique in that we actually make promises in the first place, so that happens to be, from 7 days of it being notified as a problem, it's fixed, or you've got the, option to have that replaced. So we're really upfront about that, that the promises are key to this. And it's...
It's a really comprehensive set of features and benefits, but it's really competitively priced. Again, back to how do we do that? Well, we're not charging for customers that we think aren't appropriate for that kind of product. Also, as you'll see today, all the things that the guys do in the delivery of these services to make it really, really cost effective and us to be able to compete like that. It's not dissimilar for large screen TVs, but you'll notice tiered again, so valet service, less relevant, but 24/7 technical support for a smart TV, a real good feature and benefit a customer can utilize even outside of a something break, fix. Similar story for laptops, but again, some different features here.
Set up of a laptop, data install, all the things that are useful for a customer during their life cycle of owning a laptop. Again, comprehensive but competitively priced. Even our tablet insurance, the one we've recently launched, is more aligned with what other people are offering as a vanilla product, but even that has different capabilities. Our theft loss cover is pretty unique. There is one other on the comparison that offers theft only, but customers are telling us about the peace of mind of having theft and loss covered, the access to technical support, also the next day replacement, the immediacy of something that they use to do their work on and use to travel and commute with, and do work on as well. There's that immediacy of next day replacement.
And again, competitively priced, but a comprehensive set of needs. So as well as the products being tiered to be, you know, that offer each customer what we think they need. We've also got the choice in terms of how we can deliver those services. So really importantly, we can repair centrally in a place in Newark, which you'll see today. We can do it in customers' homes. We can also do some repair activities in stores. And most excitingly of all, for both customers and us, you'll see Repair Live today, which is our ability to bring our expertise into somebody's home. And that's really essentially in terms of ultimate convenience for customer and a big opportunity for lower cost for us.
So if you imagine it's a large screen television, which customer has an issue, if we've gone through a RepairLive session and can solve that remotely, there's no deinstallation from the wall, there's no logistics back to a hub model, all at the cost of this product and all at the inconvenience for a customer of, you know, up to seven days without that product. So hugely transformational in terms of that customer convenience and our costs. So what, what's the kind of upshot of the way that we've repressed our products and how we tier them now? So we had a lot of disruption, as most businesses did during COVID. Our stores were closed for periods of time as well. So we saw not unexpectedly, quite a drop off in our Care & Repair plans on the base.
What's great is we're obviously seeing growth again in our base plans moving up. What's even more impressive is that our adoption rate of those refreshed services are higher than pre-COVID levels. So the really exciting part about that is the adoption rates that we're seeing through how we've refreshed those products. And, yeah, no, no big surprise or reveal on this one. So those standalone repairs and chargeable repairs that we can offer for those customers who haven't taken a protection product, same capabilities, same experts, same channels, same level of expertise and quality and credibility, just offered to customers on a one-off event. So if your anything, you know, any of your domestic appliances, laptops, anything that we service breaks and you need support, it a one-off chargeable repair can be, can be taken.
Just to emphasize as well, that can be in the home. So again, really comprehensive cover offered, really competitively priced, even the ability if your, your cooker, fridge, freezer, washing machine, dishwasher fails, we can come and do that outside of the protection product, for the cost we've shown there. Really, really rich feature set, really competitively priced. For another level of convenience, we've got stuff we can do in store as well. So for some of the portable products, can fix those things in store, so really immediacy and convenience again. We can bring them back to the hub here and do the repair. Again, a tiering of offer, competitively priced, across the different categories. But this is where there's a big opportunity for us.
So the market for chargeable repairs and standalone repairs is very big already and only expected to grow, with our consumers' financial constraints, sustainability and everything else that people are thinking about at the moment. So it's a GBP 400 million market at the moment and growing. We're incredibly well positioned to make the most of that because we've got the capabilities, we've got the credibility, and we've got the awareness with customers that, looking after tech and repairs is something that we're known for. What we haven't quite got aligned at the moment is how we attract customers to that and get them aware of it in the way that they can access it, and also that ease of access. So great position for us to be in.
We've got everything we need other than making sure people really are clear, customers are really clear about what it is and how they can access it. So that's where we're putting our focus and effort at the moment. So I'm just going to recap very, very quickly before I hand it over to David. So, hopefully what you've seen throughout the slides that I've gone through now, these are tailored propositions which are really valued by customers because the way in which we design them for the products they're buying, and it's a vast range of products that we need to cover, and a vanilla product spread thinly across them all just isn't good enough.
They're competitively priced because we only put into those the things that we think the customers value, and we're incredibly agile and innovative about how we serve and deliver those, those products and services in a way that allows us to keep the cost down. It's great for sustainability. After all, this is all about long-lived tech. This is about keeping the product in customers' hands and doing it in a way where it doesn't have to be a choice about going, get it replaced or buy a new one, unless that's what the customer chooses to do.
And all of this is so important, is backed reliably by all of the activities that you'll see today, both in Simon's world and David's world, and that's delivered reliably, but the innovation within that and how that's going to be better next week and the week after that and ongoing is a really impressive thing for us in services in terms of what we can do with those propositions and how we can keep offering something more. So that's enough from me. David, I'll hand over to you to tell everybody about how you power this engine for us.
Currys is the only retailer doing its own repair, and we do it because it makes sense. It brings value for the customer and brings value for us. So we build a unique capability from the scale, from the size, from the breadth of the product we support on site, and from the amount of accreditations that have been given by the manufacturers for us to do the repairs. This is very important for us because the relationship we built with the manufacturers over the years have enabled us to create some very strong and very specific programs with them that are very useful for Currys and to deliver the promises. So yes, we have other organizations in the market who do repairs, but they are here or we're here. We do both. We build up the scale and the size to be able to do both.
Now, they are very good. They are very good and very professional organizations. And very often, we look at the way we do things, and we look at their best practices to learn. And very often, we look at them as well from a benchmark just to check if we had to outsource the work, who would be the right partner to work with? It's difficult to build a service operation. You cannot buy it off the shelf. You don't have all the ingredients available in hand. So we spent really 30 years to build what we have. 30 years where we have spent all energy to improve our colleagues, get the right know-how, build the right systems, but very importantly, build the right culture.
Because this is an ongoing work with our colleagues to drive the innovation and be able to answer to the promises that you heard from Steve, that we have to deliver to our customers. The reach of the capabilities I just showed you, we build our strategy. Our strategy is really about three pillars. First, we want to know quicker what is the issue that the customers are facing, so we can give the right resolution, the right answer to fix the problem. The second part of the strategy is to repair with a strong focus about the promise we have made and do it with the right level of cost and do it without trading off to our quality.
The third pillar of our strategy was to do more margin out of the returns, mindful of our environmental commitment, but we had to do more margin out of the processes we had. So just to give you a bit of what we do and what we receive, we handle about 2.9 million products every year, really out of two segments, some coming from the returns, some coming from the repairs. But you need to also understand the context when we started this. 3-4 years ago, repair and returns were two different organizations. Two different organizations had literally two different ways of operate. Repair was already mature from metrics management, from cost control, but everything only happened from the time the product physically arrived in Newark.
Return was different because we pushed to our manufacturers, to our partners, all the stock, so they could assess what was faulty and not faulty, and credit us the value for the faulty stock. Two organizations, ultra fragmented, only starting from product physically arriving in Newark . Our strategy would have addressed this. What we've done? Well, first, we regrouped return and repair into one business unit. We could literally deploy our strategy and impact both return and repairs. We've seen from the volume it was important to regroup this activity. We launched a diagnostic activity, a diagnostic plan at home, so we can now understand what is the issue the customer is facing, and we can propose a solution that works for the business and work for the customer. We made our operations lean. We looked at our processes, better productivity, better quality.
We look at our cost of spare parts. We had to reduce that one. But we also had to turbocharge the culture within the operation, to keep on thinking, what is the next thing we want to go after to make the customer experience better and our cost lower? And we finally recover more margin from our return stock. We developed new platform, and we opened new channels. So if I focus on only this three part of the transformation plan, I start with the diagnostic. This is the most important part of our strategy, but also the most challenging, because there is no solution off the shelf who could support all these products and all our services. So we have designed it.
We found the right technical solution, we found the right partner, but really the success of this solution was the early engagement we have with our colleagues in store, in the call center, to input into the solution. Because they had to own that solution, because they will be the colleagues talking to the customer, engaging the customer, building the confidence with the customer, that what we are recommending was the right solution. Now, if we look at the journey we've been through, as I told you before, three years ago, everything started in Newark . Well, that's where we started, because we had to build a solution able to do more. Three years ago, we were not particularly great at capturing the customer issue, so the diagnostic has helped us.
Now we are talking about the same issue that the customer was telling us, so we could go quicker to fix the problem and validate that the issue was fixed. You see in our ability to do right first time and get our customer happy, we gained 12 points on our quality performance. We built a knowledge, but very quickly we transferred into our stores, because 70% of the returns actually were no fault found. 70% were no fault found products. 25%-30% of our repairs or eligibility repairs were also no fault found or had an issue that could be fixed with the customer, like a software. We roll out our solutions in store, and we started to keep the product sold.
Customer thinking the product was faulty, be able to see through a diagnostic that the solution showed him it was the way it was used, or there was actually no fault, really build the confidence with the customers, and we started to keep the product sold with the customer. We did the same on the repairs, because 20% of the laptop today going through the store with a repair issue are actually fixed in store. So our customers, rather than going through a 7-day promise back into the lab, walk away from the store with their tech working. As we progressed, we literally had online or through the call center, customer who needed a bit more technical support.
This was literally the retail life that Steve has mentioned a bit earlier, where we have put one of our technician to talk with the customers, to engage the customer and find a solution to resolve the problem. Nearly half of the laptop, that literally the customer talked to us about, are fixed with the customer and the tech staying at home. So yes, we are going for more, but as you can see, we are not mature on every category, so we are building our capabilities over the year. So once we mature, only then we will launch it into a self-serve capability that we will give to our customers. In the operations, we really focused about three things. As you heard from Lindsay a bit earlier, we went to our colleagues, and we have empowered them to own the change and drive the change.
This was the secret, because if we would have done it on our own, we would not have won the culture. We would not have literally bring people with us to transform our activity. So we built a smarter end-to-end process. We look at everything in the operations, from our processes, we time and motioned everything, we look at the way we control it. We deploy 100% quality control on every products that we return to the customer. We wanted it to be right. We trained our colleagues like we have never done it before. Three years ago, we only used new parts. New parts was a trusted part that will give the right quality.
It was just about the time to enable the colleagues who knew the solution what to do, and we build the confidence at on our side, but also we helped our our colleagues in the operations to start looking at parts and reuse parts. So we started a first wave of parts usage into operations, looking at every returns we had, and say, "This part will be good to achieve our objectives from quality standpoint and cost standpoint." And as you can see from example here, we took nearly a third of the cost of spare parts we used to repair a laptop. This has matured, and naturally, when you open the opportunity for the colleagues to create, they came back with more ideas.
They say, "We can go into these modules that we replace, and we can repair these modules or change that small part." They did it brilliantly. We literally were absolutely shocked by the level of performance, in a good way, but our colleagues have unlocked. We literally, like everything, appetite growing, invested into more technology, where we talk about potency, a repair center with potency. Very unusual, but this is coming from our colleagues and from their ideas. We had to maintain, obviously, the dynamic because it's very simple to start something. We, as an organization, have also developed and doing everything we can to sustain this entrepreneurial spirit. This is our guarantee of success for the future. We invested. We have put 3D printing, we have automations. You will see them into the lab a bit later.
And we have given the platform to our colleagues to bring these new ideas, because we have to stimulate, we have to feed them with answers. It's not about giving the idea, it's about telling to the colleagues, "That's the right one. I want to go for it." So we created that environment to develop IP, to develop new ideas, and this community is fantastically performing today. And finally, I've told you about diagnostic, I've told you about our repair capability. It was about what we do with it to increase the margin for our returns. Priority number one was to recover as much as possible, full value for returns from the vendors. So you heard about diagnostic to keep it sold, which guaranteed a full value to stay within the business, and we worked on our compliance.
So diagnostic enabling us to find out what product are the best candidate to send to the manufacturers for full credit. The other benefits of diagnostic is now we know what we can do with the products, but we cannot ask the full value for. And we create this platform. This platform aggregate everything in the repair operations, all our logic, all our cost, all our capability being developed. We put that platform to help us to understand what are we going to do with this stock? Do we want to refurbish it? Do we want to repair it? Do we want to take the parts from it? And assuming we wanted now to take the parts from it, which channel will be the best candidate to take that stock at optimum margin? Historically, we only had resellers.
We created, as we were becoming better and as the opportunity was there, we started to put our product online, in store, and we also found an opportunity to offer some of this product to our charity channels. Couple of examples, a fridge, but before we will have returned to the manufacturers for full value, and the manufacturer would have said, "No, thank you," we would have sold it to the trader for GBP 80. Our system is telling us today, "Don't sell it as is. Repair it, fix the issue, and sell the product." Today, the same product we exited for GBP 80 generate GBP 220. This product is still GBP 400-GBP 500 new.
So the only thing we've done is created an affordability line for a customer segment, who now can go for this technology, who's got the warranty from Currys behind it, how good is that product from a quality standpoint? On the laptop, it was a different, different journey because this is a very old laptop. Coming from our trade-in plan, coming from Cash for Trash, we will have recycled that laptop. By putting the diagnostic into our system, the system said, "Take the parts, because these parts will be what you will use to repair the Care & Repair products." And the parts we used have literally saved GBP 200 of new parts we will have bought from the manufacturers, and this is the kind of examples, but all our products are now going through this platform. So the result is significant.
The 45%-30% full value is an amazing performance from the team. The benefit of diagnostic, the benefit of screening the operations to build a relationship with the manufacturers, this is, this is a top player for, for us. As we improve our processes. Naturally, the way we do things, the, the way we move products around the country has improved, and we have significantly reduced the amount of damage in transit we add into our network. In repairs, we saved 2 digits, millions of GBP of cost. Of cost. And you heard about the quality improvement, moving from 96% to 96% from an 88% base. I told you about what we have done about our spare parts and how much spare parts we have been able to use. GBP 6 million saved just last year.
And finally, the diagnostic and the performance we've done on avoidance and compliance means that we are today able to stop and fix the product for the customers on 21% of the laptop and 54% of the laptop for RepairLive. So you heard about Steve, but for the customers, we have the right value. We have built a competitive price. We've got the right choice. We've got the reliability of our delivery. I hope you will see today, and you will have heard from me in the presentation, that we found a way to do the repair at a profitable level. But we are now integrated to our ecosystem with a diagnostic tool, but we are leveraging every bit of Currys to deliver our promises.
But more importantly, and because of the colleague I explained to you before, we are nowhere near the end of the improvement that we are driving. So I hope you will see later a lot more of this reality. Thank you.
And I guess I'm going to caveat, I'm not a sustainability expert, but what I am is I'm a member of the ExCo, and I'm responsible for the operations and for the channels of this business. So I have a responsibility around sustainability, that myself and my colleagues take really seriously. This won't be new news to you. You will have heard a number of times from us about our three priorities in relation to sustainability. They are that we will achieve Net Zero emissions by 2040. We will help eradicate Digital Poverty, and we will improve our use of resources and create circular business models. Now, you've already heard us start touching on some of those elements as we've gone through.
We've made real progress, but you haven't got to take our word for it, because we've been recognized and rated by some of the industry's leading standards. So in terms of the ambition, it's a big ambition. Our first commitment is around Net Zero. So our commitment is by 2030, that we will have halved our Scope 1 and 2 emissions and our Scope 3 emissions. I'll come back in a moment to talk about progress. But by 2040, we will be Net Zero for Scope 1, 2, and 3. That's a lot easier to say than it is to do, but that's the ambition, and we are making really good progress. So we have seen a greater than 40% reduction in our Scope 1 and 2 emissions over the last three years, and similar on our Scope 3.
Looking at this, you might think we're so close to our 2030 target, surely it's easy. But the reality is, most of the low-hanging fruit has gone, and it gets pretty tough from here, and that actually, we're quite heavily dependent on technology advancing over the next decade to unlock and enable that Net Zero objective. But really great progress from across the business. Where does that come into the world of operations you're going to see today? So we very much focus on Scope 1 and 2, which is where we have the most control, and there are three elements we've really focused on. The first is about consumption of energy and reducing and minimizing that consumption where we can, through LED lighting, through looking at our heating and our cooling systems, but also improving our reporting.
It's amazing what you can find out. If you can actually track your energy usage, you can find where we are using it inefficiently and reduce. And we have made huge headroom in terms of improving that and rolling out LED across the business. So really concrete. The second is clearly around renewable energy. So renewable energy, both in terms of renewable electricity, which 100% of our sites are now on that basis, but where we have possibly, also using solar energy. So we've pretty much, I guess, done what I would say are the relatively easy elements of that. Where a lot of the carbon footprint still sits, clearly, is in our fleet and our carbon footprint around transport. So we've made good progress. Some of this is about technology. A lot of it's about technology.
We've signed up to the EV100 initiative, which means that we will be carbon neutral by 2030. And what does that require us to have? To basically move to electric and alternative fuel vehicles by 2030. The reality is today, that's just not possible. The technology is just not ready, but we are at the forefront of testing what is available out there, and you will see a couple of examples later on today of our electric vehicle, alternative fuels vehicles. But again, the technology needs to evolve. But it isn't just about the vehicles, it's about what we do behind the vehicles as well. The efficiency of our routing, our driver training, the behaviors of our drivers will make as much impact on fuel efficiency in the short term as anything else that we do.
So I think that hopefully brings to life the fact that it's, it's not an or, it's absolutely an and. So if we look at the problem, as the video referenced, electronic waste is the fastest-growing waste stream. So globally, we know it's huge. 75 million tons by 2030 is the best estimate. Here in the U.K., we are one of the worst offenders in terms of the producing of electronic waste. We also have one of the poorest track records of managing our electronic waste effectively. We hoard it, and we chuck it in the bin.... So fundamentally, as Currys, we set ourselves the challenge to do two things. The first is to raise awareness, and we'll, I'll, I'll come back to that. What's often hidden within is that there are precious metals and resources hidden within what we are throwing away.
These are finite resources that are not replaceable. So we have a real responsibility to ensure that those supplies are used to the best of their ability as we go throughout. Right. We're just going to have to work with it and ignore that. So that's the problem, and it's a big problem, and it's a very real problem. So what are our solutions to this? Now, David's already touched upon this, and for me, this hierarchy is incredibly important because we talk about recycling all the time, and recycling is great, but actually, recycling is at the bottom of the hierarchy. That's the last thing we want to do. The first thing we want to do is actually to repair products and keep them in customers' hands. That is the single most sustainable solution that we can provide is a repaired product.
If we can't repair it or they don't want us to repair it, we can take that product back, and we can refurbish it, so we can resell it, and we can reuse it. This is where the circular economy comes in. Reusing perfectly workable products to people who are perhaps comfortable about having a two-year-old laptop, allowing the gadgets to go off and buy themselves their new tech. That's the second most attractive from the planet's perspective and also from our profitability perspective. If we can't refurbish it and resell it and reuse it, we then want to repurpose the parts. This is the next most valuable use of those products. That allows us to repair products, to refurbish products, feeding the upper hierarchy in terms of circular economy.
Only when we have exhausted every possible use for those products or their parts, do we then come into recycling. As we go round, you'll see, Chris will bring to life some of the physical execution of that and what we do in terms of recycling. But I want you to understand the scale of it. In terms of repairs, 800,000 repairs. That's 800,000 products that are not being thrown away and replaced. Our circular economy in terms of reuse and resell is relatively small, just over 4,500 products today, but it is growing, and we have seen huge demand. Some of the products were selling out within a week or 10 days of being available online. Nearly 140,000 spare parts harvested. I'm not going to talk about that.
You're going to see it for yourself a little bit later, but it's incredibly important what that unlocks. When we do get to recycling... So I hope everyone knows what WEEE is. It's, WEEE relates to the electronic, waste regulations. We, as Currys, and I'm really proud of this, are the largest recycler of electronic waste in the UK. We handle 44% of the total retail waste, electronic waste in the UK. That's more than our fair share, but we do more than our fair share, and we're looking for more. Our responsibility, as we see it, is, first of all, to raise awareness and to make it easy for all of our customers to recycle, to repair, to reuse their old tech. Not just what they bought from us, but any old tech. So making it easy, they can drop it off in our stores.
We can collect it from their homes, and for small items, that's free of charge. We're using trade-in as a great way of raising promote. Some of you will have seen our Summer with Samsung this summer. We'll be working with them in really close partnership, where customers can bring in their tech and then offset that against money off, against new products. So again, seeing those partnerships coming in, raising awareness, and Cash for Trash, I mean, I hope you've heard about it before you came here today.
This is an always-on identity that is absolutely Currys, that says, "Any electronic items you've got, if you've got a battery or you plug it in the wall, bring it in, we'll take it off your hands." We will make sure that every single item is reused to the maximum value, and if it is recycled, it will be recycled responsibly with zero to landfill. It's not just about the product, it's also about the packaging. There are two key lenses for us in terms of packaging. The first, we always say, the best thing we can do in any of this is to eliminate. You can work on efficiency, but to eliminate in the first place. Starting with packaging at the point of design for our own products, our own branded products, designing, minimizing packaging at the point of design.
Working with our suppliers to help them eliminate unnecessary plastics in their products, but also thinking about our refurbished products, how do we package those, minimizing the packaging and making sure that it's the most environmentally friendly packaging available. But packaging does exist, and we are actively, actively involved in the collection and the processing of packaging. So we will take it back from our stores, we'll take it back from our customers' homes. We'll take ownership of that packaging, and we will maximize what we do with that. And you'll see some great examples as we go around of how even packaging has its own inherent value if we treat it properly and use it to its maximum. We keep coming back to this, this message around tech being essential. So I, I've talked about Net Zero, I've talked about the Circular Economy.
You know, I'm kind of passionate about that, but there's a, there's a community piece here as well. We touched upon digital poverty. This is a very real problem. As tech becomes more essential, the people who don't have tech become more and more isolated from that world in terms of connectivity, productivity, performance. I was shocked to know there are two and, over 2.5 million people in the U.K. who are not online. When you think about how we live today, they are being deprived of that capability and experience. 26% of youngsters do not have access to a laptop or similar device, which I think for many of us, we view as being an essential part of education and life today. We see the problem. We want to be part of the solution.
So for us, there's two key elements to being part of that solution. Some of that work is what we're doing with people like Tech4Families, where that's about physically donating laptops, raising money through pennies in our stores to contribute funds, to, yeah, to put tech into people's hands. And I could, I could give you so many stories and quotes, from incredibly grateful families who just could not afford to access this tech in any other way. But also, it's through, as a founder of Digital Poverty Alliance, it's about raising awareness and advocating for action, that we cannot allow this divide to continue. And if we come back always to our colleagues, this is something that's incredibly important to our colleagues, that they mobilize behind this. It gives them a real sense of purpose.
We don't just sell tech, we're actually trying to make the world a better place. And that's incredibly important for that engagement that we have through our colleagues, making a difference. But it isn't just about digital poverty, it's also about appliance poverty. Can you imagine not having a freezer? I mean, we had a nervous breakdown when the dishwasher broke down, for goodness sake. And we've got Marigolds, we've got washing up liquid. We've all become incredibly dependent on these appliances. Some families, 1.2 million people, do not own a freezer, and that means they can't access lower cost, long life food. It also means that they are less capable and less able to cook, to look after themselves, and to have a healthy diet. So we have a big response to a big opportunity.
Last year, we helped 50,000 appliances go out for reuse. Some of those go through our charity partners, some of those go through the circular economy, and therefore, become sold and reused. It's incredibly important that we don't just focus on the top end, the new products. It's about also thinking about how we make the best use of those products to make some good in society as well. I'm really proud of this. We're making real progress against these three key objectives at a time when actually money is really tight and we've got a lot else going on. But I come back to the other comment. It's about and. You don't get to just run the business, you have to keep focused on the longer term and the legacy that we'll leave as well. We're recognized externally, so it isn't just our words.
We've made a difference over the last 3, 4 years, and we've still got more to do. The operations you will see today are going to bring this to life in a way that I can't even begin to. Well, you will see it's embedded in every part of what we do and is very real. We are doing things that nobody else can do in terms of making and giving tech longer life. We are taking our responsibilities in terms of being the number one recycler in the UK for electronic waste, and we want to do more. And we're making a real difference to some of those low-income families who just can't afford the technology and the equipment that are essential, really, to modern life today.
Hopefully, you found the tour useful and interesting, and hopefully, you can start to see how it really creates the opportunity for a competitive advantage for Currys. What I now want to do is step through what the financial advantage of everything you've seen today, and our broader service office really delivers for the Currys business. I guess, just to set the scene of where we are, we've got about 10 slides to go. We're then going to go on to Q&A. At the end, Lindsay and I will take any questions you've got, and our ambition is to get you out of here in time for the 3:55 train. If that's okay?
All right, this is a slide that you've seen a number of times today, and as Lindsay said at the start, when we think about our strategy, customers for life, I guess, it has to be at the heart of how we move forward. A key component of that is through our range of services. Everything from we help customers afford amazing technology through our credit offer, through to helping customers get started with our delivery and installation solution, giving tech longer life. You've seen today the various repair capabilities we've got, and particularly our Care & Repair service agreement propositions that we have available to our customers. Finally, helping customers get the most out of their tech. Here, I'm thinking specifically about our mobile offer, and in particular, our iD MVNO, all of which are really critical.
Last year, the Currys UK and Ireland business sold roughly GBP 4.4 billion worth of products, and of those, GBP 700 million were bought on credit. So a really important enabler all by itself to allow customers to be able to afford and buy the products. In addition to that, we sold nearly GBP 700 million worth of revenue. So Luke, to one of your questions earlier, how do we start to monetize this? The answer is, we already are. We're already generating a substantial proportion. In fact, 13% of our total sales is coming through in services. And it breaks down, roughly delivery and installation, roughly GBP 100 million. The protection services, including Care & Repair, is over GBP 250 million. And then our mobile business, particularly iD, but also the Vodafone business, worth about GBP 300 million.
So those are key components of our proposition today from a revenue perspective, and obviously, really important also from a margin perspective, and I'll come back to that in a second... So starting off with credit, you heard a little bit about credit earlier on. Credit is a valuable growth engine for us, and it's critical not only because it helps customers afford to be able to buy the technology that we're offering in our stores, but also because it augments the lifetime value that we get from customers who buy on credit. Now, some of these are estimates based on samples and averages, but we believe, on average, a customer who buys on credit has got a 65% higher lifetime value than a customer who doesn't buy on credit. Why is that? Well, there are three key factors.
First of all, based on our surveys, customers who buy on credit are 20% happier than non-credit customers. They spend 20% more on services, and they're 52% more likely to return within a two-year period. So as a result of those advantages, we have put a lot of effort and investment in growing our credit proposition. And over the course of the last 3 years, you can see on the right-hand side, we have seen dramatic increases in our credit adoption rate. Within our stores over that period, a 400 basis point improvement, so really successful in stores. But as you can see, even more astounding is the growth that we've achieved online.
We have more than doubled our online adoption rate for credit, and a lot of that has been our investment in our Salesforce platform, which has allowed us to drive the customer journey and allow customers to self-serve through that process. What does that mean? Well, that means that we've got more credit customers. We've now got 1.9, nearly 2 million credit customers who have available to them a credit limit that they can come back and spend, which is really key. We've got more credit sales, so we're selling more product. What has been new over the last two years is that we've started to generate incremental margin as a result of the credit offer we have and the mix of credit proposition that we've put in place.
It is worth flagging, we're just calling it out there at the end, we do expect some step back in that margin this year because of the cost of funds as interest rates have increased. But nevertheless, it is a positive contribution to our overall gross margin. But we're not complacent. We're not stepping back and saying that, "That's it, we're done with credit." Actually, we want to continue to drive it forward. And at one level, you could say that we're at a pretty nascent position because there's a lot more that we're now starting to do and you will see more of over the course of the next three years. So in terms of our offer, today, our credit offer is very generic. It's pretty much the same proposition for all of our customers.
We want to move towards a personalized credit solution that is tailored to the customer, their needs, and their financial situation. Similarly, in terms of attracting customers, particularly around credit availability, we want to make sure that credit is available no matter what channel you buy through. We want to make sure that the credit journey is intuitive, and we want to make sure that promotions that we use credit to drive incremental sales are really effective and relevant to the product and to the brand. We also want to drive our conversion rate within credit, so we want to maximize the number of customers who want credit and are going through our funnel to come out the other, other end successful. And ideally, we want to say yes to every good customer who is eligible for credit and ethically, we should be offering credit to. And then finally, repeat.
I told you about the 1.9 million customers we've now got who've got an active credit account. We want to make it really straightforward to them. We want them to understand their available credit balance, and we want to make it easy for them to be able to plug into it. Maybe a QR code when they walk into store, they scan it, and automatically, that purchase goes onto their account. You saw this slide earlier from Simon, but I unapologetically go back to it because delivery and installation is the second channel within those four channels under Customers for Life is around D&I. And the work that our supply chain team have done over the course of the last two years to really drive the profitability and the gross margins of Currys' business has been significant. One component is taking costs out.
Here, we're talking about right first time and getting direct cost savings. But also, if you think back to the last two years, the incredible work that has taken place with our outsourcing and the work with GXO, the right first time activity, and some of the other activity that we've talked to you previously called Brilliant Basics. Really, really important way of improving our profitability. We talked about increasing adoption rate of delivery and installation. Also an absolute critical component, and as you, again, as you've heard today, a real competitive advantage that we have. And the final piece is starting to charge for delivery, installation, and returns.
Something that we haven't been able to do in the past, but as we've improved the quality of our service, we've been able to charge customers for it or increase the charge, and we've seen an 86% increase in our revenue from D&I last financial year. In terms of Care & Repair, Care & Repair is our service proposition, again, backed by the incredible team that you've seen today within our service organization, whether that be field-based teams or the workshop teams or, or indeed, the RepairLive operations that you've seen operating today. We can leverage that to give customers more comfort that their technology will last for longer, and we've been delivering that successfully.
After a number of years where we saw the number of live Care & Repair policies declining, actually, we've now had two successive years where it's growing, and we're now up to 8.9 million live customer agreements under Care & Repair. In terms of adoption rates within store, as well as so, as Lindsay described, the success of giving our colleagues in store the tools and the motivation to sell Care & Repair, it's also about the confidence of knowing what the service is like in the back end, which is all helping us drive a record level of adoption over the course of the last 12 months. Then finally, iD Mobile. A little bit off topic compared to what you've seen today, but we think it's a really important aspect of our ongoing recurring revenues.
We have, we think, a best-in-class, MVNO. It is classified award-winning, by many independent observers. We think it's a very rounded proposition. And in terms of NPS, historically, the NPS of iD Mobile has always been industry-leading, and we saw a six-point increase last year, so it's continued to grow. And all of those things have led to this, almost exponential growth that we've seen over the last two or three years in terms of the number of subscribers within iD Mobile, up to 1.3 million, which is super important. So what does that mean? Again, stepping back, why, why are these things so critical, particularly from a financial perspective? Well, the main reason is that all of the services which I've just talked about, all six of them, are either high margin or important from a recurring revenue perspective, or both.
That is why these will continue to be at the very heart of our strategy and will continue to be driven by some of the investment and the hard work that you've seen from the teams today. What is really good news is that it's easy to talk about FY 2023, so the year, last year that's just finished. But the really good news is that in the last 4 months of this year, so the first quarter of this year, we have continued to see momentum across all of the metrics that we've been describing. So despite credits being at a record high last year, we've seen a further 330 basis points increase in our credit adoption rate. In terms of delivery and installation, you saw that big 80%+ step forward.
We've seen 150 basis points increase in the first quarter of this year. Care & Repair, literally every week, again, we're seeing record adoption rates from customers, up 360 basis points or up 9% year-on-year. And finally, ID. I described it as exponential growth. That's exactly what we're seeing. We've gone from 1.3 to 1.4 million subscribers just in the last four months, an increase of 19%. So we're really excited about these propositions. We're really excited about the recurring revenues.
We're excited about the high margin these category delivered and the ongoing growth that we're seeing, which is why we believe and why we thought it was so critical to bring all of you here today, so you can see how all of that is underpinned and how it links to the progression that you've seen within our gross margin. I'll remind you, 110 basis points improvement in gross margin in FY 2022, a further 160 basis point improvement in FY 2023. And it's through this activity that we're able to maintain that progression, the profitability of the Currys business. So to summarize, from my perspective, services are a material part of our business. Maybe it's not what you necessarily think about when you think about Currys.
You think about shops full of product, but actually, the underpin of our services, our recurring revenue, is so critical for our margin. And as we look forward, and as I've already said, in terms of the first quarter, we're really excited about the momentum we've got, and we're going to continue to develop the offer. We'll continue to develop the proposition in the back office, which will really support our customers going forward. Thank you all.