Very good. Thanks very much, everyone. Apologies for the short delay, but we obviously have to make sure the online webcast is live. Firstly, very much welcome from my side to what is our Flexible Packaging Teach-In. I'm Andrew King, and many of you know me as the Group CEO, and I'm joined by a number of my colleagues who I'll introduce shortly. I'm delighted to see so many of you here in person in London, and also, I believe we've got 40-odd people on the webcast and probably counting at last count. You'll hear, firstly, presentations for the first hour, and then there's an opportunity for Q&As after that. If you could please hold your questions. There will also be the ability to facilitate the questions both on the floor and from the online audience, which we'll explain at the time the Q&A opportunity comes around.
Just before we get on to the main topic of the day, a quick reminder: this is not a trading update. We provided you with a trading update last week, but we do look forward to talking to the opportunity we see in our Flexible Packaging business. This is really the opportunity for you to hear directly from my colleagues about what we do, firstly, in the Flexible Packaging business, where we see our big competitive advantages, and most importantly, what opportunities we see going forward for this business, which we are very excited about, and I'm sure you will be, certainly by the time you leave this room. If I then come on to the agenda for today, as I say, I'm just facilitating this.
You'll be glad to hear you're going to be hearing some other voices today, not least from Thomas, who's our CEO of our Flexible Packaging business. Thomas, again, will introduce himself in more detail. Eveline, who is the COO designate of our Consumer Flexibles business, who will give us some more insights, particularly in the consumer packaging markets that we do serve. Then we've got Nedim, who heads up our eCommerce Key Account business, a vital and growing part of our business, and lots of exciting activities taking place there, which Nedim will share with us. Also, we are joined today; you've already heard from Mike, who did a great job to the in-house audience around the safety protocols. Mike is also joined by Clemens, who is our CFO of our Flexibles Business.
You will have the opportunity both to, if there are any questions, certainly we can direct to them, but also the opportunity for those in person to talk to them in the refreshment session afterwards. As I mentioned already, post the presentation, we will have the opportunity to open up for Q&As. There will be an instruction coming from the operator around how that protocol will work between the in-room and the webinar. If I turn first to the business of the day and talking about our Flexible Packaging business, as the heading suggests, we see it as a high-quality business, extremely competitively positioned, and a great platform for growth. Why do we say that? As you will hear throughout the course of the discussion today, we do enjoy leading market positions in the markets that we serve.
We see them very much as structurally growing markets, and there are a number of trends that really do support that growth. What we focus on internally is very much customer-led innovation, and you'll hear some great examples of innovation derived from those relationships with our customers. Proven operational excellence, always the bedrock of what we do as an organization, permeates across our organization, and again, some great examples of how we have driven ongoing continuous improvement in our organization and in the businesses specifically that Thomas is responsible for. I think you've heard this from us in other areas as well, but we do have a well-invested asset base. We believe in investing through the cycle as a business.
We have done that, and we will continue to do that, but that really puts us in a great position to leverage all the growth opportunities we do see going forward. Again, just before we start positioning of this business, we are talking about our Flexible Packaging business today. I remind you, it is one of the three business units that we operate within Mondi. It is the biggest of our business units, contributing last year 52% of our EBITDA. If you take that with our other big main packaging business, which is our Corrugated business, roughly 30% of EBITDA. In total, they account for over 80% of the Group's earnings, and this is clearly where the growth is going forward, where we are investing for growth, and for all the reasons we'll discuss today, we see exciting opportunities for us going forward.
Not to forget our Fine Paper business, a very strong business delivering into its regional markets of Central Europe and Southern Africa, where we continue to optimize the great asset base that we do have. I think what is very important, why do these businesses fit together? An important point to note is that there are strong synergies across those three verticals that I've just discussed. Thomas will take you through, in much more detail, some of the opportunities we have within the Flexibles offering that covers in itself a number of different end markets. If I look just holistically at the group itself and what opportunities and what synergies we do see across the group, I think we can really categorize them in two areas. The one is operational synergies. I remind you, we operate 14 paper mills across the group.
You will hear about four of them within the kraft paper business, but really there are big operational synergies across those things. Even though we segment them on a value chain basis and we operate on a value chain basis, there are a number of synergies from an operational standpoint across our pulp and paper mills, and we work very hard to ensure that those synergies are fully optimized. Clearly, things around best practice sharing in terms of the operating environment, big procurement opportunities that we always have in procuring both the commodity, chemicals, and the like, but also regional procurement, for example, paper for recycling and wood and the like, particularly in Central Europe, where we do a lot of joint procurement across our mill network. Supply chain optimization, always very important. For example, shared warehousing across the different spectrum of products that we produce.
Also, the procurement of logistics spend and the optimization of logistics, always very important across our operations. Finally, I think very importantly, and not to be forgotten, is around the opportunity for talent development. It allows us to move people around our organization to give them international experience, to share that best practice and learning across the different operations. I think linked to that, and you'll hear it also from Thomas, is we are able to really specialize our mills in different areas. For example, we have our flagship containerboard operation in Štětí in Poland, which I know a number of you have visited over the years.
Similarly, in kraft paper, we have our Štětí operation, which is the biggest, and I think I would say without contradiction, the best kraft paper mill in the world, and you'll see how we've continued to invest in that, and it has a real hub of expertise. Similarly, on the commercial front, really where the biggest opportunities there are, what I'd call our downstream businesses, the converted packaging opportunities where we leverage customer relationships across our Corrugated and Flexible offering. Importantly, in the innovation segment, where you see some great examples here, you'll hear a lot more about them from Nedim, particularly on the protective mailer, for example, where we combine Corrugated and Flexibles expertise to produce a particular product. There's also, we talk about the hug and hold concept. I think there's an example upstairs.
Those of you in the room will be able to see where, again, you've got a Flexible paper wrap combined with a Corrugated hold. There are innovation opportunities as well that come about as a consequence of having our two packaging verticals. Now, really finally from my side, because I do not want to take up any more of Thomas' time, but just a quick reminder of the track record in this business from a financial perspective. I think you can see from the slide a strong track record of EBITDA growth over many years at returns that are consistently above our cost of capital. As always, I know people's attention is drawn to the last couple of years.
Undoubtedly, these have been very challenging years for the industry more broadly, but in spite of those challenges, you've seen we've delivered double-digit return on capital employed, not clearly where we want to be. We certainly see ourselves nearer the bottom of the cycle right now, and again, Thomas will explain some of that, particularly relating to our industrial exposures, but nonetheless reflective of a highly resilient business model. Without further ado, you're going to hear a lot more about that business model now from the main speakers for today, and for that, I'll certainly hand over to Thomas in the first place. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Andrew. Good afternoon. My name is Thomas. I'm Austrian. I'm with Mondi for about 30 years already. I actually was running each of the businesses that is comprised in Flexible Packaging at a certain stage. Since four years, I'm the CEO, and I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to share with you an overview and then the deep dive also into our Flexible Packaging business. Let's get right into it. Let me start with an overview. What we show you is the Flexible Packaging business according to market end users. Why are we showing it like that? These different businesses, industrial packaging and consumer packaging, they have distinct value drivers. We have different positions. They have different supply and demand characteristics.
It is important to understand what Mondi's position is in all these businesses and to understand where it will also lead us in the future. Maybe let's start with industrial packaging. Industrial packaging caters predominantly to the construction industry, some agriculture industry, and actually chemicals, for instance. What we do there is we produce sack kraft paper, and we are integrated with our downstream business into the industrial paper bag business. It is a very important business, and I will try to explain to you that actually the supply side of this business is very important for us, and we have a very favorable position in this business. You see some names here. It is the typical big guys, international global businesses of the cement industry. You will also see this business is global. Both in the upstream business as well as in the downstream business, this is global.
Moving on to consumer packaging. In consumer packaging, we are focused on value-adding products in more demanding markets. Who are we serving in these markets? It's the FMCG world. We have very special market positions in chosen markets, for instance, in the pet food industry, and e-commerce is also falling under this category. This is less of a global business. It is more into developed markets because there, both the markets are more sophisticated, but also the products are more sophisticated, and this is where we see ourselves to add value. Also here, you see some names. We are in the e-commerce world. We are in the retail world, big brand owners and the FMCG world. If we move on, I give you another picture of this explanation. You see on the one hand, you see again a 50/50 split between consumer and industrial packaging.
You see the geographical split where overall, a little bit more than half of the business is in developed markets. It is important to understand if you want to try to link these two graphs that in the industrial packaging business, majority of the business, up to 60% of the business is in emerging markets. We are enjoying higher growth rates there, while on the consumer packaging business, it is predominantly in developed markets in Europe and the USA. Let's get into industrial packaging for a deep dive. Let me start with what are our competitive advantages in this business. The number one, and you will hear me talking quite a while about it, is actually our strategic positioning as a market leader on a global scale. This is very important in this business. We have a very good position, and it gives us a competitive advantage.
The second point that you see on this page is these markets are structurally growing. They are more growing in emerging markets, and as I told you, we have more and a higher exposure to these markets, so we are enjoying also higher growth rates there. I will talk about paper quality. The paper we are producing is a very specific paper with very specific requirements, which is very hard to copy, and it is important as criteria for our downstream business to produce the right product. We have a proven operational excellence track record, and I will show you some numbers in our business, and that goes across all businesses, but here specifically, relentless focus on operational improvements and actually doing that year after year is important to maintain our cost advantage and our cost position.
Last but not least, I will tell you a little bit about the investments that we were doing in these businesses, and actually we are very proud that most of them we have completed, and we are in a very good position for further growth in this business. Let me talk about the first point, which was the global positioning of this business. What you see is we have four paper mills on this chart. It is integrated pulp and paper mills in Europe, in Sweden, in Austria, and in Czech Republic. As you know, we have acquired last year a pulp mill in Alberta, in Canada, in Hinton, where we are now in the phase of making a feasibility study in order to invest into a new paper machine also in this market. As I am not coming back to it, maybe I dwell shortly on it.
What does that mean for us? It means for us access to a new wood basket, and it means for us a very competitive raw material source for these markets. Let me move on to the downstream business, and you see we have around 40 plants globally. We are the only player in this business that has a global reach, and I will show you some comparisons later. Why is that important? It is important, first of all, customer proximity. We are close where our customers, all the international cement groups, are located, and we are there. It gives us obviously the advantage of scale, but it also gives us the advantage that we are able to specialize plants because we have many of them to certain products, to certain product types, which helps us to drive operational improvements year- after- year.
You see also markets, for instance, West Africa. You see us in the Middle East. You see us in markets where actually businesses for us are typically not so easy to operate. We are very comfortable being there. We have excellent assets. We have very good business. We have very good business partners, and we are achieving excellent returns in these markets. Let me explain a little bit more in depth the supply side of this business. What you see on this chart is sack paper capacity. These are the columns that you see, and on top of it, with the dot, you see if these players are integrated into downstream business or not. Mondi is market leader on the paper side with around 800,000 tons dedicated to these markets, specialized three mills doing exactly this paper.
You see the next competitor that we have is playing in North America and also in Europe. You see also a dot that this competitor is integrated. Again, we are the only one who is globally integrated in this business. The other players that you see, they only have a regional presence with their converting businesses. Number three, Scandinavian competitor, actually no integration and operating on the open market. You see two companies working in South America. They are integrated. Again, they are only regional players, and they are basically integrated with their paper output into the downstream converting. We are moving on. We see two other competitors, North America. Again, they are not integrated. Let me wrap it up. Again, we are the largest player.
We are the only one who is globally integrated, and we have a lot of advantages because of this position. Now, same picture, but from a different angle. You see who are the largest consumers of sack kraft paper in the world. You see we are consuming around 700,000 tons of this paper internally. You see actually quite a big distance to the next competitor. That was one of the South American players that I was talking about, who is basically integrated. The number three is a converting business in North America that has no integration at all. They are buying paper on the free market, and then we are moving on to Russia and then actually already to smaller players here. If I combine these two pages, the last one and this one, you see that it gives us a balanced view on our internal consumption.
We're producing 800,000 tons. We're consuming 700,000 tons, so we are net long by 100,000 tons. What does it give us? It gives us scale. It gives us flexibility. Actually, the integration helps us to reduce the cyclicality of this business. The supply side of this market is very favorable for us. Let me move on to the demand side of this business. You see in the chart as a proxy, you see cement output in the last 10 years. Actually, what it should show you, emerging markets were growing faster than developed markets, and I think that is not a big surprise. What are the drivers behind this business? In emerging markets, it is very much linked to cement consumption, to big construction projects that are underway. There is growth in population. There is a lot of investments into logistics.
Actually, these are growing markets. If we talk about the more developed markets, first of all, we are supplying also there certain niche markets, which are more in some food or agricultural or chemical segments, but it is mainly driven by the Do-It-Yourself market. If you look to what is happening in Europe, for instance, you see that actually, even if the market is going down, there is a continuous trend to repair houses, and actually, this is done with the product that is packed that is in our bags. These are organic growth markets, the organic growth aspect of these markets. Let me move on to what are the possibilities on inorganic growth on M&A and acquisitions. There are two ways, and we performed that also in the past, actually to grow our businesses.
The one is that, especially in emerging markets, large cement groups, historically, they have their own in-house packaging operations. All these big groups, at a certain point in time, come to the decision if they need to invest into this business. As they consider it as non-core business, very often they come to us because we are the partner of choice. We are the only one who can operate globally and has the integration with paper, and we are partnering up with them, and actually, we take over their packaging operations. That is one way. The other one are bolt-on M&A opportunities. If there are markets where none of these ways are possible, and we see these markets as interesting for us, we are building greenfield operations. We did it in Morocco. We did it recently in Colombia, and actually, we are very happy with these greenfield plants.
I told you we are producing a very special paper, and I want to go to the unique paper characteristics of our paper. Actually, you can describe it with three words. One is strength. The other one is stretchability. The third one is porosity. What does this paper, what does it mean for actually the process of producing this paper? You need slow-growing softwood fiber. You need special technology to prepare the fiber and form a perfect sheet of paper because you need a strong paper. Actually, we have our paper machines, and only our paper machines, only this market has it. We call them extensible units. It is actually extending the paper in the process and gives the paper the stretchability. I'm going to give you an example. A 50 kg cement bag is filled with 80-degree hot cement in less than five seconds. What does that mean?
It means you need definitely strong paper. You need paper that is stretchable. Otherwise, during this filling process, this bag would immediately tear. Actually, you need porosity because at the same time, this 50 kg of cement gets shot into this bag. The air needs to get out, so you need porosity. This is a very specific grade of paper that actually needs a lot of know-how to produce it on that scale. You see a few pictures here because actually, the characteristic or the requirement on this bag is different in emerging markets, where actually there is a lot of rough handling. On the other hand, talking about developed markets, you need the same features. You need printability. You need smoothness. You want to have a nice product in the do-it-yourself store when you buy it.
Let me talk about cost advantage of Mondi and how we are doing with it. You see that actually 80% of our capacity is in the first and second cost quartile of the [RISE] curve. Why is that? First of all, we have large mills. Secondly, we have dedicated mills. So these mills are dedicated to this product, and we have a lot of know-how how to produce these bags. So we have access to very favorable raw material sources. We are actually very much driven by continuous operational excellence improvements because we need to maintain the cost advantage that we have in this upstream business. Now, let me come to the productivity in the downstream business. The downstream business, you see two charts. The upper one is actually volume development. Volume development over the last 10 years, and you see we have a CAGR of around 1.5%.
Looking to the lower chart, you see productivity improvement. Output per person, again, over the last 10 years, growing by close to 2%. What we do is, or what we did is, in these last 10 years, we closed 10 plants in developed markets, and we acquired or opened up six new plants in emerging markets. What is the result of it? The result of it is our units are getting bigger. We have more cost advantage. If you look at this chart, I mean, we drew down the line for 10 years. If you would shorten it and stop at 2022 because the last two years have been very difficult for all of us, actually, you see the CAGR, both on the volume growth as well as the CAGR in productivity improvement, would be around 3%. Every year we grow volume by 3%.
Every year we improved our productivity by 3%. Let me talk about the capital expenditures that we did in this market recently. You know it from Andrew and from Mike. We are very proud that actually we have started up a new paper machine in Štětí. Allow me to remark, we are proud that we did it on time. We did it in budget, and actually the ramp-up curve is exactly to what we have planned. We have a very strong commercial pipeline, and our paper is out in the market, and we sell it, and we use it. For such a big project, I think it is important to repeat that because we are really, we were working very hard for these last years, and actually we started up exactly on time.
We also acquired the Hinton pulp mill in Canada, as I was telling you, and we are analyzing in the feasibility study a new paper machine. We also made investments in the downstream business. As I said, we have opened up a plant in Morocco. We have opened up a new plant in Colombia. Actually, we also made a lot of investments into the world of improving our assets overall that actually prepares us for the next moves in this journey of continuous improvement. Let me wrap up the industrial packaging part. It is a very good market position we are in. You have seen it. We are the largest producer in paper. We are the largest and only global producer on the converting side. We have very good opportunities growing further, especially with the high exposure into emerging markets.
We have well-invested assets, and we know how to run this business. We know exactly what we are doing. We have done it for many years, and we will continue to do so. With that, I'm coming to consumer packaging, if you just allow me. The consumer packaging piece, I said, has different value drivers. Mondi has different competitive advantages in this business because we are operating in markets that we have chosen where we say, "This is where we can add value. This is where actually we can make really good money and returns." You see, again, it's half of our business. It's in chosen markets that we have taken. It includes as well paper, and I will talk about specialty kraft paper. It operates a lot also in the world of plastic packaging, where actually laminates are required, barriers are required.
Actually, really, sophistication of the product is required. These markets are growing. They are structurally growing, and I will show you why we believe we can even grow more than this structural growth in these markets. Again, I will come back to that at the end. We have a very well-invested asset base. We invested through the cycle also in these businesses, and actually we are very well prepared for further growth driven by sustainability and other drivers in this business. Again, on the map where we are operating, I told you we are operating in developed markets. We are operating in developed markets with more sophisticated products, which are required for more sophisticated packaging. You see, again, we are supplying this market on the paper side from the paper mills that you saw before in Europe.
We have a network of around 20 converting plants, mainly in Europe and in North America that are serving our customers in these markets. What are the value drivers and actually the growth drivers in this business? Let me talk a bit about it. There are the obvious ones. One is convenience. Convenience, so actually increase in food online ordering, food takeaway. I think it's a classical example everybody of us knows. We talk about lightweighting. Lightweighting, what does lightweighting mean? Actually, lightweighting means you need a packaging with the same performance, but with less material. You need a high-performance packaging. Lightweighting, actually, you need to have the prerequisites in order to produce and serve our customers with lightweighted products. Consumer preferences, I think, yeah, you see overall retail growth.
You see a movement on the one hand together with sustainability on the one hand into paper solutions. On the other hand, it is really consumer preferences to have safe products and actually functioning products at home. Let me talk about sustainability and e-commerce because they are very important drivers in this business, and we are very well positioned to actually capture the growth that is in this market. Number one, sustainability. Sustainability, there are two maybe buzzwords. One is paperization, so the trend to move into paper products for consumer products. The second one is actually on sustainability, the move from multilayer materials into mono materials. For both of it, you need the equipment. You need to understand what you're doing, but especially you need the know-how and the technology in order to serve these markets.
E-commerce, e-commerce itself is a fast-growing market, and actually Nedim will show you something about it. Actually for us, we are very well positioned to offer the full broad of products to our e-commerce customers. This is again an additional value driver, an additional growth driver for our business. What is important on sustainability and actually also on e-commerce? These markets are fast developing. They are moving very fast. What does it mean? It means that the time to market for a new product needs to be short. You have very high-demanding customers, but you need to be very fast in order to give them the new product that they want. This is an advantage that we are having. Let me tell you something about specialty kraft paper. Specialty kraft paper in Europe, we are in Europe market leader.
What you see on this chart is we have produced around 440,000 tons of paper last year. With the startup of our new paper machine in Štětí, half of this machine is dedicated to these markets, and therefore we have added the other 100,000 tons. We will produce around 540,000 tons of this paper. Mondi is the only supplier in this market that can offer the full range of products to our customers. We can do it in bleached and unbleached, so white and brown papers. We can do it extensible paper or flat paper. We can produce it with recycled content or pure virgin paper. We have the full range, and it is important, and I will come back to that later, why this is important for our customers to have this broad range of products.
Secondly, we are running these products on some specialized assets in our paper mill. We have some paper machines that are dedicated entirely to this market, and then we have the other machines. We are on shared assets. We are actually having the flexibility on these machines to produce both paper for industrial usage as well as we do it here for specialty kraft paper. Again, the growth here, it's a structurally growing market. We have the advantages of these mega trends, especially sustainability and e-commerce, that help us to outgrow this market. These markets are actually dominated by FMCG players. They are driving the growth because of our business setup, and you will hear from Eveline later on, because of our exposure to this FMCG world, we are very well positioned to capture that. None of our competitors has this access to the FMCG world.
We know how they are operating. We know them. We know how to deal with them, and that gives us a huge advantage when it comes to, again, time to market for new developments and actually drive growth in this business on top of the market growth. I was talking about paperization, and I want to show you some proof points that it is happening. You see everybody is talking about is now the chocolate bar in the supermarket switching from plastic to paper, and then this is paperization. Paperization is much more of it. It is in the consumer market, but it is also in other markets. It is in the retail market. It is in other brand owner markets where paperization is happening. What you see here is actually what you see here is our output in specialty kraft papers five years ago and last year.
You see not only the pie grew. You see that 15% of our products that we sold last year, they were not existing five years ago. It is new paper grades. It is new applications, and we have invented them. We have developed them together with our customers, and we have sold them last year to the market. Moving forward, what does it mean? First of all, because of our investments, the pie will get bigger again. What you see is we are very confident. We have a very strong pipeline with new products, new applications that, again, the share of these new products will grow in the already larger pie. I think that is very important. I have here some examples, and I want to share them with you. What you see on these pictures is, on the one hand, it is FMCG world.
We are talking about diaper packaging. We're talking about dishwasher tablets. We talk about e-commerce world, and Nathan is coming back to it. The pictures below, in my view, are extremely interesting. You see wrapping of coffee or, for instance, wrapping of pellets from our customers that they are switching because of legislation, because they want to get rid of shrink film for compound packaging. This is, for instance, Europe due to the PPWR. What does that mean? It means actually you need stretchable papers. Actually, everything I told you before about the requirements to produce a cement bag is one-to-one applicable for these markets. You need to have the stretchability. Let me talk about the mattress picture that you see in the middle. Large brand owner actually switching all their packaging in all their stores from plastic to paper.
To give you some idea, shelf life test for us for this product was nine months. I mean, it's similar to food products that we have somewhere else. Here we are talking about the wrapping of a mattress. It takes a long time that these projects are kicking in. Once they are kicking in, they are big volume movers. If you just compare chocolate wrapper with a mattress, you understand that there is much more paper in this product than in many chocolate wrapping. The last picture on this slide is actually a Danish toy brick producer. What they did is they decided, and they went official with it. They decided they will not have any more plastic packaging in their boxes or in their packaging. Actually, they were switching to paper. They were switching to another paper. Again here, it's not any paper.
It is a very specific paper that they need. You need puncture resistance for products, for these bricks falling into these bags. You need a certain stretchability of this product. Obviously, you need strength that it is holding. What I am talking about is that you have paper, and that actually for many products that are transitioning into paper packaging, you need additional features that are required by the customer or by the product. Number one, if we go back to our LEGO example, what they need is actually they need to seal this bag. You need a certain coating on that, or you are adding other specific barriers that are required by more demanding products. What we are doing is we are a very large producer of different coating methods and of different coating technologies.
Also there, we have invested last year into a latest technology of coating for ultra-thin coatings. Where have we done it? We have done it in proximity or very close to our paper mill in Štětí, what I was talking before. What is the advantage? One advantage is obviously logistic cost, but the second biggest advantage is we have very short time to market. If we are producing, if we're developing new products together with our customers, we are the only ones who can actually go from our paper machine to our coating technology, produce a new product, test it with the customer. If it fails, we stand up and we do it again until it is working. As I was telling you, we are producing products with low barrier, medium barrier, and also high barrier. High barriers are actually required especially for very specific consumer markets.
Now you will hear more from Eveline about these markets where we are on the consumer side. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Thomas. Hello everyone. My name is Eveline. I'm the designated COO of Consumer Flexibles. I'm 20 years with Mondi. My background is I'm a chemist, but you will learn quite soon my heart beats for sales. You will know. While I was in Mondi, I went from product development through several sales jobs. Then I got the honor to lead a plant, first one plant or more plants, and here I am. Today, we're talking about consumer packaging. Thomas already mentioned it's a market where we always have been very strategic about where to play. We intentionally choose markets which are fast-growing, demanding, sophisticated, where we as Mondi truly can differentiate. Today, I will introduce you to our most sexy products.
These products are growing far ahead of GDP. We are growing far ahead of the market, and here we are market leader. What sets us apart? Why is Mondi winning? First of all, we understand barrier. We understand what matters for us to protect food, pet food, and other stuff. Secondly, we are not only converters. What we do for our customers is we solve problems. We are partners. We produce pouches. We produce bags with spouted, but we produce sustainable products, compostable products. We can do so because we understand both. We understand the world of paper, and we understand the world of plastic. Being integrated in both past, in both areas, just gives us a really high speed to market and also this excellence and knowledge which we need for that products.
Third part, and we shouldn't underestimate that we understand, sorry for not showing you the picture actually. We understand legislation. Why is this important? We have packaging, packaging waste regulation. We, as a global partner for our big FMCG partners, but also for other customers, understand what this means to packaging. What's most important about here is also the target we have to make sustainability affordable. It's very important that we are providing products where our customer can lead. We are one of the few companies which have this ultimate knowledge and expertise in the area of paper and in the area of plastic to be the leader in the market. This just gives us this advantage where we are. Let's start about pet food, one of these excellent markets we are in. We are super proud at Mondi.
Here we are the number one player in Europe when we talk about Flexible Packaging for pet food. This is a market. It's all about emotions. It's about trust, and it's about high performance. Why is this market so powerful? Because of the emotions. Nowadays, we don't talk about pet owners. We call them pet parents because people deeply care about their pets. Why we like that? Because it makes this market resilient, super resilient in times of crisis. That's a very good part of it. The other side of the part, it's a super demanding area, which means not everyone can do it. One of the examples I want to show you where we play this important role is actually our small wet pet food pouch.
You have to understand in that pouch, when we fill the product, it's getting up to 120 degrees, and it has to survive a shelf life of 24 months. The customer has to trust us about what we deliver. There are only a few companies in the world who understand barrier that well and who have the operational experience and consistency to supply to the market. Here we are. We are this partner, and here we grow in a very nice way. The other part you can see here on the screens is the dry pet food part. Thomas was already mentioning it. It's an area which is still very much focused on convenience. I show you why. Let's take here. It's unfilled, but someone has to understand we're talking about these huge bags. What we do here is we make them convenient.
We add features like reversibility, but we also have a handle here so that a person like myself is able to carry these bags. We make them, and that's most important, we make them—whoops—we make them sustainable. These pouch and bags you see here, they are all in mono constructions. Also, the wet pet food pouch is a mono construction one, recycling ready. The important thing about these pet food markets is we can offer the full portfolio. When we work with the FMCG partners, they want one partner. What they want is a one-stop shop, and Mondi is that partner. The next excellent market is our home and personal care market. Let me show you this dishwasher tablet. Actually, for that pouch, we are market leader. What is important in that market?
We are providing solutions, but we are not disturbing our customers with our solutions. Sounds strange. What I mean is it's all about sustainability. We are co-developing with our FMCG partner solutions which work and can run on their existing machines because we learned many sustainability transitions actually didn't work out in the market because customers had to invest in new machines or they had to upgrade them. The target for Mondi is that we provide solutions which work on their existing machines, which is an asset. Especially when we look at that one, it's an evolving process we have to understand. What does it mean? We start with a lightweight multi-layer pouch. The next generation was a mono pouch, which is already recycling ready. At the moment, what you will find on the shelf is actually a paper-based pouch. Why can't we do that?
Because we understand both worlds. We understand the plastic world, and we understand the paper world, and we are fully integrated. We are so much faster than the others to provide the solutions and to give this added value to our customer. The least and the last sexy market of today is our dear coffee market. When we talk about the coffee market, it describes taste, aroma, perfection. Why I'm telling you these emotional things? Because this is how consumers decide. What it means to the packaging, it means it is a highly demanding, highly sensitive area. No compromises. You, as a consumer, you want a fresh coffee. We cannot compromise on barrier. Again, our solutions are supposed to work or will work on the existing machines.
What I show you here is the first sustainable vacuum-packed coffee bag produced by Mondi with no limits in barrier and other requirements. There is another great area where we could show our innovation power, and this was in a development with one of the biggest FMCG customers where we developed a compostable capsule, paper-based, to tackle the single-serve market in sustainability. Also here again, you can only solve those problems if you understand what it means to provide these kinds of barriers and to have a paper solution be fully integrated. Our target is to grow with the customer. We understand the customer. We understand the products. We understand the market, and we understand the consumers, and we provide solutions that help our customer to lead.
By combining this enormous power of knowledge, of innovation, with this extreme focus on customer, we are not just keeping the pace of the future of packaging. We are shaping it. We are leading it. Thank you. With that, I hand over to Nedim.
Thank you very much, Eveline. Hello everyone. My name is Nedim. I've been with Mondi for seven years, all seven years focused on the e-commerce market, on the e-commerce customers. Today, in my role, together with my team, I'm responsible for e-commerce key accounts. I would like to start with the definition of e-commerce. E-commerce refers to a sale of a physical product via a digital channel to a private-end consumer, which means that when we order something on Amazon or a website of ASOS or John Lewis, the product that comes to our doorsteps comes in e-commerce packaging, which is either a box or a bag. Now, why every time we, or actually, why is e-commerce a megatrend? Every time we think about e-commerce, one phrase comes to mind, and that is "exponential growth".
Whether we think about a market value or the e-commerce share in a total retail or a percentage of population that is shopping online, the growth across all these metrics, both historically and in projections, is exponential. Now, if we zoom in on the Flexible e-commerce packaging and then even down to paper bags, because paper bags have the highest share of Flexible e-commerce packaging, again, here, both in Europe and the United States, we see the exponential increases. That is why we call e-commerce a megatrend. It is important to note that Mondi recognized this trend early on and strategically positioned itself to capitalize on this significant market opportunity. To give you a context about the size of this market, e-commerce share in a total retail is about 20% and growing. There are three key market drivers in e-commerce.
The first is a shift from plastic to paper, a major trend driven by influential companies such as Amazon and Zalando, as well as a giant fashion retailer such as H&M and Inditex, all of whom transitioned their portfolios from plastic to paper a few years ago. That said, over 50% of European e-commerce companies still rely on single-use plastic for their shipments, meaning that this trend will continue for years. Second, broader material changes. Due to the regulatory changes and empty space ratio requirements, this trend has become active. It is in its infancy. However, it will become significant in years to come. Lastly, we have a switch from manual to automated packing. Automation increases productivity, reduces labor dependency, and lowers costs. In the coming decade, automation will play an important role in e-commerce fulfillment and logistics.
Now, what you see on the right-hand side of the screen is a snapshot of our latest annual consumer trend report. We've always known that consumers' preferences were important. In a meeting with an important e-commerce customer a few years ago, this point became even clearer. In that meeting, they told us that their priority for that year was to eliminate plastic because consumers asked for it. They focused all their attention and resources in doing just that. At the end, they concluded by saying, "This is how we set priorities." After that meeting, we went and talked to other important e-commerce customers, and they told us the same thing. Consumer input shapes packaging strategies. This is when we decided to start doing our own research to understand what consumers expect from e-commerce packaging so we can actually help our customers align with those expectations.
This positioned us as trusted advisors to our customers and thought leaders in the industry. Every time someone asks me, "How does Mondi provide value to e-commerce customers?" I always go back to this slide. Our multi-material portfolio, which fulfills all the requirements of the e-commerce supply chain, is our key competitive advantage. On the top, we have listed all the solutions for manual packing, and on the bottom, we have listed all the material that is used for automated packing. On the left-hand side, we have products that have a higher protection, all the way to the right side where we have products with lower protection. This is why Mondi is considered a one-stop shop for e-commerce packaging. Some of our customers buy all the products from our portfolio.
Now, to demonstrate how we provide value to our customers, let's just go back briefly to the key drivers that I mentioned earlier. The first one, switch from plastic to paper. A leading online fashion retailer in Europe came to us a couple of years ago with a request to help them move their portfolio from plastic to paper. We understood the requirements. We crafted the specifications. We did the trials. We implemented the new portfolio, and we scaled it. This company today is using 100% paper-based solutions. A little bit over a year ago, Amazon approached us due to the second key driver, which is the broader material changes, and in particular, the empty space ratio requirement. They wanted to move part of their portfolio to Flexible Packaging.
However, they couldn't just move it to a regular paper bag because the products they wanted to pack in there still required good protection. We worked with them on designing a product that today is called a protective mailer. This is a paper bag that offers the flexibility, and also we have a corrugated material inside to offer the protection. You have both protection and flexibility in one product. By doing this, we combined the materials that haven't been combined so far, at least not in an e-commerce supply chain. We have implemented this product. We have worked with the machine suppliers to produce the lines that can enable us to produce this at scale, and we are in the process of scaling it throughout Europe.
Lastly, when it comes to automation, the leading pet food marketplace came to us, and they wanted to move from manual to automated packing. They effectively wanted to move from our corrugated box to the corrugated material that is designed for automated packing lines. Fast forward a couple of years. Today, this company runs 80% of their portfolio or all the volume through automated packing lines. To conclude, e-commerce is a megatrend, and Mondi is strategically positioned to capitalize on this magnificent market opportunity. By understanding our consumers or the consumers and the expectation of e-commerce packaging, Mondi became a trusted advisor to our customers. Due to our deep expertise and broad portfolio, we have been recognized as a market leader in e-commerce packaging and logistics. Thank you very much. Now back to Thomas.
Thank you, Nedim. To conclude the consumer packaging part, I also want to share with you what we have invested. As I told you, we have invested in the Štětí paper machine. Half of it goes into the specialty kraft paper line world. I told you we have invested in an ultra-thin coating machine, again, in Štětí, reducing time to market for co-developments with our customers. We have invested over EUR 60 million in the pet food market, the pet food market where we are already leading, but where we see additional growth. Based on this growth, we have prepared for sustainable products and future capacity for future growth. As Nedim was telling you, we are scaling up our operations on the e-commerce side, both in Europe as well as in North America. We are at the end of our presentation.
Actually, if you give me one more minute, I would like to wrap it up with a page that Andrew actually used for introduction. We were talking about leading market positions. You have seen on the industrial packaging side, we are a global market leader in sack kraft paper. We are a global market leader on the converting side into paper bags. We are a leader in Europe in sack kraft, in specialty sack kraft papers. Eveline has shown you that in our chosen markets, we are a market leader for very sophisticated products. We talk about structural growth. On the industrial packaging side, I was explaining to you that actually more than half of the business is in emerging markets where we see healthy growth rates. If we talk about consumer packaging, we are talking about structurally strongly growing markets.
Combined with our expertise, we are confident that we will continue to gain also market share in these markets. Customer-led innovation, we are partnering with our customers. I think both Nedim as well as Eveline have shown you some examples where we are doing it. We are material agnostic. Actually, if the customer wants paper, we are fine. If the customer wants a mono material, we are equally fine. We are happy to supply them with both solutions if they want it. We have shown you our proven operational excellence. You have seen it. We are continuously working both in the upstream business as well as in the downstream business on improving our cost position and actually working on productivity very hard. Talking about investments, we have invested EUR 600 million in these last years into Flexible Packaging.
Actually, overall, Flexible Packaging is actually responsible for half of the result of the Mondi group. I think we are very well positioned also to continue to grow and deliver these numbers in the future. From my side, thank you very much for your attention. Actually, I think it is time to hand over to Andrew for Q&A.
Very good. Thank you to the team. I appreciate it's a quick gallop through, but I hope you got a real flavor for what we do in our Flexible Packaging business. Now, we do have some time for questions. Before we start taking the questions, if I could just ask the operator to explain how we're going to take questions from both the floor and from the webinar.
Thank you, Andrew. Yes, if you're in the room and you'd like to ask a question, please do raise your hand and wait for a microphone to come to you. If you are viewing via Zoom, then you've got two options. If you're calling in via a phone, then please type star nine to raise your hand and then type star six to unmute when prompted. Alternatively, if you're just calling in in the usual way, use the raised hand function on your screen. I'll hand back to you, Andrew. Thank you.
Right. With that, I think I'll do the easy thing first and go manual. So I'll ask you first up. There is a microphone coming.
Thank you. I can probably keep you going for 30 minutes, but I'm going to stick to two questions. Just starting with, you obviously spoke to your leading positions in the markets that you serve, but we can also see there's quite a large number of producers. If you can speak to what that leading position gives you in terms of your integrated business model versus some of your peers and how that enables you to have maybe superior profitability, I'm not sure if it does, but also the growth component to that, how that enables you to drive faster growth in the overall market. That was my first question. If you kind of look at the e-commerce bit of your offering, clearly there's now been a transition. It seems to be at least somewhat away from corrugated into paper bags or paper solutions.
Does that cannibalize on your Corrugated business in any meaningful way? If you could comment on how big that e-commerce offering is in share of your business.
Very good. Thanks, [Lars]. Never expected anything less from you than a couple of questions, but we will go first. I think probably I think it's specifically linked to the industrial business where we do have such a strong market position. And what does it give us? Maybe Thomas, you could provide an answer on that.
I think what is important to see is that we have, compared to others, we have another business model. Yes, we are in leading market positions, but we are actually the only one who in-house has all the capabilities when it comes to barrier properties as well as it comes to integration into paper and upstream business that others do not have. Other companies need to partner with other companies in order to develop new products, which is obviously possible. I mean, I am not saying it is the wrong way, not at all. We are faster. We are faster, and we have the expertise. You have to see if you develop these products, I was talking about shelf life test of a mattress packaging of nine months. Okay. We are working with much more complicated products.
Actually, you have a number of tests in order to arrive at the final product with which the customer is happy. Actually, in this time, to have all the possibilities, technology, and know-how in-house reduces time to market. That, I think, differentiates us from our competition.
I totally understand, but does it actually give you quicker growth? If so, can you quantify what that really translates to?
I mean, I can only talk about our growth. And our growth in these markets is definitely ahead of GDP. We are gaining market share in all of these markets that we are showing you. We are gaining market share. These are very interesting markets already. We will continue to do so because the trends that we have shown you are not like the initiative of the week. They are here to stay, and they will continue. Actually, especially moving now with PPWR, for instance, coming 2030, the pressure is on the market. The pressure is on our customers to transition to new products. Both this mega trend of sustainability as well as also in this e-commerce world, what is important is that actually it is driving change in this market.
It is actually challenging every single packaging that is out there today from the consumer to our customers and then from our customers to us. Actually, that helps us because here, speed and expertise is necessary in times of high pressure to make new products.
I think it is safe to say, I mean, clearly we like it when our customers want us to innovate. That gives us the opportunity to develop new products, to develop opportunities for them to obviously outperform their competitors as well. As Nedim also pointed out on the e-commerce side, when you go to the end consumer, they want these products. That is what gives us a lot of confidence that there is a real push here. Yes, there are always ebbs and flows in any sort of cycle, but it is for real, and we are seeing big volume opportunities here. We better move on. Just on your second question, very quickly, in terms of the size of the market, I mean, obviously, in terms of our Corrugated business, it is an important component within that.
I'm not going to give you exact percentages, but it is clearly the bigger demand source. On the other hand, the bag side off a lower base clearly is growing fast, as Nedim said already. I think just to quickly short-circuit it because we better get on to other people, but in terms of the question of cannibalizing, yes, on the margin, there is a transition in certain categories from boxes to bags because of the whole issue around lightweighting, PPWR, and space, etc., lends itself to that, particularly in the fashion space. Fashion retail is going a lot to bags. To be clear, there is a big demand and a growing demand off a much bigger base for boxes. The box demand, we still expect to grow, but the rate of growth in bags is faster.
The initial stimulus for that was very much plastic substitution, and that has been a huge driver and will continue to be a driver. I mean, we're very excited about the opportunities in North America with some of our key customers that we've been working with in Europe, and we are investing behind that. There will be an element, yes, where we're taking business from the box business into the bag business. That is why we've set up a separate commercial function with Nedim as part of that, driving our offering across our whole spectrum of products because we want to be product agnostic. We don't want our bags and box guys competing with each other for the same business. We want to be able to provide the customer with the best solution for them.
We think that that's the best way forward and will provide us with the best opportunities. Thanks, [Lars]. Maybe we could go to one more on the coming, just one back. No, sorry, we've already chosen [Andy] then.
Hi, thanks a lot. Just on the, I mean, slide nine, you give a sort of 50/50 split between industrial and consumer packaging. Do you have an approximate split for the bid-ask side? Just for the context, I mean, obviously, things like construction are obviously cyclically weak. I'm trying to get an idea for sort of peak to trough in that part of the business and the potential opportunity if we see a rebound in construction in the coming years.
I knew I would open a can of worms whichever way we split the business. I think, as Thomas so well articulated, we think that is a good way to articulate the different value drivers in the business. We are certainly not going to get into the realm of splitting out profitability in that because ultimately, the reality is we've even struggled ourselves to define exactly what is what in which pot because the reality is there's a lot of synergy across these different businesses. Even, for example, in the paper mill, we have flexibility to sell into or to produce for both respective markets. It is not a static number for one thing.
In broad terms, though, if you look at it in terms of the current profitability, should we say, or not current, should we say the average profitability, you would say that the industrial side has higher margins simply because we control more of the value chain. If you think about it, most of it is integrated. We produce the pulp, the paper, and then it goes into converted box or in a bag, sorry. In the consumer side, clearly, we do not have that same level of integration because, for example, in the plastic side of the business, you buy in a resin or even a film in certain cases. You do not have the same. It is not as capital-intensive, similarly, as a consequence. If you took a rough guide, there is still more profitability in the industrial side relative to the consumer side, but simply for that reason.
In terms of, call it, the cyclicality of it, I mean, very clearly, as Eveline so rightly said, there's the consumer side from a demand perspective, clearly much more defensive in nature. People eat and drink and feed their pets regardless of the economic cycle. That's why it's such a fantastic business in that sense. You typically see less demand side cyclicality on the consumer side. By the same token, as hopefully Thomas pointed out, while there's more cyclicality of demand in the industrial space, and you saw that, for example, in that graph showing the long-term trend on bag volumes in the last couple of years, the supply side dynamic is extremely favorable. Certainly, our position within that is extremely strong. That's why we can still make good money even in very difficult times.
Clearly, there is also cyclical upside there if and when we finally get some tailwinds in this world. I do not want to prejudice the people online. If we could maybe take the question from [Brian Morgan], who is waiting patiently online.
Cool. Thanks, Andrew. If I could just ask, do you have enough kraft paper capacity on a, say, 5 to 10 year- view given all of this growth?
I hope not, but maybe Thomas could outline what we have. Sorry, the question, do we have enough kraft paper capacity for the next 5 to 10 years?
I love the question. You see, we are in the phase of ramping up the new paper machine in Štětí now, which is adding overall 200,000 tons. I was also talking about that we have Hinton, which is an outstanding place from a cost point of view, where we are in the phase of the feasibility study to invest into a new paper machine. This paper machine would be something in the similar size of the one that we have added recently now in Štětí. Actually, I think for the next years, we are pretty good in shape when it comes to kraft paper capacity.
Very good. Thanks, Run. Maybe come back to Cole. Sorry.
Cole Hathorn from Jefferies. Thanks for taking the questions. I'd just like to start with the supply demands and the competitive moats that Mondi have got in sack and kraft paper. One thing that wasn't mentioned is you're the number one in sack and kraft paper, but you compare that to containerboard, which is the much bigger brother of the paper markets. How do you see supply and demand in sack and kraft paper, considering containerboard is oversupplied? Why are you comfortable to invest in sack and kraft paper? And what are the barriers to entry? What gives you confidence that you will continue to be the market leader there? Would you like to add?
Thank you. That's a very good question. Thank you for that. You see, if you look to the industrial packaging piece, so sack kraft and demand into industrial paper bags, you see in the past years, in the past decades, actually, there was no conversion of any machine into this business. I explained why it is because you need specific pulp, you need specific preparation of the pulp, and you need this extensible unit into the paper machine to produce these papers. There are some smaller conversions on the specialty kraft paper, but actually, some players are entering into the market. We are seeing very good growth rates overall in this market. They are definitely by far not as strong impact as it is in containerboard.
In the specific world of virgin sack kraft paper, actually, I do not see a lot of risk that actually new players would enter the market. On top of it, you have seen also from the demand side or from the consumer side, we are by far the largest consumer of sack kraft paper, consuming 700,000 tons of paper. If you are a new entrant into this market, it would also be actually quite difficult to find easily or quickly an outlet for all your capacity.
Maybe just a follow-up on the consumer packaging markets. You talked about good growth there and Mondi wanting to drive more growth in e-commerce, FMCG, the new product developments. If I go back to 2016 to 2020, your competitors in the box market were talking about deploying innovation centers, focusing on helping customers. How are you able to work with machine suppliers and customers to not only deploy new products, but deploy them at scale and quickly so you take more than your fair share of the growth? Does anyone else have innovation centers in Flexible Packaging like yourselves?
Thank you. Maybe let's start with that. We have opened last year in Germany, a new R&D center. It's called Flex Studios, which is basically a combination of customer experience center. In the same building, we have a floor for testing machinery. We are testing newly developed products with our customers. In the same building, we also have added a lab in order to analyze the newly tested product. In this world of fast change, I think also the way of doing innovation has changed. I mean, what we are doing is not base research. What we are doing is development.
Actually, we are going together with our customers into this new building, and we are co-innovating products with them in order to reduce time to market and to have quickly a product that actually they can take home and say, "Okay, is that something that we want to use in the future?" Does other players in this world have R&D centers? For sure, they have. Does other players have R&D centers where they can combine and test with all the technology, paper and plastic solutions? I'm not so sure.
Yeah, and I think that is the critical point. We're by no means suggesting we're the only people who are innovating in consumer packaging. It is a very field ripe for innovation and product development and the like. Our specific USP is the ability to combine the expertise on the paper and other substrates that we can combine. That really, we believe, gives us huge advantage. To be honest, five years ago, it was not a topic because it was not really being driven. Now, every day, I can assure you, the team is talking to our customers about exactly where the opportunities lie for driving these sustainable solutions. That is what is exciting. I have to go to you, sorry, eventually.
Ephrem Ravi from Citi. Two questions. I'll take it one by one. Firstly, it's a bit philosophical. When you do pricing, what's your frame of reference for these new products that you're innovating and bringing to the market? Are you, for example, pricing it versus a plastic? How do you price up the sustainability premium, if you will? I mean, do you do consumer research and then go back to customers? Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much one.
I mean, maybe Thomas can take it a little bit more detail. In short, I mean, undoubtedly, it is clear that more often than not, they call it more sustainable solution, at least initially, is more expensive than the incumbent. I always say there's a reason why you have the incumbent solution. It's normally because for the level of functionality you need, there's a price that is attractive. Invariably, we are charging more for the sustainable solution, partly because initially, upfront, when you haven't got the scale, et cetera, the unit cost is higher. That does come down over time. Maybe some thoughts on how we discuss that with our customers.
The development, especially of newly developed sustainable products, is actually coming in waves. The first wave is typically switching into a new product combination, which is more expensive. It is more expensive simply because of the product mix and of the way how you produce it. And we, as co-developer with our customers, we are also having a good margin on this business. Nevertheless, I mean, we see that overall with the pressure on the market, especially now these last two years, actually, big brands, especially in the luxury brands, they face a lot of pressure from their consumers. What we are at the moment focused on, and we are very successful with that, is what we call cost-out innovation.
You want to have the same outcome as a product, but actually, you have to find the bits and pieces that make it cheaper for the customer to produce. This comes in phases. That is depending on the cycle. As Eveline said, it is from multilayer to monolayer, from monolayer going into paper solutions.
How do you sort of incentivize your salespeople to upsell into more kind of, because I presume they do not know what the margin profile is, et cetera. How does it kind of work on a day-to-day basis when someone from Nedim's team is going out and speaking to a small e-commerce, not the Amazons of the world, but I start up, I do not know, a Petford e-commerce platform. How does he sort of decide which products to kind of push and how to kind of optimize margins from a Mondi point of view?
Go ahead. I'm sorry to u rge you.
We showed you our Flexible Packaging business linked to market end users. What makes us successful is actually to have this market focus. Yes, there are products where you potentially earn more in a box than in a bag or the other way around. Actually, the success with the customer is that you give the customer what he wants and that you actually give it to this customer at the right time. You might sacrifice margins left and right sometimes. At the end, when it comes to scaling up the whole portfolio, it definitely counts for you that you are the one who is giving the customer exactly what he wants. Therefore, this is the incentive system that we have for our people that actually they bring back home the request from the customer, what he really wants.
Can I assure you, our commercial people know exactly what the costs and margins are on each of the products that we sell. Should we go back to the line? We have [James Twyman] on the line.
Yes, hello. Thank you very much and a very, very informative presentation. I've got two questions, if I may. The first one is you mentioned recent CapEx that you've been doing in Flexibles. Could you talk around what sort of plans you've got in terms of growth projects over the next few years or some sort of idea of what sort of spending you're thinking of doing in there? Secondly, operating rates, my understanding is in kraft papers, is actually pretty good at the moment. I just wanted to contrast that with the fact that returns are very much at the lower end compared with the last sort of 10 years or so. What are we missing there in terms of why we're at the bottom end of the cycle from that perspective? Thank you very much.
Yeah, I think I'll take those. I mean, just in terms of the CapEx, James, we give a very clear guidance in terms of the group numbers. I won't even ask Mike to comment on that because I think we've given that to you before. We are clear in terms of the CapEx we're spending this year. Undoubtedly, we've had a big expansionary program. We are a large part of the way through that in terms of the actual project execution. Now it's about the, call it commercial execution, well, commercial and production ramp-up, which is taking place. I mean, I think we heard from Thomas, we do have a well-invested asset base. We've spent money in terms to be able to leverage that future growth that we see. In the short term, clearly, the focus is actually from a CapEx perspective more on the ongoing cost optimization opportunities.
For example, we've got a couple of energy projects going on at the moment in our pulp and paper mills, which continue to drive the cost base down. It is more around that, certainly in the near term. You would naturally expect on that basis that the overall CapEx budget for the group comes off in the absence of other big exciting growth projects, which we'll tell you about at the time. In the Flexibles business, the main chunky project that we obviously are currently reviewing is the expansionary project at Hinton. As Thomas has already told you, we are in feasibility on that. Realistically, that is a decision for next year. That is where we are on the CapEx side. I think to your question on operating rates, I'm always skeptical about these operating rates. I know everyone loves trying to calculate them.
I mean, we can't even calculate our own capacity. It's amazing how difficult that is. I don't quite know how everyone works out these precise operating rates. It is suffice to say a tighter market in the sense that, as we discussed already, there is no new capacity, particularly in the sack kraft space, other than the capacity we've been bringing on. At the same time, we also know the demand side, particularly in the industrial space, as we discussed already, is more cyclical and it has been cyclically impacted. I mean, when you look at our bags volumes and we are a proxy for the market in that respect, we have seen a decline in volumes, quite material decline.
If you look at peak to trough volumes for the European market, and I hope I haven't got this wrong, but it's over a billion bags of demand was lost from the peak in the middle of 2022 to the trough, which hopefully, with a bit of hindsight, was kind of, well, the beginning of last year. Since then, we've seen a slow recovery. In the face of those sort of cyclical headwinds, it is very challenging in spite of, obviously, a very much more favorable supply side than you see on the container board, for example. I should hesitate to say on the container board, it's in the recycled container board. The virgin grades are, as we well know, much tighter from a supply side perspective. Thank you very much, James. I hope that answers your question.
We have time for a couple more questions from the floor. Yep.
[audio distortion] . Quick question on your competitive landscape. Since the Russia-Ukraine war, the Russian supplier, which had a big market in Europe, is out of the market. What I am trying to understand is how did that benefit Mondi in terms of volumes or maybe even pricing? If the war stops, should we expect any headwind if that supplier comes back to the European market?
Yeah, very good question. I'm sure you saw one of those bars on Thomas's slides referencing that exact competitor, which is Segezha, obviously. Maybe Thomas, you could talk about where they've been in the market.
Actually, what happened was Segezha, Russian paper mill, Russian integrated paper mill, they had converting operations in Europe. They do not have them anymore. It is not part of the group anymore. They sold it. They are integrated in Russia today. Actually, what happened to their paper that they are selling on the market is this paper is going into Asia. It has found a new place. Leading into your second question, if there are any changes in the political landscape, first of all, they have markets they are selling to today. Yes, maybe something of these volumes would come back, but I would not see that as any major disturbance, not at all. I think on the other side, probably the bigger impact of opening up would be on the supply side. Here we talk about forests.
Here we talk about wood supply, especially into Scandinavia and into Central Europe. Actually, the competitor itself, I actually don't see that as any threat to our business.
Good.
Hi, thanks for the presentation. I'll keep it very short. [Janis Masbulas] from Morgan Stanley. A couple of questions. First, on this revenue split, industrial versus consumer, you show 50/50. I think a few years ago, maybe five years ago, that was 63% for industrial or something in that range. Is that shift towards consumer more of a function of the footprint, production lines, or just the organic growth of the two segments? The second question on Hinton, you talk about the feasibility study. In a scenario where we have trade barriers and moving paper to the U.S. might prove unfeasible, can you talk about some of the options there? Thank you.
I didn't think it would take so long for the tariff question to come up, but appreciate it nonetheless. Just in terms of the revenue split, I think if I recall correctly, you're referring there was a, and we've referred to a 60/40 split. That's when we've looked at effectively the asset base from treating all our bags business and all our kraft paper business essentially as industrial. We've taken a more end use sort of lens here. It is really more of a question of the definition. When we look at it in detail, obviously we have a number of, call it industrial bag exposures, which actually into consumer applications. It is essentially a refined calculation looking specifically at the end market users. It should not be read about into that. Having said that, obviously we do see a lot of opportunity on the consumer side. We are very excited by the growth that we are seeing there. We are continuing to invest behind it.
Likewise, we've also put money behind the growth in the industrial markets where we enjoy such a strong position and we are determined to retain that position. Very quickly on the tariffs, without getting into the detail, I mean, we spoke last week briefly about it in terms of the trading update. As a group, I remind you, we have very limited direct exposure to tariffs. It's 2%-3% of our turnover represents turnover of anything we sell from somewhere else into the U.S. That, of course, includes also in this particular business, Mexico into the U.S. and also Canada into the U.S. The reality is both the products that we sell in those trade flows are currently exempt under the USMCA regulations. Clearly, it's a moving feast, so we have to keep it under review.
The products that we currently make at Hinton, some of which is sold into the U.S., a lot of it actually into Asia, is exempt, and as would under the current rules, a kraft paper product. It is undoubtedly an added uncertainty. As we all know, when rules are changing all the time, it does create uncertainty. Undoubtedly, we'll be needing to consider the implications. As I said, we are not ready for that decision anyway because we're working through the engineering, the permitting, and all that detailed feasibility work before we're in a position to overlay whatever the trading conditions will be at the time. Something to think about for the future. Very good. I think we are coming to the end. We have one very last one. I thought you were itching either for your drink or for a question.
I'll stick with the questions. I've actually got two follow-ups, if I may. The one is I want to understand really the scale benefits of your industrial bags business. If you compare that to others, can you talk about some of the kind of benchmarkings you do by plant comparing to each other, the efficiencies of that? Should we think about Mondi's cement and building materials bag business likely having higher margins than your competitors just because of your scale, just on the converting side alone? The second one is there's a lot of focus on growth in consumer packaging because of the more stable volumes in markets. Industrial business, I think, is quite an attractive space. You probably do get good margins. Do you have a specific preference to grow consumer over industrial, or are you agnostic to that when you deploy capital? Thank you.
Maybe I will take the second part and Thomas then can talk about the exceptional performance we have in our operational plant performance. Just in terms of the overall dynamic, I mean, very clearly, we like all our exposures. We think that the industrial exposure, we enjoy a privileged position. Clearly, the overall market is growing relatively slower than the consumer markets. Of course, the overall market opportunity is smaller in the sense that it's just simply a smaller global market. Having said that, we're in an extremely strong position for all the reasons that Thomas outlined. I see great opportunity both organically to continue to grow this business, both upstream and downstream. Of course, if there's M&A opportunities that come either from the outsourcing, which has been a highly productive area of growth for us over time.
Of course, if the world, we haven't spoken about it at all because frankly, we're not seeing it at the moment. If the big competition for industrial paper bags is woven polypropylene bags, if the cement industry ever worried about sustainability from that perspective and you saw a shift in that direction, that would add a huge new impetus. I don't want to paint that picture because it is fair to say we are not seeing that as a trend right now. If that ever happened, of course, that adds even bigger emphasis to the sort of growth opportunities we see in the industrial space. Equally, on the consumer space, for all the reasons I think we outlined, and I'm running out of time, so I better keep it short. We see great opportunities.
We're investing behind that for all the reasons, from the pet food converting to the coatings business to obviously some of these upstream investments, which are very much predicated also on the consumer markets and the growth around paperization, et cetera. Opportunities very much in both. We do not sit there and think we'd like to grow in this rather than this. We like them all for somewhat different reasons, for hopefully the reasons we articulated already. Very quickly, five sections because I've taken all your time.
Yes. I know we are the most productive producer in the industrial paper bag downstream business. Why do I know it? You have seen this business has grown historically a lot via acquisitions. We bought 20, 30, probably more than 40 plants, and actually also we closed and restructured many of them. We have never bought a factory that was more productive than us. Never. We always went in and actually we brought our expertise, how to run the machines, how to set it up, which products to run, and in which schedules according to our expertise. We are definitely the leader when it comes to productivity in this space. Why is it? Because we are bigger, we have a larger scale, and we also have, as I said, this possibility to specialize certain plants.
That actually gives you, from a supply chain perspective, from everything, a huge advantage actually to be more productive than your competitors.
Very good. I am very conscious of the time and that we must stick to our commitment around that, which I think we are already extending people's patience. Just finally on that point as well, I'm always deeply skeptical when people come to me and say, "We can run this thing better than someone else," and hence there's a kind of synergy. I do think in our bags business, we have demonstrated time and time again that we can genuinely add value when we acquire these businesses just from an operating perspective before you get into the integration benefits and the like, which is maybe a nice way to round things up. I really do appreciate everyone's attention today. I hope you have got a flavor at least for what we do in this business.
I know there's some complexity in understanding it, but we like that complexity because that gives us opportunity as well. We are very excited across the piece and the opportunities that it brings. We think we are extremely well positioned to take advantage of those opportunities as they arise. We see a lot of good, strong structural growth here, and that will give us the opportunity for long-term sustainable value creative growth. With that, I just quickly like to thank the team of presenters and obviously everyone else who's been working extremely hard to make this event happen. I won't name everyone because I've got no time left, but I really do thank you. Thank you everyone online for your attention. For those of you in the room, we'd be delighted if you joined us for a refreshment upstairs.
Thank you very much, and we'll close the webinar.