Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Thank you very much for coming to the Morgan Advanced Materials Capital Markets Update. I'm just gonna start with a little bit of housekeeping. Two things. We are videoing the event. Please could we ask that you turn your phones to silent. And then secondly, we're not expecting a fire alarm, so if one goes off, the exit is behind me. The exit is up the ramp to London Wall and along the street, but hopefully we won't need to use that facility. Without further ado, I'm gonna introduce Ian Marchant, who is our Chair, to open the meeting.
Thanks very much, Richard, and good afternoon, everyone. I joined Morgan just about a year ago, took over as chair at the AGM, and it's been a really interesting year to get to know the team at Morgan, to meet the business that I've gone around, and just a couple of reflections that I think effectively are a preview of what you're gonna hear about today. As I've gone around, it's really good to speak to people about the growth they could see in their business. And it's not just in the high-growth areas. It's across the piece. And the feeling that a lot of the foundation stones that needed to be in place have been done, and Morgan's ready to pivot into a growth agenda.
That sense that the business needed a bit more simplification, and that margins could be increased by a bit more cost reduction, a bit more facility rationalization. The third thing that really marked out our first year as a board was the momentum behind some of the capital expenditure. I think Morgan approved more growth spend last year than in the previous seven or eight years put together. And you're gonna hear quite a lot about that growth spend, so it's a fascinating time to join a business where it feels like it's at that tipping point of moving from sorting the basics out, getting the foundation stones right, and actually moving to growth. But a lot of these sort of days are set up so you can hear from people that you don't normally see.
So I'm delighted that we're gonna hear from the three business unit presidents, Wendy, John, and Damien today, and you'll get a chance to speak to them later too. Do take that opportunity up, 'cause we don't often let them out, so this is the time for you to spend with them. So I think these events are really useful, both for the company to spread the word around what our investors are looking for, but most importantly for you to get to know what's really going on in the company. So on that basis, I'm not gonna speak anymore. I'm gonna hand you straight over to Pete. Thank you.
Thank you, Ian. Good afternoon, everyone.
[crosstalk] Good afternoon.
There we go. Okay. Let me start by introducing the team, who are gonna be presenting to you today. So we've got Richard Armitage, our CFO. We've got Wendy Pryce Lewis, who leads our Performance Carbon business. John Righini, who leads our Technical Ceramics business. And Damien Caby, who leads our Thermal Products business. We've got two objectives for this update. So first, we want to give you a clear understanding of our improving organic growth trajectory and the drivers of that in both our faster-growing and our core markets. Then secondly, we want to lay out the implications of that growth and our business simplification for our margin trajectory. The agenda's split into two sections, so Richard and I will start with the key aspects of our growth, simplification, investment and returns, and capital allocation priorities. The second section covers our markets.
We have a large and attractive opportunity in semiconductors, and Wendy will give you a deeper dive into that. And then we will talk more about three segments within our core: aerospace, fire protection, and thermal insulation in India. Each of these is growing strongly, and it will support faster growth in our core over the next four years. John will talk about aerospace, what we do there, and the growth drivers. Damien will follow up with our opportunities and growth in fire protection and in India as a geographic market. I'll wrap up, and then we'll take questions at the end. So fundamentally, what do we do? So we're a global manufacturer of advanced carbon and ceramic products. We have deep expertise in carbon and ceramic materials, and we use that to solve difficult problems for our customers in demanding applications.
We create value by building long-term, trusted relationships with our customers - excuse me - to understand their markets and their technical needs. We use our deep knowledge of materials, our extensive product development and testing capabilities, and a lot of production know-how to produce highly capable, and highly, high-quality products that address those needs. We maintain our materials leadership through research and development to advance our overall materials capability and to develop specific material and product solutions for market needs. Ceramics and carbon are very versatile materials, and as a result, we participate in a wide range of end markets. We've been investing in four faster-growing markets: semiconductors, healthcare, clean energy, and clean transportation. We also have strong positions across our core, with markets including aerospace, fire protection, and India growing quickly too. And we'll talk about both groups of markets today. Our investment proposition is stronger than ever.
We've made further improvements to our growth and margin outlook during 2023 and developed our acquisition pipeline. We are very well placed for a period of rapid organic growth supplemented by bolt-on acquisitions. There are four key improvements. One, we've increased our organic growth expectations. Subject to overall market conditions, we expect to be towards the top of our 4%-7% guidance range over the next four years. Our growth is underpinned by robust drivers in our faster-growing markets, including the large semiconductor opportunity that we have, but also by a number of market positions in our core that we expect will grow more quickly over the next four years. Two, as we announced with our results, we've simplified the group, reducing the number of global business units and consolidating manufacturing plants to provide better support for our customers and a more efficient cost structure.
Three, margins are well underpinned and will progress towards the top of our 12.5%-15% range with growth in our faster-growing segments and in the core and with the benefits of our simplification. And four, our balance sheet remains strong. This gives us the capacity to fund significant organic expansion while allowing us to pursue bolt-on M&A and to continue to deliver attractive distributions to shareholders. We'll give you more detail on each of these in turn. We expect our organic growth to be towards the top of our 4%-7% range over the next four years. Our faster-growing markets should grow 10%-15% per year. Four markets within the core: aerospace, defense, fire protection, and India should also grow between 5%-8% a year.
Taken together, our faster-growing markets and these four markets within the core account for almost half of our revenues. These should deliver strong growth well above GDP in the next four years. We expect the other markets in the core will grow too. Industrial markets will benefit as the developed economies grow. We believe oil and gas demand will increase, and demand for energy from conventional generation will grow in support of the energy transition. With close to half of our group growing at 5% per year and very rapid growth in our faster-growth segments in particular, we expect group organic growth to be towards the top of our 4%-7% guidance range over the next four years. We're seeing very strong growth in our ceramic and carbon products that support wide-bandgap power semiconductors.
This demand is driven by clean energy and clean transportation, in particular by the growth in electric vehicles as well as the integration of renewables and energy storage into the grid and in new applications such as data center power management. We also expect the large and attractive conventional semiconductor market to grow strongly in the next few years as digitization progresses and AI demand continues to grow. We have grown at a compound rate of 17% in semiconductors over the last four years. With the investments we're making, we expect our semiconductor revenues to grow at 15%-20% per year between now and 2027. Wendy will talk more about this in her section. Our core business is well positioned with differentiated businesses and sticky customer applications.
We expect the core to grow towards the top of our guided 2%-4% range over the next four years, driven by four markets. Aerospace is growing strongly as demand for air travel recovers. Air travel expands with new orders in developing markets, and new and more efficient aircraft and engine models are delivered, all driving demand for our consumable products. Defense spending is growing around the world driven by geopolitical tensions. We won't talk specifically about defense today, but much of what John will cover, in his section on aerospace applies to defense, so we provide the equivalent products to civil and military aircraft as well as other defense consumables, for example, in night vision equipment. Fire protection is a regulation-driven market where product performance in terms of fire protection duration, weight, and ease of installation are paramount.
Regulations are becoming more demanding, and they're increasing in scope, and that is driving demand for fire protection solutions. We have leading products in this space. The market is growing, and we are winning share. Finally, our thermal insulation business in India is growing quickly. The Indian economy is expanding quickly, and that is driving demand for iron and steel, construction materials, and petrochemical capacity. We grew at over 10% compound annual growth between 2019 and 2023 in India. We're adding capacity in this market, and we expect strong growth to continue in the coming years. John and Damien will cover aerospace, fire protection, and India in more detail. We are simplifying our business, reducing the number of global business units, and completing further consolidation of our plant footprint.
This will improve our agility, allow us to provide better service and support to our customers, and deliver efficiencies that we can reinvest in the business and, in time, flow to margins. We've integrated 90% of our former Seals and Bearings business into the former Electrical Carbon to form Performance Carbon and integrated the balance into Technical Ceramics. This allows us to optimize the larger asset base, moving production between facilities to address the high demand we're seeing and improving plant utilization. The integrated structure also delivers synergies in key operational activities including sales and operations, and it simplifies the prioritization and the delivery of research and development. We've also combined Thermal Ceramics and Molten Metal Systems into a single reporting segment, further simplifying the business. Taken together, this simplification will reduce the site footprint by a further four sites.
Overall, since 2016, we have streamlined our footprint by over 20%, delivering higher revenue and profitability from a streamlined plant footprint. We will save GBP 10 million a year for a one-off implementation cost of GBP 20 million, and this continues our multi-year self-help activity. I'll now hand you over to Richard to talk through our capital program, margin progression, and financial framework.
Thank you, Pete. I'm very happy to be able to continue by describing our organic capital investment plans. The accelerating growth in demand for our products that support the silicon carbide power semiconductor market has meant that we have decided to increase our investment in this opportunity to GBP 100 million over three years. This investment is incremental in nature. It's at existing sites, and that means that it allows for very attractive returns, giving an ROI of 25%. We would expect the largest components of this investment to come on stream during 2026 with close to a full run rate by 2027. We will invest in capacity to support opportunities in other growth markets as well.
At present, we can foresee around GBP 40 million with attractive returns that support our group ROIC ambition, supporting growth in healthcare, clean transportation, clean energy, and from some of the growth opportunities in the core that we will hear about later on. We would expect our maintenance CapEx to remain at around GBP 60 million, which is currently 1.2x depreciation. That allows us to continue to invest significant sums in improvements in water consumption, energy usage, and efficiency that will support the achievement of our environmental targets. These are exciting plans for investment in markets for which we are confident of growing demand and where we can achieve excellent returns as a result. They do present a significant usage of free cash flow, but we would expect to progress towards a free cash flow conversion of around 50% towards the end of the period.
These returns underpin our ambition for margin expansion. Taking this year's consensus expectation of 12.5% as a base, the GBP 80 million of incremental revenue and GBP 25 million of profit we have quoted in relation to the semiconductor opportunity will add 120 basis points to gross margin. We would expect growth from other end markets, which will be roughly 50% underpinned by capacity investment to which I've alluded, to add a further 70 basis points. The simplification and cost-out program Peter's described will add a further 60 basis points. Aside from these changes, we continue to drive savings from improvement programs throughout our businesses that will be used together with pricing as appropriate to offset inflation and any further overhead investments that will be necessary to support our growth.
On the subject of overheads, we have previously reported an increase in our investment in IT infrastructure, security, and ERP systems, totaling GBP 11 million in 2023 and GBP 7 million in 2024. We would expect this to stabilize after 2024 with potential for some degree of easing from 2027 onwards once our ERP implementation is complete. We do think the time is now right to pursue opportunities for inorganic investment to support additional growth. We indicated that we would embark on this during our 2022 capital markets event and have therefore, during the last 16 months, carried out a thorough analysis of the range of potential targets with 187 initially screened. This has allowed us to construct a long list of 26 that are being approached for initial discussions and further investigations.
We then expect to be in active dialogue with 5-10 at any point in time, with our focus being on securing some attractive bolt-ons. Our selection criteria are clear and are being applied with discipline. We are particularly focused on those that our component manufacturers have access to growing markets in the U.S., Europe, and parts of Asia, and which add technical and/or product capability and/or enhance our supply chains. It is unlikely that targets will be simple consolidation plays. We will also be disciplined about financial returns. Targets must be financially stable with potential to enhance segment margin and with clear synergy cases developed. We will target returns that exceed the cost of capital in the third full year of ownership. As noted, we are currently pursuing a number of bolt-ons, and the current shortlist has valuations in a range from GBP 25 million to GBP 75 million.
Let me reiterate our updated capital allocation framework. It is worth reminding ourselves that the removal of our U.K. pension deficit has had the desired effect, with zero contributions having been paid in 2023. We continue to incur a low level of expenditure in relation to the administration of our non-U.K. schemes and will continue to evaluate options for progressively removing residual pension risk from the business. I've already covered our organic and inorganic investment plans, so we'll turn to dividends. We increased the regular dividend by 32% in 2022 after an extended period in which it had been flat. The board has adopted a dividend targeting adjusted earnings cover of around 2.5 x through the cycle, with 30%-40% paid as an interim.
We do want to retain the financial flexibility to support our M&A plans, and for now, we'll prioritize that flexibility over additional returns to shareholders. The board does review the situation regularly, recognizing the opportunity that additional returns present to return cash to shareholders and to enhance earnings. Finally, our target leverage range remains in the 1x-1.5x range in relation to ongoing operations. We would consider increasing this into the 1.5x-2x range for a period of time in the event of a compelling acquisition. So finally, let me just reiterate also our financial framework. Firstly, the recognition of additional growth opportunities in semiconductor has allowed us to increase our target sales growth range from 3%-6% to 4%-7%.
As Peter's noted, we expect to deliver growth towards the upper end of this range over the next four years. Our margin target remains a range of 12.5%-15% through the cycle, with volume leverage allowing us to progress towards the upper end of that range over the medium term. This likewise allows us to sustain our return on invested capital in the 17%-20% range. Our ambition then is to drive enhanced growth in adjusted EPS through accelerated organic revenue growth, a continuous focus on margin, accretive M&A, then enhanced returns to shareholders as appropriate, all leading to the potential for significant EPS growth through the cycle. Thank you very much. I would now like to hand over to Wendy, who will describe our semiconductor opportunity in more detail.
Hello. I am Wendy Pryce Lewis, the President of the Performance Carbon business division at Morgan, and I am very proud to present to you today on several opportunities we have in the exciting semiconductor space. Semiconductors is a fast-growing and vibrant industry given their expanding role in modern technology and infrastructure. New semiconducting materials such as silicon carbide are key to enabling the energy transition and artificial intelligence, which is taking the world by storm. Morgan is at the forefront of these innovations. We are well-positioned as one of the few companies capable of meeting the extremely demanding requirements of the semiconductor industry. We make highly differentiated and bespoke products, and we are deeply embedded in our customers' wafer and chip fabrication processes.
Over the years, we have worked hard to earn the necessary qualifications to establish new business, and as a result, we now enjoy high market shares as number one or number two leaders in our markets. We've achieved 17% compound growth from 2019 to 2023, and we continue to grow strongly. As we announced in this latest results call, we are increasing our CapEx investments in this area to GBP 100 million. This will expand capacity for our existing products to support the strong market growth and to meet our customers' growing demands. It will generate an additional GBP 80 million in revenue and more than GBP 25 million in profit by 2027. Our world is rapidly evolving. It's becoming more connected, smarter, and energy efficient by the day. At the heart of this transformation are semiconductors, the silent powerhouses driving this digital revolution.
They are everywhere, from the smart cars that you drive to the phones that you're probably typing on at this very moment. I saw you. The market size and potential for what we can do here, it's massive. Let me now dive into the market growth for two important types of semiconducting materials. First, in the silicon semiconductor device space. You know silicon. It's the traditional and best-known semiconducting material. Here, the device market is growing at an impressive rate of 11% a year. This is being propelled by the relentless pace of digitization, connectivity, and the recent surge in artificial intelligence. New fabrication technologies are also enabling the semiconductors with denser and more efficient nodes. This is increasing the need for Morgan's advanced materials as fabs are operating at increasingly stringent and harsh conditions to achieve the desired miniaturization and performance requirements.
Countries, they're continuing to onshore, friendshore, to increase the number of fabs for regional supply chain security. The second type of semiconductors is where Morgan is truly making a difference. It's the fast-growing realm of wide-bandgap semiconductors, where materials like silicon carbide and gallium nitride are game-changers. The growth here is even more striking at 29% CAGR. This is a testament to the critical role that these semiconductors play in energy-efficient power conversion, telecommunications, and in other applications that are shaping our world. So let me stay on wide-bandgap semiconductors for another slide here and ask, why are they growing so fast? The key here is the excellent power conversion efficiency of silicon carbide. And what do I mean by that? Silicon carbide is simply more energy efficient, much more so than silicon.
This means that more energy is converted from DC to AC in applications with less loss to heat. Recently, the growth in this space has been driven from silicon carbide in the main power inverters in electric vehicles. Here, the better power conversion efficiency means that electric cars can charge faster, and they can drive further on the same charge. This has helped to make them more appealing to consumers. Silicon carbide technology has matured over the recent years. Capacity has expanded. This has led to significant cost reductions, which have helped achieve parity with traditional silicon solutions. Silicon carbide device makers have actively partnered with car makers who are all adopting silicon carbide in their most recent models. This has been what's spurred the wide-bandgap semiconductor power device market to grow more than 6x in the last four years. This growth is going to continue.
Silicon carbide is becoming more and more popular, especially in the latest 800-volt electric vehicles. These new models charge much faster than the older ones, and they're helping to increase the number of charging stations that are available to more cars on the road. Silicon carbide is preferred not only for its excellent performance in vehicles but also for the benefits it's bringing in expanding the charging infrastructure. And furthermore, from what you can see in this depiction here, the influence of silicon carbide and gallium nitride, it extends well beyond electric vehicles. These semiconductors are now making inroads into other faster-growing markets. This is such as power infrastructure, 5G telecommunications, and artificial intelligence data centers. These end markets are each experiencing tremendous growth, with the underlying market growth rates in the range of 20%-26% per year.
The penetration into these diverse industries underscores the versatility and critical importance of wide-bandgap semiconductor technologies empowering our modern world, especially a world where more and more sectors are decarbonizing through the use of more electricity. So this is a clear trend. Now, what's also been remarkable is the applicability of power semiconductors in artificial intelligence. As noted by McKinsey very recently, and I quote, "As generative AI applications such as ChatGPT take the world by storm, demand for computational power is skyrocketing. This unprecedented surge underscores the critical role of power semiconductors, with AI servers potentially consuming more than 10% of global electricity by 2030." Did you know that AI servers are slated to consume more than 10% of the world's energy, electricity, by the year 2030? That is remarkable. So it just underscores the critical need for these materials.
Looking towards the future, the trajectory of wide-bandgap power technology is promising. By the year 2028, it's expected that wide-bandgap power devices will represent more than 30% of the total power device market. This signifies a monumental shift towards efficient, reliable, and sustainable power solutions across a wide range of applications. It's impressive progress, and it's due in no small part to the innovators in this industry like Morgan Advanced Materials. Morgan's extensive product portfolio enables the production of silicon carbide, gallium nitride, and silicon chips. Our products power the multiple steps in the fabrication process. You just heard about the multiple growing end markets. Our broad array of products and applications further makes our business in this space diversified and impactful.
Morgan's technology is critical from the crystal growth of the semiconducting material at the very beginning of the supply chain all the way through the many wafer fabrication steps. We offer a broad portfolio of unique materials and components that are made from highly purified carbon, graphite, alumina, polycrystalline silicon carbide, and brazed metal alloys. Our business model thrives on the recurring sales of these highly qualified products. The nature of our advanced material components is such that they are replaced with a regular frequency, and in certain applications, they are fully consumed in the process. This cycle of use and replacement forms the backbone for our sustained revenue streams, ensuring long-term business stability and growth. We collaborate closely with our customers to develop solutions that meet their unique needs. This process involves lengthy qualification cycles, and this makes the barrier to entry high.
Our customers are the leading wafer producers and fabrication original equipment manufacturers. They rely on our products as they push the boundaries of this technology further. So now let me share two literally red-hot examples of how we apply our technology to bring value to our customers. First, in the silicon carbide crystal growth process. This is where these remarkable materials are first created. Compared to silicon, silicon carbide is tough to produce, and this held it back for many years. Producers have now mastered how to make silicon carbide at very high qualities by using our products. Silicon carbide crystals are made from a sublimation process at temperatures half that of the surface of the sun. So that's red-hot. Our products include ultra-pure, very high-temperature insulation, porous graphite membranes, isographite components, and source powders.
They're used by our customers and replaced monthly to control important production criteria such as temperature gradients, vapor chemistries, and the purity of the crystal-growing environment. This enables them to optimize yield as they scale up wafer production and reduce costs, which is helping to continue proliferation. Today, more than 80% of the leading silicon carbide wafer makers have embraced Morgan's products to help them optimize yield and reduce costs. The second example is that of epitaxial deposition. This is another extremely demanding application in the wafer manufacturing process, and it's used to manufacture wide-bandgap semiconductors. This process is also conducted at red-hot temperatures within a highly reactive and harsh chemical environment that is unique to these semiconductors. To enable this process, we've worked with our customers.
We've invested significantly over the last years to develop a new advanced material called silicon carbide, sorry, called CVD SiC, which does stand for silicon carbide. It's an ultra-pure polycrystalline silicon carbide material that's uniquely capable of withstanding this harsh environment. From this material, we make components that carry and protect wafers during the epitaxy process, and it does so with unprecedented dimensional control. And that is what's enabling epitaxy for wide-bandgap semiconductors. Our new CVD SiC products have grown nicely over the last years, and now they are used more than 30%, sorry, they are used in more than 30% of today's silicon carbide and gallium nitride reactors. To summarise how we create value in semiconductors, Morgan's distinctive capabilities give us the edge in this field. We control the very smallest aspects of our materials, like microstructure and purity.
We also manufacture complex components at high volumes with reliability and consistency. We have deeply embedded customer relationships in this space. Finally, we have strong R&D capabilities and partnerships with leading universities. Through these capabilities, we generate value for Morgan and its stakeholders. We make and sell a diverse set of advanced products, and we have an exciting portfolio of new products that are coming to market.
We've entered into long-term supply agreements with leading silicon carbide customers to help provide them with supply security while underpinning our investments. Finally, given our capabilities, our know-how, and our ability to invest, we are well-equipped to fund growth projects and to find successful M&A opportunities, which can then add incremental value through capacity or adjacent products. We are investing for growth. As I mentioned earlier, we are increasing our CapEx in this space to GBP 100 million. Overall, our capacity doubles as a result of this total investment.
Our main focus is expanding product lines that cater to the silicon carbide market. This aligns closely with the rapidly growing market projections. Through our investment, we'll generate an additional GBP 80 million in highly profitable revenue with excellent returns. We are pursuing this investment because the demand for our products is strong. The silicon carbide supply chain is currently constrained, and our graphite products are largely sold out this year and will continue to be stretched until the expanded capacity starts to come online. To de-risk this investment, we have entered into long-term supply agreements with several of the leading silicon carbide players. Through the year 2027, we already have more than 30% of our capacity contracted, and we aim to have several new agreements in place in order to get to the 50% level.
This investment further demonstrates our commitment to organic growth, to innovation, and to Morgan's purpose at large. We are well-diversified and well-positioned to achieve this organic growth. We're also seeking to expand into adjacent markets and pursuing strategic acquisitions. In conclusion, Morgan's achievements in the semiconductor industry have propelled our faster-growing markets. We've successfully developed this as a key growth driver for Morgan, and we are confident that it will continue to experience robust growth in the years ahead. Thank you. I'd like to now introduce you to my colleague, John Righini. He'll take you through our opportunities in the aerospace industry. John?
Thanks, Wendy, and good afternoon. I'm John Righini, President of Morgan's Technical Ceramics global business unit, and I'd like to take you through how Morgan creates and delivers value in the aerospace segment. First, the aerospace segment is a significant and growing opportunity for Morgan, with forecasted growth at nearly 8% per year and an addressable market at GBP 500 million. At Morgan, we serve both the aviation and space portions of the aerospace segment, with a lion's share of our revenues coming from the aviation sector, which includes aircraft engines and systems. A smaller but growing share comes from the space segment, which includes rockets, satellites, and the core technologies that support them. Today, I'll focus on the larger aviation portion of our aerospace business, but irrespective of the subsegment, we supply a wide range of differentiated products.
We address increasingly challenging customer requirements using proprietary materials and processes tested to exacting standards. We have very long-term relationships with customers and supply them with products that provide annuity revenue streams. Our investment in innovation and R&D is translating into new growth opportunities. Regarding growth, there are several key factors driving structural demand in aviation. First, world economic growth is predicted to expand at a compounded annual growth rate of 2%-3% over the next five years. This growth leads to the next two drivers: an increasing demand for business and leisure travel and increasing global trade. Airline traffic growth, measured in revenue passenger kilometres, has rebounded from the pandemic and is projected to grow at over 6% per year for the next five years.
On the cargo or trade side of aviation, it is also expected to grow at a rate of over 4% for the same five-year time period. This creates a need for new, more efficient aircraft and aircraft engines to service this demand. Our approach to delivering value to our customers lies in our engineered-to-order business model. That is, our customers bring us their toughest material science challenges. We work together with them to design the best solutions for their specific application needs from both a material science and manufacturability standpoint. And this requires tremendous insight and intimacy to deliver performance to the strict tolerances and standards in aviation. Once we are in production, successfully delivering on time and at quality, that opens the door to repeat business.
Revenue comes from both new builds and replacement parts for the emerging and growing installed base, and the cycle repeats itself as new iterations of aircraft engines or other aircraft parts are brought to market. So how does this work in practice? As you can see from the illustration on the left-hand side of the slide, we develop resilient annuity streams by supplying engineered components to new builds, represented in blue, and then to the emerging installed base via spares or replacements for these consumable parts, which are represented in orange. This is compounded by multiple generations of a product being brought to market over a period of time, represented by the different shades of blue, and those successive iterations occupying the installed base at the same time. So let me take you through an example. Consider a popular commercial aircraft engine for use on single-aisle aircraft.
This engine has been in production for over 50 years and had over 10 generations, with each successive generation improving performance and efficiency. While current production of the latest generation is about 1,700 units per year, roughly 30,000 units have been built over those 50 years, with approximately 28,000 or nearly 90% or over 90%, excuse me, of those engines still in service. Morgan supports every iteration of that aircraft engine, whether they are new builds or engines requiring replacement parts in the significant and growing installed base. I'd like to take you now through two specific examples of how Morgan addresses the demanding needs of the consumable components in aviation. On this slide, we are highlighting how we enable critical temperature sensors on an aircraft engine. Morgan produces a hermetic brazed ceramic metal feed-through used in an exhaust gas temperature probe or EGT.
The EGT's function is to measure the temperature of the exhaust gas in the low-pressure turbine to detect abnormally high or low temperatures that are indicative of potential compressor, combustor, turbine, or fuel system issues, which in turn affect the efficiency of the engine. This is important, excuse me, it is important that the EGT probe and its feed-through provide accurate and reliable measurements. While the feed-through is not in the exhaust gas stream due to its proximity, it experiences temperature extremes from -50 degrees Celsius to +500 degrees Celsius during an aircraft duty cycle of taxi, takeoff, flight, landing, and taxi again. The brazed ceramic-to-metal seal of the feed-through must maintain its hermeticity under these temperature cycles to avoid moisture ingress that could cause problems with the probe, which could result in corroding or false readings.
The seal is considered hermetic if the measured leak rate of helium, the smallest inert gas molecule, is nearly imperceptible. Morgan is differentiated from our competitors in our unique combination of vertically integrated brazed alloy manufacturing, ceramic manufacturing, and metal-to-ceramic joining capabilities. This is just one example of the many different feed-throughs we produce for aviation. In this next example, we are demonstrating how Morgan enable alloy turbine blades within an aircraft engine to function at temperatures in excess of their melting points. As engine manufacturers push for efficiency driven by airline sustainability goals, operational targets, and the need to meet more stringent regulatory protocols, engines are required to operate at higher and higher temperatures, putting more and more stress on engine parts, particularly turbine blades.
As you can see on the slide, the turbine blades within the high-pressure section of the aircraft engine sit directly behind the combustor and operate at temperatures in excess of 2,000 degrees Celsius, nearly 500 degrees Celsius higher than its melting point. In order to keep the blades from deteriorating, they are actively cooled with air piped through from the cooler low-pressure and high-pressure compression sections of the engine. The air passes through very small channels or cavities within the interior of the blade. These channels are produced during the casting process of the blade by casting molten metal alloy at 1,500 degrees Celsius around a ceramic core that Morgan produces. After the casting is cooled, the core is removed by a caustic solution forming those cooling channels.
Thus, the ceramic core that Morgan produce, which often has very fine, precise, and complex features, must be able to maintain its form, strength, and rigidity during the molten metal casting process and then be easily and completely dissolved in a caustic solution to ultimately create the cooling channels that are critical to the turbine blade's operation. The material formulation of the ceramic core must also enable the complex single crystal alloy castings that are critical to the performance of the turbine blades. As you can see from the image, addressing our casting customers' needs individually, much less simultaneously, is extremely difficult to do. We can tackle these demanding requirements because we have the best materials in the industry. The material competence, that material competence, combined with our deep application manufacturing knowledge and our ability to produce at scale, makes us the partner of choice with our casting customers.
In both examples given, the components Morgan supplies are for engine parts that are regularly replaced depending on the wear and duty cycle of the engine. So, in summary, we expect the aerospace market to grow strongly over the next four years at nearly 8% per year on a base of GBP 500 million. We're well-positioned to grow with the market and win share following the investments we've made in the last five years. We've simplified the business, pursued focused research and development, and have expanded capacity to capitalize on the expected segment growth. Our technologies are integral to our customers' product and operational performance. As discussed, they enable exacting performance in the most challenging environments. Our products are consumables, driving repeatable annuity revenue streams.
This inherently sticky, engineered-to-order consumable model is applicable not only to aerospace but the vast majority of the nearly GBP 750 million Technical Ceramics and Performance Carbon portfolios, whether that be in the aerospace, semicon, healthcare, defense, industrial, analytic instruments, or clean energy sectors. I will now pass it over to Damien Caby, who will cover fire protection and India. Thank you.
Thanks, John. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Damien Caby, and I'm in charge of our Thermal Products . I'm pleased to take you through highlights from two more high-growth areas in core: fire protection and India. Fire protection is a large and growing market for us, driven by two micro-trends: urbanization and infrastructure development, and increasing societal expectations on protecting life and assets, which are leading to tighter regulatory requirements. Our solutions come into play where higher performance is required: protecting against high-temperature fires or in end uses where space or weight matter. We operate across a wide range of end markets, which include offshore platforms in oil and gas, marine, civil and defense, lithium-ion electric vehicle batteries, as well as in the parts of buildings, pipe networks, and other infrastructures where protection against high-temperature fire is critical.
As you can see in the illustration on this chart, we assemble our materials into engineered products that are certified to meet increasingly challenging regulatory and design standards. We're benefiting from strong market growth in the higher performance areas of the markets where we operate. Our sales have grown at a compound annual rate of 15% since 2019, and we expect growth to continue at these high rates. In fire protection, regulation has been increasingly tightening, predominantly based on European and British standards. If you consider the example of smoke ducts in buildings, in the case of fire, you want to extract its smoke for as long as possible to provide breathing air while people evacuate. You want the extraction system to remain operational under extreme conditions, and you need particularly strong fire resistance.
As you can see from the long timeline on this chart, the first standards to assess duct performance in the event of a fire were set up in the 1970s. Over the past 50 years, certification tests have become more stringent, covering internal and external fires with and without hot gas extraction. In the 1970s, only 30 minutes was required for a duct to pass the certification test. This has been progressively increasing, and most recently, in 2021, Europe increased the test duration from 90 minutes to 120 minutes. Testing temperatures have also increased. For example, as of last year, the U.A.E. ducts are tested to 1,000 degrees Celsius against 300 degrees previously. Now, this plays to our strength. This slide talks about how we create value and grow at double-digit rates and achieve higher margins than in the average of our core business based on four distinct capabilities.
One, we have the broadest materials portfolio in the industry above 800 degrees, underpinned by proprietary material and manufacturing technologies. Two, we have specialist engineers located close to our end users and testing facilities in the U.S., in the U.K., in Germany, in India, in China, in Korea. Three, we nurture strong customer relationships globally. We service them with the help of an ecosystem of loyal and trusted fabricators and installer partners. Four, we have a global asset footprint to manufacture materials, components, and custom parts, and we can scale production rapidly for limited costs. Now, here is how we leverage these capabilities into a business model that delivers strong and resilient value creation. We're targeted in our approach to ensure that where we play, we are the go-to partner across the value chain.
We mobilize the full range of our products to provide the best combination of materials and continue to innovate to stay ahead of regulatory change. We secure and constantly upgrade our own third-party certificates of regulatory compliance. This provides greater speed to market and a lasting competitive advantage. We manufacture close to the point of use, which ensures fast, reliable, and cost-effective delivery. I will now run through a couple of examples to demonstrate our business model in action. Let's start with the smoke duct segment I already alluded to. We have a strong reputation in this field for superior performance at high temperatures. We target geographies with the best growth opportunities where demand is attractive and our products support the regulatory trends. In these geographies, we actively manage an extended ecosystem for commercial reach in two directions.
We collaborate with fire protection professionals to customize our solutions to the needs of the local regulations, and we manage a network of fabricators who operate under our certifications. We constantly innovate to stay ahead of the new regulations. Our newest patented products are 25% less weight for the same performance than competitive products. Our value is faster installation, lower labor costs, and more functional space within the building. Our sales have been growing above market rate as we have expanded geographic reach, and we are now installing additional capacity in the Americas, in China, and in India to respond to the rising demand. Our second example is fire protection from lithium-ion batteries in EVs. Imagine that in an electric car, a battery malfunction can spark a high-temperature fire that spreads within seconds and endangers the life of the passengers.
There have been serious accidents over the years, and fire safety is a key priority for electric car manufacturers. In 2020, China established a regulatory standard setting a minimum of five minutes to allow safe evacuation of the vehicle. Regulations in other countries are currently being formalized. This is the type of challenge we like as a company striving to keep people safe and to improve the quality of life and environment. So we've been able to move quickly in the early stages of this market by leveraging our long-term strong relationships with OEMs. We started by taking established products, using other parts of the vehicle, and adapting them. We shaped and we conditioned ceramic papers for easy integration into the battery assembly lines.
We've recently secured more business in China for a global leading OEM, and we're investing in a new line there, which will be commissioned this summer, and it will supplement our existing capacity in the United States. We've leveraged our early commercial successes to deliver innovative solutions at pace with the changing EV landscape. To illustrate this, let me walk you through a recent opportunity with a leading battery pack manufacturer to provide more complex parts. It's a good example of our agile innovation and manufacturing of bespoke components. So the requirement was for a very high-temperature resistance with a complex shape and with very tight dimensional control for automated assembly at high volume. We worked collaboratively with the client's engineering team to develop the material and the high-precision machining to hit the tight dimensional tolerances. We met this challenge in eight months, and sales started this year.
We're positioning well for today and the future, delivering next-generation products to stay at the forefront of this dynamic industry. Stopping fire as fast as possible requires more, higher-performance fire protection material, but it also requires lower weight and free up space in the battery. That's how we've developed a compression paper with dual functionality. It provides superior thermal protection for more safety, and it holds the cells in place. In doing so, it displaces holding material such as foam, and the extra space can be used for energy storage. Now, looking at the illustration on the right-hand side, on the left, you can see our first pack-level protection product. In the middle, the complex-shaped product, and on the right, the dual functionality paper that slows propagation of fire between cells and saves space and weight.
To summarize with our four key takeaways, our market in fire protection is large and growing, driven by regulatory change. Certification and stringent standards provide high barriers to entry. We work closely with an ecosystem in each target market to develop and deliver leading solutions. Our differentiated materials, customer positioning, and manufacturing scale position us to grow faster than the market. Now, when John and I have been talking about high-growth applications, we will now shift our focus to one of our fastest-growing geographies, which is India. This is a country that has been and will continue to enjoy strong growth in manufacturing and in infrastructure. Steel and petrochemical are an important part of our core business, both outgrowing significantly in India, with several new facilities in development and in construction.
India is also a center for the prefabrication of petrochemical equipment, which is then shipped to the plant sites abroad for final erection. The country is investing in urban infrastructure with a strong emphasis of government and many corporate owners on the safety of high buildings and mass transit. This represents a GBP 200 million opportunity for Morgan and growing. We've been manufacturing in India for more than 40 years, and we are very well positioned as the market leader. Our sales have grown at a compound annual rate of 10% since 2019. Here are our distinctive capabilities in the country. We benefit from the broad material portfolio. We have the largest domestic manufacturing capacity for ceramic fibers, and our products have superior performance and quality, and we're expanding. We're actually commissioning our fourth line in the country at the end of this year.
Our products are approved and specified by the international licensors and OEMs, and we supply much more than products. Our Indian engineering team is the largest in our thermal business. They provide service from start to finish: advanced modeling, design, supply, installation, and end-of-life removal. We have leveraged these capabilities in a very successful business model. Our advanced insulation systems assure optimal energy efficiency. Their approval by international and global technology licensors is particularly valuable in modular prefabricated equipment for export. We leverage our global commercial team to identify and accompany offshore manufacturing projects from start to finish. We're uniquely placed to assist our installed base for asset turnarounds and to increase thermal efficiency and throughput. We assure seamless and cost-effective delivery as the majority of our products are made domestically, and we localize our global technologies as the market grows. We're finally applying our fire protection business model.
India is a key focus country where fire protection is accretive to growth rate and profitability. Let me illustrate this value creation model with two examples from our insulation business. First, a petrochemical operator who was not satisfied with the thermal performance and wanted to improve operational safety and reduce energy costs. This customer recognized that they needed to upgrade their insulation and approached us as their trusted go-to partner. Our engineers clarified the pain points, completed a full thermography assessment of the furnaces, and then proposed an alternative design that allows better insulation without increasing the thickness or modifying the equipment. The solution was slightly more costly than the replacement with the conventional refractory materials typically supplied by our competition, but the extra amount had a payback of less than one year.
In the second case, we were approached by a leading Indian steelmaker who identified cracks in the shell of their steel ladles. This is a major safety concern. I'm sure you can visualize how a breach of containment of molten steel would be catastrophic to life and the surrounding infrastructure. Here, our engineers combined several insulation products to reduce the magnitude of the thermal shocks and prevent the cracking and reduce the heat loss. The result is a safer, more energy-efficient solution with lower maintenance costs. This was a quick success, and with a solution which has been rolled out to all ladles at the plant, we're now being deployed across this customer's other sites. Key takeaways on India. We have a leading position in a growing country. Our compliance with international standards and our local design, engineering, and installation capabilities set us apart from competition.
We're adding capacity in response to high demand and bringing products from our international portfolio for local manufacturing. We're well placed to grow rapidly in the coming years. Now, Pete, back to you for wrap-up.
Thank you, Damien. So our investment proposition is stronger than ever. We expect our organic revenue growth to be at the higher end of our 4%-7% range over the next four years, reflecting strong growth in our faster-growing markets and in our core end markets. We've highlighted several of those core markets here today, but we're well positioned across the whole of that core with differentiated products and strong customer relationships. And these growth opportunities, this is the result of five or more years of diligent focus on customers, business development, research and development, capacity optimization. We've spent a lot of time preparing these, and they are coming to fruition.
We've further simplified the group to improve our support to customers and reduce costs. That provides funds for reinvestment in the business, and in time, will provide further support to margins. Our margins are well underpinned by the organic growth and business simplification, and we expect margins to progress up through the range over the next four years as the business grows. Our balance sheet remains strong. This gives us the capacity to fund our organic growth and incremental M&A, accelerating our strategy, delivering enhanced returns in earnings per share, and providing attractive returns to shareholders. Thank you very much indeed for your attention. We'll now take questions. If you raise your hand, we'll bring you a microphone. If I could ask my colleagues to join me up on stage, and we'll field them between us. Nick, here's a mic for you. There you go. Thanks very much.
All right. Fire away. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Scott here from Investec. Thank you for the updates. Really good. And thanks for the detail. Much appreciated. Couple of questions, please. Firstly, on the semi area, could you go into a little bit more detail on the competitive landscape? Who you're competing against? What sort of shares you have? Always quite difficult to answer in terms of share. And is there a capacity ceiling beyond what you've already done? I mean, can you just keep going, or the market's only so big? Anything there would be really helpful because clearly, it's a high-margin business that can have a really big difference on the profit line. And then secondly, on the M&A, six identified. Are you happy to tell us anything about the sort of growth profiles, margins, IRRs, multiple?
But equally, are you willing to let the ROIC number decline a little bit outside of your range to get the right acquisition that you can then sort of improve and bring returns up? Thank you.
Okay. So Wendy, if you could pick up semi competition, Richard, I'll ask you to cover off the M&A, please.
Yeah, sure. So we participate in a broad range of applications in semiconductor. We talked today about two different semiconductor types: silicon, silicon carbide, gallium nitride, the wide-bandgap types. We also have several products, and I'm happy to show them to you later today. Each of those product lines, in each of those applications, comes with different competitors. Okay? So a lot of the growth that we will be seeing comes from the capacity expansion.
And we've told you that that's mainly geared towards the growth in silicon carbide as a power semiconductor in power devices. Okay? So you'll find competition in that space for what we do. Other graphite materials providers, other ceramics materials providers, and there are several in the different materials camps. There are a number of announced capacities in the different product lines that we've seen. It doesn't scare us. If anything, it helps to support the fact that we think we're doing the right thing here. The market growth is strong, and yeah, and we're excited about the future there. So I don't know if that answered your question, but.
Can I just?
Sure.
Just back briefly to that. So for a lot of the stuff that Wendy talked about, certainly in that carbide space, you're among the leaders or the market leaders, so you've got a high-share position.
Barriers to entry are significant. I'd say they're insurmountable, but stuff we make is difficult to make. We spend a lot of time figuring out how to make it. There's a lot of know-how and a lot of material science built into that, and so I think that provides some protection. The growth drivers Wendy talked about, I mean, if you take electric vehicles as one example, our expansion case is based on a kind of 10%-15% a year growth in EVs. I think most of the forecasts out there are sort of 15%-20% +. So we've taken quite a conservative view. So if the market grows faster, there's opportunities for us. We'll invest.
Yeah. We can always invest more as well.
Scott, thanks for the question on M&A. So the frontrunners are in growth markets that you've heard about today. Our component manufacturers bring some complementary products, and at least one of them has a sort of supply chain optimization kind of benefit potentially coming with it. Probably slightly early to be precise around what the return profile of those will be, but they are looking attractive. Would we, at a point in time, accept a temporary dip in ROIC to accommodate the right acquisition? We might do. I don't think we'd want to be completely rigid, but I don't think I've seen anything yet that would actually make that happen.
Mark. Yeah. Mark Fielding from RBC. Actually, in part, this follows on from some of the comments you just made about potential for further investment if the market keeps growing. You showed that CapEx chart, and obviously, it sort of tails down. I think it was slide 11 or so. But I just wondered what the hopper was of other investment areas. Is there actually, beyond semis even, are there other things that you've identified for potential internal organic CapEx? Or sort of just thinking, where do we really think that CapEx number settles in the medium term?
I'll quote quickly then, Richard. Maybe you can comment. So yeah, there are a lot of growth opportunities coming through across our business. To the extent that they're in the core, it tends to be a bit less capital-intensive because we're, in general, not at capacity. That's not entirely true, as Damien remarked. Sorry, Damien, this side. As Damien remarked, we've got paper capacity shortfall, so we're adding paper capacity, for example, in China. But that's a little less capital-intensive depending on the particular product and sort of end market and geography.
But certainly, in the faster-growing spaces, there are other things that we are looking at and that we can do, and those will potentially have a capital investment piece that sits alongside them. I think, as we sit here today, what we've declared is the stuff that we can see and that we have got a reasonable level of confidence in. I'll let Richard comment on sort of how that cash flow and capital sort of plays out.
Yeah. I think Mark's picked up Pete's point. The semiconductor investment, we know what roughly 95% of it is. The other growth investments of the GBP 40 million, we know what sort of half to two-thirds of that is, and therefore, we've left some wiggle room for projects that we don't necessarily yet know about. So that level of investment supports our growth targets that we've set out.
To Pete's point, we think that's a reasonable assumption for the next few years, bearing in mind we do still have 66 sites. That means we do have capacity we can utilize in some cases. If over that period, more profitable growth opportunities meeting our financial framework come along, then our capital investment could increase further, and we would certainly be open-minded to that. But at the moment, that is the profile that we foresee to underpin the growth that we've set out.
Thank you. And then could I ask a separate question, which is just obviously identifying lots of good growth areas. We've got our sort of high-growth areas and now other high-growth areas to expand the portfolio. But I suppose the counterpoint to that, are there any bits that have disappointed you, that do disappoint you, or that you're more concerned about going forward? How are you thinking about those parts of the portfolio?
Yeah. I should probably pick one from each so as not to leave either of Damien, John, or Wendy feeling particularly unloved. Yeah, sure. I mean, there are parts of the portfolio. We're a well-diversified portfolio. There are parts of the portfolio that are growing more slowly or indeed are declining. So for example, in China, we've seen a very slow start to the year this year. We do supply there into things like building and construction, so it's understandable why that would be slower. I think that will be slower for a while. I don't think that is a long-term problem, but I can certainly see it being a challenge for the next 12 months or so. We haven't touched on it much recently because it's becoming less and less relevant.
But in Wendy's business, the core brushes business are those brushes that go onto DC drives. That market is in slow structural decline, probably 1% or 2% per year, albeit not linearly, as DC motors get replaced with AC. But that has been in structural decline probably for the last 45 or 50 years, and we're still selling quite a lot of them. So I think that's got a ways to go yet. And then in certain parts of John's business, we've got some of our products that go into sort of European industrial, and that was very challenged at the back end of last year and continues to be so. And if you think about the sort of combination of energy prices and sort of reshoring and the impact on the European industrial base, I suspect there's a little bit of a headwind on just European industrial.
I'm not sure that means it declines, but I think growth will be more moderate in perhaps the next few years than we've seen recently. So I think there are parts, Mark, where you look across and go, "Some of those things will be a little slower." What we were trying to get across today, and I hope we've succeeded, people have sort of got a view that said, "You've got 20% of the group that's going quickly, and the rest of it isn't." And that's not the case at all. And as we've shown today, 20% is really exciting and it's got a lot of potential, but there's plenty within the core that is going to grow quickly. We highlighted three of the four markets that we called out today. Other parts of the core are very well placed.
U.S. industrial, I suspect, will pick up nicely through the balance of the year, and I think we'll see that through other markets as well. Nick, if you could. Yeah.
Hi. Thank you. It's Maggie Schooley from Redburn. Just to drill down a little bit more on that capacity question for silicon carbide, the GBP 100 million investment you've clearly said is add-ons in facilities you already have and hence supports the high margin. But if you come to a position where you, say, think there's another GBP 100 million to do, is there further capacity for that investment to support that add-on, or would you have to, given the specialized nature, actually add other capacity? Hence, the return would be lower for the next level.
Maybe John, you could answer for your pieces, and then Wendy for your pieces in terms of that growth.
Yeah. So for the CVD SiC portion, which is in Technical Ceramics, we are adding capacity with the GBP 100 million that's being spent. We're keeping pace with our customers. There's certainly more to do, but I think we'd be in a position to be able to add within our own four walls at the present without adding an additional building yet. But at some point, I would expect with the success of that product, we'd be in a position to expand even further.
Yeah. And I think to your point, Maggie, then the return drops a bit because you've got to put in some more fixed infrastructure, but not for certainly the stuff that's laid out and probably a bit beyond, John.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, we've got plenty of room right now for continuing to add equipment within the buildings that we have. Wendy?
Some of the graphite products that we highlighted today that go into silicon carbide, we're expanding capacity in that area. That's meant we've needed to expand at current facilities, but we have added some infrastructure, some fixed-cost pieces. As we move forward, we see there's maybe more we can do at those facilities, but we may be looking at other facilities as well. So there's still some decisions to be made. I don't think it just all comes for free on the back of those facilities. I think there's more that we would need to do to invest.
Okay. If I may, can I have one further question?
Thermal Products has a tendency to be slightly cyclical, but given the regulatory drivers that you've outlined and the growth in some of your key markets, would you expect in the near term that cyclicality to potentially be dampened by those types of drivers?
Yeah. So I focused on the high-growth area, which is fire protection. This is a smaller fraction of the Thermal Products activity. So you're right. This portion is much less cycle-resistant, although it has also its own cyclicity. I mean, building tends to go also in waves. The remainder of the business will remain, by definition, tied to the cyclicality of industrial production.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks. David Farrell from Jefferies. Just to focus in on semiconductor, just trying to get a sense of kind of how you see the growth over the next four years.
If you look at some of the key kind of players in this market, Aixtron, on semi, etc., suggesting this year's actually going to be relatively low growth. Equally, kind of your investments suggest that it's 2026, 2027 where you get the kind of uplift. So can you just kind of talk through how you see that kind of parameters of growth in semiconductors and how that might be weighted?
Yeah, sure. Wendy, do you want to have a crack at that?
Yeah. I think that there's structural drivers for long-term growth, and what you might be seeing in the short term is some cyclicality. And I think what's really driving a lot of it is electric vehicles. The long-term growth there is promising. We're seeing that in the short term, people are waiting for some of the requirements to go in place.
There's been quite a bit of announcements by various countries around the world as to just what fraction of your fleet needs to be electric vehicles. So as those come on, we for sure see long-term structural change and growth. And so between now and then, I think it'll still continue to be somewhat cyclical.
Yeah. I'd add one point to that, which is at the moment, we're sold out. And I think it's true for our competitors. So the market is undersupplied today. So to the extent that you see some moderation in end-market demand, whether it actually reaches the current level of current supply or not is unclear. But I mean, as I said, we're sold out through the end of this year.
And some of the cyclicality in the semiconductor space is typically related to supply chain issues, for sure.
Okay. Thanks. Second question, just on capital allocation policy. I think about 25% of U.K. industrials are buying back stock now, kind of scared off by the fact that buying businesses are at higher multiples than their underlying trading valuations. Can I just kind of ask how you, as a management team, as a board, have kind of thought about that over the last couple of years since you kind of set out this M&A strategy?
Yeah, David. We've thought about it very seriously, and we do it every few months. So it's a topic that's under constant review at the moment. The decision has been made to keep our flexibility so that we can embark on an M&A journey, and we have the flexibility over time to maybe even pursue one or two or three bolt-ons in the same kind of period. But that'll get reviewed if that slows down or the phasing is different. I think the board will take very seriously the idea that we do execute a buyback because the benefits to shareholders are recognised.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. That's Harry Philips of Peel Hunt. Several questions, please. Just seeing Superwool up on the screen sort of was a blast from the past. Just sort of wondering where Superwool is more generally at the moment because obviously, in the past, it was a reasonable chunk of business and just sort of how the competitive position has evolved with competitor sort of patents coming off and things like that. And then secondly, on ceramic cores within aerospace, obviously, again, not one too long back, but there were issues around sort of I'm trying to think of the right word, implementation, if you like, and process.
Just as you ramp up, I mean, are there any other sort of potential bottlenecks or issues sort of lurking in the background? And then lastly, just on the semicon, not being a semicon expert at all, but sort of currently sitting with 30% of 27 capacity sort of booked out, going to 50%, sort of is that normal? Is that sort of what you'd expect in those types of projects, and is that sort of industry normal? Is that uniquely good or lagging behind the curve?
Okay. Why don't we do this in turn? So Damien, Superwool.
Doing well. Thank you. Doing actually quite well. The product that I presented today in automotive is a paper made out of Superwool.
So it's a product that's sold in blankets for typical insulation, but also a critical part of some of the higher-value, higher-bespoke products that we set into the market. Like every industry, this is like every market, this is a place where we need to continue to innovate. And we've introduced sequential innovation in this field. We're working on some more innovation. It's the normal life cycle of a product. And right now, it's Superwool still, I would say, is in a good, healthy position of its life. At some point, it's going to we'll have to replace it with something that's even more performing. And I mean, it's probably somewhere between 50%-55% of the fibre we sell is sort of Superwool.
So it's probably been that sort of level, incrementally increasing over the last four or five years. John, calls.
Yeah. Just as background, we spent a significant amount of time improving the position of the business. We've reduced the number of facilities that manufacture by three to get the structure correctly. Then those that remain, we've invested heavily into. We have capacity, and every step of the process has been improved and made more efficient. I think we're in a good position to deliver. Your comment about it is very complex. These are complex items, as I describe. They have to survive in a demanding casting environment and then be able to be removed. We spend a lot of time upfront working with our key customers, both the casting houses but also the engine manufacturers, in understanding what they're trying to achieve and then helping them with manufacturability. It's a process. It's an iterative process.
But again, with the types of blends that we have, ceramic blends, and then our manufacturing process, I think we're in good position to capitalize on the opportunities there.
Hi, Harry. So when it comes to contracting, look, this is a fast-growing space. And so are we going to get the growth rates right? And it's a large capital expenditure for us, and we've worked with our customers, and they're equally hungry to get some supply security for the future. So it's a bit of risk-sharing, if you will. If we build this, will you come? And we've decided we would contract up to 50% of our capacity, leaving the other 50% for spot purchases. We see that as a way to optimize profitability.
If I could just follow on from that, in terms of in that context, and that's a balance you suggested, is there any sort of technology which you one particular customer will want sort of unique sort of rights over or preemption rights or sort of two to three year sort of advantage or whatever? How does the industry work in that context? Is it sort of one product fits all, or it's sort of 50% core and 50% sort of bespoke to each entity?
Okay. So there's no exclusivity that's been granted. And yes, each of our customers have different designs, and they're all proprietary designs for figuring out how to make semiconducting materials with the highest yield possible. So they each have their own recipes. We respect their confidentiality and privacy on all of those matters, of course.
And so what we'll do is we will sell optimized products to them, and it's not just the material, but we also manufacture all of the three-dimensional components that fits their designs. So that's the bespoke nature for each of them. But we largely have a handful of basic products that we scale together that then gets manufactured and machined into bespoke designs for those individual customers. So we can scale it all up. We don't need to scale each one separately, if that makes sense.
All right. Well, in which case, we'd be delighted if you'd join us for a drink, having sat through listening to us. That's the least we can do. And some canapés. If you'd join us, join us to the back room. We've got some product samples. We have some experts among Richard and I, as in between Richard and I, who can talk to you about those products, and we'd be delighted to answer any other questions you may have. Many thanks.
[crosstalk] Thank you.