So good afternoon, everybody. It's really great to be here, and, delighted to welcome you to this, our strategy update, where we're gonna update you on our progress since we held our Capital Markets Day last autumn. Before we get into this, I want to just talk to you just a couple of things I'd like to cover. First off, if there's any fire alarms go off, we're assuming it's the real thing. There are no drills planned. Head to the green signs, head downstairs, find the fire marshals, and, they'll take care of you from there. The second thing is, we are actually, as you probably noticed, we're using the technology. We'll be streaming this live as well, so please do check and make sure that your phones and ringers are all off, so there'll be no disturbances in the room.
So with that, we are gonna be focusing today on the progress that we've been making, and I need to get my clicker here, so this is really good. You know, otherwise we'd be sitting there waiting for the next slide for a while. So, we're gonna be focusing on the progress that we've made in putting our strategy, Sustainable Solutions for Growth strategy in place since this time last year. So, let's get into it. In terms of the agenda, I'll be taking you through the major part of the presentation today. We'll be going through step by step, the progress we've made in each of the points. I think most of you know me by now. I'm Joe Vorih, the CEO of Genuit. Been here since last February. The time has flown because I'm really enjoying this.
We're making a lot of progress as a group, but I don't think I need more introduction than that. I'm delighted to have with me today Tim Pullen, our CFO. Would you like to introduce yourself?
Thanks, Joe. Hello, everyone. It's great to be here with you today. I'm really enjoying myself, three months into the business now. For those of you who don't know me, my background is in manufacturing, technology, and outsourcing businesses, such as IQE, Arm, and O2. Fresh from the trading update we did last week, I won't be talking about any new financials today, but what we will be doing is unpacking some of the direction towards our targets and our outcomes that we expect from the strategy. So a bit more from me on that later on.
Great. Thanks, Tim. Look forward to that. We've got great support here in the room as well. We've got some of the other key members of our leadership team. I'll just point them out so you'll know who to go and ask questions of later. No particular order, we've got Martin Gisborne, our Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer. You can imagine he's had a big role in helping to put this together. We've got Kevin Boyd, our Chairman. Really great to have him here as well. Many of you know him as well from his long career in the city. We've got Steve Currier, Managing Director of our Sustainable Building Solutions business. You've met Tim. We've got Steve Hollamby, who's the Managing Director of our Water Management business. I'm sure you'll have lots of good questions for him.
Emma Versluys, our company secretary and general counsel, and she plays a key role in making sure they're ready. And of course, absolutely importantly, I think the analyst community is getting to know Lisa Oxnard very well, our Group Financial Controller, and we're delighted to have her. We've got a few other people around, and so after we get through the agenda, we've got ample time for Q&A, and then we'll be retiring outside. There'll be some drinks and light refreshments available. Our team will be around. We're delighted to take questions and hope you'll get a chance to speak to all of them. With that, let's get into it. So this is a strategic progress update. It is intentionally that.
We put forward last autumn a sustainable solutions for growth strategy that we'd spent six months creating, and I'm pleased to tell you now that I believe we're still on the right track and that strategy is intact. It really was a well-received framework to drive growth, sustainability, and profitability throughout the Genuit business, and we've made specific progress that I wanted to share with you over the course of today. Of course, there's much more than this, but we brought essentially Genuit to you today here in London. Our work really is fundamentally to drive growth. However, at the same time, we've made also a lot of progress at simplifying and improving the business so that we're really well positioned in creating that platform for growth.
You know, I would say also that as you saw in our trading update last week, a lot of that work has allowed us to be very resilient and post good performance through what's been clearly challenging market conditions. But before we get into the presentation, I want to share with you a video which I hope helps you capture the essence of this journey that we're on.
At Genuit Group, we care about sustainable living and are working with our customers to build a better built environment. But we can all see the challenges ahead. Our planet is getting hotter, the air more polluted. Cities are expanding, and our towns are flooding. However, challenges often present us with opportunities to collaborate, to innovate. At Genuit Group, we've been developing and delivering solutions that help mitigate the effects of climate change, protecting our waterways, creating green urban spaces, cleaning our air, heating and cooling our homes efficiently. We're working together to lead on sustainability, to use the Genuit Business System to unlock value, to develop the right people, to grow. We're ready to meet the future challenges so that together, we create sustainable living.
So there's a lot to unpack there, and let's do just that. So who are we today? Genuit, fundamentally, is a growth-oriented business, and our mission is to enable customers to respond to climate adaptation and the mitigation of that climate change, both here in the U.K., in our home market, and increasingly globally... because, of course, these challenges unite us all. We have three key challenges that we're addressing through three key platforms of our business. So let me just step through those. The first is our Climate Management Solutions business. This is very much about climate mitigation, right, and climate adaptation as well. The mitigation piece really is about enabling the transition to renewable energy in our built environment. This is a significant challenge, and it's much like the one we're going through in the automotive industry with the switch to electric vehicles.
That transition allows us to then begin to use renewables across the built environment, and it's key to reducing the carbon impact of our built environment. It's also about just increasing energy efficiency in general, not just with new homes, new buildings, but also with the retrofit of older buildings as we put more energy-efficient technology there as well. Our Water Management Solutions business is really about responding to the increasingly intense changes that are already happening. So therefore, it's really about adapting to climate change. We're seeing more rainfall, more droughts, and more intensity of all of the above, which means we've got to better manage the water, preserve rainfall when it comes, through blue-green roof solutions and more, and have much better solutions for stormwater management and flood protection. So this is really key.
However, there is a mitigation impact to this business as well, because while we're making those solutions, if we can provide the leading recycled content, which we do today, of course, we're also putting lower carbon solutions in place as we solve the climate adaptation challenge. Our third platform is our Sustainable Building Solutions business. This is about helping to be more productive as we build buildings. It's about solving labor productivity challenges, as well as doing that with increasingly lower carbon solutions. So it's about installation productivity, dealing with the shortage of skilled labor, which is here and is going to be persisting for some time to come, and taking that market-leading position we already have in plastic plumbing and transitioning that to more and more recycled content and more and more lower carbon solutions. You heard in the video our purpose.
When I got here, coming up on two years ago, I believed that Genuit had a really great, sustainable, intrinsic purpose, and I use intrinsic intentionally. What we've done over the last year and a half, actually for the last year, is we had a team of leaders across the business, volunteers from our Genuit Leadership Team, which I'll talk more about in a minute, who actually volunteered to come together and figure out what our purpose really ought to be. And we've adopted this new purpose. I'm proud together to say that our purpose is that together, we create sustainable living. This is something that our people came up with and resonates very, very well, and I think describes the journey that we're on incredibly effectively. So let's take a look at how we put that purpose into action.
I mentioned earlier, people, and you notice that there's a we in together we create sustainable living. No business is better than its people, and great businesses have, are led by great teams. We have made great strides in building an already good team into the best team out there. Culture does matter. No good strategy survives unless it's underpinned by a high-commitment, high-performance culture. Our Genuit Leadership Team is the key group that we look to lead the business. It's the top 70 or so leaders across the business. That more expanded leadership team is key because this is the group that's going to be putting our strategy into action and making sure that we execute against that. It's also where you start to see the impact and commitment we've made to diversity. That group is already nearly 30% female, right?
It's that group we're going to be looking to continue to expand the diversity and inclusion so that they can then lead that in the rest of our businesses. We've also been rolling out the Genuit Leadership Program. That's our own... You can think of it as our leadership university, starting with this group of 70%, so we know we've got the best leaders in the business, equipped with the tools to drive change and get results, as well as creating the best place to work. Some of the visible commitments we've made, we made some time ago, the commitment to be a gold member in The 5% Club, which means having 5% of our workforce in earn and learn programs. We're making really good progress, and we're confident we're going to hit that target by the end of 2025.
We've recently signed up as one of the strategic partners with the newly launched Construction Inclusion Coalition. This is about driving inclusion and diversity in an industry which has been known not to be as far along as possible. This really matters, especially as we face skilled labor shortages, and we're going to see an increasingly challenging, but I think a purpose-driven industry that will actually help with this diversity message. I have great confidence that we have the team in place to really see this strategy through and take us to the next steps. So I'm excited about that. So let's go back to what we laid out at the Capital Markets Day at ADEY one year ago. What, what did we say we would do? First, we said we would focus on higher growth, sustainability-driven markets, fundamentally growing where investment is needed.
And there's arguably no place where more investment is needed over the coming decades than mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change. So if you want to grow, grow where innovation and investment's needed. Second, we said we would strengthen our position as the lowest carbon choice partner for our customers. This is key. We've been leading in this area for a long time, but it's actually more important than ever as more of our customers are figuring out how to make their net zero commitments and their Scope 3 purchasing initiatives come alive. We also said we would simplify the business. I described this to many of you as unlocking unrealized synergy, which then we knew was here.... We've been doing a great deal of that, and as you've seen through our recent announcements, that's starting to show through in our results.
We'll tell you more about that. We said we would create value by implementing and embedding the Genuit Business System and the lean principles that are well proven in great businesses worldwide into the very heart of Genuit and what we are and what we do. We said we would increase the solution capability of our expanding portfolio, and we'll talk about that more today, through really good strategic, targeted, and accretive M&A. Importantly, we also said that we would do this on the path to getting to and then exceeding 20% operating margins, and that we would do this with driving above-market top-line growth. This all works together, and together, between Tim and I, we'll take you through that. I was confident last year that we were on the right track. I stand before you more confident than ever that we're gonna make this progress, make it happen.
Now I'm just gonna walk you through and share some of the progress that the team has made. First, let's dig into how we are making climate-friendly solutions the key to driving above-market organic growth. We said that we would focus on this sector, that we thought that a lot of regulatory tailwinds were backing up growth in this sector. What's really interesting is that there's actually more than just the regulatory tailwinds. There's a lot there, with Future Home Standards and more. Because what we're starting to see is that climate change is actually becoming more acute and more visible, that customers at all levels, from end customers to corporate customers, are more aware of that change.
We're seeing preferences are starting to change, whether it's an individual who's renovating a house or a company that's looking for a new office space, and both of them want a greener solution, right? Or corporate, our corporate customers, who are now putting in place tough Scope 3 carbon reduction initiatives so that they can meet their net zero targets. So we're kind of past the tipping points that I've described, where we're just waiting for government to push. Right now, all of the customers in the industry and, frankly, society, are starting to move in that direction. So let's talk a little bit about the impact that this needs to have. First off, you know, science has been driving regulation for some time in the area of climate change, right? But the necessity is here. We're seeing it.
We're seeing it in our weather patterns and hotter summers. We're seeing it in droughts. We're seeing it in much more intense rainstorms than we would normally be getting. And all of this, actually, that awareness, I think, underpins our confidence as a management team that we're on the right track and don't intend to change course. One of the key mitigation factors is that in the U.K., the built environment accounts for about 40% of the carbon footprint. So it's absolutely essential that we build new with lower embedded carbon, that when we renovate, we use more of the existing buildings, which requires more innovative solutions to do those retrofits. And that we actually lower the operating carbon of those businesses, of those buildings, too, so that they operate more efficiently, consume less electricity, and stop consuming carbon-based energy sources.
On the adaptation side, one of the challenges here is as the weather gets hotter, of course, it puts more stress on our living environments. We all felt this last summer when we felt some very hot days, and I think a lot of people were sitting there thinking, "I might need to get some incremental cooling here." We'll talk about that in a few minutes. The other thing is that as we've been driving to more energy-efficient buildings, they're often better insulated and better sealed. But at the same time, we know we need healthier indoor air, and that healthier air quality and that weather tightness and, and energy efficiency can be at odds unless you have innovative solutions to do that. So there's a lot of opportunity for growth there as well.
On the drought and storm side, of course, you know, we've actually been working on putting in stormwater management to meet sustainable urban drainage and Flood and Water Management Act regulations for some time. The difference there is the storms are getting worse, and the challenges are becoming more intense. So what is the size of the market? What are we facing up to, and how do we actually go attack that? So today in the U.K., we would say that our current market that we can serve with the products and solutions we have today is about GBP 3 billion, just under. Right? And that market is actually expected to grow the different segments we're in at about 3% CAGR between now and 2027. You might notice if you'd been here last year, that's actually up.
No surprise, of course, since we're down from where we thought we were gonna end up last year. So it's a really good time to be in these particular segments going forward, of course. The other thing I'd point out is that when you look at our sales by category, this is not the same business that we took public 10 years ago, right? You'd know that Polypipe, of course, is well known for its presence in plastic plumbing and drainage. But today, about a third of group revenues come from heating efficiency, heating systems, ventilation, and now a bit of cooling, right? External water management is more than a third of the group. A lot of growth in the areas of storm water management, blue-green roof technology, and dealing with sort of the flooding and drainage, which is becoming more prevalent.
So it's a different business, and I think it's well-positioned for some of the vectors of growth that we'll be talking about. So, as I said, that 3% is really the underlying market growth, but we told you we would grow at 2%-4% above that. That's an ambitious target, of course, but we're confident in that because we're actually putting in place and investing in the actions to actually drive the innovation and expand the solution portfolio so you can see that take place. The climate change and sustainability, this is already impacting customer choices, and we've got concrete examples, and we'll share with you a couple, where we think that's already started to impact our bottom line. I mentioned regulations like the Future Homes Standard 2025.
As we get closer to that, a lot of work is going into figuring out how we help the house builders, for example, to meet those requirements. We'll, we'll share a little more on that. And of course, this innovation in construction productivity, the modern methods of construction, you know, making installation easier, making retrofits easier, is really key. So let me now share several examples of how we've actually brought that to life. First is an example from Nuaire. Many of you know Nuaire as one of our premier businesses that's long been a leader in the technology for ventilation, mechanical ventilation throughout buildings, right? All different types.
They've also been one of the leaders in mechanical ventilation heat recovery, which is, of course, the ability to ventilate a building, meet the new standards for more ventilation, but actually not discharge all of that hard-earned, renewably heated air that you have in a building in the winter. So by recirculating that, of course, we can get energy recovery and reduce the energy consumption of these heating systems. That's really good, but with the impact of the hotter summers, and therefore the building heating that we're seeing, we're starting to see the request for incremental cooling. What Nuaire has done is figured out a way to add an incremental cooling module onto the MVHR solution, right? So that basically, you can have the best of both worlds.
You can have a very efficient air exchange, getting energy efficiency in the winter, and you can get a bit of incremental cooling in the summer. But rather than me tell you how that works, let me actually let our team share with you the video that they put together to explain this technology to their customers.
How hybrid cooling works. Nuaire's MRXBOX Hybrid Cooling System combines year-round high levels of indoor air quality with the added benefit of summer cooling to mitigate overheating. How MRXBOX heat recovery works. MRXBOX units provide optimized, balanced ventilation and high-efficiency heat recovery. Fresh outdoor air enters the MVHR system. This air passes through a high-efficiency heat exchanger, which tempers it using heat recovered from the building. This recovered heat warms the air and enters the home via habitable rooms, such as living rooms and bedrooms. Stale air is extracted via wet rooms, such as bathrooms and kitchens. This warm room air passes over the heat exchanger, which transfers the heat to warm incoming air. Finally, this stale air is exhausted from the home. How summer cooling works.
For warmer months, MRXBOX units have an automatic summer bypass, which allows 100% of the fresh air to bypass the heat exchanger, recovering no heat. This untempered fresh air helps keep the property cool. As external temperatures rise above internal, the bypass closes, and extracted air is used to cool incoming fresh air. During the hottest days of the year, when outside air is significantly warmer than the desired inside temperature, additional cooling may be needed. Warm outdoor air enters the system. In most situations, the MVHR will be in coolth recovery mode when cooling is activated, with cooler inside air reducing the temperature of the incoming fresh air within the heat exchanger. This pre-cooled outdoor air passes over the cooling coil, which further reduces air temperature before it is supplied to habitable rooms, helping to mitigate overheating. This helps to maintain a comfortable indoor temperature.
So there you go. That's actually a piece of, piece of marketing work that they put together to help customers understand this. This product launch was actually just about the same time as we had our Capital Markets Day last year, and since then, we've gotten over GBP 4 million of sales from this product launch alone, and we've got about 10x that in orders. So we've got in opportunities. So we've got really good confidence in actually driving that forward. It's really an exciting product launch that's at the right time. And as you can see, this is actually driven by customer preferences in dealing with the impact of, of the warming that we're seeing around us. So moving on.
On a bit broader scale, and this is, this is, an area where I get a lot of questions about. I thought it'd be really helpful to walk through this. This is really where regulation is driving a significant expansion in our portfolio sales opportunity. So what we thought we'd do here is really show you some of the pieces that are going into a Future Homes Standard-compliant house from 2025 on. So the Future Homes Standard is fundamentally driving improved ventilation. It's lowering the circulating temperature of the heat sort of system in the house. It's actually setting up a whole series of requirements for energy efficiency that are designed to get 20% reduction in the carbon operation of the house, okay? That's good. It's really important, and it means also that we're able to provide a lot more value to that house.
In what would have been a gas boiler in a radiator-heated house with probably minimal, minimal amounts of mechanical ventilation, we're starting to see the switch to air source heat pumps, right? Which, by the way, is not part of, you know, sort of the value that we're counting in here. But that air... those air source heat pumps, which are widely expected to be 50%-70% of the market in a few years' time, will often be-- what, what's happening is because they're operating at lower temperatures, they need much larger emitters.... and one of the biggest emitters you can find is your floors, right? So underfloor heating, which is just a fraction of the market today, is expected to be a widely adopted solution for part or all of home heating.
As underfloor heating comes into play with air source heat pumps, we have that same dynamic we talked about earlier. We have to make sure that that carefully crafted energy-efficient system isn't really fighting against mechanical ventilation. So the MVHR solution, that mechanical ventilation heat recovery, is expected to play a much bigger role in the home of the future and become much more widely adopted. Now, as the cooling temperatures are lower, any degradation in heating system performance is much more impactful and will be noticed. Therefore, filtration and additives to keep the heating system working at its peak will become even more important. So ADEY's mission becomes more important than ever, and that's really key. In terms of positive input ventilation, in some cases, that's gonna be the right solution.
It's particularly useful, of course, in reducing damp or in adding ventilation in different types of spaces. And of course, I think we all know that the houses of the future are still gonna have plenty of plumbing and drainage. We'll be again, leading the way there and making that out of increasingly recycled content. But here's the important part, right? If we look at a house with a conventional house built perhaps five years ago, with a gas boiler and radiator, little bit of mechanical ventilation, the normal plumbing, right? The part that we would sell is Genuit, right? Certain amount X, right? We look at what that'll be with the Future Homes Standard 2025, that can on average, be as much as five times more content for us.
Right now, obviously, we'll get every single house, but I think you can see why we have high confidence in growing above market into this segment. The other point I would make is that all of these solutions are also finding their way into other buildings as well, through different types of regulation. So I hope you can see how this is a really good example of how we are creating sustainable living. But lest you think that that's the end of the story, there's more that we can do. Beyond 2025, there's still more innovation needed. You'll see more innovation in insulation. You'll see fresh air and cooling continue to evolve. You'll see green spaces begin to be integrated into residential and commercial buildings more widely, taking advantage of roofs and gardens to recover rain, use it at the point of use.
You'll see connections to district heat networks. So in some areas, you'll see actually many houses networked to a single ground source heat pump or air source heat pump with a lot more complex plumbing. It's an area we're already working in today, and we think we can expand in as well. We've already talked about low carbon heating with air source heat pumps, but we'll continue to see more innovation in the heating space. We're very confident in that. I mentioned green roofs already, and of course, greywater storage is interesting because we know we've got a stressed water supply. And what we don't want to be doing is using that really precious drinking water supply for anything other than drinking, like watering gardens, which was, of course, widespread today.
Graywater storage and reuse is gonna be much more common in the future. All of these are not part of the 2025 regulations, but we expect to be huge sales opportunities for growth for us into the future. Of course, I guess the other thing I should mention is that the way we are set up right now with our different businesses, there's the opportunity to drive more cross-selling, okay? We've already started doing that. We've shared examples of how Nu-Heat, with their direct to home builder, direct to homeowner channel, is starting to pull through ADEY filters and beginning to pull through MVHR solutions from Nuaire. At the same time, building products or Polypipe Building Products has long had a great presence with the major house builders, and we're starting to leverage that access as we're having discussions about solving these very problems.
So we're well positioned there. If I switch to another example, so Nu-Heat is a business we bought a few years ago. Again, as I said, it's really about providing renewable energy solutions direct to home builders or to small home contractors, or homeowners even, right? And what they'll often do is they'll be doing a renovation project or a new build project. Increasingly, when we bought them a few years ago, it was mostly single-family new build. We're starting to see a lot more prevalence for renovation, RMI projects. This is where the innovations come in, and earlier this year, we released a product called Nu-Deck. We talked about that in our half-year results, but let me just show you a little bit more about that. This is really about the fact that underfloor heating is a bit more complex to install.
It's a bit more labor-intensive, right? Still the right thing to do, and in the end, it leads for a much better building. However, innovation in decreasing the labor content and making it faster and more confident and higher quality as an installation is key. And so what Nu-Deck is, which was released, is really, it's a structural solution to make it easier to install underfloor heating. Right? It's a great product with a great launch. As you can see, I mean, we, we're really pleased with how this come. We've already taken quite a lot of sales with this, and it's been one of the fastest-growing things that Nu-Heat's done in quite a while. But rather than me tell you about it again, let me try to bring the business to you.
This is actually a Nu-Heat video, and what's great about it, it's actually an installer who's gonna tell you how this works and how he thinks it's valuable.
I'm Rob Quartermain. I'm a heating engineer. I've been doing it about 18 years. This project is a 1960 bungalow with an extension and a full renovation to make it a more eco-friendly family home. So I chose Nu-Deck because I was removing the boards to fit insulation to improve the efficiency of the building anyway. So to fit a structural board which integrated the Nu-Deck heating system in it, it just made sense. Working with Nu-Heat was a really easy process, right from the start to the finish. The design team made the bespoke system that I required really simple and easy to work around all of the features I've got in the property. And technical support was really helpful when I had any questions regarding the installation. For any other installers looking for an integrated underfloor heating system, Nu-Deck is the system.
It is so quick and easy to install 'cause of the way it's designed. This is actually my own house, and I chose Nu-Deck 'cause I really trust in the system.
There you go. Couldn't ask for a better reference there. Somebody who clearly knows what he's doing. Couldn't ask for a better reference there. Somebody who clearly knows what he's doing, and, all I can say is I'm actually a customer as well. I'm putting Nu-Heat in my house, too. Let's turn now to the core of our business, and an area that you'd all know well, those who've been following us for a while, are familiar with our plastic plumbing business. So, this business is quite important. It's a business that we've got about 25% market share in the U.K., right? And yet we still need to invest to grow and to grow our share. So PolyPlumb is a well-known product, often preferred and specified by plumbers in the industry.
We're always on that innovation journey to see how we can make their lives better. Over the past couple of years, we've been working directly with plumbers, getting their feedback and voice of customer into the next generation of PolyPlumb. We've now launched that, just launched that. It's called PolyPlumb Enhanced, and it includes our patented In-Cert technology. In-Cert fundamentally is a way to give you haptic feel, know that you've actually installed it right, 'cause that's one of the keys with plumbing. You gotta make sure that when you've built the system, that it won't leak, and you don't have to be called back out to fix that. So plumbers wanna know, and what they can do is they can simply insert the pipe, twist it a bit, get that positive feel, and they know that they've got a high-quality, guaranteed seal.
Great reception, as you'd expect from a product that was really designed from the plumber's point of view backwards. We're quite excited about this, and actually, Steve's got some samples here. You're welcome to go and actually feel and click and see how it works yourself afterwards. So again, creating products with the voice of the customer, in this case, the plumber in mind, is exactly how you drive preferential market growth. So these are four or five areas that we're using to drive above-market top-line growth by providing better solutions than anybody else. But as we said, investing in climate change and climate-driven growth and innovation is only part of this, right? We also need to make sure that those solutions are lower carbon and that the way we run our business is fundamentally more sustainable. So let's dig into that.
So what we said is that we would leverage our sustainability leadership position as we move forward, and that we would be champions for sustainable construction, that our solutions themselves needed to be lower carbon. We'll touch on that, but that we would also run our business in the most sustainable way possible. And then all this would be really important as our customers ramped up their plans to achieve their net zero targets. Again, our recycling position, our long history of being focused on this, our early mover advantage has positioned us well, but we're not stopping there. We're not resting on our laurels. No presentation at Genuit would be complete without sort of talking to you about the progress we've made here. So let's do that.
First, you'll recall a few years back, we set out concrete, clear, and measurable medium-term targets by 2025, where we could measure progress against our sustainability objectives. We are actually on track for those, and we're really pleased. We'll give you some more details about that. We also, and perhaps haven't made enough of this, we've actually had our LSE Green Mark for four years, right? And by the way they score, we actually have more than 70% of our revenues are, in fact, green revenues. It's an outstanding achievement and something we're just gonna keep trying to drive further. We're also the first among our U.K. peers to receive accreditation for our science-based targets. Again, you know, it's the right thing to do, and we're leading the way.
As we put together our pathway to net zero, we're making sure that it's just as clear and measurable. Obviously, it's a bit of a longer timeframe, right? But we'll actually be publishing that with our annual report for the fiscal year, for the calendar year 2023. So you'll see that in a few months. I think you, many of you already know that we're the largest user of recycled plastics, in fact, across our E.U. peer group. Right? So that's really important. We've got that experience, right? And we think that the transition away from just recycled plastics into no more virgin polymers at all, right, is gonna be really important. So we've got to keep looking for alternative sources.
This is really clear and is absolutely core to what we're trying to do here, so we'll keep updating you on this as we extend our leadership position. Going back to our medium-term targets, we said we'd get from 48%, that's where we were in 2022, up to 62%, and this is across all the plastic that we use in the entire business, and that's half of everything we buy. So this is a significant amount. I think we told you last year that we actually recycled more plastic than the nation of Wales collected. But we have to go further, right? So to get to 62%, we actually have a range of projects currently in operation across the group, and we track the contribution each of those is gonna make to get us from 48% to 62%.... This is how that looks, right?
I won't take you through the details of every single project, but every one of those has an owner and is investments that are required and actions. And we know that they'll take us to these, basically, projects already started and underway, get us to 85% of the way, so just about 2% short of that 62%. We've got a hopper of new projects we're evaluating, so we have high confidence that our enhanced mechanical recycling initiatives are going to get us to our targets by 2025. But as I said earlier, that's not where we stop. Sixty-two percent was when we were using mechanical recycling in all the places that the regulations now allow. There's several ways we can get beyond that.
There's product innovation, we can lobby to change those regulations, we can expand the definitions, we can provide customers with alternative certifications, but we can also lead the way on things like chemical recycling, where you essentially break plastics down to its components, and then you start the process all over again, and you make plastics that are indistinguishable from virgin polymers, but from reused streams. This is an early piece of technology, but we're already evaluating and figuring out how that can play into our future. Of course, further down, there's a lot of discussion around how we can start to use polymers from bio sources, right? And so we'll be looking at that as well. So there's quite a long way to go here, and we're very confident that this is going to be a key part of our business for years to come.
I should say that these same customers who are figuring out their Scope 3 plans and their purchasing are looking more and more for environmental product declarations, which is where our products shine. They're essentially the certification of the carbon content that's in the products we're going to be supplying. We actually invested in our ability to generate them on our own, third-party certified, and we started rolling them out across our portfolio. So they need to trust that when they make that net zero and Scope 3 commitments, that they get what they said they were going to get, because that is part of their integrity to their customers. Just share a quick example here.
If any of you've ever driven up the M1, which is probably everybody, as you go through Northampton, on the left, as you're going past the junction to turn off to Silverstone there, there is a, SEGRO distribution park, and it was actually built as a net zero distribution park. In order to do that, because they recognized that actually a lot of customers like, you know, who had distribution businesses, wanted to be operating with a, with a greener footprint. So they actually are looking for this kind of a park. Winvic actually did the civils work on this site and had to subscribe to delivering their part of the project net zero as well. So they, in turn, turned to our Water Management Solutions business to buy all of the drain water, sorry, the, the storm water and drainage solutions.
These are nearly 100% recycled. There's a bit left, you know, but between the little bit left in our products and some of the other products that couldn't be as green, they had to purchase carbon offsets for anything that they couldn't mitigate, right? And so what that does is it actually starts to show a real trade-off value between greener products and not greener products. This is just one example, and if you look on the Winvic site, you'll see actually some of these images. And importantly, and I love this one, they actually figured out with our team that over 1.1 million milk bottles were used to actually make that site a low-carbon, net zero site. So it's exciting stuff, and it's just one example of many, and we're starting to see much more customer awareness for the value of greener buildings.
We've talked about the innovation we're using to drive above-market growth. We've talked about the role that sustainability is playing, both in driving growth but also in how we operate the business. Let me tell you now about how we're building actually a much stronger platform from which to grow. Importantly, not only does this fund growth for us in the future, but it also helps improve our margins. You'll be interested to hear about this, I'm sure. What we said was, fundamentally, there was a clear opportunity to simplify the business and, in the process, to leverage our scale, to lower our cost base, and to free up resources that we could reinvest in growth. I think you've seen some of that because we've been making progress all year on growth with a lot of this innovation, while continuing to deliver better results.
So how are we simplifying the business? We recognize that we could take our four business unit structure to three. Clear, logical focus, makes more sense for our people, more agile and lower cost, okay? And so early on this journey, last autumn, we announced GBP 8 million of annualized savings. That really came mostly from reducing our overhead costs through reducing layers, streamlining our management, and better purchasing that we started to leverage across the group. Last week, with our trading update, we announced another follow on GBP 7 million of annualized savings for a total of GBP 15 million. This is mostly coming now through footprint optimization, something that we saw the potential for and we've now got the team and the ability to execute on. I'm going to share with you a couple examples of that coming up, but let me say that this is substantially underway.
A lot of it is completed. A bit more to go. We expect it to be completely done in the first half of next year. And so that importantly, this GBP 15 million, which is already hitting our bottom line, and Tim will talk a little bit more about that, has come without any compromise of our production capacity. We haven't taken any capacity offline. We've actually just much more intelligently used what we have. So, let me give you a couple of examples of that. These are two, really three of the sites and two of the projects we've been working on. The first, again, without taking out capacity, was actually a ground-up look at how we distribute products in our Sustainable Building Solutions business.
We had some extra two distribution centers, one in Glasgow, which was really set up to serve Scotland, and one actually in Doncaster, close to our other sites, set up really to sell to some different channels. Steve and the team did a lot of good work, did a lot of analysis to figure out how they could actually do this better. You know, quickly, they realized that actually we serve the rest of Wales and south England from Doncaster very efficiently with really good customer service. They looked at that network and determined they could actually do the same thing from Doncaster to support the rest of Scotland. So we closed the Glasgow distribution center, reducing our cost base.
We reduced our inventory levels, and we actually simplified, we eliminated cross-docking, and we were able to very carefully monitor customer experience through that process to get the same or better customer service, but with a much more cost-effective, centralized distribution network. That's been a great success. The other thing that we did is we looked at the other business in Kirk Sandall, just outside Doncaster, and we realized that that business actually could be brought in and closer to the source of production and actually repurposed to serve a growing segment of the merchant business as we focus more and more on supporting some of the digitally enabled and online-type channels. Again, we were able to consolidate all that into space we freed up from our existing facilities. No loss of productive capacity. That, too, is done, and we're really pleased with the results of that.
So really good work by the team there. Another good example is an acquisition that we've made some years back. Surestop, smaller business, very innovative, great products, bought in 2015, outside Birmingham. Been doing well, left alone, but hadn't actually grown as much as we would have liked and, of course, came with a lot of extra costs. So what AD was able to do is, as they'd been on this lean journey, they were able to reduce the floor space that they needed to produce their own products. That allowed them, CMS , Climate Management, to then integrate Surestop into the actual AD footprint. So now, if you go to AD, you'll see the same people and the same footprint also making the Surestop products. We reduced cost, sure.
Obviously, one fewer site, yes, but importantly, we've also put the innovation team from Surestop now together with the ADEY innovation team, so that we've got a better, more powerful technology group, and those products are now available and sold by a much bigger, more capable ADEY sales force. So definitely a win-win there. We've got other examples that are already in progress, you know, so definitely, more to come there. But like I said, the bulk of the work will be finished in the first half of next year. And again, no reduction in production capacity. Once we've gotten to the right footprint, though, we're not done. I said we'd be on the continuous improvement path. So let's talk a little bit about the Genuit Business System and how we're actually gonna be doing that.
This is really about embedding lean thinking and continuous improvement into the very fiber of everything that we do at Genuit. And it's absolutely key to leveraging the value of the Genuit Group, both for everybody in the group now and all who will join in the future. What we said we would do is that we were committed to enabling this lean-based Genuit system to be used across the entire business. And that it was gonna be key to unlocking the synergy, both what we already had, but also creating value from future acquisitions. And that we thought it was key to being able to get the benefits of scale and again, driving that continuous improvement.
So what I thought I would do now is actually walk you through a little bit, because I've gotten a lot of questions about this, as to what it is. This is a simplified version of the Genuit Business System we're putting in place. For those of you following it online, I'll just walk from the bottom of the slide up. Let's build this. The guiding principles of any good lean business system, and there are many examples that have been proven to deliver outstanding shareholder returns and great customer value, are thus: Go and see. See what's actually happening with your own eyes. Keep the customer at the very heart of everything you do. Have a learning mindset. Be data-driven, right? So we actually know what problems we're solving. You'll see that thread all the way through.
Team collaboration is always better, and again, embedding that belief that every single day we can make tomorrow better. Those are those guiding principles, and the foundational tools are leader standard work, which is really about making sure that we have a really good way to run the business every day, and we know if anything is off track, which actually frees up time to growth. Good workplace organization, structured problem-solving, something that really we get a lot of effort, a lot of results out of teaching, daily management, and of course, embedding behavioral safety. So if you visit one of our sites far along the lean journey or on the lean journey, you'll see teams working on things like value stream mapping, where you literally take the whole team, and you walk through every aspect of a customer process from order to cash.
You map out where all the inefficiencies are, and you figure out how to make it better, so it's faster, more reliable, better quality for the customer. Sometimes you put standardized work in place, a lot of times. Anytime you can have a process that you can figure out what happens when it goes wrong and why it goes right, you can then design that process to always go right. Right? It eliminates an awful lot of waste and rework. It makes our lives a lot easier and delivers a lot better productivity and quality for customers. Obviously, pull is just working at the pace of the customer, and problem-solving, we've already talked about.
But these are some of the things you see during these lean lighthouse transformations, and if you visit ADEY or Doncaster, you'll see teams working on this now, and this is the foundation for the lean system, which is one of the three components of the Genuit Business System. There's obviously more tools to it, you know, more if you're interested, but not today. One of the other key pieces is the leadership system. Strategy deployment is a tool that we use to connect the dots from our five-year strategic plan back to what we're doing today and tomorrow, so that our leaderships, our leadership teams spend less time managing the business because it runs itself, and it's much more empowered, and more time focusing on innovation and growth and delivering the strategic plan.
As well as talent development, change management, and things like putting in place better leadership development, which we covered earlier. Again, more to it, but that's the leadership system. The last piece is the growth system, and this is something a lot of people don't associate with a good lean business system, but it's really important because this is how you drive top-line growth. And again, there are tools to do that, like value selling, solution selling, sales funnel management, and more. So we're deploying this system, and this is what it's gonna look like as we get to the future state. This drives a lot of value, and it's similar to what you'd see at quite a few well-known companies, both in the U.K. and abroad. So, it's really important, it's very powerful, and it's progressing well. Where are we on this?
We told you we would start with ADEY. In fact, I think we started it two weeks before we did our capital markets event last year. ADEY is now about a year on, great progress. At the half, they'd already identified GBP 200,000 of savings in their half-year results, and that's just ADEY, right? Obviously, that continues to grow. They've seen a 25% productivity improvement. They're actually expecting quite a bit more of that now. So when you get there next time, you'll see more. As I said, around 40% savings in space. They'll probably be closer to 50% in time. And we've now started this lighthouse process at Doncaster. I think we're on about six months of progress now there. That's going really well. We'll show you that in a second.
We've got a third lighthouse site starting up toward the end of this year, beginning of next year, and we have four other sites which are already using parts of the lean toolbox. Those seven sites represent about 75%-80% of our productive capacity. So you can see this isn't just a fringe exercise. This is something that is getting right to the core of everything we do, and it'll be generating significant savings that'll increase year over year over year. So, what I thought we'd do now is actually bring the plant to you. So it'd be good to do this here in London, so more people could come, but we wanted to bring Doncaster here. We asked the team to put a video together, and this is entirely their work.
So I hope you can get the idea of the excitement they've got for this process as well. So, you can ask Steve lots of questions about that afterwards. So that's the Genuit Business System. So now let's talk about that fifth area of growth, and this is really that growth-enabling M&A. You know, we know that M&A has been core to who we are, and we believe that's gonna be the case for years to come. So let's talk a little bit about how we think about it. So what we said, right, was that strategic solutions portfolio can actually be expanded through targeted strategic M&A, often bringing a technology or a solution capability that we don't have today. We also recognize that good M&A can help us take our current solution capability into new markets, right? And bring some things from other markets into this market.
So there's a lot of opportunity. We wanted to make sure that we're ready when the time is right to be back on that journey. Here's how we think about this today, sort of in order of priority, right? Water Management Solution has tremendous solution opportunities. We talked about with the Future Homes Standard and the Home of the Future. There is, we offer a lot, and that's why we're seeing that 5x expansion of value opportunity now. However, beyond that, right, as we acquire businesses that could provide a different emitter sources, different controls, get us deeper into things like gray water reuse, we can continue to expand that, and we've got the right access, whether it's through the major house builders or through individual home builders and RMI.
So we believe that there's a lot of expansion opportunity still there, and it does provide the opportunity, as I think you've seen other of our peers, get into other markets that are logical adjacencies. And I talked about outside just the U.K., right? You know, obviously, Europe and North America have some of the same types of dynamics. You know, we'll be thoughtful and make sure we've got the right types of acquisitions, and we'll talk a little bit about the ability to manage those in the future, because that's really important. In terms of Water Management, there's a lot of portfolio completion opportunity there, too. So today, we provide stormwater solutions, and we provide blue-green roof solutions, but there are components that we buy out that we can in-source.
There are also ways that we can expand value, like things like silt separation, flow controls, and more. So there's opportunity there as well. This is the business which is already the most international. We've got a very strong sales and engineering channel into the Middle East, which shows the portability of these solutions. We also been beginning to sell quite well into the U.S. with partners, so we know that there's applicability of the WMS solution portfolio overseas as well.
Obviously, Sustainable Building Solutions are our most U.K.-focused business, but we certainly wouldn't rule out good acquisitions that can grow our share, bring technology, particularly in areas like modern methods of construction or advancing the journey toward recycling and alternative materials. Key point I wanted to make here, and this is something that I, you know, I don't think I would have said a year ago, is we have proven now that we have the ability to integrate these businesses. That's what we've been doing, right? And we've put the Genuit Business System in place to help extract synergies and also bring businesses in, so that we can actually be a much more successful and much more financially rewarding buyer of good businesses to come. So the bottom line is, look, we've, we know what we want to do.
We've been building the opportunity funnel, and we've got the better team in place. On that point of funnel, if you see, we've actually built up quite a good business as a result of this. Since the strategic plan last year, we've taken all of that expansive market work. We know what those adjacencies are, and we've been working with each of the businesses to build a more expansive list of acquisition potential targets. Obviously, I can't talk about those. However, it's a significant expansion, and we're actually focused on being much more proactive at finding and cultivating future acquisitions.
Tim will talk to you a bit more about having the capacity to go do that, but I want to emphasize again, having the leadership team with both experience from their previous management experience and the integration we're doing now, as well as having the Genuit Business System at our disposal, means that when the time is right and the deal is right, we'll be able to be the best buyer for that solution, strategic infill. So I hope this helps you understand the progress that we've made at implementing our solutions, our sustainable solutions for growth strategy. What I'd like to do now is turn it over to Tim, who can walk you through the financial implications and give you a bit of an update there. Tim, over to you.
Thank you, Joe. Right. Hello again, everyone. Great progress there. I'm sure you will agree. What I thought I'd start by doing is giving you some of my key reflections on my first three months in the business. And here I see in the group a real structural market opportunity for lower carbon, higher efficiency products, that really address the structural underinvestment that we've seen in the U.K. housing construction industries. There's a clear purpose and strategy with sustainability at its core, as we've set out today and a year ago, stands us in really good stead to address that. There's a really great portfolio of businesses here.
If you look at the established products, the innovative new products, there's a common theme of strong market shares, and there's a real great team here as well, if you look at the people in Group, and you look at the people in the business. All of these, for me, are real ingredients for strong growth over the coming years, and there's a real opportunity here to unlock the potential of the Group and provide strong returns to our shareholders. Those are my reflections. Because of those and the financial due diligence I've done in my first three months, I'm happy today to reiterate the financial targets that we set out a year ago over the medium term. Let's remind ourselves of those. We plan to grow our revenues with a market outperformance of between 2% and 4%.
Our focus on innovation, on being the lowest carbon choice for our customers, high quality, the ability to solution sell and synergy sell across this great portfolio of businesses, and with the market opportunity that we see, if you remember the house of the future that Joe described, that 5x content potential. We plan to increase our operating margins and achieve over 20%. Here, we've made really great progress so far on the business simplification journey, and that, combined with our focus on the efficiency of operations, will be key. I'm gonna talk a lot more about this particular section in a moment and unpack that a bit more. Cash conversion. This is really important to me as CFO. We're targeting over 90% cash conversion. We've been there before as a group, quite consistently.
We've seen some disruption through the supply chain issues and so on. That's now normalizing. We don't need to wait till the medium term for this. This is something that we're driving now, and you'll see our cash improving in year, cash conversion, and that's evidenced in our reducing leverage. We're targeting return on capital employed of over 15%, and we have a range of measures, as you know, to really keep sustainability at the core of what we do and lead the way on this front. So before I talk a bit more about our operating margin expansion, I wanted to make sure that we're rooted in the current context. This is a cyclical industry, and as we know, well-documented, going through challenging times at the moment.
So if I may, I'd like to take you back in time to 2019, before COVID, before supply chain disruptions, before we were reminded what inflation is and the interest rate rises that have come with that. Actually, at a time in 2019, when the Cricket World Cup champions were England and not Australia. At that time, we'd had a period of, you know, quite consistent volumes, steadily growing, that I would consider quite normal for this industry, and we're about 17%-21% below those as we stand today. So the key question is: Is this the new normal, or will there be a return to those normal volumes? And I, like many industry commentators, most even, believe there will be for two key reasons. The first is that the supply chain disruptions have abated. Inflation is coming under control.
We've seen peak interest rates, hopefully, and expectations have adjusted. These are all the precursors to returning confidence to the sector. The second factor is those structural growth drivers. We know that we need more homes in the U.K., quite desperately. We know that commercial construction needs to return to more normal levels. As we do those things, we know that we've got to incorporate greener technologies in both our homes and commercial buildings to make sure that we're addressing the broader societal impacts of climate change. So these things give me confidence that this will come back. I won't predict when, but we know that that's around the corner. So that return to normal is a really key stepping stone in our margin expansion journey, which has three core elements to it. First of all, the business simplification that we've been undertaking.
This has been removing costs, increasing our efficiency, increasing our economies of scale, essentially, as a group. Importantly, no reduction in production capacity, as Joe pointed out, so that as the recovery comes, we're still able to take advantage of that. This really gives us a, a platform, a proactively built platform, on which those normal volumes can be generated, and the drop-through from that incremental volume of about 20% extra will give us, I think, high teens in terms of operating margin. Get us substantially there. That's not predicated on some new business in the future. That's based on our current product sets being sold into our current markets with existing customer relationships. As you've heard today, we're planning to expand those as well.
That on top of here, along with the Genuit Business System, which is focused on that operational improvement, driving productivity, increasing efficiency, reducing cycle time, increasing automation, reducing waste. This is the continuous improvement that we've started already. The three projects that Joe talked about, gathering momentum, more projects each year, more people in the business, understanding these tools and techniques and deploying them, having a real snowball effect on our efficiency as a group and generating year after year improvement. That doesn't need to wait for the additional volumes. That's something we're delivering now, but certainly builds on top and gets us to over the 20% margin that we're targeting. And then if we bring all that together, what we see is a real compounding earnings growth story. We're targeting that top-line growth, outperformance versus the market, through all of the initiatives that you've heard about today.
That will give us, together with our focus on reducing costs through simplification, increasing the efficiency of the group and the operating leverage of those extra volumes coming through, significant margin expansion. You've heard me talk about our focus on cash conversion and how that isn't going to wait. We're focusing on that now. That will mean that we're turning those profits into cash, and together with an effective capital allocation policy, we'll expand our earnings. Just to talk about that a little bit further, this really gives us a very strong balance sheet.
When we've got a strong balance sheet with reduced leverage, and we talked last week in the trading update about reducing from 1.3 x leverage at the half to nearer 1.1x, the full year, plus the organizational muscle that Joe talked about in that integration activity we've been undertaking, that we can apply to new acquisitions, along with the Genuit Business System, that can increase the efficiency of those acquisitions. This really gives us that optionality to undertake them. We're incredibly focused on our organic growth journey, and we'll continue to invest in that with capital, similar levels to this year, those organic and sustainability-linked initiatives. But we also know that inorganic strategy will also deliver significant benefits to shareholders. So if we find the right business at the right valuation, at the right time, we have the ability to undertake that.
Our commitment at the moment in the current environment is that we won't let leverage go above 1.5x , and that we'll seek to reduce post-acquisition, but we certainly have the ability there to get that done. So that's it for me, and I'd like to invite Joe back on the stage now to wrap up.
Don't go far. We'll have some Q&A soon, I'm sure. Thank you, Tim. Delighted to have you here. We all are. You know, Tim's been here three months, but I think you can see he's really got a good mastery of the business in a very short order. So, in summary, again, let me just recap our strategy and give you a bit my perspective as to where we go next, right? So we said we would focus on higher growth, sustainability-driven markets. We've given you some really good examples of how we've invested in organic growth. We're gonna continue to do that to keep our already high vitality high or getting higher, and make sure that we can expand the solution portfolio abilities, so that we've got ways to grow above market.
We said we would strengthen our position by being the lowest carbon choice for our customers. We've been on this recycling journey as long as anybody, right? We're already leading the way, but it's not enough. Our customers need more, and it's just the right thing to do. So we're very committed. I'd put our credentials up against anybody, but we'll keep pushing the way because we said we would be champions for Sustainable Building. So we'll keep pushing further. We said we'd simplify the business. This is the one that's of these, the one that's closest to done, right?
We intend to have this largely behind us so that we've built that platform for growth, and we're ready for the market recovery and the expansion for times to come, and that all of our money goes into investing in growth and in our people, and certainly not wasted on any unutilized capacity. So great to see great progress there. I hope that the projects we shared give you a bit of a sense of that, and again, we haven't done anything to reduce our ability to be ready for the recovery. We said we'd create value for the Genuit Business System. We've had requests for site visits.
We'll certainly be accommodating those, but I thought I would share a little more, both in my words, of the system we're putting together, and then, thanks to Steve and his team for actually bringing that a bit to life with a video of our second Lean Lighthouse site that's undergoing that journey. Fifth, we said we'd increase our solutions capability through growth-enabling M&A. We'll make those announcements as the time comes, but we're very active in making sure we've got lots of targets that make great sense for our strategy, and we can be selective and disciplined to buy things that are strategic, that we can integrate well, and that'll be accretive and provide good benefit both to our customers and to our shareholders.
Most importantly, it's about having the very best leadership, the very best people possible, so we can invest in every one of our 3,200+ associates across the globe. Having that leadership team that is ready to take us to the next level. I'll leave you with this thought: I'd argue that we're sitting here, having built a platform that is ready, and we are prepared for the growth, whether it's through market recovery, which we know will come, and that inorganic and organic growth that we can drive ourselves. I'll tell you, this is a better business than when I was standing in 2023 talking to all of you a year ago. If anything, I'm more confident now than I was then in our ability to meet and exceed our medium-term targets. With that, thank you, Tim. We're ready for some Q&A.
I think the plan is we'll take questions from the room first. In the meantime, I've got a colleague who's going to help us take questions from online. If we're not able to get to all of them, we'll reach out to those of you online afterwards. But let's see how it goes. So who would like to open up? If you ask a five-part question, I reserve the right to come back to you and ask what the second three were, okay? So, Aynsley.
Thanks, and, yeah, I've got three, thanks. Aynsley from Investec. Just obviously a very compelling, convincing message around above, construction market growth the cost savings, simplification. Just talk a bit about the kind of the confidence you've got to retain those savings and the benefits going forward in terms of pricing power. You, you mentioned certification, low carbon. Just a bit more around that would be interesting.
Okay.
Do you want me to go through... And then just second question, on the GBP 15 million, if you could just remind us how much of that falls into this year and how much is incremental next year? And then third question, just on CapEx, obviously good cash conversion targets. Do you need much growth CapEx to deliver these, these targets? What's the-
Okay.
CapEx?
You'll take the second two. I'll take the first one. Great.
Sure.
So on the first one, in terms of pricing power, holding onto the margins, and all, I guess a couple of different thoughts here. First, most importantly, is the savings that we've implemented, right, are actually structural savings, right? So those don't have to come back, and that's really important. We don't have to. We haven't taken capacity offline temporarily, that we're gonna have to bring costs back into the business. So that helps, right? In terms of pricing power and inflation, I mean, that's a broader topic. It's one I get a lot, right? So what we've seen is a bit of a normalization of sort of the pace of inflation. In some cases, we've seen sort of a bit of deflation. However, you know, input material prices are nowhere back to the level they were, say, three years ago.
And what we've done is, as we went through our cost base and understood what those were, and we dealt with, we actually restructured the pricing in the front end of the business, right? We, we actually put in place a sales force and a commercial sort of operation, as well as financial incentives for our leadership team to be focused on the profitability of the business. So that if and when customers, and of course, they do ask for price, right? We make sure that we can expand the discussion, right? We're in a good position to always look what we can do in a, in a mutually beneficial situation with our customers, to be able to expand our portfolio. And again, we've got a team that's quite focused on preserving the margin of the business.
The other thing I'd remind you and frankly all of our customers is that by no means have we seen the end of inflation, right? We're still in an inflationary period. Labor inflation is quite real. Energy inflation is with us. So it is quite a balance, but we're trying to keep those two things quite separate and making sure that if and when we do have to give help customers with prices, that we can actually lower our costs further, right? And keep our margins where they need to be. That answer your first question? You want to talk about the other two?
Yeah. So the GBP 50 million of savings, we had GBP 8 million or so announced last year that were really related towards, SG&A, procuring, buying well, energy, and so on. And this year, our savings of GBP 7 million annualized that we've announced are very much focused on the site consolidation activities that we've talked about, so removing that overhead and cost from the group. As we've said, publicly, you know, that's already started to contribute to our performance, and as Joe said today, those consolidation activities will be complete by the middle of next year. So you can assume that a chunk of that has flowed through this year, but, you know, the full annualized savings will, you know, be completely going through the P&L by the middle of next year.
In terms of the CapEx, we would expect a normalized level of CapEx of GBP 30 million-GBP 40 million, I think, for the group as we are today. Those are really focused toward the organic growth initiatives that we have, new products, and innovation, and also the sustainability-linked projects, like improving our recycling content that we've talked about today.
... Okay. Aynsley, thank you. And again, please do introduce yourself. I know most of you, but just in case.
Thanks. Afternoon, everyone. Sam Cullen from Peel Hunt. I've got three also. Do you want them one at a time?
Okay.
Yeah.
Sure.
So the new build's kind of 5x opportunity, can you give an idea of where that's majorly coming from in those, I think it was eight or nine products? Is it, is 40% of it underfloor heating and MVHR, and the other bits kind of smaller, smaller percentages?
Look, let me talk about it bidirectionally, right? So first of all, when you think about plumbing and you think about heating, right, and the transition from radiator-based heating to underfloor heating, that sort of whole package of the underfloor heating content and the plumbing content, that piece increases pretty substantially. You know, can be, you know, sort of 2x or more what it used to be. Obviously, MVHR is a significant on-cost above, say, simple mechanical extraction. So that's those are two of the biggest chunks. Filtration is important. Of course, we've gotten a good share in new build so far, but the filtration as will kick up a bit. And you know, so those are probably the three biggest factors, roughly in order.
But I'd say, you know, MVHR and the transition from sort of radiators to underfloor heating really drive probably, what, 2/3 of that? Yeah. Okay.
Great, thank you. The second one is, when you talked about the, kind of carbon reduction in the products and that being important for your customers, are you still sort of pushing that to them, or are they coming, are they beginning to turn the corner and come to you and pulling that product off of you in terms of you're becoming a preferred supplier because they're much more focused on their Scope 3 emissions or whatever it might be?
Yeah, great question. Look, it's, there's, right now I'd say it's probably more pull, although we're, we're certainly doing everything we can to make sure people know that we're the experts in this, right? So let me give you a good example, you know, and this is something you're welcome to talk to, to Steve and Steve about this and what they're seeing. But if you go back to a year or two ago, when we were at purchasing conferences with merchants, with, with major house builders, a lot of discussion about, you know, product availability, a lot of discussion about the supply chains, a lot of discussion about lower prices. That's it, right? This year, you certainly... Obviously, people would like to see lower prices, but they immediately get on to: Here's our Scope 3 targets.
Here's what we've said we are gonna go do. I mean, every discussion I've been having with some of our major customers, this is front of mind to them. So I think the awareness level, I mean, it's not an exaggeration to say it's gone from no discussion two years ago to front and center of the purchasing agenda, and they're clear that this is something they need to do. So we're right at the onslaught or sort of the tipping point where this is beginning to be a significant issue from our customers. The other thing is, as we work together with sort of customers further up, because remember, a lot of what we do is specified, whether it's from house builders, you know, commercial designers, M&E contractors.
As we talk with them, you know, the SEGRO example is a good example of where we're seeing customers two or three levels up in the supply chain specifying, and that's flowing down. Had similar discussion with builders and developers, where commercial building developers are saying, "We're-- Look, we're gonna have a green building. How do I know that what gets put in is actually low carbon?" So it's all coming. The good part about it is, I think this is actually a benefit that we're still to see play in the future, so it's actually upside.
Great, thank you. And then the last one on the kind of GBP 2.9 billion addressable market and kind of indicating-
Yeah
... that M&A might expand that. Are there areas that you might not look at in terms of... Obviously, you're in underfloor heating, you don't do kind of your own brand thermostats in terms of you don't manufacture them. Would you go into that sort of area, or is that too sort of electronically, and you wanna be more behind the wall?
Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't. Look, I wouldn't rule stuff out right now. What we're really looking to do is, is get in the habit of ruling more things in. We've given a couple of examples, and, and rather than just say thermostats, we do recognize that controls are important to these more complex systems, and we've been quite transparent that controls are something we'd like to have more of. We buy in today. So no, I'd say, I'd say we're, we're more actually about ruling in than ruling out right now, but it's got to be a really good fit. It's got to be something where we can actually drive more value. So remember, we said this would be growth-enabling M&A, not just a change of ownership, but actually accelerating the expansion.
So those are the questions that when we announce M&A, you should hopefully see that's a real logical, you know, higher growth rate as a result of that deal. Is that helpful?
Yeah. Thank you.
Thanks, Sam. [Rivera]? Yep.
Thank you. Hi, Steven Rawlinson from Applied Value. Can I ask three? 'Cause it seems to be the standard-
Sure
... if that's okay.
A good number, right?
Yeah. Firstly, just regarding the number, the number of sites. When you've saved the GBP 15 million from where you were when you started, Joe, to when you got the GBP 15 million in the bank, what number of sites will you have, and what sort of capacity rate is the current revenue running at compared to the number of sites you've got? So how does... Just give me a number of sites, because I think it's sort of running about 25%, 30% at one stage. I don't know where you end up with that.
Yeah. So, so you'll appreciate that with a few more projects still in flight, I actually have to be a little bit careful, right? But, let me just give you some directional pieces that I think will help. First on, in terms of sites, we've got six or seven sites, which account for about 90% of our production capacity, right? And those aren't the ones we're talking about, right? Those are the sites we're actually bringing stuff into, right? We also, as we said, we've identified three sites here. We actually did announce another one, last month. So, you know, you know we've got four out there. I said we weren't done. You've got some idea of the pace here, right? Your other question...
And by the way, you're right, we did start with anywhere between 25%-30%, depending on how you count small labs and sales offices, right? But, but the important thing is that, you know, sort of six to eight core sites that we're, you know, bringing into.... In terms of capacity, as you look at Tim's slide, we're, you know, we would say we're probably about 80% of the output where we were, you know, a couple of years ago, right? But what we haven't done is we haven't gotten rid of the equipment. We haven't gotten rid of the ability to ship product, right? So all of that is still there, and that's what's really important, is that, you know, there's nothing... We haven't done anything to prevent us from shipping at the rate we were.
The thing about the lean journey is we start looking at everything we're doing, and we find ways we could reduce efficiency to get more out of the assets we already have. So I think we're well positioned as we do this consolidation, take some of our smaller sites, bring them to some of our bigger sites, where we get more economies of scale, where we could ship at the levels that we were a while ago. Obviously, there's some ramp-up in supply chain and all, and staffing, but that's relatively easy to do in short order. I think that leaves us really well positioned. So not a perfect answer, but hopefully good enough for today, right?
Thank you. So the second one-
Obviously, we'll fill you in more.
Yeah.
as we go, as we...
Yeah. No, no, thank you. On the second one, you haven't mentioned the distribution fleet today, and I think that did come up a year ago. Have there been any developments in that that are worthy of note for us?
Well, look, we continue to find ways to optimize our distribution fleet. It is really important for us, and we are doing a range of things to get more out of it, like bringing recycled materials back from customers. We actually have been piloting biodiesel in some of that, and we think that's gonna be an important opportunity for us going forward. But the key is actually, we think we can optimize and get more usage out of the existing network 'cause it is a good advantage for us today. And we wanna make sure that whatever we do, we don't, in any way, decrease our customer service, which is something we've been known for. So it is still very important to us, and we'll get more out of it.
Sorry, the final one from me. You've talked about the vitality index previously, not necessarily today, but you've also talked about simplifying the business. Now, if you're bringing in 25% new products every year, that implies you're increasing the number of SKUs every year, and therefore, you know, if you're increasing the complexity, your IT capacity, and then also monitoring what's in the distribution chain. So can you just talk us through how a 25% vitality index, bringing in new products every year, but you've still got a long tail of all the old products that still people will still want?
Yeah.
How the organization manages all that at the same time as simplifying?
You can see me smiling here, right? I love that question because actually, one, I didn't talk about everything that's in sort of that Genuit Business System, but one of the key things there is actually much better product portfolio management. What's really interesting when you see, when you bring new products in, that doesn't mean you should have more SKUs. What it does mean is you've got to go back and look at the SKUs that aren't being bought anymore, that are still taking up a lot of management bandwidth, that are actually costly to produce, and transition customers to new SKUs, right, to new products. So being much better and more thoughtful, and we've actually been on this journey to get rid of products that aren't useful for us anymore, transition those customers to newer and better products.
The real goal is actually to have fewer SKUs over time, but much more new products. So that is a key piece of this. That's absolutely important. So that is, that's something we're working on right now. That's a good example, so.
Just one supplementary, how many SKUs have you got now, and how many did you have when you started?
I couldn't answer that question right now. Does Steve or Steve, you have a good example from where we are? Steven, why don't you button-hole one of these guys afterwards? I can tell you, it is quite a lot, and we have definitely been, and this is something, particularly in SBS, I know we've been going through and trying to trim some of that tail. You know, just, just products that aren't bought anymore, right? And, and that helps a great deal. It also helps in your inventory management, too. So happy to pick that one up. These two guys are the great ones to ask. Right? Okay, so Steven, you can talk to, Steve and Steve. Yes, right here up front.
Christen York from Numis. I'll go for three as well. Why not?
Great.
Uh, first-
I can remember three.
Well, I'll do it one at a time.
Yeah, the five parts get really tough.
On Climate Management Solutions-
Mm-hmm.
Could you just touch on the benefits of having a range of products to sell to customers? I know, you know, if you look at, I'm sure-
Yeah
... you know, there's business selling just ventilation. I'm sure there's businesses selling just underfloor heating. What is the advantage of having a more holistic package of products?
Oh, that's a... There are two types of range. There are alternative solutions, and there are more of the solution, right? So you mean both or one in particular?
Both.
Okay, so let's talk about alternative solutions first. I'll give you a couple of really good examples of that. Well, I think they're good examples. To me, they make a lot of, a lot of sense. If you look at what's going on in social housing today, we need retrofittable products that can address the damp and mold issues, right? And it's difficult to run ducting in an existing house. So PIV, or Positive Input Ventilation, is a fantastic solution because what you can do is essentially pressurize the inside of the house. You can reduce the damp and mold. It's easy to retrofit, right? But it would be difficult to put MVHR into that same compact, already built house. Not impossible, but it's a lot more labor-intensive. MVHR, but a PIV doesn't bring the thermal recovery benefit.
So where you can build new or you're doing a substantial renovation, MVHR is a fantastic alternative. You get everything you need, plus you get the energy recovery benefit. And of course, if you, you know, depending on where you are, I mean, if you're in a, if you're in a stone house in the Cotswolds and you've renovated, you may not need incremental cooling. But if you're in a flat, you know, on the seventh floor in Leeds, just saying, you might need a little bit of incremental cooling on those hot days last year. And so having cool recovery would be, or, cooling, incremental cooling ability would be really good. So, so it isn't a one-size-fits-all across the whole construction industry. Now, of course, those same products, if you look at the Nuaire portfolio, remember, Nuaire is about 2/3 or so commercial.
There's a much bigger and varied product line that actually looks a lot like that there as well. That includes heat recovery, it includes incremental cooling, better ventilation. So the breadth of product line is key, and it's part of why we're committed, and we believe that there is opportunity to expand the ventilation solution product line. So that's one example. I think the other example I'd give of having more of the solution are actually some of the discussions we're having, for example, with the major house builders on how you deal with underfloor heating, right? Because that has to integrate, obviously, with the rest of the plumbing. Productivity is really important. They're trying to figure out how to make this, obviously, energy efficient solution be easier to install.
And if they can talk to the same supplier to bring that whole system into place, they've got a lot more confidence. Because they wanna make sure that when they turn that house over, it's being done right. By the way, I don't think I mentioned this in the presentation, but we've been working with quite a few house builders on this. We've already taken orders for those first systems, so those, that's another example. And I've shared before the advantage of Nu-Heat, for example. Since they're doing the MCS certification on the air source heat pump system, it's a perfect opportunity for them to do the calculations on the value of heat recovery as well, and to recommend that solution to customers in addition to the ADEY filters.
Brilliant, and so slightly related to that then, I suppose, if there is a benefit of having that more holistic solution, does that make M&A and bolt-on a little bit time sensitive to try and build out that solution and stay ahead of the curve as quickly as possible?
Well, I mean, yes and no. I mean, look, obviously, part of the reason we're doing all this work is to make sure we're ready, getting our leverage down, and so, you know, as opportunities come up and as we cultivate those, we're ready to go. So in that sense, we're not wasting any time finding those targets and being ready to bring them in. But on the other side, I think the good thing is we actually have a good offering today, and that 5x is with the products we offer today. So it's not like we're sitting here facing a bleak future without some M&A. So it is... I think we're well positioned in that sense. So we'll get on with it, but, you know, it's not an existential threat for us.
Brilliant. Excellent. Thank you. And then just the final one on the 20% EBIT margin, you obviously seem much, well, slightly more confident than that.
Mm-hmm.
You were confident last time and, and incrementally more so now. Could you update on how we should think about that by division? I suppose particularly noting where Water Management has been versus history, for example.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You wanna do that?
Yeah, sure.
Sure.
Yeah, SBS is our strongest margin in business as everyone is aware, I think. So, you know, already demonstrating that the greater than 20% margin is possible. But we're seeing improvements across the board with the simplification that we've undertaken. So actually, those have been predominantly focused on SBS and Water Management so far. And then we've got our efficiency drive as well. You know, we've talked about the lighthouse projects that we've had, which have been focused on so far, the Water Management plus SBS. So we've got a range of things going on across all of the businesses which are targeted at improvements. Water Management has been the lowest, but they're making good progress this year.
You would have seen in our trading update last year, actually from a top-line perspective, really holding up well compared to some other sectors in the, you know, in the building markets. And along with that, you know, a decent profitability performance as well that, you know, we'll talk more about when we get to the full year. So we're moving in the right direction, with lots more to go at in order to drive us towards that target.
Perhaps the most remaining potential actually in Water Management, in terms of that ongoing footprint work. So it's exciting. Yeah.
Brilliant. Thank you very much.
Let's see. Where to? Back on the right, floor. There's some over here. We'll make sure to come over this way.
Thank you. Afternoon, everyone. Sorry, John from Davy. Just a couple from me. I guess this one might be for Tim. It was mentioned earlier on just on operating leverage, how should we think about that? Just more, in kind of more detailed terms. Say, if we get that 1%-2% back on the top line, how does it drop through, you know, in terms of, you know, the way the mechanics of it?
Yeah. So I won't talk specific numbers. As I say, there's no new financial information being released today, but you can assume that there's a healthy contribution drop through from incremental volumes. You know, these are sites that have a certain element of fixed costs. The tools are in place, the people are in place to produce products. When you can get more throughput through the tools, keep them running longer, perhaps long, run longer shifts and so on, then you're gonna get a decent contribution flow through. So that's where, you know, when I talk about return to normal, a new model, 20% or so is going through, you get, you get a decent flow through, which, as I say, then gets you to, you know, close to 20%, certainly high teens in terms of operating margin, if you, if you assume that.
Thank you. Second one, just on IT systems. Obviously, there was an issue last year with the cyber.
Mm-hmm.
Just wondering how is that all resolved and the kind of IT system across the group, anyway, how robust and how confident you are in that?
Yeah, so this is something that reports into me now, and I've taken a good look at, obviously, with joining the group. What I'm pleased to see is that the group has undertaken a consistent deployment now of the core operating platform of the group, with no exceptions. So we now have that ubiquitous across the group, which gives us a minimum security standard. We've got all of the right ingredients in place from, you know, prevention and training to penetration testing and monitoring that you'd expect to see now without exception through the group. So you can't say it will never happen.
You know, you constantly have to keep pace with developments in technology and the evolving threat, but certainly I'm confident that the group has taken the right steps, and is, you know, in an appropriate place for a group of this size and nature.
Thank you. Sorry, just finally, it's not particularly strategic, but just wondering about the boiler market in the U.K. I know it's been kind of a, they're struggling for a while-
Sure
... in terms of the backdrop to the ADEY business in particular. Just wondering, what's the latest-
Yeah, sure
-there is.
No, happy to say. So, as Tim said, I mean, it's also in that area of sort of 20% or so down. And the important thing to remember, the boiler market, you know, and forgive me if you know this, right, but in a good year, it's about 90% RMI and 10% new build. Of course, that 10% is probably 8%, but the RMI, maybe 6%, right? But that RMI right now is also down because of consumer confidence.
What we see happening, and this is not the first time, is because replacement of a gas boiler is a relatively high ticket, sort of RMI item for a homeowner, when the heating engineer comes and says, "You need a new gas boiler," the answer right now is: "Well, yeah, I don't really have that thousands of quid to do that, so can you put some sticking plasters on? Can we keep it running a little bit longer?" Perhaps sometimes with some ADEY products, right? Where they can, what that's doing is actually aging the fleet of boilers that are out there.
And, you know, we have obviously been serving this market for some time, and every time we see one of these sort of discretionary, delay of spend on boiler replacement, we see a pretty quick catch-up as consumer confidence returns. That's happened in the last three or four downturns in the boiler market. We fully expect that to be the case now. So, yeah, it's, it's difficult right now because it is one of those areas where if people can keep running a bit longer, they will. Let's see, where to next? Get Priyal here, and then, Graeme. Sorry if I get the right order wrong, but we'll get to everybody. We got plenty of time, and the drinks won't run out before we get to them.
Thank you. It's Priyal Woolf here from Jefferies. I've got three as well. I'll ask them one by one. So the first one is just coming back to that 5x number you quoted.
Mm-hmm.
I suppose the question is, what's the biggest threat to that not being realized? I suppose what I mean by that is, are there any completely alternative products-
Mm-hmm
... that could be used as opposed to sort of heat pumps, underfloor heating, MVHR? We've seen some house builders, you know, looking at infrared panels, et cetera.
Mm-hmm. That's a good question, and look, we'll keep looking at this. And remember, one of the things I said earlier is, you know, if you assume that the market's gonna be 50%-70% air source heat pumps, right? That doesn't mean 100%, because there's room for alternatives. So electric heating is certainly one that in smaller properties, you know, where you know you've got renewable energy sources, where energy rates are competitive, that's an alternative, so infrared is one. But assuming that you're in that 50%-70% that's expected to go to air source heat pumps, what we're seeing is we work with the house builders, large and small, is they're seeing anything from 100% underfloor heating to, say, a floor of underfloor heating and a floor of radiators, right?
So there certainly are some hybrid approaches, and we've taken all that into account when we say up to five times opportunity. So I think there's actually plenty to play for there. In terms of mechanical ventilation heat recovery, I mean, that's expected. I mean, it's growing from almost a zero share in new house building today and definitely will be significant growth rates. So I think the question isn't, can we get 5x ? The question is, what percent of the market goes to 5x bigger share, right? And, and for us, I mean, that's really significant growth, right? Because that's considerably above the 3% growth rate. So that's kind of the way we would think about that.
The other thing I would say to that is, as we're thinking about that and we see these alternative technologies, you wouldn't be wrong to assume that they're making their way onto our funnel as we're thinking about expansion opportunities for us.
Then the second question is just on M&A. There was a comment at the beginning where you said, growth coming largely from the U.K. market, but increasingly from abroad.
Mm-hmm.
The international expansion, is that just going to be essentially U.K. businesses which are more scalable, where products are able to travel further? Or would you look at M&A explicitly abroad and then bring some of that technology into the U.K. as well?
So, I wouldn't exclude either, right? I mean, certainly if there... If you talk about M&A, if there were a U.K. company that happened to have a better global presence that we thought we could leverage and drive better organic sales into those channels, that'd be interesting. But look, I mean, we bought Permavoid four or five years ago, and it's been a really good driver of growth for us. That's a, you know, an Amsterdam-based business with a good global reach, and it's been very successful. So, you know, both can certainly fit.
The last question was just on that 62% recycled content-
Mm-hmm
-target. You've previously said that that's sort of, limited by regulators, et cetera. I mean, what, what's the latest on that? Essentially, could that be pushed higher given all your customers focus on decarbonization?
Yeah, great question. So a couple of things on that. That 62% that we calculated was basically the products we had at the time with the regulations and the building codes and standards that were in place at the time. We've seen a couple of things. There's a couple of ways we can do that. First of all, there's certainly been other countries in Europe where they've been relaxing restrictions on using recycled materials in the building industry, and we certainly think there's opportunities, and, and we'll do everything we can to make sure that that's right, so that the standards can be based on how the product performs and the quality of the standard, and not just the source material. The second, and I know this is a bit of a subtle point, but it's really important actually.
As chemical recycling starts to be successful, the polymers that are made from that will be absolutely indistinguishable. In fact, you won't even be able to separate them from virgin polymers because they'll be going right back into the same supply chains. So that's an opportunity, and of course, providing products that actually can be certified and be more attractive to customers, to different regulations, I think are different standards, is also an opportunity. So I think it's safe to say we're thinking about that a bit more expansively than we were three years ago.
Thank you.
Thanks, Priyal. Let's go to Graeme. Yep.
Thank you. Graeme Kyle, Shore Capital. Another one on M&A, I'm afraid. Can you just explain the structures and the teams you may have set up to search for suitable acquisitions?
Yeah. So I'll talk briefly, first of all, I mean, you know, Martin, who's here, actually heads up strategy and sustainability and, you know, working with the business units to develop M&A, that's his responsibility. However, and this is really key, each of the business unit teams is actually working on developing their own funnel. So we actually have a sort of group funnel that's merged of those three. So we're putting the teams in the driver's seat on finding new acquisitions and actually being very proactive about companies that we think would be great to invite to the fold. In terms of how we execute and integrate, we've also been doing is investing in integration, project management capability, and Genuit B usiness System capability in each of those three platforms.
So that depending on where the target is, obviously, you know, they would be responsible for both the, the project management work and the, the lean work to help bring them in effectively. We've been strengthening the entire leadership team across the piece, from HR, integration capability, all of it. So from my past experience, this is exactly what makes future acquisitions go really well.
Just secondly, just following on from it, which, which international markets would you say offer the most attractive mix of growth and good value at the moment?
Look, we're actually, we're actually doing a piece of work to make sure that we're targeting that appropriately. But what we've said in the past is, clearly, it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that internationally, we, we'd be looking into Europe, you know, perhaps the North in particular, and parts of North America, right? You know, I wouldn't expect us to see a big push into Sub-Saharan Africa or something like that. So generally speaking, those are some of the areas, but we're doing some work to make sure that we prioritize that appropriately right now, so. Let's see, who else? Questions in the room? Anyone? Yes, over here.
Hey. Hi, good afternoon. Gaspar Ariño from Montanaro Asset Management.
Hi, Gaspar.
Hi. Thank you very much for the presentation. I thought it was very comprehensive. I have a few questions, probably more than three, but so I'll go by one, one by one.
Okay.
What is the split between products and solutions?
So yeah, it's a good question. It's not an easy one to answer because it really depends on what a solution is, right? In some cases, like in the case of Nu-Heat, we would classify the solution because they do all that design work, right? In Steve's business, in water... Sorry, in Steve Hollamby's business, in Water Management, they've been moving from sort of loose product supply through merchants to increasingly specified solutions for some years now, right? And we've been seeing the same thing, certainly, I think, increasingly in the building services business, too. So it's hard to put a precise number on it, but you know, I think it's fair to say that certainly more than a third of our products today are sold in more of a solutioning way, right? So we'll keep, we're gonna keep obviously pushing that forward.
Okay. Thank you. Then, a question on the management team. There's been a few changes.
Mm-hmm.
Recently. Yes. Just wonder, who is the head of Climate Management Solutions?
Yeah. So, Climate Management is one other change we haven't talked about today. Okay? Matt Webber was leading that, and as a testament to the quality of the business we have and the quality of the team, he got a chance to go and lead a really great business. We're currently recruiting for that position, and we've got some great candidates for that, so... That's the only senior leadership team position that's open right now.
Okay.
Yeah. That's what happens when you build an outstanding team. Sometimes they get really great job opportunities, and we're really happy to see them go do those, so.
Okay. Another question is, I mean, it's a very clear strategy on trying to become more efficient, improve margins, become lean, and, and so on and so forth. Is there a risk that in this transition, you become, you're becoming too cost focused, and you're somehow you are kind of losing some growth opportunities or giving away market share?
That's why I spent the first half of the presentation talking on growth, because it is really, really important that the cost activity is actually so that you can free up resources to invest in more growth. That's really key. And I would say that if you look at lean as a way to reduce cost, you're really missing the point. And I don't mean you, I mean, if one were to do that, right? Because the real opportunity is to take cost that was serving the businesses you already have, right, and not free it up to invest in the business you wanna get for the future. So we're absolutely committed to reinvesting in organic growth and driving market share up. That's really the key to this. So I don't think we've become too cost-focused.
Look, it's good timing that being better at managing our cost base happened at a time when we're in a market downturn, but this is also why I emphasize the fact that we wanna get all that work done and behind us so that we're then just completely focused on growth going forward. That said, we can always look for ways to be more effective, 'cause I'd rather spend an incremental pound on growth than an incremental pound on servicing business in a way that the customer doesn't even want anymore. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Sure. Thank you.
Okay.
My final questions is on acquisitions. Now, historically, not only for a construction company, but international acquisitions have not really added much value, and even for the previous January, when the French business was not really profitable. So it was making her to be sold at a loss. How can you manage that risk of making an acquisition, going abroad with very little synergies?
So look, I wasn't here, so I'm not gonna comment on the thought behind buying and then disposing of the French business, right? But what I can tell you is, and Permavoid is a really good example of business that we actually think has got a really good both profit growth potential and continues to identify organic growth opportunities for us. So look, there... For a bad case, there's a great case, right? The other thing I would say is that, I think it's actually quite important, and I, you know, having been doing this in my career in many different businesses, one of the keys is being able to look for really two things. One is, and this is, I hope we've been clear on this, but I'm happy to reiterate.
As we look to do an acquisition, we wanna make sure that it provides a couple of things. One is part of our solution portfolio that we don't have today and/or market access, so we can take the solutions we do have into a new market. That allows us to get top-line synergy. The other thing, I wanna point this out, is that the Genuit Business System has been proven, in similar systems, that lean thinking, has been proven to help improve the businesses you buy, right? And that, plus the fact that we've got a good leadership team, there are still synergies available, even if acquisitions happen overseas. The third thing I would say is that, you know, as you build a presence, as we already have started to in Europe, right? There is the opportunity to start to get synergies, even in other markets.
So look, this will roll on over time. The most important thing is a really good, disciplined approach, knowing how we're gonna get the growth, knowing how we can actually improve the acquisitions we buy. I'm very confident in our future track record. We've built a leadership team with quite a bit of experience in doing that.
Thank you.
Good questions. Thank you. Any other questions in the room? Am I missing any hands? No. Do we have any online?
Yeah, just the one from Andy Murphy at Edison Investment Research, who asks: What's the timing on delivery of the margin enhancement initiatives?
Sounds like one for you, Tim.
Yeah, so we talk about the medium term, and that's because there's a degree of variability, which we don't shy away from. You know, when we look at the return to normal volumes, as I say, I'm not gonna get into predicting when that will come. The structural drivers are really strong. The need is strong for housing, for those green technologies. When it gets moving, it'll move fast, but we don't know exactly where it is. When we think about the deployment of our, you know, lean program, that's a bit more linear, okay? That's a little bit every year. And the simplification bit is, you know, substantially done by the middle of next year. So each has a different profile, but it doesn't have a definitive end date.
Okay. Last call for any questions. No? Good. So look, let me close by saying, first of all, thank you all for coming. We wanted to do this in London because we did our last one out in ADEY. We intended this to be a strategy update. I hope we've met that goal. Feel free to, to join us afterwards. I think there's some drinks, some light snacks out here. Our leadership team will be here. They're really eager to meet you if they, if you haven't. We've got lots of potential to go for, and as I said before, I'm really confident that we're on the right track. Really looking forward to the future and sitting here with a better platform, ready for growth, in face of an eventual market recovery, whenever that happens, right?
With the organic growth prospects that we're putting in place and the ability to do some more M&A, I look forward to having more of these. Thank you very much for coming. Talk to you all soon. Thank you.