Good afternoon. Welcome to Tate & Lyle's Capital Markets event. I am so excited today to present the new Tate & Lyle and the significant growth opportunities ahead for our business, which I believe we are well-positioned to capture. This is the first of a series of capital markets events we plan to hold to present different aspects of the business.
Today, we will focus on four main areas. Firstly, the new Tate & Lyle, our purpose, strategy, competitive advantage, growth potential, and an updated five-year financial ambition. Secondly, our specialty portfolio, the markets we operate in, and why we expect Food & Beverage Solutions to grow ahead of the markets. Thirdly, we will talk about innovation and how we are growing our solutions-focused business with customers.
Finally, we will look at our financial framework, including a new productivity target of $100 million over the next five years. That is all to come, but I want to start with a projection. It's estimated that to meet increasing demand from a growing global population, we will need to produce more food in the next 40 years than has been produced in the previous 8,000 years.
That's quite a challenge. It's not just the quantity of food that will be needed. It's also about ensuring that the food we eat is nutritious, that it's affordable, that it's produced in a sustainable way, and meets the demands of a busy modern lifestyle. Nutritious food and drink should also be accessible to all. To achieve this, the world is going to need companies focused on three things.
Firstly, companies with a world-class understanding of the science of food and world-class food scientists constantly pushing the boundaries of innovation. Secondly, companies with the capability to create new solutions, working to develop healthier and tastier, more sustainable food and drink. Thirdly, responsible businesses which not only grow their profits, but also have a positive impact on society and our planet. New Tate & Lyle is all of these.
Everything we do comes down to three things: science, solutions, society. The new Tate & Lyle will be more ambitious in everything it does, which is why we have elevated our purpose from improving lives to transforming lives through the science of food. Our commitment to science, solutions, and society is borne out of a deep understanding of our purpose. After all, everything Tate & Lyle does is rooted in science.
It's through research and development, our understanding of the science of food, that we have the greatest impact on the world by creating ingredients and solutions that support sustainable, healthy living. The new Tate & Lyle is a growth-focused speciality food and beverage solutions business, a global leader in sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification, creating high-value speciality ingredients and solutions to meet growing global consumer demand for healthier and tastier food and drink.
It is a focused and agile business with an ambitious purpose and a clear strategy for growth. How did we get here? Well, over the last five years, Tate & Lyle has been through a major transformation, with significant acceleration in the last two years. We have transformed the way we focus on our customers and on the categories where we can have the most impact and deliver most growth.
We significantly strengthened our capabilities in solution selling. We invested over $200 million in the last four years to accelerate innovation and to establish world-class scientific capabilities and infrastructure. We've instilled a culture of productivity and cost discipline in the business, delivering over $150 million of productivity in the last four years. We significantly strengthened our sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification platforms with four key acquisitions.
We've repositioned the company as a growth-focused speciality food and beverage solutions business through the sale of Primient last year. Finally, we have placed sustainability at the heart of our business and committed to become net zero by 2050. The significance of this transformation is clear. Over the last five years, we have achieved a fundamental shift in both the quality of our portfolio and the global reach of our business.
In the 2018 financial year, only 37% of the group's revenue came from speciality ingredients. By the end of the 2022 financial year, revenue from speciality ingredients and solutions for new Tate & Lyle increased to 93%. Likewise, in 2018, only 11% of group's revenue came from the large and fast-growing markets of Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.
In the 2022 financial year, 29% of new Tate & Lyle's revenue came from these regions, and that figure will be higher in 2023 following the acquisition of Quantum Hi-Tech in China last year. The position we have built provides a significant opportunity to grow further and faster in these markets. This extraordinary transformation to reshape our business has put Tate & Lyle right at the center of the future of food.
The global population is growing rapidly and is expected to increase from 8 billion today to nearly 10 billion by 2050. People are living longer, want more convenience to suit their modern lifestyles, and are much more knowledgeable about their impact on the planet. These structural megatrends are driving consumer purchasing and consumption patterns.
With our capabilities in sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification, we are really well positioned to benefit from growing demand for healthy, tasty, and convenient food that is sustainable and affordable. With this backdrop, why am I convinced that Tate & Lyle is well positioned to deliver sustainable growth? Well, in each of our platforms, we already have leading positions. We operate in large markets with attractive growth rates. Our portfolio of highly functional ingredients and solutions directly address consumer demands for healthier food and drink.
We have leading scientific and solutions capabilities, and we have strong customer relationships. Let me take each one of these in turn. We have leading market positions in each of our three platforms. In sweetening, with our unique toolbox of ingredients and solutions, and over 100 years of scientific know-how, we are the market leader in sweetening sugar and calorie reduction. Liking a food is often highly dependent on how it feels in our mouth, and mouthfeel is an increasingly important area of the food matrix. With our range of clean-label texturants, gums, and stabilizer systems, we are a leader in mouthfeel. Our third platform of fortification was significantly strengthened by the recent acquisition of Quantum, helping us to become a global market leader in fiber fortification.
Just as importantly, our ability to formulate across the intersection of sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification provides our customers with a unique proposition as they look to make their products healthier and tastier. These leading market positions address large and attractive markets. The global specialty food ingredients market is $75 billion and is expected to grow at around 6% on a compound annual basis. $19 billion of this market, also growing at 6%, is addressable by Tate & Lyle's three market-leading platforms. Tate & Lyle's core categories of beverage, dairy, soup, sauces and dressings, and bakery and snacks represent 70% or $13 billion of this addressable market. The other 30% is in categories such as confectionery and infant nutrition, where we have regional expertise. The real opportunity is even bigger.
While the global specialty ingredient sweetener market is around $5 billion, sugar still makes up 80% of the global sweetening markets, and there is an estimated further $3 billion of sugar replacement opportunity across our four core categories. We will talk more about sugar replacement later. Within our addressable markets, there are structural trends which are driving consumer preference and changes in consumption pattern. The rise of diseases like obesity and diabetes and concerns about digestive health and immunity are leading people to be increasingly concerned about their health and well-being. As a result, consumers are looking for products lower in sugar and calories and with added fiber. They are also moving to more plant-based food. For example, in 2022, 9% of all food and drink launches globally had a sugar or calorie reduction claim, and 11% were plant-based.
We expect these trends to accelerate. Consumer desire for food and drink, which is healthy, tasty, convenient, and more sustainable and affordable, all play directly into Tate & Lyle's areas of expertise. Through our three platforms, we create ingredients and solutions which reduce sugar and calories, enhance texture and mouthfeel, provide stability across a product shelf life, increase nutrition through fiber and protein, and where necessary, optimize cost. These solutions could not be created without world-class food science. Tate & Lyle has been at the forefront of food science and innovation for over 100 years. We are, in essence, a food science and technology business. Our scientific knowledge in the fields of biochemistry and material science are at the very heart of our company.
Our core scientific competencies in separation and fractionation, enzymology and fermentation, drying and crystallization, and industrial scale-up mean we are well placed to deliver solutions to create healthier, tastier, and more sustainable food and drink. For example, through the combination of our deep understanding of biochemistry, our enzyme technology, and separation capabilities, we are able to take stevia leaves, separate the sweetness, and produce low-calorie sugar reduction solutions without the bitter aftertaste stevia can create. By bringing together our science and applications capabilities, our category expertise and insight, and our broad portfolio of ingredients, we are able to provide integrated solutions for our customers. This increases customer intimacy and strengthens our position as their partner for growth. Serving our customers is at the center of everything we do. We have strong and long-standing relationships with many customers around the world.
Over two-thirds of our top 30 customers today were top 30 customers five years ago. Over the same period, we have grown our revenue by more than 3 x with over 100 of our customers. We serve a diverse mix of customers from innovative market disruptors to strong regional businesses and large global food and beverage multinationals. While there are so many aspects of Tate & Lyle which are different today than five years ago, if I had to pick one area that has changed the most, it is our focus on the customer. Today, serving our customers is the number one priority for everyone at Tate & Lyle. Moving now to our strategy. The strategic focus and intent of Tate & Lyle is clear.
Based on our market leading positions and leading scientific and solutions capabilities, we are a leading and differentiated specialty food and beverage solutions business, delivering sweetening, mouthfeel and fortification across our four core categories. We have been successfully executing this strategy over the last four years. Our framework for growth is based on four pillars: accelerating innovation, portfolio expansion, integrated solutions, and market focus, with serving customers at the core. This framework is supported by our scientific and technical know-how, solutions capability, our increasingly global supply chain, the talent of our people, and our culture. Accelerating innovation is central to our growth strategy. Over the last five years, we have launched over 50 new products from our innovation pipeline, and the probability weighted value of our pipeline has grown to over $400 million.
On portfolio expansion, we have strengthened our three platforms through the acquisition of four businesses, as well as brought new ingredients into our platforms via distribution agreements, such as erythritol into the sweetener platform. To enhance our integrated solutions approach, we are strengthening our capabilities in areas such as sensory, prototyping, and category and consumer insights, and are implementing new ways of working to build stronger solutions-based partnerships with our customers. Victoria will talk about this later. Finally, in the developed markets of North America and Europe, we aim to grow above the market. In the large and fast-growing markets of Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, we aim to accelerate growth, which is why we are investing in these regions with six new or expanded customer innovation and collaboration centers and increased applications resources.
Our strategic growth framework has delifourvered strong and consistent financial results for Food & Beverage Solutions. Over the last four years, Food & Beverage Solutions has grown revenue by a compound annual growth rate of 8% ahead of the market, with EBITDA growing at 10%, and new product revenue growing double digits. In summary, the new Tate & Lyle is a simpler and more growth-focused business. It has considerable financial strength to support both organic and inorganic growth with a strong balance sheet and capacity to invest further in growth. Food & Beverage Solutions is by far our largest business, representing 81% of revenue and over 80% of EBITDA. Its role is to drive growth, revenue growth, and margin expansion. For sucralose, a critical part of our sweetener toolbox, which represents 12% of revenue, the role is to maintain attractive returns.
For Primary Products Europe, which represents just 7% of revenue, the priority is to optimize its performance and to reduce its size over time, mainly through the planned transition of capacity to specialty ingredients. The financial ambition for the new Tate & Lyle over the next five years is as follows. Firstly, to deliver 4%-6% group revenue growth, with Food & Beverage Solutions growing high single digits ahead of the market. Secondly, for group EBITDA to grow by 7%-9% each year. Dom will talk the expected mix of revenue and EBITDA and other aspects of our five-year ambition later. The efficient use of capital continues to be a key focus, and we aim to increase organic return on capital employed by up to 50 basis points on average each year.
On productivity, today, we are announcing a new program to deliver $100 million of benefits over the next five years. Finally, we will look to continue to accelerate growth through value-enhancing acquisitions. I firmly believe that purpose and performance go hand in hand, and that purpose is critical to the long-term success and health of our company. Our purpose of transforming lives through the science of food inspires our people and resonates strongly with our customers. We live our purpose through three pillars, each aligned to five of the UN Sustainable Development Goals where we can have the most impact. We measure our progress against the set of targets put in place two years ago, and I'm pleased to say we are making strong progress in each pillar.
For example, under supporting healthy living, through our low and no-calorie sweeteners and fibers, we have helped remove more than 5 million tons of sugar from people's diets over the last two and a half years. Over the same period, we have provided more than 3 million meals through our food bank partners, helping some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. Over 90% of the waste we generate globally is beneficially used. The beneficial use of waste is just one of our four environmental priorities. The others are carbon emissions, water use, and sustainable agriculture. We have set ambitious 2030 targets for each of our four priorities and are making good progress. Importantly, our carbon emissions targets have been externally validated as science-based by the Science Based Targets initiative.
Our targets for carbon emissions, water, and waste are also used as metrics for our long-term incentive plan. Agriculture is a key part of our Scope 3 emissions. Over the last three years, we have built leading sustainable agriculture programs for corn in the US and for stevia in China. These programs not only decrease the environmental impact of our supply chain, but make it more resilient to the impact of climate change. We already support sustainable corn acreage equivalent to our annual usage. Working in partnership with Earthwatch and Nanjing Agricultural University last year, we significantly expanded our stevia program in China. This program focuses on improving the environmental and social impacts of stevia production. In 2021, we saw a 7% improvement in greenhouse gas emissions alongside an improvement in local water quality.
Sustainability is more than a series of targets and initiatives, important though they are. Environmental considerations are built into every aspect of our business, including our innovation and capital investment program. It's also increasingly a part of our customer offering. A great example is recent work to develop a new manufacturing process for our CLARIA clean label starches. While our next generation CLARIA has the same functionalities as our existing CLARIA, our scientists have developed an innovative and more environmentally friendly manufacturing process, resulting in 34% lower carbon emissions and 35% less water use. We are looking at other ingredients in our portfolio to see how we can deliver similar benefits.
Last year, we carried out an analysis of what a net zero pathway would look like for Tate & Lyle, including comprehensive Scope 1 and 2 decarbonization reviews at our four largest plants and an in-depth review of our Scope 3 emissions. On the basis of this work, we have committed to reach net zero by 2050. While we recognize that advances in technology, changes in policy, and many other factors will evolve as we move towards 2050, what won't change is our determination to deliver on our commitments. Cultural transformation is another key enabler of our growth strategy. We recognize that to unlock the growth potential of our business, we need to build a more agile, ambitious, and inclusive culture. For example, currently 42% of our leadership and management roles are held by women, up from 27% in 2020.
We have also set eight targets to measure our progress on equity, diversity, and inclusion over the next decade. We have already met one of those targets by enabling the leaders of our employee resource groups to spend 10% of their paid time on their respective groups. Cultural change is more than just equity, diversity, and inclusion. It's also about behavior. We have rolled out four new behaviors to drive the ambition of the new Tate & Lyle, encouraging curiosity, courage, challenge, and flow. As we embed our new culture, I am seeing a real change in the way we are working both inside and outside Tate & Lyle. For example, we are thinking differently about our global supply chain. We don't have to make every product we sell.
As a result, we are looking at new partnerships and agreements with third parties to produce products that will strengthen our customer offering, get our customers to market faster, and allow us to better target the use of capital. A key part of cultural change is ensuring that the leadership team reflects the culture you want to see. Over the last five years, we have significantly reshaped our leadership team. This is now a team that is truly purpose-led with deep customer knowledge, extensive industry experience, and a real deep commitment to delivering our growth strategy. It is also gender-balanced, a strong signal to the organization that we want a truly inclusive workforce.
To conclude, the new Tate & Lyle is focused on growth. We have repositioned the business to be at the center of the future of food, focused on creating solutions that meet growing consumer demand for healthier, tastier, and more sustainable food and drink. We have a clear strategy and a strong balance sheet, providing the ability to invest for growth. We are a business fueled by science, obsessed with customer collaboration, and with a strong desire to make a positive impact on society. Science, solutions, society. That is the new Tate & Lyle. The agenda for today's event is on the screen. I will shortly hand over to Andrew Taylor and Bill Magee to talk about the markets we operate in, our specialty portfolio and growth opportunities.
We will have a short break before Victoria Spadaro Grant will talk about innovation and how we are developing our solution selling capabilities before Dawn Allen, our CFO, will present our financial framework. I will return to summarize, after which we will finish with the Q&A session. With that, let me hand over to Andrew Taylor in Singapore. Andrew, over to you.
Thanks, Nick, and welcome to Singapore. I'm Andrew Taylor, and I'm President of our Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America business. I've been with Tate & Lyle for over five years, initially leading our innovation commercial development team before moving to my current role three years ago. Together with my colleague, Bill Magee, who's President of our North American business, I'm gonna talk about the markets we operate in, our specialty portfolio and market position, and why we believe we have a differentiated customer proposition that will deliver growth above the market. To start with, let me remind you what the new Tate & Lyle group looks like. Revenue is GBP 1.4 billion and EBITDA GBP 234 million, having grown at 6% and 8% respectively over the last five years.
With the sale of Primient last year, the group has repositioned itself to focus on growth driven by our Food & Beverage Solutions business, which now represents 81% of revenue and over 80% of EBITDA. This is supported by our sucralose and small Primary Products Europe businesses. Let's first take a closer look at our Food & Beverage Solutions business. Food & Beverage Solutions is a strong and well-balanced business. Around half its revenue comes from North America, with 29% from Asia, where I sit, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, and 22% from Europe. Our two largest platforms are sweetening and mouthfeel, which is not surprising given our long history in both areas. With our newer but fast-growing fortification platform at 15% of revenue.
The percentage of revenue from fortification in the current financial year will increase after our acquisition of Quantum Hi-Tech in China. We're very balanced across our core categories of dairy, beverages, soup, sauce, and dressings, and bakery and snacks. In each region, we also focus on two or three additional categories where we have local expertise. For example, confectionery or nutrition in North America. These additional categories account for 30% of revenue, this also includes the revenue generated through distributors. Food & Beverage Solutions is a high-quality business with a track record of delivering strong financial results. It has a number of advantages which can give us confidence that it can grow revenue high single digit ahead of the specialty ingredient market of 6%. These advantages include we operate in large and attractive addressable markets.
We benefit from consumer trends which are directly addressed by our portfolio of ingredients and solutions. We have significant growth opportunities across all three platforms and an increasing presence in the large and fast-growing markets of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. We have deep regional consumer and category insight. Finally, we specifically target higher growth subcategories. It's the combination of all these attributes that gives us a unique proposition for customers. Let me take each one of these in turn, starting with the addressable market. The global specialty food ingredient market is large, at GBP 75 billion, and is expected to grow around 6% per year. Of that market, GBP 19 billion is addressable by Tate & Lyle's three platforms. It is also expected to grow at 6%.
The ingredients that make up our addressable market are listed here and include high-intensity sweeteners such as sucralose and stevia, starches and gums made from corn and tapioca, and also dietary fibers. If we drill down a bit further, 70% of our addressable market sits in our four core categories. These categories are expected to grow between 6% and 7% over the next four years, offering significant opportunities for Tate & Lyle. We'll talk about these categories in more detail later, but first, let me expand on the structural mega-trends driving this growth, which Nick referred to earlier, and why with our capabilities in sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification, we're ideally positioned to benefit from these trends. At a macro level, there's four structural mega-trends which we see impacting the consumer landscape. The first is population growth, most of which is happening in the developing world.
The middle class, with its increasing purchasing power, is growing strongly, especially here in Asia, and is a key driver of demand for packaged food. By 2030, another 700 million people are expected to join the global middle class, making it more than half of the world's population. People are also living longer. The number of people over 60 is expected to double by 2050 to just over 2 billion. This aging population faces the twin challenges of wanting to stay healthier longer while also having to combat the global increase in obesity and diabetes. One in 11 of the world's adult population today are estimated to be living with diabetes. The third factor is climate change, which we're all seeing impact our daily lives. Lastly, the fast adoption of technology, which is leading to society driven by both speed and convenience.
Along with the global megatrends, there are key consumer trends that are affecting how people are increasingly purchasing and consuming their food and drink. We see this in four ways. The first is the desire to be in control of what we eat and drink. People want to understand what's in their food they're buying and to ensure it reflects their values. Transparency about the sustainability of products, nutritional claims, and labeling are all increasingly important areas. The second is a trend we've seen for a while and continues to grow during and after the pandemic. The desire for healthier food. Consumers are looking for products that are lower in sugar, calories, and fat, and which contain additional nutrition such as fiber and protein. People also want to eat more plant-based food. The third trend is all about the pleasure and celebration of food.
The restrictions of Covid lockdowns, especially here in Asia, consumers are looking to embrace new sensory experiences and indulge every now and then. Finally, as you'd expect, with the cost of living crisis affecting people across the world, value for money is a key part of purchasing decisions. Convenience is also important. For example, working from home has meant people are snacking at home much more often. While there are some regional differences, overall, people want healthy, tasty, and convenient food, which is both sustainable and affordable. That plays directly into the sweet spot of Tate & Lyle's portfolio and expertise. As Nick said earlier, we're very well placed to benefit from these trends, given our leading positions in sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification, and across the intersection of all three.
We are experts in taking sugar and calorie out of food, enhancing its texture and mouthfeel experience, as well as improving nutritional profile by adding in fiber and protein. We also have the capabilities to help our customers reformulate products to optimize cost as they require. I'm now gonna hand it over to my colleague, Bill Magee in Chicago, to talk about our platforms, portfolio, and growth opportunity in more detail. Bill, over to you.
Thanks, Andrew. Good afternoon, everyone from Chicago. I'm Bill Magee, and I'm President of our North American business, and I've been in this role since 2018. I'm gonna talk today about our three platforms and some of the growth opportunities within them, starting with sweetening. Tate & Lyle has over 100 years of sweetening experience, and today we are the world leader in sweetening solutions and sugar and calorie reduction. The addressable market for specialty ingredients for sweetening is large, at $5.2 billion, and is expected to grow at approximately 6% each year for the next four years. The demand for sugar reduction in food and beverage continues to grow.
Today, 7% of all new products launched globally over the last two years made a sugar reduction claim, and that's in addition to existing products being sold already on the market that have been reformulated to reduce or eliminate sugar. People's awareness of their personal health has also increased significantly following the pandemic, where about 40% of consumers are saying they're more conscious of low sugar products than before the pandemic. It's not just consumers who are looking to reduce their sugar intake. Governments and regulators are focused on sugar reduction too, as healthcare costs continue to increase around the world. While the opportunity within the specialty food ingredient market is sizable, the real opportunity lies in further penetration of the large market for sugar.
Sugar still maintains 80% share of the global sweetener market. The sugar replacement opportunity across all four categories alone is estimated at $3 billion. We're focused on this opportunity in every part of the world. This slide shows the ingredients in Tate & Lyle Sugar and Calorie Reduction Toolbox. No other company has this range of sweetening products and solutions and the expertise to apply them, and particularly in combination. This is a critical piece as more and more sugar reduction claims use a combination of sweeteners rather than just one. Removing sugar from a product sounds simple, sugar does so much more than just sweeten. It lowers freezing temperature and elevates boiling point. Sometimes sugar acts as a preservative, and sometimes it provides the ability to hold water and moisture. Understanding the complexity of sweetening solutions is critical.
Probably the greatest challenge is making sure products maintain the same sensory experience after sugar has been removed. There are real challenges in maintaining mouthfeel, bulk, and texture. Through our portfolio of sweeteners, texturants, and fibers, we can build back the taste experience consumers love. Let me give you an example. In this case, a customer wanted to reduce the amount of sugar and calories in one of its popular cakes. Removing sugar from a cake is challenging because it not only sweetens the product, but it also provides bulk and keeps the cake moist. Food scientists here at Tate & Lyle had to deploy a lot of science and application expertise to find a way to replace the sugar while retaining the same great taste and functionality.
Developing a sweetening solution with erythritol, stevia, and allulose in combination, our technical experts were able to reduce calories by 23%, carbohydrates by 39%, and total sugars by 89%. They also cleaned up the label and maintained the product's great taste. On our sweetening platform, a word about sucralose. This ingredient remains an important part of our sugar reduction toolbox and customer offering. Market demand continues to grow with new product launches containing sucralose growing by 3% each year over the last four years. Our strategy remains to focus on customers who value the benefits our Splenda sucralose provides, including supply chain security and the clinical and regulatory support that we provide to our customers. We also benefit from being the only producer of sucralose outside China. Moving on to mouthfeel.
Tate & Lyle's ability to predict and modify mouthfeel is a key differentiator in the solutions that we provide to our customers. In many cases, consumers like or dislike a food simply because of how it feels in your mouth. Mouthfeel is mostly affected by the texture of food together with how it tastes and smells. Given that 80% of consumers make their choices based on taste, it's essential that we can identify what mouthfeel consumers prefer. This specialty ingredient addressable market for texture is large, at $7 billion, and it's expected to grow at around 6% over the next four years. Tate & Lyle's mouthfeel and texturing portfolio is extensive, with over 290 starches and gums providing a range of functional benefits, including gelling, thickening, emulsifying, film forming, and bulking.
In simple terms, it means our starches ensure snacks remain crispy, cakes don't crumble, frozen meals remain stable, and yogurts have a rich and indulgent texture. This platform includes our clean label offering, where we know 84% of consumers read labels because they want to know what ingredients are in the food that they're eating. It's not surprising they are increasingly choosing products that feel less processed, simpler, or just more natural. Many of our starches, such as our CLARIA® clean label starches, have all the functional benefits of modified starches, but can be labeled as a simple starch and therefore provide a cleaner label for the consumer. Let's look at our mouthfeel expertise in action with a customer example. As more people turn to vegan and flexitarian lifestyles, plant-based food and drinks are becoming increasingly popular.
With our decades of dairy formulation experience, we help customers develop great-tasting alternatives to dairy staples. One such company is Oatly, the world's original and largest oat drink company. Last year, our dairy application experts in Lübeck, Germany, worked with Oatly's research and development team in Sweden to develop a custom-made solution for its oat-based dairy-free whipping cream. Developing this whipping cream had presented Oatly with quite a few challenges, so we had to think creatively about how we could best support them from initial prototypes through to lab and factory trials. To develop plant-based alternatives to dairy products, you need to balance the key components, water, vegetable fats, and proteins, to replicate the texture, taste, and eating experience that people love. This was no easy task, but working with the customer, our scientists achieved this using a solution based on our HAMULTEC® stabilizer system.
The project resulted in a successful launch of Oatly's whippable creamy oat product, now available in 10 countries across Europe, including Germany and the U.K. Moving to our third platform, fortification, which for Tate & Lyle is dietary fibers with a small presence today in plant proteins. The addressable market for fortification ingredients is large at $6.5 billion and is expected to grow at approximately 6% each year. Dietary fiber is an exciting growth opportunity as people are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of getting more fiber in their diets for a host of benefits. It's not surprising that 50% of consumers say they plan to eat or drink more fiber in the future, and 65% say they associate fiber with boosting immune health.
Here's a short video all about fiber and its health benefits from our Global Head of Regulatory and Nutrition, Kavita Karnik.
The World Health Organization tells us to consume at least 25 g of fiber per day as adults. None of us are actually meeting that requirement. The gap between what we actually consume and what the recommendations are is called the fiber gap. Immunity is on everyone's mind as we go through the global pandemic. Food and diet is one of the factors consumers can control to support their immune system. Fibers through their action on gut health, gut microbiota, and also through gut barrier function, affect various aspects of immunity in order to improve the outcomes, even if you do get infections in the current context. A fiber is a complex carbohydrate that travels through your stomach and small intestine without being digested.
As a result of that, it has negligible calories, it hardly has an impact on your blood glucose levels, and it makes you feel full for longer. Fibers such as PROMITOR have been shown to have a beneficial impact on maintenance of blood glucose levels and also help with weight management. Some fibers have also been shown to impact cholesterol levels and help reduce cholesterol levels. In longer term, some fibers have been shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and also help to reduce the risk of developing type two diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
We take a look at fiber intake, the World Health Organization recommends that adults eat at least 25 g of fiber every day, but most people are not getting anywhere near enough, and in many cases, nowhere near enough. This is important as low fiber intake is associated with high levels of cardiovascular disease and diabetes and can disrupt the beneficial gut microbiome. Bridging the fiber gap, as we call it, is a key challenge for both consumers and food and beverage manufacturers. The global leader in soluble fibers, Tate & Lyle is well-positioned to help consumers bridge this gap. Fibers have distinctive attributes in many food and beverage categories, including sugar and calorie reduction, as well as fiber fortification.
Our fortification toolbox today consists of PROMITOR soluble fibers and STA-LITE Polydextrose fibers, and our recently acquired FOS and GOS fibers means we have the broadest range of fibers in the market. Our toolbox is completed by our chickpea protein and flour products. While this is a small business for us today, our ability to offer sustainable plant-based protein solutions is generating very strong customer interest and great collaboration opportunities. We have leading expertise in all three platforms, but what really sets us apart is our ability to put them together and formulate across the intersection of sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification. I'll walk you through a customer example of this in action.
Bomparte, a customer in the U.S. making low-fat ice cream, wanted to relaunch one of their brands to reduce the level of sugar and calories per serving to lower the impact on blood sugar levels and make it diabetic and keto-friendly. Taking their base formulation, using our ingredients and technical expertise across all three platforms, we developed a complete solution using ingredients including DOLCIA PRIMA allulose and PROMITOR soluble corn fiber. This solution reduced the level of sugar and calories, while at the same time building back the mouthfeel and taste experience of a full sugar indulgent ice cream. Our customer was delighted with the final product. That's all on our platforms for now. I'm gonna hand you back to Andrew, who's going to talk about the markets we operate in and how we target higher growth subcategories around the world. Andrew, over to you.
Thanks, Bill, for that deeper dive into our platforms and portfolio. I'm now gonna cover our markets and growth opportunity. As Nick mentioned in his opening remarks, we operate across three regions, the developed markets of North America and Europe, and large and fast-growing markets in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. In line with our strategic growth framework, each region has a clear focus and priority. In North America and Europe, where we have been operating for many decades and have long-standing customer relationships, our priority is to grow above the specialty ingredient market growth of around 5%-6%. In Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, where historically we've had a smaller business, our priority is to accelerate growth above the market.
Over the last five years, we've delivered just that, with North America and Europe growing revenue by a compound annual growth rate of 7% and 5% respectively. In Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America, up by 9%. North America is our largest region and has been growing strongly with a compound growth rate of 7% over the last four years compared to 4% in the broader North America food and beverage market. As I'll explain later, this growth has come from a strong focus on high-growth subcategories where solutions are truly advantaged. New products have also been a strong contributor, representing 18% of the region's revenue last year. Improved product mix and absolute focus on serving the customer are also important factors in the region's success.
If you look at Tate & Lyle's GBP 19 billion addressable market for specialty ingredients, 25% is in North America, but the majority, 52% is in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America regions. Asia represents our largest region with 37% of our addressable market and is a key opportunity for our company in the coming years. Many of the consumer trends I referenced before, such as sugar reduction, fiber fortification, and plant-based foods, are increasingly growing in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, Africa markets. For example, plant-based products grew globally at a compound rate of about 11% between 2017 and 2022. However, this opportunity grew by 2x that rate across Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, and Africa. Given our portfolio of ingredients and solutions is plant-based, we're well-positioned to capture this growth.
This is why over the last few years, we've been investing in our infrastructure and platforms to build our presence in these regions. We've expanded or opened six new innovation and customer collaboration centers over the last four years, and we are in the process of significantly expanding our innovation and commercial development laboratories here in Asia as well. Along with the innovation centers, we're fully accelerating our growth profile through acquisitions, and three of our four recent acquisitions have been here in Asia. As I mentioned, a key driver of growth is shifting our focus and investment into those higher growth subcategories. This is something we piloted in North America a few years ago and has become integral to the way Food & Beverage Solutions operates in all regions. Our approach is simple.
Through our three platforms of sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification, we focus on our four core categories of dairy, beverages, soup sauces and dressings, and bakery and snacks. Within each of these categories, there are numerous subcategories offering opportunities for even higher growth, and a few examples of which are listed on this slide. In each region, we have consumer insights experts who analyze consumer and category trends by region and by country to assess the relevance and growth potential of the various subcategories. This insight truly is the foundation of how we decide which categories to focus on. We also talk with customers to understand their priorities, and we size the subcategories to ensure they have a large enough addressable market and also an attractive growth rate. Let me give you two very different examples. Within the beverage category, an attractive subcategory in North America is ready-to-drink tea.
The global market's growing around 7%. In North America, growth is around 10%. With our portfolio of sweeteners such as stevia and sucralose, together with our expertise in sugar and calorie reduction, we're ideally placed to support our customers in this subcategory. While we work with customers in different ways, depending on their needs, here we use what we call a Prototype Pantry approach to find the right solution for a customer. This includes creating several ready-to-drink tea variations to optimize the right formula. Another example is the yogurt category in China. The global yogurt market is sizable at $2.2 billion and is expected to grow at 6%. In China alone, the market's over $570 million and is growing around 7%.
Given the size of the market, that's an attractive subcategory for us and an area of particular expertise for our team here in China. Pulling this all together, we believe Tate & Lyle has a distinct and advantage customer proposition, where the market leaders in our three platforms with the broadest portfolio of sweeteners and fibers. We have unique scientific and applications expertise at the intersections of our three platforms and deep category insights in the area where sugar, mouthfeel, and fortification are critical. We underpin this with local capabilities in nutrition, regulatory, sensory, and applications. All these work together to enable us to provide our customers with the solutions they need to win in their local markets. In summary then, we operate in large and attractive addressable markets. Our specialty portfolio is aligned to structural consumer trends.
We have strong opportunities for growth across all our platforms and a sharp focus on higher growth subcategories. We're growing ahead of the market in developed markets and increasing our presence in the large and fast-growing markets of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Overall, Tate & Lyle is very well positioned to grow ahead of the market. That's all for me, so I'll now hand it back to Nick and Linda.
Thank you, Andrew and Bill. We are now going to talk about R&D, innovation, and customer solutions. I'll give you a brief overview of our innovation organization, performance, and pipeline, and then our President of Innovation and Commercial Development, Victoria Spadaro Grant, is going to talk about our approach to integrated solutions, the ways of working we are developing with our customers, and how we are helping create the food of the future. Science and innovation are at the heart of how we deliver our strategy. As I said earlier, we have invested over $200 million over the last four years to strengthen our innovation capabilities and infrastructure. Why is innovation so important for us and our customers? It's because ingredient science is at the very center of the food chain. It's the glue that holds it all together and brings new ideas to market.
We take agricultural crops such as stevia, chickpea, corn, and tapioca, and using over a century of scientific and technical know-how, turn them into highly functional food ingredients and solutions. Our customers increasingly rely on the innovation expertise of ingredient suppliers like Tate & Lyle to solve the challenges of food reformulation to deliver nutritional improvements in taste. It's not just about solving today's challenges. Our scientists are also working to create the next generation of specialty ingredients and solutions, developing new technologies and using new substrates. Innovation within Tate & Lyle is driven by our Innovation and Commercial Development team, or ICD, as we call it. This structure encompasses everything in one organization that is needed to take an idea from inception to commercial launch. This helps our customers get to market faster and encourages greater experimentation and collaboration.
Both our research and development and our platform management teams are aligned to our three platforms of sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification. Our platform teams identify the most attractive areas of the market and ideas for new products. These are worked on by our research and development team. This team consists of highly trained PhD scientists in areas such as biochemistry, starch chemistry, and sweetener science who are all experts in their fields. Our solutions innovation team take these products and using their category expertise and understanding of the food matrix, create solutions for our customers in their local markets. Creating great solutions isn't all that is needed for commercial success. Regulatory approval is required to sell a product, and what's on the label is an increasingly important part of a product's consumer proposition.
ICD provides regulatory support to our customers in all our key markets, alongside labeling advice, nutrition science, and marketing and consumer insights. Finally, there is open innovation. We've invested more time and attention to this over the last few years, working with startups and academic organizations to find new ingredients and technologies to support our business today and into the future. Our innovation approach has delivered strong results, delivering growth in revenue from new products every year since 2012, and a compound annual growth rate of 18% since 2018. We launched over 50 products from our innovation pipeline during that period, including groundbreaking innovations like our TASTEVA M stevia sweetener, which enables customers to formulate with stevia without the bitter aftertaste, and innovative line extensions such as a highly successful range of PROMITOR fibers and CLARIA starches.
It's also worth remembering that all new products revert to the core portfolio when they reach a predetermined period. The growth shown is stronger than it looks as periodically, ingredients are removed from revenue figures. Our approach has enabled us to build a strong innovation pipeline across all three platforms. The value of our pipeline has more than doubled in the last four years and now stands at over $400 million, reflecting not only a step up in our scientific capabilities, but also closer collaboration on innovation with our key customers. Ensuring that our new and existing ingredients can be applied to our customers' products in their local markets is critical. To support our customers, we've invested in a global network of 16 innovation and customer collaboration centers.
This is important as consumer preferences across the world are different, whether it's the amount of sweetness in a product or the way it feels in the mouth. That's why our customers come to our centers to work with our application scientists to reformulate their products with our ingredients and solutions to suit their local markets. Given the size and significant growth opportunity in Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, because in our experience, customers in these markets tend to innovate more quickly, 75% of our centers are located in these markets. The way we collaborate with customers differs depending on their needs. This is split broadly into three different types of collaboration. Firstly, where the customer provides us with a clear specification for an ingredient requires no or minimal technical support.
About 60% by value of our new business wins coming out of our new business pipeline represents this sort of specification requirement. The next type is where a customer has developed an in-house recipe, asks us to provide an ingredient for that recipe, and also needs some technical or process support to ensure our ingredient performance is as required in their final product. This represents 24% of new business wins. The third type of collaboration is where we work hand in hand with the customer's R&D and marketing teams from concept to launch, sharing resources and facilities, and providing prototyping services. The end product is then tailored specifically to the customer's needs and to meet consumer preferences. Solutions represent 16% by value of new business wins coming out of our new business pipeline.
All three types of collaboration provide an important service to our customers, whether it's a highly functional ingredient to make a recipe or product work, or a full-service solution to launch a new product into the market. Collaborating on solutions has a number of benefits. The value of the ingredients used in solutions tends to be higher, about 2 x higher on average. It's a more sticky sale as the solution directly solves a customer's challenge, and it builds strong and more intimate relationships with customers, often leading to more new business. That's why, as Dawn will talk about later, our ambition is to double solutions as a percentage of our new business wins from 16% to more than 30% over the next five years. The aim of our innovation engine is threefold: To improve the customer experience, grow our solutions business, and capture more value.
How are we going to do this? We have asked Julia Glotz, a freelance food journalist and former managing editor of the U.K.'s The Grocer, to join us and to sit down with Victoria Spadaro Grant, our President of Innovation and Commercial Development, to discuss our innovation approach, what we mean by an integrated solution, and how we are working differently with customers. With that, over to you, Julia.
Thanks so much, Nick. Victoria, welcome. It's great to talk with you today. You have a really exciting story to share with us about how Tate & Lyle is transforming its approach to innovation and the way it works with its customers. I have lots of questions for you about that. Before we dive into the details, I thought it might be useful for our audience to provide a bit of context on you, who you are, your background, and the experience from the food industry that you bring to your role at Tate & Lyle. You are a relatively recent addition to the senior leadership team at Tate & Lyle. You joined in November 2020, is that right?
That is right.
Could you just give us a quick overview how you ended up working in food and what you did before you joined Tate & Lyle?
I have a scientific background that comes from degrees that I have that range from mathematics to computer science, from biochemistry to food engineering. As a scientist, I have taken very early on a career in the food industry. I have worked in the consumer-facing food industry, food and beverage industry all my life, that is 30 years. I have to tell you that the amount of changes that I have seen in the past five to seven years are absolutely massive and kind of dwarf whatever has happened in the previous 20 years. It is really exciting to be at Tate & Lyle right here, right now talking to you because Tate & Lyle does sit at the center of all this phenomenal revolution.
It's more than an evolution, it's really a revolution that's taking place in the food industry.
I want to take you back to 2020, a year of big change for everyone. Also a year of very big change for you personally and for your career, because that's when you joined Tate & Lyle. I'm saying that was a big change, not just because you left one company and joined another, but you also switched sides. Up until that point, you had always been on the customer side. Now suddenly, you find yourself on the ingredients side. I'm really intrigued to understand what inspired that change in direction.
What was it that you saw at Tate & Lyle in particular that made you want to join them?
It's really hard to give you a singular answer. That is because, as I was telling you before, there have been massive changes taking place in the food industry with regards to the blurring that is happening across pharma, biotech, and the food industries. New technologies have been enabled in the food industry by pharma technologies, pharma science, biotechnology, biotech science, that really have allowed us to create new foods in a commercial viable way, reaching consumers in ways that we haven't done before. You think about the world of alternative foods, the plant-based, this is all new, and it's all enabled by the blurring of technologies. That's one factor.
As we think that, Tate & Lyle being an ingredient supplier of sweeteners, mouth feel and texture ingredients, and fortification ingredients, really sitting at the center of much of this change in the ways that we make, we design these ingredients, and we make these ingredients. That is a big attraction being a scientist as well. Tate & Lyle has the biggest and largest group that I have seen together of very talented people. Last but not least, the portfolio quality that Tate & Lyle has because of the focus that Tate & Lyle has, is just incredible and a great base to build upon.
It's because you have that customer side experience that you are very much focused now on making sure Tate & Lyle becomes a company that is, as you put it, customer obsessed. You have a vision for how you want Tate & Lyle to work with its customers, and how you want the innovation culture to evolve. Tell us a bit about that vision. What changes would you like to see?
Tate & Lyle has for many years been a company that has been in a customer journey obsession. When Nick joined Tate & Lyle, I think that journey got started, and it's well underway. The work that we have been doing lately really puts the accent on many of the things that we need to do more of, investing more in, so we can become the in and the out, the first call that any customer makes when they have to solve the most complex or simplest, but generally the most complex challenges that they face, that a customer faces. When you think about the platforms where we have ingredients and we operate and we develop solutions, those solutions are difficult.
They are difficult because when you're taking sugar out, when you're taking fat out, you're taking bulk ingredients that provide a functionality and provide bulk, weight, volume. That task is not simple and requires lots of scientific expertise, knowledge of how the formula works together for the customer and the consumer ultimately, to make sure that you're continuously delivering delicious foods because let's not forget, at the end of the day, taste is king. If we don't have taste, if the customer doesn't have a delicious product, there is nothing behind. Really to emphasize, I think that we are indeed in a unique position as Tate & Lyle, not only to be able to deliver that tasty formula, but to do it with ingredients that will help the healthfulness, the nutritional balance that the formula has. Healthier foods that are delicious.
I just wanna drill into this point about the customer focus a little bit further, because as you say, it's all about understanding what customers need. Let me ask you a slightly blunt question. What do customers need? What do they want, and what are they looking for from Tate & Lyle today, and what might that look like tomorrow?
Customers have a lot in their plates. No doubt about it. There are a lot of pressures that they get from retailers or chains that they serve. Whatever it is, there is a lot. On top of that, you think about all the innovation pipeline that they need to keep active, so their products sell. On top of that, reformulation efforts that these days any food company has. Cost of formulas or regulatory requirements or commitments that company makes to improve the healthfulness of their foods are common currency these days. That has been a key platform for Tate & Lyle to drive growth because of the type of solutions we can offer to customers.
You've already touched at various points on the importance of scientific expertise. It's absolutely central to what you do at Tate & Lyle because, as you mentioned earlier, the work you do with your customers can be very complex. Reformulation, in particular, can be very complex. You need that deep scientific expertise. Can you just paint a brief picture of the kind of scientific expertise that Tate & Lyle brings to the table?
You need to have what I would call three core type of competencies. Those obviously are not just that. They deploy into many type of skills that you need to have available in order to drive the type of business we are in. The first one is about the basic science capabilities, for example, organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, biochemistry, process engineering, science. All of that is really important to be able to go from the design of the molecule all the way into the scale-up of the molecule, again, in a commercial way, which means cost-effectively. When I think of that, the example that comes to mind is allulose. Allulose, for the longest time, has been a molecule that has been known, very rare in nature, natural, yet nobody had been able to scale that commercially, meaning cost-effectively.
We invented and devised the processes that would make allulose commercially viable. Today, we are able to commercialize very successfully allulose, main market being North America, because of the set of inventions that led to that commercially viable alternative. The second pillar is about the application science, the material science knowledge, which means fancy words. It means how does the ingredient or the ingredient solution perform in the formula of the customer, in the food or the beverage, in a cake, in a bar, in a drink? Understanding that is a lot of science because you take sugar, you put a blend of stevia, allulose, monk fruit. That's not it. You have to compensate that sugar with fibers, with maybe some mouth feel starches or some gums or a blend of it all.
Understanding how at a molecular level those perform and behave and interact and maintain the functionality throughout the shelf life of the product is critically important, as it is having the capabilities from a sensory perspective to measure how consumers like the product and why they like it. The third pillar is related to the nutrition and regulatory capabilities, scientific capabilities that we need to have in order to be able to develop value-based claims for the customer. These are claims that hold an actual value to the customer because they can talk about it in front of pack or in softer claims, and the regulatory frameworks that we can provide so the customer can appropriately label the product for the markets that the products are sold, or the market that the product is sold.
This focus on scientific and technical expertise is also reflected in how your portfolio is structured. That's actually changed quite a bit recently as Tate & Lyle has transformed to focus fully on providing speciality food and beverage solutions. Now you have three innovation platforms that you work with. Tell us a bit about those innovation platforms, and why exactly is the portfolio speciality?
I love your question because it shines the light on the kind of science and focus that Tate & Lyle has. Tate & Lyle has a very strong focus on sweeteners, mouthfeel and texture, and fortification. Sweeteners are low calorie, no calorie ingredients. Mouthfeel and texture are modified, highly functional, modified starches and gums. Fortification are fibers and incipient business that we have in plant-based proteins. We organize the business along those three platforms, and that's how we drive innovation. The magic happens at the intersection of the three of them, because that's when you start creating very high value solutions for the customers. It's not just about the sweeteners. It's not just about the mouthfeel. It's not just about the fortification.
It's the combinations that you can do to address the different challenges or opportunities or projects that customers have. That's where the future of their foods is going, and that's how we impact society as well.
We started the conversation talking about your vision, but we should probably make clear this isn't just a vision for the future. There's a lot of work happening already. You've already done some internal restructures, you've expanded some infrastructure, and there are more changes coming down the track. Can you just bring us up to speed on the kinds of changes that are already happening within Tate & Lyle right now to make the company more customer-obsessed, and what further changes customers can expect in the coming months?
If it wasn't clear, I expect that we all become maniacally focused on the customers. Like I said, Nick started the journey several years ago, and myself coming from the industry and putting more accent even on that. One thing that probably has not been as prevalent to customers interacting with Tate & Lyle, while we have a phenomenal portfolio, we have probably the strongest science out there, not sure that it was always as visible to the customers. The expressions are in the prototypes, in the prototypes that come before even the prototypes, and how those interactions with the customers happen. One of the evolutions that we have done in our organization is integrating the research and the development of the ingredients. Remember that design of the molecules, all the way to the deployment, meaning the application of those molecules and everything in between.
What I'm talking about is the understanding of those molecules, those ingredients in whichever one of those three platforms, the sweetening, the mouthfeel and texture or fortification, interact in the recipe of the food or the beverage. Integrating that had made it seamless at a global level to be able to come up with solutions to the toughest and most difficult problems that customers face. A great example of the journey of customer obsession we've been going on is the work we have been doing with a very large Mexican food and beverage manufacturer, and I think it would be great to hear from them.
Fantastic. Let's take a look.
We worked in a differentiated way to present to a key customer a new experience. We showed them our consumer knowledge in the mayonnaise dressing category and some of our technical and sensory capabilities that allow us to innovate in texture and mouthfeel. Their reaction was very positive, and they saw how we could work together in their ideation process. Why don't we hear it directly from them?
Hola. Mi nombre es Anaín Becerra y soy líder de innovación tecnológica de producto en una empresa de alimentos muy importante en México que maneja varias categorías, este, desde salsas, aderezos, incluso hasta helados, bebidas y una cantidad más de categorías. Ya que nos han apoyado a arrancar procesos de ideación que normalmente no estábamos ejecutando y nos han ayudado a aterrizar ideas y sobre todo a consolidar los conceptos que estamos creando desde una etapa muy temprana, pues para que nuestros productos sean cada vez más exitosos y.
En ese caso, tengo así como super presente un caso que tuvimos en mi parecer muy complicado porque estábamos explorando sobre traer nuevas texturas a cierta categoría y Tate nos ayudó a aterrizar estos conceptos en productos, porque justo tienen como todo este expertise técnico en donde conocen a la perfección todas las categorías y nos ayudaron a crear estos conceptos y estas fórmulas y estos productos de una manera muy sencilla y sobre todo cumpliendo con esta experiencia de una textura diferenciadora. Fue como tan bueno el involucramiento porque justo se inmiscuyeron desde el entendimiento de lo que estábamos buscando, de nuestro reto, hasta, pues entregarnos como una solución supercompleta en un reto, digamos, como técnico y ya de producto.
solamente agradecer a Tate & Lyle y a todo su equipo por siempre estar como tan al pendiente de todos los proyectos y los retos que tenemos y sobre todo por siempre mantenernos a la vanguardia, pues de todos los nuevos productos, nuevos ingredientes que están incorporando, porque eso también nos ayuda a enfocar las, los desarrollos que tenemos en el departamento de innovación.
Another important aspect of your vision is this idea of providing integrated solutions to customers. You're gonna have to explain that one to me. What precisely do you mean when you say integrated solution? How does providing an integrated solution change the way you work with customers?
These integrated solutions that I was mentioning before are nothing else than the ability to deliver for the customer the ingredient solution in their product that has, at times, maybe a nutritional claim that benefits the consumers and the customer can profit from. Importantly, the sensory-embedded, if you would, qualifications to guarantee to the customer that it is the best tasting in the competitive set alongside, of course, with the regulatory framework. At the end of the day, the customer will have to label the ingredient or the ingredient solution in their pack and how best to do that. We have those capabilities, and we constantly and routinely offer that as part of the value add that Tate & Lyle brings to the table.
How does all of that affect your innovation pipeline? How do you manage your innovation pipeline now? What does that process look like?
At Tate & Lyle, we manage our innovation pipeline by platform. We have three platforms. We have the sweetening platform, we have the mouthfeel and texture platform, and we have the fortification platform. To think about that, we have what we call line extensions, so variants of products that we already have in the portfolio for each one of those platforms. We have new to Tate & Lyle innovation, which could be products that exist out there, but we don't have in our portfolio, or it could be breakthrough innovation. A really good example of breakthrough innovation is the one on allulose, where we actually invented the process by which the allulose could be commercially available at an effective cost for the customer and ultimately the consumer. For us, having a very healthy innovation pipeline is as important as water
That is because we depend on maintaining our leadership as the best ingredient solution supplier in the areas of sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification to be able to provide to the customer the best possible solutions. We cannot afford not having the best solution. We have to have the best, the latest, and deliver to the market in the fastest time.
Which I think nicely brings us back to that point about scientific expertise that you mentioned several times.
Some of the things that I find really interesting about the ingredients you supply is that we're often talking about fairly small quantities. What you supply might account for less than 5% of the final product, but that 5% is absolutely transformational for your customers because it might enable them to make a claim about the product, be it reduced sugar or added fiber. Of course, to support that functionality, you do quite a lot of clinical and scientific research. Can you just talk to us about the kind of research you do and what sorts of ingredients and functionality you're currently exploring?
We are a science-driven company. Science is at the core and the heart of everything we do to develop the solutions. I think the best way to think about it, and when I look at other companies, and I try to understand what is the scientific rigor and what is the scientific capability that the company holds, I look at their IP library, intellectual property library, and I look at the collaborations, and I look at the publications. Yes, I'm talking about publications being a company. Publications are very important because they validate the benefits or claims that you may want to do for an ingredient or for a food in peer-reviewed articles. This is hard science. When it comes to the IP library, we are holding at the moment 450 patents, and we have 400 pending applications.
When it comes to publications. In the past five years, we have published over 30 papers in the areas of fiber and the benefits of fiber, being that on memory, immune health, cardiovascular health, in the areas of sweeteners. We have seven more being published over the next 12 months. To me, that speaks volumes about the work that we do, the science that we hold, the rigor of the science, and therefore the guarantee that we are to the customers that work with us.
I was really interested in what you just said about collaborations and partnerships. How many of your ideas typically come from in-house, and how many come from external partners?
We have very strong innovation capabilities, we have very strong innovation capabilities because we have very strong science fundamentals. That is not by chance. That is by design. The reason that we have very strong fundamentals is because we don't stay with what we know. Curiosity is a trait in our scientific community at Tate & Lyle, we are constantly scanning to understand what is the latest science that will lead to the best next design of an ingredient molecule or process development, we can be even more efficient, more sustainable in the way that we do things. We happen to have such strong fundamentals, we are a very sought-after partner for many ideators around the world.
Ideators many times have really, really good ideas, but making that scale in a cost-effective way is very difficult, and that is something that we really know how to do. Over the years, we have developed a very rich ecosystem with which we partner with to fuel our innovation pipeline to support their innovation efforts that at the end of the day Acts in parallel and helps our own innovation pipeline as well. I think that Zymtronix, which is a company, that we have a very good collaboration in place, is a very good example of how we do this.
My name is Ben Cogier. I've got a PhD in environmental biotechnology back from France, and I came to the U.S. to develop biofuels at Cornell University. I love technologies that can be integrated and solve big problems, you know, energy, environment, food. Thanks to this and the technology that I developed at Cornell, we created Zymtronix, a cell-free biomanufacturing platform that is able to use different pieces of living organisms in order to produce new ingredients that can be transformative. Tate & Lyle, for us, is a partner.
you know, we learned a tremendous amount of, you know, knowledge from developing the processes, developing the enzymes, understanding, you know, the production of giant quantities, you know, of ingredients, which is not something that a startup truly see really early on. Food as the first medicine is not a concept. It's reality. I think, you know, the fact that Tate & Lyle already thinks about this and is a leader in that space makes, you know, again, a very powerful and powerful company to be a leader in the future.
We're nearly out of time, but before I let you go, I want to quiz you a little bit on the future of food, because as you mentioned, your team is constantly scanning the horizon, looking for what's next. You yourself have spent most of your career at the cutting edge of food science. What's on your radar right now? What do you think will be the big next thing in food and ingredients?
Obesity, undernutrition are incredible forces that will further coalesce the blurring between the industries that I had mentioned before, pharma, biotech, and food, to enable better production. By better, I mean less water, more reduced spaces via fermentation, for example, or very precise enzymatic conversions and better use of thermal energy to make products for our customers. When we think about the future of foods, and we think about the role that our ingredients need to play in the future of foods, I think that we have an enormous responsibility in ensuring that we continuously keep that innovation pipeline and we deliver to the market the ingredients that will support our customers driving that future of foods.
Victoria, thank you for a great conversation. Back to you, Nick.
Julia, thank you very much. Of course, Victoria, thank you to you. That was really fascinating. As Victoria explained, we are very focused on driving near-term growth through innovation, as well as developing new ingredients and solutions that will keep us at the center of food into the future. It's time for me to hand over to Dawn, who's going to talk about our financial framework.
Thank you, Nick. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Dawn Allen, chief financial officer. I'm going to take you through our financial framework and how it delivers long-term sustainable performance and strong shareholder returns. As you have heard from my colleagues, new Tate & Lyle is a growth-focused specialty ingredient and solutions business. We operate in attractive markets, which are both large and fast-growing, with leading positions in sweetening, mouthfeel, and fortification.
Our strong financial position gives us the ability to invest to grow. We are investing in building capability in innovation, solution selling, and customer partnerships together with increased growth-focused capital expenditure. These investments, alongside our productivity program, give us confidence we can deliver accelerated margin-accretive organic growth. On top of this, M&A provides the potential to further accelerate this growth.
Bringing all this together with a disciplined approach to cash generation and capital allocation, we expect to drive attractive returns on investment and deliver strong shareholder returns. First, let me begin by explaining in a bit more detail what we aim to deliver, starting with our ambition for the next five years that Nick laid out earlier. As a reminder, this is to grow revenue 4%-6% per annum, to grow EBITDA 7%-9% per year, and to deliver an increase on our return on capital employed of up to 50 basis points each year. As well as deliver a new productivity target with total benefits of $100 million, which I will come back to later. You will see that the total growth and return on capital employed ambition are unchanged from our previously stated ambition. What has changed is the profit measure.
From operating margin expansion to a new absolute EBITDA growth ambition, as well as the introduction of a new five-year productivity target. The reasons why we have changed our profit measure are threefold. Firstly, to better reflect our growth focus as the new Tate & Lyle, providing more flexibility to invest and grow absolute profit. Secondly, for ease of comparative performance measurement. EBITDA is the profit metric used by many of our specialty ingredient peers. Thirdly, to reflect the current context. Growth in absolute EBITDA is more practical in today's unusually high inflation environment. This change does not dilute in any way our determination to drive further margin accretion as we deliver improved mix through solution selling and operational leverage. Our ambition reflects the attractive organic growth opportunity of our business.
Alongside this, our strong balance sheet provides the potential to deliver further value accretive growth through targeted M&A. I will return to this later. Our business is comprised of three very different parts, Food & Beverage Solutions, sucralose, Primary Products Europe. Each one plays a different role in delivery of our overall strategy. Food & Beverage Solutions is the growth engine of the business. Its role is to drive margin accretive growth. Revenue is expected to grow at high single digit per annum, which is ahead of the market. Food & Beverage Solutions is also the largest part of our portfolio, comprising over 80% of both our revenue and EBITDA. Sucralose is a strongly cash generative business. Its role is to provide attractive returns.
Our strategy on sucralose is to focus on customers who value our high levels of service and the quality and provenance of our product. Our aim is to maintain high utilization at our single production facility in Alabama and not pursue increased demand if that erodes margins. Reflecting this, revenue is expected to remain broadly flat over the next five years. On Primary Products Europe, we expect revenue on average to decline double-digit % each year as we execute a planned transition away from these lower margin products and use the capacity to fuel growth in Food & Beverage Solutions. The five-year group revenue ambition of 4%-6% reflects our underlying ambition, although in the near term, we expect inflation will accelerate growth ahead of this. Let's dig deeper into Food & Beverage Solutions.
We expect revenue to grow by high single-digit percent each year and to deliver EBITDA growth a few points higher. The driver of this margin accretive growth will come from three areas: volume, price mix, and productivity and operating leverage. Over time, we expect each driver will deliver broadly equal contributions to growth. Let's look at each in more detail, starting with volume. There are four key volume drivers. Firstly, market growth through increased demand for our ingredients and solutions to address growing demand for healthier and tastier food and drink, reinforced by increasing regulation, encouraging healthier consumption. Secondly, an increased share of our customers' business through stronger relationships. Thirdly, geographic expansion, increasing our presence in the large and fast-growing markets of Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, where we see strong opportunities for growth. Fourthly, through R&D led innovation and portfolio expansion.
Turning to price mix, improvements are expected to come from the optimization of customer and product mix, together with a step up in our focus on innovation and solution selling. This benefits us as innovation is margin accretive by design and because solutions can command a price premium. Finally, productivity and operating leverage will also contribute to margin growth as we expect to grow our business faster than our cost base. EBITDA growth ahead of revenue growth will drive margin expansion as we return to a more normal inflationary environment. Reflecting the new shape of the group and the clear role and priorities of each part of the business, we are simplifying our disclosure framework. We will move to three segments: Food & Beverage Solutions, Sucralose, and Primary Products Europe.
Making Primary Products Europe a separate reporting segment will improve transparency, as it will clearly highlight the performance of the Food & Beverage Solutions growth engine. On central costs, as we are now a smaller, more focused business, these costs are better allocated to the segments. This enables even closer alignment of investments to segment strategies as we progress on our solution selling journey. It also means we will no longer report central costs separately. Full restatements to show the impact of these changes will be published ahead of our full year results in May. You have heard about the importance of our investment in innovation and solution selling from Victoria. Let's move on to talk about the key success measures in this space. Over the last four years, we have invested over $200 million in research and development.
This has helped drive revenue growth from new products by a compound annual growth rate of 18%. As a result, we have nearly doubled the size of Food & Beverage Solutions revenue that comes from new products from GBP 95 million in 2018 to GBP 173 million in 2022. This represents a move from 11% to 16% of total Food & Beverage Solutions revenue. Our ambition is to accelerate further our growth from innovation and solution selling. Over the next five years, we will focus on three metrics, two of which are new. Firstly, we plan to continue to focus on new products as a percentage of total Food & Beverage Solutions revenue, increasing our ambition from 16% today to 20%.
To help achieve this, we will introduce a new metric, investment in innovation and solution selling capabilities that we plan to increase by 5% a year. This is a much broader definition than previously used of solely R&D investment and better reflects our total investment in this space. This broader definition includes investments such as capability to build deeper relationships with customers, addition of applications capabilities and resources in our regions, bringing technologies and ingredients into the business through our open innovation program and scientific collaborations such as our partnership with APC Microbiome Ireland focused on the health benefits of fiber. We invested $70 million across R&D and solution selling in fiscal 2022. Accelerating growth from innovation and solution selling requires a stronger output from our new business pipeline, and this represents our second new metric.
Our intention is for solutions revenue from new business wins to double to 32% by 2028. This has averaged 16% over the last three years. Let's move on to another important part of our five-year financial ambition, which is productivity. Since launching our productivity program in 2018, we have made strong progress embedding a culture of productivity and cost discipline across the business. In 2018, we set an ambition to deliver $150 million of productivity benefits over a six-year period to March 2024, and we achieved this ambition in 2022, two years ahead of schedule. Today, we are announcing a new productivity ambition of $100 million over the next five years. We expect around half of these benefits will come from operational efficiencies, both in our global operations function and across the wider business.
The other half from supply chain improvements. Key initiatives include improving our end-to-end customer experience alongside cost optimization and efficiency. Our program will target initiatives of all types, including continuous improvement. Two near-term projects which will both improve the service we provide to customers and reduce costs are firstly, our plant in the Netherlands, where we are improving throughput of our CLARIA clean label starches by de-bottlenecking the process with the need for only modest capital investment. This will create savings by reducing changeover times and avoiding process downtime. Secondly, we are launching a series of continuous improvement activities to optimize the process for making our PROMITOR fibers with no capital investment required.
Finally, on productivity, let me remind you that in the current 2023 financial year, which is not part of our $100 million ambition, we have already increased our productivity target to $50 million, and we are making good progress against that target. It has been over 10 months since we completed the sale of a majority holding in Primient to KPS Capital Partners. This sale had a compelling strategic logic for Tate & Lyle, and we are now seeing those benefits being realized. The sale created two standalone businesses, each positioned to focus on their respective strategies, with Tate & Lyle becoming a focused global Food & Beverage Solutions business. Importantly, the sale has substantially reduced Tate & Lyle's exposure to more volatile commodities markets and to bulk ingredients in North America.
Our stronger balance sheet enables us to focus capital on delivering stronger organic and inorganic growth. Finally, the partnership with KPS provides the opportunity to unlock potential future value in Primient. We are pleased with the way our minority holding is working. We have built a positive relationship with KPS and are already seeing the benefit of cash dividends from Primient. The 20-year agreements put in place to provide supply and economic security for both businesses are operating effectively, and we continue to benefit from the scale and expertise of Primient's corn procurement services, providing us with supply security and allowing us to lock corn prices when we secure customer contracts, which reduces our cost volatility. Today, around 20% of Tate & Lyle's revenue comes from products produced at Primient's plants, and around 5% of Primient's revenue comes from our manufacturing facilities.
Turning to capital allocation, our priority is to continue the disciplined deployment of capital and to maintain our financial strength. Under our capital allocation framework, we have a clear prioritization. Firstly, investment in organic growth. Secondly, investment in acquisitions, joint ventures, and partnerships. Thirdly, our progressive dividend policy. Finally, we will consider returning capital to shareholders over time should it become surplus to the needs of the company. We have a strong balance sheet, giving us flexibility to invest in growth. Looking forward, we want to retain the flexibility to use this balance sheet to drive value accreted growth with long-term efficient leverage in the range of 1x to 2.5x net debt to EBITDA. At the 30th of September, 2022, leverage was at the bottom of that range at 1x net debt to EBITDA.
On M&A, we expect to continue our disciplined approach to making acquisitions. In assessing targets, we will continue to strengthen our customer offering across our three platforms, broaden our portfolio, and expand our presence in fast-growing markets. Recent acquisitions of stevia, tapioca, and fiber businesses in Asia and a chickpea protein business in the U.S. are good examples of us selectively adding depth and quality to our portfolio. We maintain an active pipeline of potential transactions. By their nature, smaller bolt-on acquisition opportunities are more numerous, and our ambition is to execute one to two bolt-on transactions each year. Turning finally to dividends, where Tate & Lyle has a strong and consistent track record. The board operates a progressive dividend policy under which the board will grow the dividend when earnings allow, and hold dividends in other periods. We also aim to increase cash cover over time.
To simplify our approach, interim dividends in future will be paid at the level of one-third of the previous year's full year dividend. A rigorous focus on cash generation is important to preserving our balance sheet strength and providing the fuel for future investment. With this in mind, we are targeting to convert 75% of EBITDA into cash by the 2028 financial year, up from around 50% in the 2022 financial year. Capital expenditure for the current 2023 financial year is expected to be in the range of GBP 90 million-GBP 100 million. We expect this will increase to between GBP 120 million and GBP 150 million per year, which we see as a key investment to drive our growth ambitions of high single-digit percent revenue growth in Food & Beverage Solutions.
We will focus our capital spend in the three areas of growth, sustainability, and productivity. Over the next five years, we expect to increase our investments in growth CapEx from 40% to, on average, around 50%-60% of total capital expenditure. Examples include extending our clean label texture capacity and adding fiber capacity in both Europe and North America, as well as focusing on higher margin stevia variants in China and the US. Growth projects are expected to achieve at least an internal rate of return of 20%. At this level, new investments are always above our return on capital employed. Sustainability investments are expected to remain at the same level in absolute terms, but reduce in percentage terms from 50% to 30%-40% of the total spend each year.
In this context, sustainability is a broad definition, including investing to maintain our operations as well as deliver environmental improvements. Whilst the smallest proportion of our total spend, productivity investments are an important element of investment and are expected to be 5%-10% of total spend. As a smaller percentage of a higher overall spend, this means absolute productivity spend will be broadly maintained. In summary, Tate & Lyle is operating in attractive, large, and fast-growing markets. This, alongside its strong financial position, will ensure it is well-placed to deliver on its growth-focused strategy. Our ambition for the next five years reflects this. It sets out attractive organic revenue growth of 4%-6% per year, driven by Food & Beverage Solutions growing ahead of the market at high single digit percent per annum growth.
Absolute EBITDA growth of 7%-9% per year, delivering expansion of margins and return on capital employed, and sustained financial strength through a disciplined focus on cash generation and capital allocation, which enables us to invest in growth and maintain financial flexibility. We will prioritize organic investment with the potential to accelerate growth through M&A. Alongside this is the extension to our productivity program, with further benefits of $100 million expected over the next five years. Putting all of this together, we believe Tate & Lyle has an attractive value proposition as a growth-focused business. With that, I will hand back to Nick.
Thank you, Dawn. Before we move to Q&A, I want to summarize what you've heard today and our investment case. The new Tate & Lyle is a growth-focused specialty food and ingredients solutions business with a strong sense of purpose, clear strategic focus, and well-placed to grow ahead of the market. We are a global leader in sweetening, mouthfeel and fortification, creating solutions for our customers to meet growing consumer trends for healthier food and drink. Our business is science-led, with an established record of innovation and scientific expertise. We are a well-balanced and global business with a strong presence in developed markets and a platform for accelerated growth in the large markets of Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. We have a strong balance sheet, providing flexibility to invest for growth and an experienced management team with a track record of delivery.
All this supports our five-year financial ambition to deliver 4%-6% revenue growth and 7%-9% EBITDA growth each year, and to improve return on capital employed by up to 50 basis points on average each year. To conclude, the new Tate & Lyle has been repositioned to be at the center of the future of food, focused on creating solutions that meet growing consumer demand for healthier, tastier and more sustainable food and drink. We are operating in exciting segments of the market, which are seeing significant growth. We are a business fueled by science, obsessed with customer collaboration and with a strong desire to make a positive impact on the world. Science, solutions, society. That is the new Tate & Lyle. That's the end of the presentation for today.
Thank you for joining us. I hope you will stay with us for the Q&A session. As I said at the start, this is the first of a series of capital markets events we plan to hold presenting different aspects of the business. I hope you can join us for those in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome everybody to the Q&A session. Our first question comes from Patrick Higgins from Goodbody.
Thanks. Thanks for that presentation. It was very thorough and informative. I guess a couple of questions from my end, if that's okay. Firstly, when I look at your innovation pipeline, I'm not sure what slide it was, it's slightly biased towards the sweetener platform. Should we anticipate that platform being the biggest driver of growth over the next five years, or do you see scope for some of the other platforms becoming more prevalent, I guess, particularly as you integrate the likes of Quantum Tech? That's question one. Question two is more just around integrated solutions and what the actual definition of that is.
Is it in your, you know, definition, is it across platforms or is it much broader that you know, bring a customer along the entire R&D journey to end product? It's actually a much broader kind of offering, I guess. That's it for me.
Thanks, Patrick, and two very good questions. Let me start with the balance of the innovation platform. I think the first thing I'd say is the good news is it's a very strong platform. You know, we've got $400 million plus in the pipeline, and it's actually well-balanced across both our three core platforms and the stages of innovation. You know, breakthrough, refresh and new products. Inevitably, at any point in time, there's gonna be a bias in that innovation pipeline. However, I'd say over time, we expect to see similar growth from each of the three platforms. It may vary, year by year, but we're confident about the growth in all three platforms and the strength of the overall innovation pipeline.
That's demonstrated, I guess, by the historic performance that you've seen as well. On your point about integrated solutions, it can be a wide variety of things. Fundamentally, when we're talking about an integrated solution, what we're talking about is partnering with our customers to help them formulate either new products or reformulation, working in partnership with them in their labs. It could be a formulation that has one of our platforms in. It could be a formulation that allows us to increasingly innovate across all three platforms. The fact that all three platforms work together gives us that power from a solutions and innovation perspective. Let's move on to our next question, which comes from the chat. It's as follows: It's been a very interesting series of presentations with lots of detail and insights.
Stepping back, what are the main things you would like us to take away from today? That's a great question. I'd say fundamentally there are three big messages that we'd like you to take away from today's presentation. The first is that over the last five years, we've really repositioned Tate & Lyle for growth. We've built three strong platforms across sweetening, fortification and mouthfeel. We've also strengthened those platforms significantly over the last five years through both innovation and new products, so 50 new products launched in that time period, and through four significant acquisitions. With that, we've also focused very clearly on building a solutions capability to serve our customers better.
Because of that transformation of the business and 93% of our revenue now coming from specialty ingredients, we believe we're really well positioned to be at the center of the future of food. That's the next big message. Those platforms in our portfolio and our solutions allow us to reformulate to provide healthier, tastier, more sustainable food and beverage, and those are all on trend in the market today. Alongside that, we've repositioned the portfolio geographically. Nearly 30% of our business today is in the large and fast-growing markets of Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. That's 3 x the importance they were five years ago. They're large markets, it's 60% of the world's population and half of the addressable market, and they're fast-growing.
We're well positioned for growth at the center of the future of food. That's the sort of second big message. The third big message for me is we have the financial strength to continue to invest in growth. Because of the repositioning of the business, the sale of a majority share of Primient last year, we have the financial strength to invest both organically and in M&A to continue our growth journey. Ultimately, with those three big messages, we believe we're a very attractive investment proposition for the future. Our next question is from John Ennis from Goldman Sachs. John, please unmute and ask your question.
Yeah, hello. Thanks a lot for taking the question. If you can hear me. I've got a couple. The first was on actually market share. You gave lots of addressable market statistics, but I'd love to have a bit of color on where you see your market share, maybe between the platforms or however you think is the best way to cut it. I guess if I take a, you know, your headline revenues versus the $19 billion addressable market, it looks like you've got a high single digit market share. Is that the right way to think about it, or how would you guys break it down? That's my first question. My second question is on, I suppose the high single digit growth guidance for FBS going forward.
You showed on, I think it was slide, what slide is it? Slide 19, that your CAGR was around 8%, which obviously therefore high single digit is an extrapolation of that historic run rate. That was of course very much skewed to 2022. You know, if you exclude 2022, your CAGR was more like four or five. I guess how do you bridge the four to five up to high single digits? Is it because you smooth the pricing and think you were going to have more sustainable, more normalized pricing in each year relative to that historic period where it was all in one year? Is there something else that you can simplify, just the bridge of, let's say, mid-single digit up to high single digit growth for FBS?
Maybe a bit more of a boring one on central cost allocation. Does that just get divided by sales? Do you just sales weight your current central cost between the different divisions? Thank you.
John, I think the three questions. Why don't I take the first question on market share and then, Dawn, maybe you could take the question on revenue growth and on central allocations or GNA allocations. On market share, John, broadly when you do the math, you've got your math right. Of course, that hides though lots of different positions. You know, what we are confident of is two things. You know, we've got leading positions in our three core platforms, and that's important 'cause that's relevant to our customers in building, you know, preferred customer relationships. Secondly, because our relative share, there's still plenty to go after. It's quite difficult to measure share precisely on a market by market basis 'cause the data isn't perfect.
You know, if you said we had round about a, you know, high single digit, 10% share of the overall addressable market, that's what the math tells you. It varies very much platform by platform. Clearly we've got higher share in some of our stronger positions and in things like sucralose, for example, in sweeteners or in some of our clean label starches. The beauty of that though is we've got, you know, multiple opportunities for growth 'cause we're growing into a growing market with strong established positions, but plenty to go after. Dawn, do you wanna take the second question?
Yeah, sure. I guess in terms of Food & Beverage Solutions, this really is the growth engine of our business at more than 80% of the revenue and EBITDA. What gives us confidence that we can grow this business at high single-digit growth and actually grow EBITDA ahead of that? There are a few pieces. The first one, if you think about our portfolio, our portfolio is right at the center, you know, Nick talked about it at the center of the future of food. Right in the sweet spot of consumer trends, particularly around health. Actually the intersection of our portfolio and the way that that works together should enable us to drive accelerated growth. The other pieces are around our innovation pipeline and solution selling that you've seen.
We've invested GBP 200 million over the last five years, and it's a continued focus as we move forward with the 5% increase in innovation and solution selling, you know, per annum. The last piece, and if you look at the size of the opportunity in terms of developing markets, whether that's in Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa or Latin America. If you think about the growth potential in those markets, that represents a huge opportunity for us to accelerate that growth. The addressable market is growing at 6%. If we can leverage those three levers, we can actually grow, you know, slightly ahead of that market growth.
In terms of the second question, in terms of central cost, what we have done, given that we're the new, you know, growth-focused specialty business, we've actually taken the opportunity to look at all of our cost base and go, "Well, what really makes sense moving forward? How can we increase even further our agility, our simplicity, our alignment of our investment decisions to the different parts and the different roles of our portfolio?" Also it's, as part of central cost, you know, a portion of that actually relates to innovation.
If you think about our focus on innovation, that will be, you know, a huge part of that will be against Food & Beverage Solutions. An important part of us actually removing the central segment and attributing and allocating it on a fair basis on a consistent basis moving forward is actually, you know, a further unlock in terms of realizing the margin accretive growth for the business. Clearly, you know, we will issue a full restatement of that central cost allocation before we get to the year-end.
Thank you, Dawn. That's really helpful. Thank you. Can I squeeze in one follow-up? If the addressable market growth expectation is 6% now going forward, what was it for the last five years? Was it a similar number?
It wouldn't have been dissimilar, John. I mean.
Yeah
It varies year on year. I mean, we're not projecting a significant.
Acceleration
Acceleration, if that's what's behind the question.
Understood. Yeah, I understand. Thank you very much. Thanks for those.
Okay. Our next question comes from the chat box, and it reads as follows. You have provided interesting new metrics for the business. Can you tell us more about the financial performance and performance priorities? Dawn, I think that's a question for you.
Great. Thanks, Nick. You know, as I said, as a growth-focused specialty business, our performance objective is to grow margin accretive growth and have strong shareholder returns. You've seen the four headline metrics that we've talked about today. To grow overall for the group, 4%-6% per annum. EBITDA growth, 7%-9% per annum, as well as, you know, an improvement in our return on capital employed of up to 50 basis points per annum, and a new $100 million productivity target that we aim to deliver over the next five years. When I think about those performance metrics, I think about the three pillars that underpin them. The first one, you know, we were just talking about it, the accelerated growth within our Food & Beverage Solutions growth engine at high single digit with EBITDA growth ahead of that.
The second pillar is around our investment in science, solutions and society. Our continued focus and investment in this space. You will have seen the new metrics that we've put in place, the 5% growth per annum in terms of solution selling. Underpinning that is the ambition to double the new wins from solution selling to over 30%. The last pillar talks about our financial discipline. Our GBP 100 million productivity target, our focus and disciplined approach to capital allocation, as well as our focus on cash and our 75% free cash flow target. If we put all of that together, that should drive margin accretive growth and strong shareholder returns.
Thank you, Dawn. Our next question's from Alex Sloane from Barclays. Alex, good afternoon. If you could unmute and ask your question.
Yeah. Hi, Nick. Hi, Dawn. Thanks for the presentations. Hopefully you can hear me. The first one was actually just on the ambition to double that, you know, business wins from, you know, full solution sellings from the 16% to the 32% over the next five years. I'd be interested, you know, who are you competing for those wins against? Is it other ingredient solution specialists, or is this more about, you know, convincing your customers to trust you and effectively outsource more of their innovation activity that they might have been doing in-house? That would be the first question. The second one would just be in terms of, kind of, new Tate & Lyle, what percentage of ingredients today are corn derived, and how might that look in five years' time?
Is that something you're actively trying to diversify or are you know, somewhat indifferent as to the feedstock for the ingredient solutions that you supply? Thanks.
Thanks, Alex. Two good questions. Let me take the second question first, actually, then we'll come back and talk about solution selling. We've seen in the last five years a material diversification of substrates in the business. You know, the old Tate & Lyle, if you like, would have been 80% plus corn derived. You know, in the last four years, through the transformation, through the Primient disposal, through the acquisition of a stevia business, you know, the fibers business in China, the tapioca business in Thailand and the recent protein acquisition in North America, we've significantly diversified our substrate base. Corn is now still more than half of our overall raw material base, but you know, significantly less than the 80% plus we would have seen five years ago.
That's a conscious decision to do two things really. one, broaden the diversity of our substrate base, 'cause that's a good thing to do from a sustainability and from a resilience perspective. Actually more fundamentally, it's about exposing ourselves to faster-growing markets and strengthening our core platforms. You know, the diversification comes as a benefit of the strengthening of sweetening mouthfeel and fortification, and we'll continue to do more of that. Whether corn then becomes less of the substrate base over time, we'll see. I think it's more likely than not, because a lot of what we've acquired is gonna grow fast 'cause it's part of the, you know, the addressable, the faster part of the addressable market. That can only be a good thing over time.
Corn fundamentally is a great substrate for us still. The fact that we've got global capabilities to source corn is really important, 'cause as you've seen this year, we're moving corn across boundaries for the first time to address some of the corn challenges in the short term in Europe. If I kind of move on to your point about solution selling and how and why and what, I think it's a combination of factors. The first factor is our continued progress and focus on building greater capability to innovate and provide proactively solutions to our customers that they really want. The intersection across our three core platforms is really important.
We've worked really hard on building that capability to transfer the power of the ingredient to the application capability and the solution sell, adding on top of that, the regulatory and the nutrition knowledge to allow our customers to make claims in the marketplace. That's really important, that's part of the progress. You know, that's why we've seen the evolution over the last five years. The other point I'd make is, increasingly, all the food and beverage industry is looking for partnerships because the industry is developing so fast and innovation and technology is moving so fast, they're much more open to collaboration. The combination of those two things coming together is a really powerful combination for us. That's why, you know, the focus on doubling solution selling is both possible, achievable and very desirable.
The desirable point of it is really three things. A solution sell tends to be stickier business, so it tends to last for longer. It's more difficult to reformulate. Secondly, it tends to be higher revenue. Typically when we look at our pipeline, 2x the average of the rest of the portfolio. Thirdly, by building that relationship, it leads to a stronger relationship with the, therefore more likely for more business because you're strengthening the relationship through that sell. Those are really the three key factors for me in terms of growing that business. I don't know, Dawn, whether there's anything you want to add to that.
No, I think you said it really well, Nick.
Good. Alex, I hope that answered your questions.
Very helpful. Thanks.
Our next question comes from the chat box from Rory Forbes at Baillie Gifford. With your market growing at 6% a year, 4%-6% sounds like a low target for organic revenue growth. Could you explain the target? I think probably, Dawn, it's best for you to take that one.
Yeah. I think when we're talking about the addressable market, we're really talking about Food & Beverage Solutions. Six percent a year for Food & Beverage Solutions. As I've talked about, our objective is to outperform the market and grow high single digit, you know, with an even higher EBITDA growth. If you think about our portfolio, we've got three different roles or three different parts of our portfolio that underpin the total group 4%-6% growth. We've clearly got the growth engine in Food & Beverage Solutions. We've got the sucralose part of the portfolio where the objective is not to grow that business, but actually to maintain attractive returns. Then clearly, we've got the Primary Products Europe business in Europe, where our objective is actually to exit that business over time.
What we've talked about is that we expect that business to decline double-digit, around double-digit per annum. If you put those three different parts of the portfolio together, that's where you come up to the 4%-6%. As I said, the addressable market, you know, is primarily aimed at Food & Beverage Solutions.
Thank you, Dawn. Our next question comes from Martin Deboo at Jefferies. Martin, if you'd come off unmute and ask your question. Thank you.
Yeah. Hi, Nick. Can you hear me?
Absolutely.
Jolly good. You can see me as well. Yeah, Nick, I've got three, two of which are brief, I think. I think I'm sort of asking the same question others have asked in a different way. What we've seen today is a step change in guidance, in my view. A step change, along with that, a step change in confidence in your ability to execute. As a way of sort of testing the credibility of that, you know, those of us who've been around for a long time know there's a long history here. You know, the word solutions has been part of the lexicon of Tate for 10-15 years. You know, the big turning point was opening Hoffman Estates in 2011.
You arrived in, correct me, Nick, 2014 or 2015? One of those two. The question is, just from a personal point of view, what has changed that has given you this elevated level of confidence? Just been the sort of turning points, whether it be organizational, cultural, M&A. Just to try and test it a bit more. Why this increased level of confidence and ability to deliver these higher growth rates, you know, over that, you know, given that in a sense the without trying to be insulting, the sort of broad mission has not actually changed probably in a, in a decade. Tate has always been about getting more specialized, going upmarket. You know, that's the first question.
I've got a couple of quick ones if you want me to hold those back.
Okay. Let me take that first question then, 'cause it's obviously fundamental to the future of the business, and you can come back on your other two. I mean, I think what has changed fundamentally is that through the last five years, all of the things that we've been working very hard at have come together. We've transformed the portfolio in a way that makes it a growth vehicle. You know, the three core platforms we now have represent 93% of the revenue of the business. That was 37% five years ago. That's the first thing. The second thing is, fundamentally, we've reshaped that portfolio to make it much stronger. You know, we've innovated in a very creative way.
As a result of the investment in Hoffman that you mentioned, we've done some great M&A to strengthen the portfolio, and we now have three leading platforms that we really believe play in the future of the center of food. The third thing is we fundamentally shifted the geographic profile of the business to make it much more balanced and to allow us to access 60% of the world's population that we didn't really serve. By the way, that 60% of the world's population is suffering with the same challenges of what you might call the developed markets in North America and Europe, you know, obesity rates, diabetes, you know, growing as fast or faster in those, in those markets. That platform that we've built and the capability to provide solutions to our customers takes time.
Of course, through the pandemic, we demonstrated the resilience of the business and our ability to, you know, absorb macro shocks and continue to perform well. We did the transaction that fundamentally reshaped the portfolio with the Primient deal in April last year. All of those things take time, and through that transformation, we delivered a pretty consistent set of growth numbers that have built the increasing confidence internally in our ability to see the future with much more clarity. Underpinning all of that is a lot of hard work. There's been a lot of change in the capability in the organization.
We're a fundamentally different business from a culture and an ambition and an agility perspective today than the one we were, that I joined, as you said rightly, in 2014, in the last decade. Underpinning all of that is our belief that we really are in the sweet spot of where food is going, and a purpose and a belief that we can have a positive impact on the world around us. As you say, I mean, look, we're laying out a very clear set of financial metrics and targets for the business today. They aren't actually that different to what we talked about 12 months ago.
What we're trying to give you is a lot more clarity on our ambition and a little bit more clarity on the disclosure through the three segments, 'cause they play a different role. Of course, we're reasserting our belief in our ability to deliver more productivities. It's a combination of all of those things coming together, Martin, that, you know, felt we needed really to lay that out with clarity. You know, Tate & Lyle is a much more focused, simpler business than it was five years ago, and we really believe in the potential that we now have.
Okay, very insightful. Thank you, Nick. Can I have two quick ones? Is that okay?
Sure. Yes, sure.
I'll go to the back of the queue? I don't mind. What role does sucralose play in this? If someone comes along and offers you a big multiple for it, you're happy to sell it? Is it playing a more synergistic role? Is it a door-opening product for you in the sweetener space? Final, very geeky one, is how do I think about Primient in the ROCE target? Is it part of the definition of ROCE or isn't it?
Okay, I'll leave the third question to Dawn Allen. She can think about that while I answer your question on sucralose. I mean, the role of sucralose in the portfolio hasn't changed significantly in the last couple of years. It's core to our sweetener toolbox. You know, it's an attractive specialty ingredient in its own right? We look at its margin profile and cash return profile and return on capital. It's much less of a door opener than it used to be 'cause of the breadth and the depth of our portfolio versus where it was when I joined in 2014, when we had the sort of challenges with sucralose. We see it as a core part of our sweetener portfolio.
You know, nobody's picked up the phone to offer us any money for the business. For now, it's core to the future of the business, but it plays a different role to the rest. We'll see how that evolves over the next two or three years, and we'll continue to evolve our thinking as the business develops. ROCE?
Yeah. In terms of return on capital employed, I mean, as I've already said, you know, disciplined capital allocation and ensuring that we maximize the return from our investments is a really important part in terms of our performance targets. If you think about, you know, that target, it's actually our organic return on investment. Therefore, it's a combination of our EBIT as well as our working capital and fixed assets within our business. It does not exclude, it does not include Primient, which is clearly a joint venture. Obviously, our objective is to improve that by up to 50 basis points per annum, per year. The other piece probably to say on Primient is we see Primient as a cash generative business.
If you think about that's already been demonstrated this year, if you think about the size of the dividend that we received in the first half.
Martin, hopefully that answers your other two questions. Our next question is coming from the chat box from Jacob de Klerk. How do you keep pace with technological developments of competitors that are in the same space who have much larger R&D budgets? Great question. The way I'd answer that is, you know, we've invested a significant amount of money in innovation over the last four years. You know, the $200 million number we quoted in the presentation. We intend to invest more, and that investment is driving strong returns for the business. You can see that in the numbers, in the growth of MPD, in the growth in our three core platforms. The key actually is the efficiency of that spend.
It's not how much money you spend, it's how you spend it. You know, we've demonstrated real ability to drive internal innovation through new products. You know, with 50 new products launched in the last 5five years. You know, we've got a fantastic group of world-class scientists in Hoffman. Victoria talked about that earlier. She also talked very clearly about the other aspects of our innovation engine, working with external partners. You know, whether it be academics or academic institutions to drive, you know, regulatory and nutrition knowledge that allows us to serve our customers better. This idea of open innovation. You know, that's paid huge fruit for us in terms of innovation over the last few years. You saw the example of Zymtronix.
You know, it's been a fantastic partnership for us in terms of driving growth, we're looking to do more in that space. In fact, if you look at our breakthrough innovation pipeline, a lot of that is driven by partnerships. Our ability to find next-generation technologies that either access new raw materials or new products, or allow us to use 21st century manufacturing techniques to significantly decrease the cost of our current product base and make it much more accessible to a broader population group. The next question comes from Heidi Vesterinen from Exane. What are your main M&A target areas, and do your deals also achieve an IRR of 20%? Dawn, do you wanna take that one to start?
As we've talked about, our objective is to drive margin accretive growth, first of all, investing internally in the business, then secondly, selectively investing where it makes sense, you know, in attractive inorganic opportunities. Obviously, you know, as Nick talked about, the separation of Primient has given us the firepower, you know, to accelerate that investment. If you look at our investment in M&A, it's just shy of half a billion dollars over the last two years. We see it as a really important piece. In terms of from a strategy perspective, depth and breadth within our existing platforms, as well as broadening our geographic footprint, are important pieces as part of that strategy. As you know, the current M&A market at the moment is challenging given the macroeconomic situation, our pipeline remains strong.
We're very active in terms of building bilateral relationships, which actually has been very successful for us in the past. Actually, you know, we're really well-placed to take advantage of opportunities as they come up. Don't know if there's anything you want to build to that, Nick.
Yeah. Heidi, I just add 1 point to that 'cause when we think about M&A, Dawn's absolutely right. It's about strengthening our core portfolio, and it's about broadening our geographic reach. I'd only add a couple of points to that. The first is when we think about it's also about our ability to provide solutions to our customers and enhance that ability because that will drive and accelerate top-line growth. With any M&A deal, in the absence of, you know, integration synergies, you have to accelerate growth to make it work financially. That's a real focus. Alongside that, there's a lot of conversation about is there a fourth platform or not? I think the reality is there's a blurring of platforms. When I look at our fortification platform, we've extended it into other soluble fibers with the Quantum deal.
We're inching into protein. Is that fortification or is it plant protein? Interesting question. What we do know is in inching into those areas, it's allowing us a toolbox to serve our customers better, and links to my point about accelerating top-line growth to make the overall economics of the deal work. Our next question is from Karel Zoete from Kepler Cheuvreux. Karel, if you want to come off mute and ask your question.
Yes. Good, good afternoon. Thanks for the presentations. Very insightful. I've, well, one follow-up and then two others. When it comes to serving your customers better, I see Tate really as a specialist being pretty good at the three platforms. This is what you focus on. At the same time, you also compete to a couple of global one-stop shop houses that can do much for almost everybody and everywhere. How do you effectively compete to those names? The other question is on increasing the output for specialty starches and fibers. In certain occasions, of course, it starts with the processing capabilities, which you don't always have in all cases. How do you see that ability?
The last thing is, how you move to EBITDA from EBIT. You shared with us your investment agenda, and, yeah, that will mean more depreciation. Given the operational leverage in the business, is it fair to assume that in a normal year, EBIT will still grow faster than EBITDA because your depreciation never rises that quickly nine out of 10 times? Thank you.
Okay. Let me take your first question on customers, and then we'll come on to the capacity point on starches and EBITDA, and we'll sort of tag team on that. Look, fundamentally, the way we grow and win with customers is being the best at what we do. That's a combination of a number of things. Firstly, it's the strength of our and depth of our platforms, and it includes both their individual strength, but our ability to formulate across them that allows us to do things like sugar reduction and provide mouth feel and taste and added fortification. The second point is being really focused on categories and subcategories where there's more growth, and understanding those categories in a way that we can anticipate what the customer opportunities and demands are, and bring solutions proactively in those spaces.
The third thing is the scientific rigor behind our research that leads to regulatory understanding, that leads to nutrition capability to provide customers with claims. They can make a nutritional claim behind added fiber. They can make a claim behind natural low-calorie sweetening. It's all of those things come together. We're betting on depth and expertise and being the best at what we do rather than being a, you know, a supermarket trolley for ingredients, if you like. That's what we're seeing playing out in our growth numbers and how we anticipate continuing to focus the strategy of the business going forward. In terms of your point about starch capacity, the good news for us is there's massive demand for what we do, especially with our clean label starches.
That's both because of the technology advantage they have from a taste and a color perspective. It's the benefits of the cost profile of those starches. It's the benefits behind some of the sustainability things we talked about in the presentation. Finding a novel manufacturing process to make starches with 30% less energy, 35% less water, those things are really important to customers. We're adding capacity. You know, we're adding capacity in both our North American and our European corn wet mills. As you know, we're looking to diversify out of Primary Products in Europe, that gives us primary capacity to diversify as well. Those programs are all built into the capital plan Dawn mentioned. You might want to add a little bit on that.
I'll leave Dawn to talk about the EBITDA to EBIT dynamic.
Yeah. I mean, just probably top level from a capital perspective, you will have seen that investment in CapEx is a key part of our growth journey, and we'll continue our investment in productivity as well as long-term sustainability for the business, both in terms of maintenance of our plants, but also in terms of our environmental footprint and our goal towards achieving our sustainability targets. Clearly, the big shift on CapEx is around growth. There are three parts to that one. The first one is around growth in terms of volume growth, in terms of adding extra capacity, but also improving margin. Nick talked about the divestment in Primary Products Europe as an example of that. The second area is around our M&A and our recent acquisitions, where we see huge potential to be able to grow, and that's the second area of CapEx investment.
The third area is honestly around inflation, where across all of our business, but particularly in CapEx, we are seeing, you know, higher levels of inflation. What's also important in terms of CapEx is two things. First of all, any new CapEx, any new growth projects that are coming in on CapEx, we are targeting zero sustainability footprint on those projects, which I think is really important. Overall, we'll continue to maintain our discipline, you know, in terms of our allocation of capital to ensure that we get the optimal returns. In terms of EBITDA growth, as we talked about in the presentation, will come from three main levers. First of all, in terms of volume growth, secondly, price mix in terms of accelerating our MPD and our mix in terms of solutions. Nick talked about the value increase associated with that.
The third one, as you talked about, is around productivity and operating leverage. Broadly, we see those three will be equal, but in a given year, there might be slight differences depending upon the operating environment. The reason why we've moved to EBITDA is because when we look at the peer set, we believe that gives the best comparison of our performance in terms of peers.
Okay. Thank you, Dawn.
Thank you.
Questions coming in on productivity, in the chat box. Then the question is sort of summarized as will benefits be added to EBITDA or be it reinvested, and how much will it cost to deliver this program? Why don't I take the first part of the question and, Dawn, maybe you take the.
The cost piece. You know, the simple answer to the question is, it depends in any one year. You know, productivity is one of the levers that will help us drive revenue to EBITDA accretion, if you like. The other levers Dawn talked well to, volume growth, clearly the mixed benefit of the improving portfolio solution selling, new products. Those will play differing roles in each year. You know, typically, our plan is as follows, which is to continue to deliver the 4%-6% revenue growth we talked about, delivering that EBITDA of 7%-9%, and then reinvesting anything else and accelerating growth.
It's you're creating this sort of flywheel, if you like, and productivity is part of the levers that we'll use to deliver that on a near term and a longer term basis.
Yeah. I think in terms of the productivity program, clearly what you've seen as part of our CapEx spend, you know, is a sizable element in terms of 5%-10% of that spend, you know, which will deliver the productivity. At the moment from an OpEx perspective, the spend against that program is quite minimal. Clearly, as we build out that program in full, over, particularly over the latter years of the program, clearly, you know, we will provide an update if that picture changes.
Okay. Our next question is from Damian McNeela from Numis. Damian, good afternoon. If you could come off mute and ask your question.
Good afternoon, everybody, thank you for taking the question and also, a very good set of presentations. Our first question is just around the shape of the portfolio. I think it's pretty clear given the sort of the refocus on faster growth market. We'll see a geographic shift over the next sort of five years, but just wondering, will we see a shift in terms of revenue contribution from the platforms over the next five years as well, or should we expect it to remain broadly constant where it is today? Second question is just around. I think you've highlighted that currently solutions is around 16% of new revenues or new business wins. Are you able to provide a number around what it is for the sort of more established part of FPS, please?
One very last one on culture. It takes time, and it's very difficult to change culture. Have you introduced new financial incentives to help accelerate that?
Okay. Let me take the portfolio shape question, and maybe you could talk about the revenue mix, and I'll come back and talk about culture. The first point I'd make about the portfolio is the geographic point you make is a good one, and we'll expect to see the increased contribution from the faster-growing markets over time. We deliberately haven't put a number on that because, you know, we're looking to grow in our developed markets as well. You know, we said we want to grow ahead of the market in both Europe and North America. On the three platforms, I think it'll depend on how things evolve and how our innovation pipeline evolves. There'll naturally be an increase in the fortification platform.
It's a proportion of the mix as we go into next year because of the acquisitions we've made. It will depend on the balance of organic growth and M&A. The good news is there's plenty of growth in all of those three platforms, and we expect each of them to grow, you know, at a rate that allows us to grow ahead of the market. Do you want to take the revenue mix question?
Yeah. I guess in terms of revenue mix, I mean, what we, you know what we've said we will see over the next five years is, first of all, new products moving from 16% of revenue up to 20% of revenue, which will clearly come from our continued and actually increased investment in solution selling. Then, as you rightly talked about, a heavy focus is around doubling the proportion of new business wins from solutions. Actually, as part of our wider program in terms of investment in capability with partnerships with customers, you know how we partner with them, that applies to all of the areas across our innovation pipeline and feeds through into new business wins. Actually, you heard from.
In the video, you heard from one of our customers actually sharing their example for us in this space. Whilst we've specifically called out solutions for the three reasons that Nick talked about in terms of the increased partnership with customers, the stickiness of that business, the increased value profile of that business, actually raising our capability across all of the areas is actually something that we're focused on as well.
Damian, your last question about culture. You're right, cultural change takes time, and it takes consistency of application. We've seen a huge shift in the culture in the last five years that's got us to where we are today. That was reinforced for us actually by some very encouraging results in our internal employee survey that we did a couple of months ago. In terms of metrics and incentives for cultural change, we have a very clear metric in our long-term incentive scheme around gender diversity, so driving inclusion in the business. For every single one of our bonused employees, we have personal objectives every year, and we build into those personal objectives a specific focus on cultural change.
Last year, just to give you an example, we launched four new behaviors to accentuate our change in culture. Every single employee on the bonus scheme had one cultural behavior change as part of their objectives for that year. It's absolutely built into how we measure progress in the business because culture has to be central to the future growth of our business as well. The good news is I think we've seen a significant shift over the last five years and, you know, demonstrated more than anything else by the agility and the resilience with which the business navigated the pandemic so successfully.
That's great. Thank you very much.
Our next question is from Lauren Molyneux from Citi. Lauren, over to you, if you could unmute and ask your question.
Yeah. Thanks, both. Thanks for taking my question, also for the really insightful presentations. I just had one. I'll keep it brief. Just looking to your growth, I was wondering how much of this comes from doing more with existing customers versus new customer wins. Kind of trying to evolve that customer that you already have, obviously, relations with. Then related to this, just around what your split looks like with customers between smaller customers, maybe kind of single category customers versus larger, maybe multi-category customers, and how do you see this evolving over time? Thank you.
It's a great question, Lauren. Look, I mean, I think, let me give you a sort of head-headline answer to it, and maybe Dawn can add something. The good news is we've got a very broad-based customer base. You know, from all of the top, big top multinational Food & Beverage players being customers for us to the significant regional players where they're really important, especially in the geographies like Asia and Latin America. The small innovators, and those innovators are really important because they tend to adopt new innovations faster, and they're a great way to bring new products to market and demonstrate their capability. Breadth of customers is really important.
The good news is, as we said in the presentation, you know, we've tripled our revenue with over 100 customers in the last five years. The growth is coming from a very broad base, and we need to continue that. The proportion of our, you know, top 20 customers is a significant part of the mix, but not disproportionate. I don't know whether you had anything specific on the numbers on that.
I think you covered the numbers really well.
Hopefully, Lauren, that gives you a good sense of where we are on that.
Yeah, great. Thank you.
We've got a question from the chat box. In fact, we've had a few questions on the Primient JV. You structured the Primient JV, so you could invest more if they had attractive opportunities. Some months on, do you think that likely or not? What are your financial objectives for Primient? Obviously, the Primient JV, important part of the business for us in terms of supply, because 20% of what they of what we sell comes out of Primient today. What we've seen in the last nine months or so since the close of the deal, coming up for a year in April is the operating relationship between the two businesses is very strong.
The long-term agreements are working well. We've got a very positive relationship with KPS, as Dawn mentioned in the presentation. In terms of financial objectives, for us, what's really important from Primient is that we see stable supply, and that has financial consequences, and that's working well, and stable supply, both from a supply perspective and an economic perspective, which is why the agreements are constructed the way they're constructed. The second thing is, you know, we see it as a potential attractive dividend stream going forward, and we saw that very clearly this year, as Dawn said. Lastly, as we think about the future value of the business, we see potential for growth in Primient because of KPS's willingness to invest and their ability to bring their manufacturing discipline to the business.
That should allow an attractive exit at some point in the future. All of those things are, you know, are playing out to date, but it's very early on in the relationship. As you know from the discussion we had at the half-year results, they've been managing the challenges of a volatile environment as well through the transition. So far so good, and the financial objectives that we set when we did the deal, we expect to play out. I think, we've reached the end of the Q&A. Thank you for your questions. They're very insightful questions, and that's all we have time for today.
If we haven't had a chance to answer your questions, you know, Chris Marsh is well known to you in the Vesto-Investor Relations team, they'll follow up directly with you, especially the questions that we got in the chat we haven't been able to address. Apologies, there were so many good questions coming in, which is great to see. Look, just to summarize, I guess, I hope you found this capital markets event, I guess, interesting and informative. You know, over the last five years, as I said earlier, Tate & Lyle has been transformed, we believe, into a growth-focused specialty food and beverage solutions business. You know, we're a global leader in sweetening mouthfeel and for fortification. At our heart, we're actually a food science and technology business.
We're using our science, our applications, our expertise, and the category understanding, critically, we have to help our customers create solutions that, for us, is meeting growing consumer demand for healthier, tastier, and more sustainable food and drink. That's gonna continue to grow. By serving that growing consumer demand, we are at the center of the future of food. You know, we're focused on large and attractive markets and increasingly exposed to those. We're a well-balanced and global business with an increasingly strong presence in developed markets and that platform we talked about for accelerated growth in the large and fast-growing markets of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. At our core, we're a purpose-driven business.
We think we've got a clear strategy that's playing out and an attractive organic profile that's demonstrated by the updated financial ambition we've laid out for the next five years today. Critically, we've got a strong balance sheet that's providing flexibility to invest for growth, and we've got an experienced management team with a track record of delivery. We're a growth-focused business. We're fueled by science. We're obsessed with collaboration with our customers, and we've got a strong desire to make a positive impact through what we do in society. Science, solutions, society is where we started the presentation. That is the new Tate & Lyle. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you all into the future.