Okay, it's just gone 2:30 P.M., so if we're ready to begin, I would like to welcome everyone and thank you for joining us at our Capital Markets Spotlight event. Great to see so many of you here in person, and I know we have a number of people from around the world joining us virtually, so welcome to all. Before we start, I draw your attention to the usual cautionary notice on forward-looking statements. For those of you in the room, just to start with safety and a few housekeeping points, the fire exits are outside on the right if you follow the green running man. There is no planned alarm, so if one sounds, please follow the instructions from our hosts here at the LSE.
Can I please also ask you to put your mobile phone onto silent for the duration of the event? Today, I'm pleased to announce a new operating margin target for Weir of 20% in 2026. In this presentation, we'll outline how we'll achieve this by capitalizing on growth opportunities from smart, efficient, and sustainable mining, and by delivering on our Performance Excellence transformation program, where we're updating our 2026 cost-saving target to GBP 60 million. We are extremely confident in further expanding our margins and in setting this new target because of three key factors. We are a global mining technology leader. Our unique combination of world-class engineering solutions and intensive aftermarket support deeply embeds us in our customer operations. We have a differentiated value proposition, and the barriers to entry are high. Secondly, the long-term trends in our markets are highly attractive.
The world needs to significantly increase the production of critical metals to enable the transition to net zero. And in parallel, our customers must adopt new technologies to extract and process those metals in a more sustainable way. And third, through Performance Excellence, we have a clear pathway to optimize and transform our business, creating a lean and efficient Weir, reducing our cost base, and driving margin expansion. We've already demonstrated a strong track record, record of delivery post our portfolio transformation, and that's why the value creation opportunity for Weir is so compelling. We have a world-class business, we're playing in attractive markets, and we have a strong self-help component to our strategy. We are therefore further strengthening our commitments to delivering excellent outcomes for all of our stakeholders.
We're retaining our commitment to grow faster than our markets, delivering compounding mid- to high-single-digit organic revenue growth through the cycle. We'll continue to expand our margins after delivering the 2023 target of 17%, achieving a full year operating profit margin of 20% in 2026. On returns, we'll cleanly convert our earnings into cash, with 90%-100% free operating cash conversion in 2024 and beyond, and we'll deliver further growth in our return on capital employed. We will remain highly resilient, as we always have been, given the benefits of our aftermarket-focused business, and we'll achieve these outcomes while continuing to deliver for our people and the planet with our technology strategy, accelerating the transition to more sustainable mining, and continual action to reduce emissions and environment, environmental impact in our end-to-end value chains.
As we deliver on these commitments, our ever-strengthening balance sheet will give us optionality, enabling us to take action to prioritize growth in TSR, balancing investment for growth with dividends and special returns as appropriate. With that introduction, the agenda for the rest of the session is focused on how growth from smart, efficient, sustainable mining and the outcomes from performance excellence will deliver our growth, margin, and cash commitments. I'm gonna start by giving a group-wide perspective, and then Sean and Andrew will drill into further detail for each of ESCO and Minerals respectively. I'll then return with some closing remarks before we open up the floor to Q&A. For those of you attending in person, there will also be an opportunity afterwards to mingle and ask further questions informally of the team. Let me just start with some context.
You know, Weir has been on a multi-year journey to sustainably higher margins, and we've made great progress. Through our portfolio transformation, we expanded our presence in mining and exited our lower margin cyclical businesses. This gave us a strong and stable platform from which to build, and since completing the portfolio transformation in 2021, we've executed strongly, realizing operating leverage and benefiting from system and process efficiencies, which helped us expand margins to 16% in 2022. As we close 2023, we're on track to deliver a further 100 basis points of expansion and to achieve our previous medium-term operating margin target of 17%. We have always said that won't be the end of the journey, and as I outlined earlier, today, we're setting a new 2026 operating margin target of 20%.
We'll achieve this, firstly, from operating leverage as we grow, which conservatively, we expect to deliver a further 100 basis points of expansion. And secondly, and more significantly, by taking action and delivering on our Performance Excellence program, where we're upgrading our target to GBP 60 million of savings by 2026, which is around 200 basis points of margin expansion. And what pleases me most about much of the margin expansion target is that it's within our control as we optimize the platform with the growth assumption at the lower end of our three-cycle guidance. So despite some of the wider geopolitical and macro uncertainty, it's clearly deliverable, and we've demonstrated a clear track record of consistently strong execution over the past few years. So let's just look at the growth prospects and Performance Excellence in more detail.
This slide sets out the framework we're gonna use for the rest of the presentation, and it outlines the three factors which underpin our growth trajectory. Firstly, the structural drivers in our markets. Secondly, the compounding nature of our business model. Thirdly, our technology-focused growth initiatives. The effects of this growth will then be boosted by performance excellence as growth and margin expansion compound over time, all of which presents a compelling value creation opportunity. Turning to the first element of the framework, which is our markets. Across all of our main commodity exposures, we see strong end market growth drivers, which are incentivizing our customers to maximize oil production, which in turn will drive strong demand for our mining equipment, spares, and expendables.
The impact of electrification and the corresponding significant increase in demand for copper to achieve net zero is well understood, and this carries across to the battery metals, too. Gold continues to be the wealth safe haven of choice, and central banks continue to grow their reserves, where GDP growth and the continued emergence of the middle classes also provide solid long-term underpins. The outlook for core iron ore demand is solid, driven by population demographics. But the big positive, though, for us here will be the growing demand for higher grades needed for the production of green and blue steel. This will mean more magnetite production, requiring more processing, and robust demand in the low-cost regions such as Brazil and the Pilbara in Western Australia, where we have the bulk of our exposure.
And we shouldn't forget that many of our smaller exposures also have great long-term prospects, too. For example, high-grade mineral sands supporting the tech sector and the phosphate and potash that will be needed to support our ever-growing population. So as it stands today, our commodity exposure mix is in great shape, with strong fundamentals across all the portfolio. As we look further out, we expect electrification to be the trend which will accelerate things. For example, take copper. An electric vehicle requires around four times as much as a conventional car, and that's before we talk about infrastructure. Many countries are starting to realize that our electricity grids are gonna be completely inadequate to distribute power from renewable resources to where the consumer needs it.
So the world is going to need a lot more copper, with the general consensus being that supply needs to more than double in the decades ahead. That will require major investment in new mines and capacity expansions, as well as other potential sources. And that'll be the case right across the spectrum of battery and electrification metals, creating a strong tailwind for Weir in the years ahead, accelerating growth in these parts of our business. And that, over time, will make them a larger overall component of our mix. This is gonna require a lot of investment, and it's encouraging that we are starting to see some policy response from governments in the form of critical Minerals policies, but more support is needed to get the permits and finance in place to deliver it.
Our job at Weir is to bring forward the technology that will enable this to happen. So in parallel with production growth, it's essential that the mining industry adopts more sustainable extraction and processing techniques, in order to secure the social license the industry needs to deliver on the forthcoming demand. Today, mines use vast amounts of energy and water and create lots of waste. So for the industry to have the environmental and social license to operate and to get permits for new mines, things need to change. To contextualize the scale of the opportunity and zooming in on this chart to where Weir equipment is used in the mine, we can see that we operate in the parts of the value chain where most of the potential for change exists.
In extraction, typical ore grades in a new copper mine are around 1%, so 99% of what's being moved and processed is waste, consuming huge amounts of energy and water. In comminution, the process of making small particles out of large rocks, the industry consumes a staggering 3% of global electricity each year. In the mill circuit, the processes by which material is graded and classified are traditionally very imprecise and lacking in dynamic control, meaning there's a high recirculating load, and yields are much lower and cost per ton much higher than they could be. Lastly, tailings. It's the biggest waste stream on the planet. Over 19 billion cubic meters of tailings are produced each year. Huge volumes of material being transported, processed, and stored, much of it inefficiently and occasionally unsafely.
Put simply, there's a huge imperative for the mining industry to scale up and clean up if it's to deliver the resources we need to inhibit global warming. This industry imperative creates a compelling twofold growth opportunity for Weir. First, we're gonna be the beneficiaries as oil production expands and investments in new projects are made. And second, we have technology leadership across the areas of the mine, which I just described, positioning us to be at the heart of the transition to more sustainable mining processes.... And against both of these opportunities, Weir has the right to win. Today, our core products already have both economic and sustainability benefits relative to competitor solutions. Our superior wear life mean they last longer and need to be replaced less frequently.
However, through increased R&D investment, we are differentiating ourselves even further, developing new solutions focused on addressing miners' biggest sustainability challenges. When packaged together right across the mine, these solutions will drive a compounding benefits. Our digital insights ensure processes are optimized, which together with our sustainable hardware solutions, will significantly reduce energy and water consumption and create less waste. These solutions are set to be key growth drivers for Weir in the years ahead and will further expand our technology leadership. Later in the presentation, Sean will go into more detail on what we're doing in extraction with ESCO, and Andrew will explain the role of Minerals in the processing plant. Across the mine, it's our differentiated technology which underpins the next element of our growth framework, which is our compounding business model. In mining, downtime is the enemy of our customers.
If unplanned, it can cost millions of dollars per day in lost production, and that's cash that's gone forever. While the abrasive nature of the mining process means equipment does wear out, customers want the premium solution. They want the solution that is the most reliable and has the longest wear life, because this minimizes downtime and delivers them the lowest total cost of ownership. This is Weir's differentiator: mission-critical, highly engineered equipment, which has the longest wear life, coupled with global wraparound sales and service. This provides a significant barrier to entry, and it's why we capture more than 90% of our global aftermarket opportunity. Customers trust us. We are deeply embedded in their operations, and we're available 24/7, 365 days a year, helping them with their biggest challenges and keeping their operations running whatever happens.
This supports our aftermarket-focused business model, with each piece of original equipment generating, on average across the business, 30% of its original value in aftermarket spares revenue every year. So the GBP 600 million of OE we'll sell in 2023 generates GBP 200 million per annum of aftermarket revenue as it comes online over the years ahead. Fundamentally, this drives sustainable compounding growth for Weir and clearly differentiates us from our peers, and I don't think that's quite fully appreciated, so I want to explain in a bit more detail. Original equipment typically accounts for around 20% of our annual revenue, and while the gross margin tends to be relatively low compared to the high-margin aftermarket, each OE sale grows our installed base, generating a highly valuable annuity-like aftermarket revenue stream as we provide spares and equipment for the life of the mine.
Our installed base is therefore one of our biggest assets. It fuels our aftermarket powerhouse, and our boots on the ground service approach is how we fiercely protect it. But we're also focused on growing it and do so throughout the mining cycle, even when large projects are slower, by providing debottlenecking and small brownfield expansion solutions to existing mines. Put simply, more OE means more high-margin aftermarket on a recurring basis. And then when you put together that installed base expansion alongside all production growth, the effects of declining grades and pricing, you start to see why we can consistently deliver through-cycle growth of mid- to high-single-digit. Today, approximately 80% of our total revenue comes from the aftermarket. It's driven by non-discretionary spend on spare parts, parts which are essential to keep mines running.
So if you can understand those drivers, you can see why our growth is predictable and sustainable. And here's our aftermarket growth algorithm in action, with the graph showing the 7% compound growth in our Minerals aftermarket over the last 12 years, and ESCO growing at a similar rate since acquisition. As a ready reckoner, that corresponds to an ongoing growth rate in the aftermarket, around 2x higher than that of global ore production growth. It also underpins, through cycle, mid-single-digit growth for the whole Weir Group. We've shown you this chart a number of times, but in the latest version, we've added how commodity prices have moved over time, illustrated by the blue line.
And you can see that throughout various market cycles, including the global mining downturn, which saw CapEx fall significantly and commodity prices fall by 50%, our aftermarket has remained highly resilient, continuing to grow and demonstrating its inelasticity to both CapEx and commodity price cycles. For me, our embedded resilience is one of the biggest differentiators of our equity story. So buying a share in Weir, you'll benefit from the long-term structural growth trends in our market and the underpin of our aftermarket-focused model, which, through the cycle, has proven to be among the most resilient in the sector. Moving on to the third element of our growth framework, our technology-focused growth initiatives. Sean and Andrew are going to talk in more detail about the specifics they're pursuing in each of the divisions.
However, at an overall level, our ambition is to grow by developing and driving the adoption of new sustainable solutions for mining that will accelerate the growth of our installed base and add further to the core aftermarket algorithm I just described. We're pursuing this through increased R&D investments, targeting 2% of revenue, and are prioritizing spend based on voice of customer feedback on projects which are meeting our internal return thresholds. These include protecting our core business through investments in metallurgy and core engineering capabilities, and as I mentioned earlier, developing new products and solutions which will address our customers' biggest sustainability challenges. In parallel, we're also adding new capabilities in areas such as digital, data management, and artificial intelligence. In recent years, our strategic alliances and acquisitions have further accelerated our organic strategy, and we're continuing to build our pipeline of new opportunities.
Focusing in on acquisitions, our approach will continue to be disciplined, pursuing bolt-on opportunities which accelerate our organic strategy and which are aligned to our business model and meet our financial criteria. Specifically, there must be a clear pathway for acquisitions to be margin and ROCE accretive to us, and they must align to our priority of growing total shareholder returns. Key areas of focus will remain within the bookends of where we currently play and likely to be in one of three areas. Firstly, digital solutions, similar to what we did with Motion Metrics and more recently, SentianAI, which Andrew will build on in his part of the presentation. Secondly, hardware and product infill opportunities, where we'll use acquisitions to further add to our capabilities. And thirdly, geographical expansion, similar to last year's acquisition of Carriere, which accelerated ESCO's direct in mining strategy.
With a strong balance sheet, acquisitions will have the potential to add further to the underlying organic growth we've just discussed, and we have a dedicated team focused on building the pipeline. I'll end this section on growth by just boiling down the themes from the last few slides in a few words. We are in really attractive markets. We have a very powerful growth engine, and we are investing to accelerate our growth. So next on to performance excellence, where we're doubling our cost-saving target to GBP 60 million in absolute savings by 2026, with a cost of delivery of around 1.5x .
You may recall that Performance Excellence has three main elements to it: capacity optimization, which is focused on optimizing our service center and manufacturing footprint while maintaining proximity to our customers. Lean processes, so driving Lean philosophy and eliminating waste in our end-to-end value streams. And we have business services, the transition of the transactional elements of our enabling functions to a global business services model. Since the program's launch last year, we've built great momentum. The business is fully engaged and forging ahead. We've actually seen a snowball effect with the scope of projects expanding and the number of new projects being identified. And this is what's enabled us to upgrade our total target to GBP 60 million, with a new target savings of GBP 20 million for each of the three elements of the program.
This includes GBP 6 million of absolute savings this year, with key achievements to date, including the consolidation of our North American manufacturing footprint in minerals, where we have now exited our facility in Madison, Wisconsin, and moved operations to our newly opened Salt Lake City facility, and also the reconfiguration of our Australian service center network. We're already delivering. Underpinning the new targets are very specific initiatives, each of which is supported by a strong opportunity pipeline of projects. Having made further investments in our team, we have the capabilities to execute and are already in full swing. The opportunity pipeline spans across all three elements of performance excellence, and as you can see on the slide, it touches both divisions, with the graph illustrating the broad contribution from key capacity optimization and Lean process opportunities across both Minerals and ESCO.
Sean and Andrew are going to spotlight these later in the presentation, but I'm just gonna touch on a bit more detail on where business services or WBS, where the benefits will fall across both divisions. The objective of WBS is to move the transactional elements of our enabling functions to a global business services model. It's a well-trodden path walked by many organizations before us, and the benefits are clear. It will reduce duplication of effort across the business, ensuring we have one way of doing things, and will deliver an efficient and cost-effective service to the business, leveraging the investments we've made in global systems. It'll also bring an improved user experience for both our colleagues and customers, and stronger career paths for employees in business partnering roles. On the execution side, we've made great progress.
The detailed design phase of the project is complete. The overall shape of the transformation has been announced internally, and the first regional transition is due to commence in Q1 next year. The service delivery model will be a mixture of in-house and outsourced services, and by using third-party service providers to enable us to accelerate implementation, we'll benefit from their low-cost service hubs, which alone we expect to deliver a GBP 15 million labor arbitrage benefit, and that's before we get into the optimization phase. So WBS is on track, and 75% of the total cost-saving opportunity is already underpinned. So, in addition to expanding our margins, performance excellence will also further strengthen our cash generation.
Incremental profitability will flow to cash, and by delivering the program, our business will be lean and efficient and our asset base right-sized and well-invested, so we'll realize further benefits. From 2024 onwards, we expect CapEx to drop to around 1x depreciation, and over time, for our working capital to revenue ratio to move towards 20%.... So pulling this together, we are reiterating our commitment to deliver 90%-100% free operating cash conversion from 2024 onwards, and with us on track to deliver this year's cash conversion of target of 80%-90%, we've built a strong and consistent cash record, record of cash generation as a focused mining technology company.
And with high levels of profitability and cash generation, our already strong balance sheet will get even stronger, and with this comes a virtuous circle where we have optionality and flexibility on how we allocate our capital, enabling us to prioritize the actions which will grow total shareholder returns. We will continue to invest, both organically and through acquisitions, to fuel further growth, but we'll have the optionality to dial up our investment when opportunities present themselves. Simultaneously, we'll continue to distribute in line with our dividend policy, paying out one-third of through-cycle EPS and having the optionality to supplement this with special returns if we get to the lower end of our balance sheet leverage range. So in summary, our balance sheet is strong, and as we generate cash, it's going to get even stronger.
We'll be highly disciplined in how we use that cash to take the actions which will have the biggest impact on growing total shareholder returns. So just pulling together the themes from this first section of the presentation, I believe the future for Weir is really bright. We are on a journey to sustainability and higher margins. We've already made great progress as we deliver against our 17% operating margin target this year. Looking forward, our new target is to deliver an operating margin of 20% in 2026, which will be achieved in two ways. Firstly, operating leverage from growth as we deliver against our strategy to enable sustainable mining and continue to realize the benefits of our compounding business model. And secondly, our Performance Excellence self-help transformation program, where we've upgraded our target to GBP 60 million of absolute savings in 2026.
Simultaneously, we'll continue to invest and allocate our capital to prioritize growth in total shareholder returns. So standing back, I'm really delighted with how we're set up. The growth assumptions underpinning our margin expansion from operating leverage are conservative, and the savings from performance excellence are underpinned by specific projects, all of which are within our control. So as we enter the next stage of Weir's growth and journey to sustainably higher margins, we have a clear pathway to realize our full potential as a focused mining technology leader. With that, let me now pass you over to Sean to take you through the ESCO section.
Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm delighted to be here, my first Weir Capital Markets event, talking to you about our ESCO division. When I joined ESCO 12 months ago, what attracted me was the strength of ESCO's brand, its global leadership positions, and the value it brings to customers through differentiated technology and service. I have not been disappointed. We have a fantastic customer proposition and a fantastic team. As you will see today, there are many exciting opportunities ahead as we deliver our market growth, coupled with margin expansion from performance excellence. Before I get started, I want to touch on progress since the acquisition by Weir in 2018. In that time period, ESCO's GET market share has grown 7%, which has underpinned revenue growth of over 40%. Simultaneously, margins have expanded by around 600 basis points.
While in safety, which is our number one priority, we've reduced our total incident rate by over 60%. Let me now give you a brief overview of the ESCO division. ESCO serves customers in both the mining and infrastructure markets. Mining is our largest market, representing around 70% of our revenue, and it's this segment on which I will be focusing today. Within mining, our focus is on optimizing productivity and sustainability in the extraction phase of the mine. This is the point of attack for our customers. While we have a portfolio of leading solutions, including our ground engaging tools, where we are a global market leader with around 45% share in the large mining machines. We also have our differentiated mining buckets and our Motion Metrics digital technology.
Together, the value of these leading technologies are complemented by close customer proximity through our global service network. We work in partnership with our customers to provide customized technology solutions, which are optimized to suit the rock and dig conditions at their specific mine. It's this approach which underpins the production partner business model, which was introduced last year. Across the mine, our solutions are differentiated by the reliability, performance, and safety. Underpinning this is our deep-rooted mining expertise, continual focus on innovation and leading engineering, which combine to make us the trusted partner of choice for our customers. I'll now turn to ESCO's growth and performance excellence opportunities that will allow us to outgrow our markets while expanding margins.
As I talk through these, I'll use the same framework as John, starting with an overview of our compounding business model and how it drives growth, followed by some comments on our technology-focused growth initiatives. I'll then conclude with some detail on how we're optimizing our operations through performance excellence, including our foundry optimization program and the expansion of our low-cost foundry capacity in Suzhou, China, and how combined these support future margin expansion. So, starting with our compounding growth business model. Our ground engaging tool systems comprise of a lip, which is original equipment, and then teeth, shrouds, and adapters, which are expendables, and hence are referred to as aftermarket. Our best-in-class system has proprietary connecting technology. So once a lip is installed, we have a 100% capture rate of the expendables. This makes our large installed base of lips a significant asset.
This model is reflected in our revenue mix, which has an aftermarket bias of more than 90%. The life of a lip can range from five to 10 years, but expendables wear out much quicker, wearing down as they engage the mine with the ore in the mine. Wear life of expendables varies by application, typically lasting a few weeks, though in the most extreme applications, this shortens to a few days. Demand is driven by the quantity of ore and overburden moved, underpinned by mining production trends and the impact of declining grades. ESCO solutions are differentiated by their extended wear life, so expendables need replacing less frequently than competitors, giving them embedded sustainability benefits. Our value proposition is therefore lower total cost of ownership, or TCO, as our solutions reduce downtime and improve productivity for our customers.
Through our global sales and service network, we provide 24/7 support to our customers, ensuring they have mission-critical components to keep operations running. Together, with our best-in-class TCO, this creates a strong barrier to entry. A lip system will generate 1x-4x its value in expendables each year. That's 1x-4x its value in expendables every year. A truly great business. Our leading technology means we continue to convert customers to ESCO lips and grow our installed base, driving compounding growth through incremental aftermarket demand, just as John described. What's more, each mining bucket we sell has an ESCO lip installed, so our increasing traction in this area further supports aftermarket growth. In summary, ESCO's technology offers the lowest total cost of ownership for our customers while improving mining efficiency and enabling sustainable mining. I'll now take you through some of ESCO's growth opportunities.
The map shows our relative market share by region for three of our main product categories. For example, in GET, shown in the segment by the circle, we are the global market leader, but our share varies by region. As you can see from the darker shading, our share is strongest in North America, but lighter in other regions, so we have global opportunities for growth. In mining buckets, where we're growing quickly, we still have lots of opportunities across all regions. And finally, the market for digital solutions is emerging quickly, which provides tremendous opportunity for our Motion Metrics technology. I'll now talk about how we're driving growth in each of these product categories and how our leadership in GET is enabling us to provide optimized solutions, comprising all our products to improve mine productivity and efficiency for our customers.
Focusing first on GET, where the global market is large, the global market for large mining machines is approximately GBP 800 million, and our share is about 45%. We are the premium product in this segment, and our solutions are differentiated by, one, improved wear life. Two, improved dig performance, meaning teeth engage with ore in the optimum way, driving machine productivity. And three, our proprietary connecting technology, ensuring quicker and safer teeth change-outs. Together, these factors minimize downtime for our customers, improve productivity and sustainability, and deliver the lowest TCO. Our focus on innovation means we continue to develop this proposition and grow share. In 2012, we launched our current GET system called Nemisys, and as competitors have raced to try and match our value proposition, we've invested, staying several steps ahead.
In 2024, we will launch our next generation of GET system, ensuring TCO leadership for years to come. We have been trialing this new system with several customers for over a year, and the results are exceeding our expectations. The improved wear life expands on ESCO's leading TCO for our customers and will drive further gains in share. Turning next to our capital strategy, focused on mining buckets, where our share today is small. Annually, the global market is worth about GBP 400 million, and participants include machine OEMs and a large number of small independent players. Historically, solutions from independents have been price-focused and undifferentiated. However, since focusing on this category in 2019, ESCO has changed the game, and we're growing quickly, with revenues up almost fourfold in that time period.
Our mining expertise and dedicated resources enable us to provide a premium value proposition, and we optimize the design for each bucket to suit condition at the customer's mine. As a result, our solutions are the most reliable and require the least maintenance, and when coupled with an ESCO GET system, have a faster fill rate and better dig efficiency, meaning our customers use less energy per ton of rock moved. Finally, on this page, Motion Metrics, where the market is fast emerging, and we estimate a potential of over GBP 500 million. As a reminder, at the time of acquisition, the primary attraction of the Motion Metrics technology was its tooth loss detection capability. Tooth loss can be a significant event for a mine, with the potential to block the crusher, creating a safety risk and causing significant downtime.
With its vision-based sensing, underpinned by artificial intelligence, Motion Metrics is not only the best at tooth loss detection, but has several other significant advantages over competing technologies. First, it is GET agnostic. Our system does not require our customers to only use ESCO GET. Second, with our vision-based technology, there are many additional customer value offerings beyond tooth loss, including tooth wear, boulder detection, lip shroud loss, and fragmentation analysis. And as we develop new offerings over time, it allows us to provide additional value to our customers on their existing Motion Metrics platforms, creating further upsell opportunities. ESCO's global sales coverage has driven Motion Metrics adoption across our existing customer base, delivering on the revenue synergies we identified at acquisition. In addition, Motion Metrics opens doors to non-ESCO customers, driving benefits in our GET and mining bucket segments.
On the next slide, I will provide more color on how ESCO's industry-leading technology, coupled with our global service network, creates such a powerful combination of value for our customers. Since ESCO's acquisition by Weir in 2018, in addition to the technology investments just described, we have pursued our direct in-mining strategy to expand our sales and service network and further embed ourselves in our customers' operations. By being on the ground close to our customer, we're using our leadership in GET and deep-rooted mining expertise to cross-sell our portfolio of solutions and expand our presence at the mine, all of which provides further productivity and sustainability benefit to our customers. I'll now bring this to life with a case study. For many years, we've been supplying a large copper mine in North America.
The ESCO service team are with customers day in and day out and have an incredible entrepreneurial spirit to understand their customers' challenges and come up with the best solutions. Let me give you some more color. As the customers expanded their operations, instead of adding more expensive haul trucks, they made the decision to do more crushing in the pit and transport the ore on conveyor belts. This process requires unique wear parts with high wear characteristics, and we are supporting them with that solution. Given our proximity and deep understanding, we designed a customized solution for them, manufactured in our nearby facility. In addition, the customer was seeking to improve dig efficiency. So rather than sourcing new mining buckets from their usual OEM supplier, they turned to ESCO, and this led to our first bucket sales with this customer and increased our share of GET.
Furthermore, we're also expanding and upgrading their Motion Metrics technology. It is this type of customer intimacy that has allowed us to grow with the customer across all our products and create strong barriers to entry. As you can see from the graphic on the screen, over the last three years, we have doubled our share of wallet and significantly expanded our presence on each machine at the mine, moving from just the green GET to also supplying the red bucket and the blue Motion Metrics technology. This is one of many opportunities globally. I'd now like to share a video from my colleague, Melissa Davison, to tell you about how she's driving growth in the Australasia region.
Melissa will explain how ESCO collaborates and grows with our customers, and the video will also give you a better appreciation of ESCO's industry-leading products in action and the rugged environment in which they operate.
Hi, I'm Melissa Davison, and I'm Managing Director for the Australasia region in ESCO. Having previously worked seven years in various roles in the Minerals division, I joined ESCO back in 2021 to deliver strategic expansion opportunities in the region. Australasia boasts some of the world's largest mineral deposits and is home to some of the most ambitious mining projects. Miners are highly focused on maximizing production while operating safely, efficiently, and reliably. We are seeing the acceleration of technology and sustainability challenge our customers like never before. There couldn't be a more exciting time to be in the mining industry and be a part of a company like Weir, where we are challenged and supported to work with our customers to help them solve some of their most pressing operational problems.
We've grown strongly over the past two years, leveraging the quality, reliability, and safety of the ESCO brand and our differentiated core GET technology to help us embed ESCO more deeply into our customers' operations in the region with a broader suite of solutions. There is a significant opportunity for us to strategically grow with our capital equipment strategy, and we are seeing great success from developing innovative solutions for our customers, which marry productivity and sustainability benefits into a single offer across multiple product offerings. Motion Metrics solutions are gaining great traction, too. Field trials are proving the technology, and we recently secured a package of 10 Motion Metrics systems, which will be deployed across all large mining machines at an iron ore mine in Western Australia.
Being close to the customer remains a core focus, and we continue to expand our team on the ground, ensuring that we can deliver our trademark ESCO support and truly partner with our customers. As well as extending our breadth of technology and solutions, we're also investing time in strengthening our customer relationships, positioning ESCO as the team that's there to solve their problems and anchoring ourselves in the communities that we serve. Beyond their operations, we also spend time with customers at our locations, demonstrating our capabilities and expertise and engaging in best practice exchanges on topics like safety practices and sustainability initiatives. These interactions, combined with their experience of using our solutions, is elevating ESCO in the eyes of our customers here in Australasia as not just a provider of reliable products in the pit, but a partner for smart, efficient, and sustainable solutions.
... Thank you, Melissa. It's great to hear how our differentiated technology and customer proximity are driving growth for ESCO around the world. As I mentioned at the beginning of the video, how we are just solving our customers' toughest challenges in rugged environments. Personally, I spend a lot of time on mine sites, seeing our technology in action and seeing how just how important it is for our equipment to have the best performance and the most reliability. Customer service and great technology is so powerful when you put them together. Now, I want to talk about performance excellence. I'll start with an overview of our vertically integrated model. Our global footprint comprises of our sales and service centers, which are essential to our value proposition, keeping close to our customers, and also our manufacturing facilities and foundries.
Across the world, we have five foundries, and it's here where we manufacture our proprietary technology. Our leading metallurgy and foundry process expertise give our GET their wear-life benefits, so our integrated model is a crucial value driver and protects our IP. It also de-risks our supply chains, and by managing the network on a global basis, we have flexibility in how orders are fulfilled and allows us to be highly responsive to our customers' needs. This model works well for us by allowing us to protect our IP while better serving our customers. Our foundries are the foundation of the division and are where our performance excellence opportunities lie. Here are two specific initiatives that we are focusing on. The first is the continued optimization of our North American foundries, where we are driving to improve performance towards that of our best-in-class foundry, which is in Suzhou, China.
This is a data-driven effort on systems that are fully embedded across all our foundries. The second initiative is the expansion of our low-cost foundry capacity, which we'll achieve through the investment made in our foundry in China, Suzhou II. I'll now share further details of each of these projects, but first, let me give you some context. Operating foundries is a complex task. We monitor performance closely, with cost per ton being the most critical metric. Put simply, this is how much it costs to produce each ton of product, so it drives our cost of sales and impacts the profitability of the division. At a high level, the two main drivers of cost per ton are cost of materials and what we call conversion cost, being the cost to turn raw material into finished product.
There are many factors which influence conversion cost, but two of the most significant are predictability and quality. We measure predictability through heat attainment. To explain, a heat is a single furnace charge of steel, and heat attainment is whether we are achieving the planned amount of these charges in a specific period. For quality, first-pass yield is a good measure, and it indicates inefficiencies in scrap and rework. Having launched our foundry optimization program last year, we are making solid progress. As you can see from the chart, over the last 12 months, we've increased our average heat attainment by 3% and first-pass yield by 4%, reducing our conversion cost by millions of pounds in 2023. However, there is still a spread of performance across the network, which is an opportunity to improve.
Our target is to lower our average conversion cost per ton by 10% over the next three years, optimizing our foundry performance in North America and expanding our capacity in China. Let's start North America. When running foundries, having strong, repeatable processes is essential. Achieving this requires well-maintained equipment, supplemented with digital tools, providing clear performance data that capable leaders can monitor in real time. This is our recipe for continuous improvement. For example, we are monitoring real-time data on our critical machines, and in the last 12 months, we've taken action to reduce our unplanned maintenance by nearly 10%. We are already seeing benefits and unlocking improvement in heat attainment and predictability. Improving quality is a full team effort. We are dedicating resources from our metallurgy, engineering, and continuous improvement teams to focus on reducing the two key indicators of quality: scrap and rework.
This is ongoing, but initial process progress is encouraging, with some sites cutting these critical metrics by 50% over the last year. Furthermore, by deploying design for manufacturing principles, we're ensuring that our newest products, like the next-generation GET system I mentioned earlier, are launched with minimized scrap and rework issues from the start. Together, the improvements we're making will make ESCO a safer place to work, reduce the waste we create, thereby improving our sustainability, and will drive down our conversion cost per ton. Moving on, I'm also really excited to talk about Suzhou II. This is a $60 million investment by Weir in a new state-of-the-art foundry in Suzhou, China. It will replace our existing facility in the city, and once operating at peak capacity, will produce nearly 70 tons of GET per day.
This is about 30% more than the foundry it replaces, so will significantly increase the proportion of the division's total capacity in our lowest cost location. Furthermore, increased use of automation will improve efficiency and further drive down the cost of manufacturing. To bring it to life, I'll pass you over to my colleagues, GuangKuo Zhao and Daisy Li, to tell you more about it and show you around.
Hi, everyone. My name is GuangKuo Zhao, and I am General Manager of China Operations for ESCO in Suzhou, China. ESCO has been operating the foundry in Suzhou since 2006, mainly focus on the high volume components of GET products with a highly standardized process, and the majority of the products is exported to the customer all over the world. In line with our growth opportunities and as part of our expansion and Performance Excellence plans, we are investing the new facility behind me, Suzhou II, located 6 mi away from our current operations. Staying in Suzhou means we can capitalize our culture of continual improvement, resulting in constantly higher performance in safety, quality, productivity, and employee engagement. Also, we can retain our high-skilled employees, including many of them who has been with us from the beginning.
In line with our plans, we expect to pour the first gate during the first quarter of 2024, and transfer the operations in early 2025. Suzhou II will be the newest and the most modern ESCO foundry, and will integrate the global foundry network to supply Linatex across the globe. My colleague, Daisy Li, Project Manager for the new facility, will tell you more.
Thank you, GuangKuo, and hello, everyone. I'm excited to introduce you to Suzhou II. It optimized 16.5 acre site in Suzhou Industrial Zone, and represent a $60 million investment for Weir that will expand our foundry capacity in China by over 30%. We broke ground in July 2022, and as you can see, construction is now largely complete. The foundry features the very latest technology and equipment, and will allow us to enhance and optimize our foundry processes, improving efficiency and further reducing cost of manufacture. In addition, its design allows us to produce a wider range of GET products, including larger-sized components, so we can make more product types in a more cost-effective way.
The investment demonstrates a commitment to long-term presence and economic contributions in local that will drive the efficiency in our operations and support our continued growth as a supplier of core GET products to supply customers worldwide. We are so excited and we are looking forward to start the production here in Suzhou II.
Thank you, GuangKuo and Daisy, and the entire Suzhou team. It's exciting to see this great project progress so well and so quickly. Stepping back, delivering these two performance excellence initiatives is well within our control, giving me confidence that we can achieve our target to reduce our conversion cost per ton. I'll now wrap up by recapping on the key messages from this section of the presentation. ESCO is a global leader in the mining extraction space. We have a portfolio of differentiated technologies, are deeply embedded in our customers' operations, and have an aftermarket-biased business model, which drives compounding growth. We have opportunities to grow across our portfolio. In GET, we will win further share through our differentiated technology and the upcoming launch of our next-generation product, while in both mining buckets and Motion Metrics, we're growing rapidly and there's lots of running room.
Finally, through performance excellence, we're realizing our full potential, driving Lean processes through the foundry operations and expanding our low-cost foundry capacity. Thank you, and I'll now pass you over to Andrew.
Okay, thank you, Sean, and good afternoon, everyone. In the next section, I'm going to focus on our Minerals division. Having been both the Vice President of Finance and Managing Director for the European Region of Minerals, I was delighted when John asked me last year to move back to ESCO from ESCO to take on a Division President role. Minerals is a great business, and we have an excellent team, and the growth and performance excellence opportunities which lie ahead are really exciting. So let me take you through these in more detail now. Starting with a brief overview of the division. Minerals predominantly operates in the Minerals processing plant. This includes in comminution, which is a process of crushing, grinding, and screening rocks, and also in wet processing, where our equipment is used across the whole mill circuit to process and classify slurry.
We also have a strong downstream presence, providing equipment for tailings management. Today, we have a number of global leading brands in our portfolio, differentiated by their performance, reliability, and extended wear life. We combine these into optimized, integrated technology solutions that drive productivity for our customers day in, day out. Through our extensive global footprint, we provide 24/7 wraparound service support to this offering, which gives us a real competitive advantage, enabling us to continually tailor our solutions to the ever-changing conditions of the ore processing plant. Underpinning our technologies, we have world-class engineering capability and a strong culture of innovation, which have powered our growth and success in recent years.... Our innovations have broadened our capability beyond our core slurry pumps into new product lines and new solutions, expanding our addressable market and the value we can deliver for our customers across the processing plant.
Turning next to our growth and performance excellence opportunities. I'll use the framework you will now be familiar with, starting with an overview of our compounding business model, touching on some of our growth technology focuses before diving deeper into our performance excellence opportunities, where I'll describe how we are making our operations more efficient and driving margin expansion. As John described, our business model drives compounding growth over time. We have a large installed base of equipment, typically operating in the most abrasive parts of the mine, so it regularly wears out, creating an annuity-like demand for aftermarket spare parts. Demand for our spares typically grows in line with run-of-mine production trends, multiplied by the effects of declining grades and market share gains. As I mentioned earlier, our global sales and service network ensures we stay close to our customers and is a significant barrier to entry.
This is evidenced by our aftermarket capture rate, which is over 90%. The service center network also opens up regular cross-selling opportunities to extend the range of equipment we have on a particular site, and that incrementally expands our installed base and aftermarket opportunity and fuels further profitable and sustainable growth. Let's take a large Warman mill circuit pump, which in a typical application, pumps a slurry containing water and rocks. Once installed, it is usually in place for the life of the mine, which can be many decades, and can generate between 30% and 100% of its original sales value every year, with parts such as impellers and throat bush being replaced every three months.
The business model is fantastic, and these aftermarket characteristics span right across our product portfolio, with our focus being on providing the lowest total cost of ownership for each product and process, leveraging our technology and service presence to embed us in our customers' operations. We've opportunities to keep growing and to make our installed base even bigger. Let me tell you more about that. The map on this slide shows our relative market shares by region across three of our main product categories. Even though we're already the clear global leader in pumps and cyclones, you can see our shares vary by region, providing headroom for growth. For example, in cyclones and classification, which is depicted by the square, you can see from the darker shading, our market share is strongest in Australia, but lighter in other regions.
While in combination, which is spearheaded by our HPGR product, we've a leading technology in an emerging market alongside a broad range of crushers and screens, so there's plenty of room to grow. Across the portfolio, we are pursuing growth through three specific strategies. Firstly, trials and upgrades to reduce the total cost of ownership of a single piece of equipment. We have a high success rate in head-to-head trials with competitors, so we continue to win market share in individual products. Secondly, debottlenecking or efficiency improvement solutions. Here, we partner with customers to provide integrated solutions of wear equipment, optimized to increase throughput, expand capacity, and reduce production costs at existing mines. And lastly, our most recent growth strategy, rolling out our redefined mill circuit. This flow sheet can be installed either in full or in modular components, thereby making it suitable for both existing and new mines.
It's our progress in the redefined mill circuit I'm going to focus on today. I'll start with a recap of the traditional mill circuit, a system which typically incorporates both a SAG and Ball mill, sometimes called tumbling mills. The simplified configuration shown here on the slide has been used in mining for many decades, long before sustainability was a consideration. However, it is inherently inefficient and has many sustainability challenges. The role of the tumbling mills is to grind rocks, turning them into powder, so the minerals can be liberated. This happens when the rocks fall into each other or when they are struck by steel balls, known as grinding media. How and when this happens is unpredictable, and this causes problems downstream. Controlling the particle size is difficult, with a large and moving distribution at any one point in time.
This means a significant proportion of the ore has to be reprocessed to achieve the desired particle size. This is known as recirculating load and can account for up to 1/3 of mill capacity at any one time. In addition, water is required in the mill, so a lot is lost to leakage and evaporation throughout the process, and the majority ends up in waste and tailings ponds. So the traditional circuit consumes huge amounts of energy, creates lots of waste, and uses a lot of precious water. And it's these challenges that we're tackling with our redefined mill circuit. By replacing the sag and ball mills with a combination of high-pressure grinding rolls and vertically stirred mills, tumbling mills are completely removed from the circuit. Grinding is a lot less energy-intensive, and ore output is more predictable.
The result is a tightly controlled particle size, dramatically reducing recirculating load. In addition, water is added downstream of the HPGR, materially reducing the water demands of the circuit. Since introducing the redefined mill circuit to you last year, we've been working hard to precisely quantify the energy and emissions benefits of the system and these are known as avoided emissions or Scope 4. And I'm delighted that the benefits have now been independently assured by the sustainability experts at SLR Consulting. Our work shows that in a typical copper mine, energy consumption is reduced by over 40% and emissions are more than halved per ton of ore. In addition, the operating cost of the system is around 20% lower than that of the traditional circuit. So combined, the operational, financial, and sustainability benefits for our customers are truly compelling.
This avoided emissions study, which is the first of its kind for a mining use case, is receiving global interest with both government bodies and the finance sector waking up to the opportunity to materially reduce the carbon footprint of mining. Weir is at the forefront of this, and we were invited to take part in a panel discussion on avoided emissions at COP 28 last Sunday, moderated by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. We're really excited about the redefined mill circuit and the impact it can have on making mining more sustainable. Furthermore, as we look ahead, the enablers of growth are in place. We have great technology, and as I'll now go on to explain, our sales pipeline is growing and our technology reference sites are driving adoption.
On this slide, you can see the data on our sales pipeline for our HPGR, which is the lead indicator of demand for our redefined mill circuit. While disclosing the absolute number is commercially sensitive, the size of our pipeline has increased eightfold since 2017. Pleasingly, we're seeing demand across a mixture of commodities and from customers pursuing both brownfield and greenfield projects, and momentum is building. In addition to the compelling environmental and cost benefits, one of the key factors driving customer interest is our technology reference sites. The mining industry is conservative, so validation of the technology in operation at a live mine is really powerful. Our best example of this is Iron Bridge. I'm going to hand over to my colleague, Stuart Hayton, to tell you more about it.
Hi, I'm Stuart Hayton. I'm Managing Director of the Minerals Venlo Facility, and I'm the Divisional Vice President of Comminution. I'd like to give you an update on Iron Bridge, a major project incorporating Weir's redefined flow sheets that's setting new standards for sustainable mining operations. Iron Bridge is a complex and innovative iron ore project located in the Pilbara in Western Australia. It's operated by Fortescue Metals Group, or FMG. It will produce 22 million tons a year of high-grade magnetite concentrate to support the shift to green steel production. FMG has taken an industry-leading position with tackling decarbonization, with the goal of achieving real zero operational emissions by 2030. Given their push for carbon neutrality, they were keen to work with Weir to develop the most efficient comminution solution for Iron Bridge in terms of total cost of ownership, CO2 emissions, and minimal technical risk.
The IBO comminution flow sheet was built around Weir's HPGR technology, bringing increased uptime and wear life benefits over competitive solutions, and critically, for the substantial energy and water savings it provides. Comminution is the process of turning big rocks into small particles that can be processed to extract mineral content. It consumes huge amounts of energy, and our HPGR technology is proven to significantly reduce energy consumption. At Iron Bridge, we'll save at least 30% in energy and around 40% in carbon, compared to conventional SAG and Ball mills. This saves FMG money and delivers significant reductions in carbon emissions. The technology runs as a dry process. Not only does this bring water-saving benefits for the customer, it helps tackle another important industry issue, which is waste.
Not only were IBO looking for the most energy-efficient equipment, our dry comminution flow sheet means that waste is removed from the system at the earliest possible stage. In this case, 13 million tons of waste will be captured early and captured dry. This reduces the wet tailings requirement for the plant. In addition to the HPGR solution, we're also supporting FMG in other parts of the process, Warman pumps for tailings and GEHO pumps for a particularly demanding pipeline duty. The Iron Bridge site produces wet concentrate, which is then transported through a 135 km specialist slurry pipeline to Port Hedland for dewatering to create a high-grade magnetite product ready for shipping. Our Warman pumps and our GEHOs are mission critical in these parts of the operation. We partnered closely with FMG over many years throughout the design and commissioning phase.
A close collaboration, shared values, and a real understanding of the philosophy of what we were both trying to achieve, really underpinned the project's success, and that's continued into ramp up and operation. We've established a new Weir service center at Port Hedland, so we're on hand whenever they need us. FMG announced first production from Iron Bridge in May 2023, and Weir's innovative technology is at the heart of the operation, delivering high productivity with reduced environmental impact, all absolutely in line with FMG's ambitions for sustainable mining. And while this might sound like mine of the future, Iron Bridge and our solution within it is reality today. By combining proven technologies in innovative new ways, we've delivered FMG a sustainable and transformational solution for Iron Bridge that helps them get more from less, more productivity with less impact on the environment....
It's fantastic to see the mine up and running and the technology performing as planned. Its success is creating a lot of interest across the industry, with Iron Bridge being viewed as a key milestone site as we continue to collaborate with FMG and other customers around the world on transformative flow sheets to make mining more sustainable.
Thanks, Stuart. It's truly great to see the Iron Bridge flow sheet in action. It's a real milestone for us and an important proof point for our technology, showcasing the great cost and sustainability benefits of our redefined mill circuit. Moving on, and as John mentioned earlier, we will use bolt-on acquisitions to accelerate our organic strategy, focusing on geographic expansion, product infill, and digital solutions. In geographic expansion, we already have a strong global service and manufacturing network, so the pipeline is relatively narrow. However, there are one or two pockets around the world where bringing in specialist manufacturing or service capability would be additive, or where we could boost our product leadership in a specific region.
From a product infill perspective, more generally, I'd say we've got three key aspects: firstly, premium-positioned aftermarket buys products, especially in comminution, which, while representing a small part of our portfolio today, is a big opportunity. Tailings, an area where we're already very active, but it's an increasing focus for our customers, so we're keen to keep strengthening. And then there's transformative new technologies that enable us to challenge and redefine existing flow sheets to enhance productivity and sustainability for customers, with HPGR being a good example of this. Turning lastly to digital solutions, here we're looking at opportunities together with our colleagues in ESCO, and areas of interest include ore characterization and capabilities which add to our predictive maintenance solutions. We're also interested in adding process optimization capabilities, and as you'll have seen, we announced the acquisition of SentianAI a couple of weeks ago.
In the last few months, we've been working closely with the Sentian team on a proof of concept to optimize the performance of Weir equipment in the processing plant. So it's a natural next step to bring the technology in-house. It expands our digital capability and accelerates our technology strategy, complementing and bridging from the already strong platform we have with Synertrex. As a reminder, Synertrex is our proprietary intelligent digital twin technology, which monitors equipment, health, and performance, enabling optimization, supplemented by a remote monitoring and analytics capability. We've made great progress driving adoption of Synertrex over the past few years, supported by recent product launches, including our latest generation, IntelliPumps and IntelliCyclones. So it's a great time to be acquiring the Sentian platform. The technologies are synergistic.
SentianAI enables process optimization software with inputs from Synertrex and from across the broader processing circuit to make recommendations on how ore throughput can be increased and emissions and energy consumption reduced. It can also enable automation, so opening the door to exploring new business models such as performance-based payments and software as a service, which is really exciting and shows the long-term growth we see from digital technologies. I'll now move on to the division's Performance Excellence opportunities, and I'll start with a reminder of how Minerals currently operates. We have a global service and manufacturing footprint, which you can see on the slide. As you already heard, our boots on the ground and service footprint is a real differentiator and a significant value driver.
And so, too, is our integrated manufacturing model, ensuring we protect the IP, which underpins our technology differentiation, while also de-risking our supply chain through localization and duplication of sources, meaning our customers always have the mission-critical parts they need in order to avoid downtime. Historically, our manufacturing has been largely managed on an in-region, for-region basis, using regional ERP systems and regional cost and operating policies. While this model serves us well in being able to support rapid and reliable delivery to customers, the manufacturing everything everywhere model has some inherent inefficiencies, so we have opportunities to optimize and embed a more flexible and efficient manufacturing strategy. To put ourselves in a position to unlock this opportunity, we've been making substantial investments in the past few years to adopt common foundational systems across the division.
Historically, Minerals had over 20 ERP systems in use across the globe, with multiple variants of support systems across engineering, finance, HR operations, services, and supply chain. This meant no consistency in process or even part numbers. Getting a single instance of best-in-class tools has been the focus for the past few years to enable us to operate globally. By investing in SAP, we now have a global ERP system, which we've supplemented with investments in operational and optimization tools such as 42Q, Coupa, and Celonis. Together, these allow us to deploy standard global operating and cost, costing policies, providing compatibility across the whole division and enabling data-driven decisions. Put simply, we're now able to look at the end-to-end performance of Minerals on a global rather than just a regional basis. So with this deeper level of insight, the optimization opportunities are significant.
With the technology and systems rollout largely complete, we're now moving into the benefits phase, and we're ready to realize a return on that investment. This slide shows our Performance Excellence priorities across capacity optimization and Lean processes in four categories. The first one is optimizing our roofline and manufacturing strategy. We've already completed the first phase of this, including the opening of our new distribution center in Salt Lake City, which will deliver around GBP 4 million savings in 2024. We're now expanding the scope, looking globally at what products we make where, and using best-cost country manufacturing. Second is operational planning and logistics, benefiting from economies of scale in our purchasing and optimizing our logistics channels and how we fulfill customer orders. Thirdly, we have product lifecycle management.
Having a single global view on our product range and ensuring standardization across regions will eliminate inefficiencies in engineering, manufacturing, and logistics, while enabling further leverage of suppliers. Fourth is operational efficiencies. We are deploying Lean methodologies right across our operations to eliminate waste. I'll now cover each in more detail, starting with how we'll optimize our footprint with a focus on our manufacturing operations. As I mentioned earlier, the everything-everywhere manufacturing model enables rapid, reliable delivery but is also inefficient. Small batch volumes and limited use of standard production processes means costs of product can vary across the world, while design and manufacturing processes have also diverged, as we've made one-off bespoke solutions for customers. In addition, making everything in-house means critical capacity can be absorbed, making small, non-differentiated components.
Looking to the future, for our mission-critical equipment and spares, we'll continue to use a manufactured in-region model. These products are IP rich, and our customers value local manufacturing with simple logistics and short, predictable lead times. We saw the value of this once again during the recent post-COVID global supply chain challenges. However, for our longer lead time and modular equipment, and also some of our smaller and less differentiated components, we'll move towards a global or regional manufacturing and supply model. This allows us to use best-cost country sourcing, and where it makes sense to do so, we'll use third-party suppliers. This dual approach gives us more flexibility in our manufacturing strategy and enables us to exit certain facilities and lower our cost base. I'll now bring this to life with an example of one of the projects already underway.
In Australasia, currently, we manufacture elastomers in two facilities: one in Australia that focuses on large parts and one in Malaysia focused on small and medium parts. These components are mainly molded, used in our pumps and cyclones. The facility in Malaysia is our best-in-class Lean facility and also manufactures our Linatex rubber product range. In comparison, the cost to manufacture in the Australian facility is higher. With modest incremental investment, the facility in Malaysia has sufficient capacity to meet the needs of the whole region and also become more efficient. So in our Performance Excellence opportunity, we're consolidating elastomer manufacturing from both facilities into Malaysia and creating a center of excellence for rubber manufacturing in Asia Pacific. The move will significantly reduce our variable and fixed cost base in the region, while also freeing up space for us to optimize our Heavy Bay foundry in Australia.
In total, from this capacity optimization project alone, we expect to deliver an annual benefit of over GBP 3 million, with initial savings realized next year. Turning next to our three Lean process priorities. First, operational planning, procurement, and logistics. Today, this is largely managed at a country level. A customer places an order, the in-country team either ships from stock or manufactures, and associated procurement and logistics are managed locally. Our investment in systems and the changes in our manufacturing model means we can now operate to a divisional strategy, managing fulfillment on a global basis, shipping from stock if we can, or manufacturing in the optimum facility. This eliminates inefficiencies across the manufacturing value chain, simplifies logistics, and realizes economies of scale in purchasing. With only 14% of our annual direct spend currently managed under global contracts, the opportunity is sizable.
Turning next to product lifecycle management. Historically, product management has been in the scope of the regions, so part numbers vary across the world with a proliferation of products, with tweaks made to standard products to suit local trends. The result is a long tail of product variations. For example, in the last three years, we've sold around 100,000 different aftermarket SKUs, and of those, just 20% accounted for 90% of our revenue. So by steering product selection in the sales process to a much smaller, predefined set of global standards, we will materially reduce the complexity of our operations. To deliver this, we're rolling out global part numbers and product configurator tools, enabling customers to specify products to their needs while simultaneously controlling the number of possible variations.
Our third opportunity is operational efficiencies, where we'll achieve benefits by expanding Lean and reinvigorating our Lean culture. Historically, our approach to Lean has been fragmented, concentrating on our manufacturing operations only and following an off-the-shelf tick box approach. While we've made good progress by investing in divisional talent and capabilities, we've designed a new Lean operating system called Weir Integrated Network Solutions, or WINS, which can be applied across all value streams in our global operations. WINS is focused on outcomes, using really practical approaches to tackle big problems. It combines training and development for our people in Lean culture, with the introduction of standard processes and frameworks that can be applied locally to identify and eliminate waste across the value chain. I'll now pass you over to my colleague, Nicholas Dalhoff, who works in our Salt Lake City facility, to explain how he's using WINS in his work.
Hi, I'm Nicholas Dalhoff, and I'm the Lean Manufacturing Engineer at the Salt Lake City facility in the U.S.A. Our focus here is the manufacture of rubber wear products for hard rock mining customers located in the United States. Lean principles and process efficiency are critical to our approach, and the team is excited to be involved in launching the next stage of our Lean journey. The Weir Integrated Network System, or WINS, is reinvigorating Lean in the division. WINS is very outcome-focused and concentrates on eliminating things that waste time, effort, or money, cutting out steps that do not create value. The Salt Lake City facility was the first to put the new methods into practice with a week-long accelerator workshop in September. We gathered 17 people from different departments, including supply chain, logistics, and engineering, to focus on our large rubber press value chain.
It's a core part of what we do, and we recognize this was an area with the potential to improve efficiency and remove waste. Facilitated by Lean experts in our division, we worked through the accelerator methodology in a very structured and action-oriented way, at pace, and across the whole end-to-end process. We focused on solutions and outcomes, and on coming up with a plan to deliver improved throughput in the rubber pressing process. We began by identifying the real pain points throughout the process and narrowed that down to the six most significant opportunities, considering both their impact and the speed at which they could be executed. We then moved on to develop solutions, which we turned into tactical, actionable plans, each with an owner, timeframe, and clear outcome-led KPIs. Now, we're in execution mode and are checking back in as a team on a biweekly basis.
We are around halfway through the plan and on track to complete early next year. We are already seeing the benefits in our press utilization and reduced downtime of supporting work centers, and we are confident that our plans will deliver the improved efficiencies that we have targeted. Overall, it was a highly engaging workshop session that delivered an actionable output and created real enthusiasm among the team to deliver it. The practical but powerful accelerator methodology means it can be used for many other projects at this site and across our whole operational network, not just in manufacturing. With many small steps, together, we will deliver improvements aligned with business outcomes and customer expectations while building a culture of Lean, where we can keep improving every day.
Thanks, Nick. We're at the start of our WINS journey, and having just completed some of the training myself, I'm really excited by the opportunity for improvement that this will unlock. I'll wrap up this part of my presentation with a summary of key messages. Minerals is a world-class business. We have differentiated technology and leadership positions across the full mining process circuit, and our aftermarket business model delivers compounding growth. We have many opportunities to grow across our key product categories, and we are gaining traction with solutions, including our game-changing Redefined Mill Circuit, which delivers significant cost savings and energy efficiency benefits for our customers. Lastly, through Performance Excellence, we're realizing our investments in systems to optimize our footprint and drive Lean throughout our end-to-end value chains, while protecting our IP and staying close to customers. Thank you.
I'll now pass you back to John for his closing remarks.
Right. Thank you very much, Andrew, and also to Sean and all of my other Weir colleagues who've been part of the presentation, and, of course, all of the backroom staff who've put this excellent session together. I'll just conclude now with a summary of the key messages from today's presentation. We're continuing on our journey to sustainably higher margins and now have a 2026 operating margin target for Weir of 20%. And as you've heard today, we'll achieve this by capitalizing on growth opportunities from smart, efficient, and sustainable mining, and by delivering on our Performance Excellence transformation program with an updated 2026 cost-saving target of GBP 60 million. Our overall positioning and the compelling value creation opportunity which lies ahead gives me great confidence in further expanding our margins and in setting this new target.
We're a global mining technology leader, and the combination of our world-class engineering capability and our highly resilient aftermarket business model puts us right at the heart of our customers' operations. This differentiates Weir from its competitors and means that the barriers to entry are high. We play in attractive markets driven by multi-decade trends. The world needs more critical metals to get to net zero, and our customers need to adopt new technologies to extract and process those metals in more efficient and sustainable ways… and with performance excellence, we're taking action, optimizing and transforming to create a lean and efficient business, reducing our cost base and driving margin expansion.
So today, I'm pleased to be further strengthening our commitments to deliver excellent outcomes for all of our stakeholders, compounding growth, margin expansion, strong cash conversion, alongside best-in-class resilience and a compelling sustainability roadmap, which together will further strengthen our balance sheet, giving us optionality in how we allocate our capital, driving growth in total shareholder returns. So standing back, we have an excellent team and a world-class business. Our margin expansion ambitions are well underpinned by performance, excellence, and conservative growth assumptions, and we have a demonstrable track record of resilience, all of which leaves us positioned to be a standout performer in our sector in the years ahead, moving ahead to now realize our full potential as a focused mining technology leader and enabling smart, efficient, and sustainable mining for our customers. So thank you very much for listening, and we'll now move on to take your questions.
If my colleagues would join me up here on the stage. Thank you. We'll start from the front, shall we? Andy, would you like to go first?
Good morning, team. It's Andrew Douglas from Jefferies. I've got two questions on ESCO, and one for the new CFO, please. On the working capital to sales movement, I think we're around about 23%, 24%, and I think you're targeting 20%. I'm assuming that all the focus on Lean, et cetera, will be driving inventory out the channel, and that's the main differentiator between 24% and 20%, or is there more to it? So if you can just walk us through that, that would be helpful. And then on ESCO, you say that GBP 100 million of lip OE gives you GBP 100 million-GBP 400 million of aftermarket. It's quite a big variance. So can you just explain why that is?
And then buckets, you've got a quite considerably lower market share compared to GET. Again, I'm a bit stupid, so if you could explain that, that's helpful. I'm assuming that the big boys in that market have got material scale advantages, and if that's right, why should you gain market share? Thank you.
Okay. Well, as the former CFO, let me take the working capital question first, and then Sean can pick up on the ESCO questions. So, yeah. Look, I think we're actually in really good shape at the moment, with, as you say, working capital as a percentage of revenue, just below 25%, which I do believe is already sector leading. But we have more room for improvement. And I think, you know, what's interesting is we've talked about the operational improvements today in the context of savings and efficiency and profitability, but there's gonna be a big working capital benefit as well. All the things that the guys talked about in terms of those operational improvements, you know, the... for example, the product lifecycle management in Minerals, that's gonna take inventory out as well.
So there's gonna be a working capital benefit that goes alongside the profitability improvement. So I think, yeah, we're, as we said on the slide, I think, you know, 20% working capital percentage of sales is possible for our business, and we should get closer to that as we go through the next two or three years. And inventory reduction is going to be the big, the big driver of that. Sean, on the ESCO questions.
Yeah. So, on the first question, kinda the range of payback or, if you will, the multiple off of one lip on a per year basis. And the short answer is, it varies a lot because of the conditions that each machine is in and what the conditions that the GET therefore faces in those conditions. So if you go to not just across different types of ore, whether it be iron or copper, but also even across different iron mines, the way the customers use it, the location, the way they do their drill and blast, there's a lot of variables that go into that. So, you know, you can imagine, take it to extreme, easier conditions, soft rock, maybe surface coal, that's gonna have a more to the GBP 100 million that you're pointing to.
When you go to more harsh conditions, you know, copper, iron, you get more into the GBP 400 million kinda conditions. So the range is a lot to do with the mine itself and the conditions that the GET faces.
What's the average?
It averages, honestly, closer to the GBP 400 million side than it does to the GBP 100 million , because most of our applications are in hard rock. And well, he had another question, though, before you.
The market share on the buckets.
On the buckets, yeah. So as I mentioned in the presentation, ESCO really launched into the bucket space in 2019, and again, we, you know, 4x growth in that period of time. To your point, yes, you're right, a lot of the first fits go to the OEMs, you know, the Komatsu, the Caterpillars, et cetera, Liebherr . But we do get some of the first fits where customers will ask for our design specifically. When we don't get the bucket, sometimes just to add to it, we get the lip instead of the bucket on the first fit. And then a lot of times, as the machine's in operation for a period of time, they'll go to an ESCO bucket and an ESCO lip all at the same time.
So in this market, what you have is you have the OEMs doing a lot of first fit, but then you have a lot of local players in the different regions that supply locally. It's as I mentioned, it's, they're local, it was undifferentiated. Kinda we're bringing that differentiation that we bring to GET, we're moving it up into the bucket, and that's allowing us to grow somewhat on the first fits, but also to service the machines over their lifespan.
So just to add to that, it's also, you know, the customer proximity point about having people, you know, working in the pit there with the customer, we're understanding what are they doing with their plans for machines or replacement machines? What are they doing with their bucket strategy? So they'll have people who are thinking about this, and we're talking to them, you know, very, very regularly to understand what their strategy is, and then that drives our sales approach as to whether it's bucket, GET, whatever we're doing. And so again, that's where our differentiated business model of boots on the ground, more boots on the ground than anybody else, comes to the fore and really helps us grow and protect the business.
Thank you.
So Mike, Mike's got the microphone, so we'll work—we can, we can work back down the room.
Sort of hand it round. Thank you. Can you update us on both, the phasing of both the costs and the benefit of this expanded performance enhancement plan? Is that, and, and I guess, does that feed into a relatively linear progress on margins from 17% this year to 20% in 2026, or is that a bit more back-end loaded?
Yeah. So there was a chart which kind of shows the breakdown between the various projects and how that will build up over time. So where we are at the moment, obviously, we're doing a lot of work over the last six months in terms of building this strategy and what are the things that we're going to do and putting the plans in place, and we're now moving into the implementation phase of all the incremental projects which we've been developing on. So that means the benefits will build up over time, so there'll be a bit of back-end loading. So, you know, very broadly speaking, it's gonna be GBP 6 million of benefits this year, you know, probably mid-teens next year, getting into GBP 30 million or so the year after, and then full GBP 60 million in 2026.
So that's the kind of phase and it may move around a little bit because obviously the nature of these projects is that some will be able to move more quickly on others, you know, might take a bit more time. But you know we've got a long list of things that sit behind all of that, so very very comfortable that we'll deliver that over time. And the front-end and obviously you know the costs will be more front-end loaded, probably so this year and the next two years, and falling away in 2026 as you know we get into the full benefit realization stage.
Thank you very much. And the margin benefit, is that relatively well split between the two divisions, or is it more weighted one way or the other?
Yeah, I mean, it's relatively well balanced between the two divisions. So, obviously, Minerals starts from a slightly higher place and will end up in a slightly higher place, but they'll move up, you know, broadly in step, over the three years.
Thank you.
Over here. Klas Bergelind at Citi. So I have three, four for you, John. So obviously, your track record is solid, but I'm interested in the Lean bucket. It's quite a big step up from GBP 5 million -GBP 15 million. Have you done anything to incentives to make this realization more credible in terms of management incentives? That's the first one. The second one is on the cash flow, and maybe ask this in a slightly different way than Andy's. You've obviously lifted the margin target, you've kept your cash conversion target unchanged. You're going to 20% working cap.
Could you talk about whether you found any sort of opportunities to realize that quicker, as you've sort of been going through, particularly on the Lean side, or are we talking about 2026 as well? And then my third and final one is on the OEM growth. You talk, John, about that you have historically outgrown by around 2x . Now, you talk also about green steel and so forth. Has the sort of addressable market changed as well for you? Can OEM growth for Weir Group grow faster than history? That's my three questions.
Okay. Well, let me talk about the first one in terms of incentives, and then maybe Andrew, just pick up in a bit more detail on the Lean, 'cause it's mostly minerals, but obviously, Sean, feel free, and then I'll come back on the growth algorithm. So I think when you talk about incentives, we've got the business and our people really inspired about what this company is and where it's going at the moment. So I think it's twofold. We've got a really, really passionate and aligned group of employees who are really bought in to where this company is going and the potential of it, and we've got superb alignment across the business. So, and you know our culture's always been sort of very strong in that regard.
So what we're trying to do now in terms of moving from being a good company to a great company has really got the organization fired up and our people really excited by it. So I think that's, you know, really important to understand. We talk less about culture than maybe we should, but we've got a great team, and they're really, really fired up about where we're going. But then, of course, we will back that up by making sure that we've got the appropriate reward programs in place, and that includes the sort of existing, you know, annual bonus plan, because, you know, as we drive the growth in margin and profitability and cash generation, targets for the next three years will be set based on what you've just seen.
But of course, there'll be specific supplementary kind of retention programs and other things that we need to put in place just to make sure, you know, that we're covering off, which is more of kind of risk covering off, if you like. So, I mean, that's how we're thinking about it. Andrew, maybe just touch a bit on the Lean initiatives.
Yeah, I think, I think Lean absolutely is gonna generate cash, obviously, as well as margin. Indeed, a lot of the benefits drive to that. The core of Lean, as you obviously know, is again, velocity through the plant. So again, the shorter the lead times we can create, the less safety stock we need, the less we, you know, need in the plant. So it'll be a great way to drive down inventory over time, and we see that. I think I'd also kind of highlight pulling into systems as well, tie into that, because, again, as we get unified SIOP processes, sales, inventory, operations, planning, we have a far better understanding of what we have here, optimizing it, and again, fundamentally, I would expect it to help us increase our inventory turns, you know, to a place that we'd like to try and get to.
As John said, really, the working capital target is underpinned really by inventory. We're not assuming stretching creditors further or better debt or days. It's really driven by the benefits coming from Lean and that systems investment. We already see some of that, I mean, for example, in our EMEA region, where we've pulled that together and actually proactively looking, we're generating. I think we're at over GBP 100,000 a month of stock reduction. So the first regions were saying, "Right, let's cross over. What have you got? What are you ordering? How can you fulfill?" So that's already start to see that incremental benefit.
The aim is, as we broaden that product lifecycle management across all regions, across all products, combined just to Lean fundamental continuous improvements, Kanbans, driving that down, all of that will hopefully support not just margins, but the reduction in the level of inventory that we fundamentally need to support in that business.
Okay. Well, just on the org growth algorithm, I think, you know, where we are today, you know, and we've shown you the 12-year sort of progression, 7% CAGR, many times now, and that's because we believe the history is the best predictor of the future, and that algorithm, as we've talked about a lot today, is gonna continue. There are some probably things in the mix which are strengthening, which obviously are highlighted around, you know, iron ore and copper and the battery metals and so on. You have to remember, we still have some coal in the mix, and that's gonna continue to decline. Our oil sands exposure is probably gonna stay flat. And then the overarching piece would be that at the moment, we're not seeing a big CapEx cycle coming.
So I think that's the thing which would turbocharge it, but we just don't see that in the next few years. If that comes, fantastic, and that may give us a, you know, a boost above the kind of through cycle targets we've got, but we're just not. It's not coming through yet. Andy?
Hi, guys, it's Andy Wilson from JP Morgan. I've got two, I'll take them one at a time, I guess. Just on the two percent, I think you said 2% of sales for R&D, and kind of you obviously talked about a lot of these opportunities in terms of sustainable mining and kind of technology development. Is that 2%, is that the right number in the sense of, are you expecting that to be 2% in 2026? And I guess if you're spending, I guess, a little bit more in absolute terms, but the same as percentage sales, is it just that you're spending on different things to what you were spending on previously? It just feels like there's quite a lot to go for from a technology perspective.
I just kind of wanted to understand how you're thinking about that.
Yeah, no, look, I think it's a great question. It's one that I ask the team a lot. I think we're in the right place at the moment for what we're doing. And remember, I think, you know, this year will be pretty close to 2%, probably hit 2%, you know, next year as we think about what's in the pipeline at the moment. You know, you got to remember, you know, for all of the technology things are happening, we do have quite a long kind of product life cycle. So, you know, we don't have the fundamental churn that underpins maybe people who have higher percentages of R&D spend. So, I think it's in the right place.
I ask the team all the time: Are we doing enough? Are we spending enough? I think we are. When I step back, you know, I know, you know, it stepped up gradually to 2%, but with the revenue growth, that spend and the acquisitions we've made, our spend has doubled in the last four or five years, so we're spending many more absolute pounds, than we did before. Of course, you know, within the margin progression that we're setting out here, I think we've got flexibility. If we see a pickup among our customers for some of these technologies quicker than we anticipate, and we've been quite conservative because the industry is conservative, but if we see more of a pickup, I think we've got the flexibility and optionality to push more investment into certain areas if we need to.
So it's in the right place for now, but I think we can do a bit more if we need to. We'll see how it plays out.
And then secondly, and I'm not sure quite how to ask this, but if you think about a lot of kind of what you talked about is, for example, like globalizing some of the procurement or thinking about it more kind of holistically at that global level and where sort of the, the business service is being shared and the models kind of a lot more kind of integration, I guess, at a global level. Now, notwithstanding that you've got the single ERP system in Minerals, which obviously, from a visibility perspective, must help. But I guess what I would worry about is understanding who owns those costs, given that previously these were presumably individual P&Ls and are now kind of being amalgamated into the, the global number or a global number.
Long way of sort of saying, yeah, kind of confidence around the practicalities of understanding how people are gonna manage those costs or how you're gonna manage those costs.
Yeah. No, no, that's another good question, and I, you know, Andrew, step in, but, I mean, the way we're thinking about it is that, you know, for-- if you take Minerals, each of the regions, we want to retain P&L ownership. So driving growth, customer proximity, fulfillment, you know, P&L is owned by the regions, but we are mandating through a central manufacturing control team that when you make this stuff, this is where you'll-- this is how you'll make it. You'll make it in the same way. You'll have optimized, bills and material and routings and standards that are absolutely the same everywhere, so we can decide, you know, what's the best, you know, what's the best, location to manufacture it in.
So Andrew's built a team, and maybe you can talk about some of the capability of that team that is gonna drive that. So wanna incentivize the regions to own the P&L on the bottom line, the delivery, but drive process efficiency into everything they're doing from a fulfillment, and supply chain point of view. And that is, you know, that's been a bit of a cultural shift for the business division, and, Andrew, you might want to touch on that. But again, back to what I said earlier on the incentives point, I think we've got real alignment now about how we're gonna do that. Maybe give a bit of detail.
Yeah, yeah. The region P&Ls are run regionally. That will not change. They're in control of that, and that's really important back to our responsiveness to customers. So that's something that's absolute paramount, but it really is back to that providing global expertise and a global framework. So back to bringing in experts in particular areas of Lean, helping train people, bringing in procurement experts, leveraging some of our best cross-country sourcing in that area. It fundamentally drives opportunities. And what's held us back has been, again, not having that common underlying platform. It's very hard to compare and contrast and show people. You might wanna look at this. And what I found is, in terms of our regions, for example, if we do identify a good low-cost source for a particular component we might want to buy, the regions do it themselves.
Indeed, okay, we have to sometimes manage globally with this supplier cannot have all the capacity, we have regions looking to push to use it. So I don't have any concerns around, the regions not wanting to do it. It's about making it easy and making it systematic, and being able to drive that common approach globally. But the, the regions own that income statement, they own it, they own the customer. That's something we're made sure we're protected in this area, and that's why, as John said, in Weir Business Services side, which is a partners run cross-group, cross-divisional. A lot of work has gone into how is this going to work? Who has responsibility for what? How do we manage it?
We've been very cognizant of that through this whole process around, we want to make sure that the business still can operate, still can focus on the customer, and they understand how all these things will work and how they can use them. So it's very much about us putting them in a position to optimize their performance.
The other thing, Andy, is just, you know, obviously, our regional vertically integrated model served us very well through COVID and the supply chain disruptions. So we don't wanna lose that kind of network flexibility that we have to be able to move stuff around if we need to. But, you know, it's trying to get the best of both worlds with, you know, through what Andrew has been talking about, driving low cost into the places that we can do that to deliver cost reductions, but making sure we don't have a single point of failure in our sort of supply chain and fulfillment channels, and we have, you know, the ability to be resilient and move things around as we need to. So it's kind of a best of both worlds approach.
That's super helpful detail. Thank you.
Okay, let's go back. Next row.
Hi, it's Rory from UBS. Thanks for taking my questions.
Okay.
I've got three on HPGR or dry processing more generally. Can you just remind us what Iron Bridge has done in terms of revenues this year and what you'd expect for next year? That's question one. If I pause, actually.
Okay. Do you want to take that?
Sorry, next year-
No, what, what's Iron Bridge done in terms of revenue this year?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, next year, we have a service contract that will be kind of mid-teens GBP millions. In addition to that, we have spare parts with other products and services around it. So fundamentally, it will be GBP 20 million-GBP 30 million type range in total. The plant ramps up over the next 18+ months. Again, it takes time to fully ramp up, but yeah, the service contract kind of kicks in, and that's combined with around HPGR, including service of the tires and the like. And that, again, is a great driver for us into 2024.
Great, thank you. And then thinking about overall aftermarket intensity of a redefined mill circuit versus a traditional mill circuit, because obviously, HPGR is going in where maybe one of your competitors would have had a SAG or Ball mill, but you've clearly got some pumps in the downstream part. Yeah, just trying to get a sort of high-level picture of what that aftermarket intensity looks like or where mix can perhaps go in the future if that pipeline starts to convert?
Yeah. I think I'll answer that because, you know, as we look at it, I think it's gonna be consistent with the ratio you that we gave for the whole kind of group, which is $1 of OE is gonna drive $0.30 of revenue. I think, you know, in aftermarket, when you combine everything that sits across that redefined mill circuit, I think that's the sort of ratio that we're gonna be looking at, and of course, it's gonna. Each product has a slightly different ratio, but on average, you know, that's what we're gonna see.
If you look at Iron Bridge there, you know, you've got, you know, the tires on the HPGRs, which are driven by the service contract, Warman’s and Geho’s on the, tailings and pipeline duty, kind of very standard, you know, aftermarket opportunity for us. And, you know, the, the stirred mills, you know, in the case of Iron Bridge, they're not, you know, they're not, ours, but as we sell now more of stirred mills through our affiliation with, you know, with another supplier, STM, then we're gonna have aftermarket opportunity in those stirred mills as well going forward because they're rubber-lined, and that will wear out. So it's kind of consistent with the overall divisional group average.
Okay, thank you. And then just lastly, on the competitive landscape, both in dry processing and across the group, are you seeing any significant moves there from the other players? If dry processing is sort of a threat to their key product set, and then also in ESCO and in slurry pumps as well, I guess there's been a bit of M&A in the space. Are people running to catch up with you, or you're fairly confident in your moat in those legacy markets as well?
Well, first of all, I'm very confident in our moats and the barriers to entry that we have for our key brands and products. We've talked a lot about that today, you know, it's sort of obvious what they are. You know, and, and when you look at our peer group, then we all- we have bits of overlap here and there, but we all do slightly different things, and we bump into each other and nudge into each other. So I don't think, you know, I don't think anything's really, really changed. I mean, 10 years ago, I'd have been sat here talking about, well, so-and-so is talking about growing slurry pumps strategically, and, you know, we've got- there's a couple of players who've got HPGRs. You know, we think we've got...
You know, there are different competitive perspectives on how good they are, so, but I don't think anything, you know, fundamentally has changed. I think it's, it's been sort of part of the, you know, the, the warp and weft of, you know, you actually got quite a consolidated group of suppliers, and they have bits of overlap.
Great. Thanks so much.
Hi, it's Jonathan Hurn from Barclays. I just got three questions, please. The first one, just on your margin bridge from 17% - 20%. How do we think about mix within that margin bridge? Obviously, movement to OE can be quite detrimental and obviously, aftermarket can be quite beneficial, but how do we think about that from getting from the 17% - 20%, we're assuming basically a broadly consistent AMOE mix through the next few years?
Yeah, we are, and for the reasons I talked about earlier in terms of CapEx cycle and actually just the scale of the aftermarket business now, and the compounding growth volume that we have. It's quite difficult to see how OE can accelerate in such a way that it might give us too much of a headwind on mix. And I think as we've shown in the first half of this year, actually, where we did have a mix headwind, we still delivered margin expansion because we have plenty of levers to overcome that. So as I sit here today, you know, not expecting a massive shift in the mix, I think, you know, actually, we could cope with a reasonably meaningful shift. If there's a huge CapEx cycle, bingo! We, you know, we'd love that.
You know, that might make it a bit harder at the top end, but it's not something we're, and we've done a lot of analysis of it, as you would imagine. But it's not something we're worried about as we sit here today.
That's okay. The second one was just on M&A. Obviously, you've talked about acquisitions, and I think you said you are happy to do M&A, even if it's margin dilutive, at least in the short term. I mean, what kind of timeframe are we thinking for, for those acquisitions to kind of get you back to, to where you want to be in terms of margin?
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't take margin dilution for a very long period of time. We would seek to get margins very quickly up to the point where they're accretive, exactly as we did with ESCO. I mean, you know, you go to that case study, 600 basis points of margin improvements since we acquired the business. So, you know, up to the bottom end of the Minerals range, which is where we promised it would be. So, I think we've got a good track record of doing that with larger acquisitions. And, you know, from a return on capital point of view, our sort of standard, you know, we wanna—we'll beat our WACC within three years, is, you know, how we think about it.
Obviously, we want them to be any acquisition to be accretive. You know, you'll take a little bit of margin dilution for a short period of time, but, you know, through synergies and growth, expect to get that back to, at least the average of the existing group, not better.
And the last one, maybe just a sort of a longer-term question, but if we look at ESCO and we look at Minerals, is there anything structurally within those businesses why they can't ultimately do a very similar margin? So I think in terms of where we're thinking from here, obviously, Minerals is going to do better. ESCO is going to probably move towards that sort of 20% level. Obviously, Minerals is higher, but longer term, could they converge at some point, do you think?
Yeah, possibly, not by 2026, but I think, yeah, we'll, they'll move up in sync, as I said earlier, and then, you know, if you think, step back and think about it, why is Minerals, you know, slightly ahead at the moment in terms of the margins, and will stay ahead? It's probably really a volume thing, because you think about the scale of Minerals and the, you know, the global opportunity. ESCO is still... You know, it's a smaller business. There's more opportunity to grow outside of North America, and with more volume over time, then there could be potential to get to, to get closer to Minerals.
Okay, thanks.
Hi, Mark Fielding from RBC. Yeah, two, three questions. One of them, typical two-part question. But, I mean, the first one is actually, in your plan, what are your wider assumptions around the cost inflation that you're seeing and the sort of normal offsets that you also have to produce to deal with that over the next few years, in addition to the benefits of the incremental cost plan?
Yeah, very, very broadly speaking, we're expecting a much more benign inflationary, cost inflationary environment than the one that we have seen over the last two or three years. Obviously, the area that is still inflating a bit is, you know, wages and salaries, and that will probably endure a little bit into next year. So, as we think about next year, we're planning, you know, you know, relatively modest price increases relative to where we've been to just offset that, you know, the tail of the cost inflation that we're seeing.
And the, you know, in the, in the two or three years afterwards, that we're probably in a, an environment where, you know, inflation remains benign and we're back to the sort of average, you know, low single-digit price increases that we would normally get through, through the cycle. That's the, that's the planning assumption for now. Of course, the world is strange at the moment, and things may change. But I think as we've demonstrated over the last two or three years, whatever happens, we've got the ability to manage through that and protect our gross margins.
Thank you. And then, I suppose, my one thought is at the end of this process, it still feels like, you know, while the margin would be very good, you know, your SG&A as a percentage of sales, will probably still be at the higher end of the mining equipment peer group. Do you think there's structural differences there, or, you know, is it that actually there's more to do? And this being the two-part bit, you know, it's notable that the business services savings plan is the one with the least increase in this. And I just wondered, a new CFO coming on board seems to have a background in, in some of those areas as well, whether there's still more to be thought about there.
Yeah, well, we certainly hope that Brian will come in and kick the tires and have a look in terms of what we're doing, given his background. But no, look, I think, you know, as we step back, you know, we've built a track record of saying we're going to do something and then delivering on it, and we've done that over the last two or three years. In the first phase, post our transformation, this is now phase two of us moving up towards best in class in terms of what we can deliver from a margin point of view. Our focus over the next two or three years is now gonna be on absolutely delivering that, alongside our other commitments, you know, as we have done.
Structurally, on our SG&A, yes, I think it probably is a bit higher, Mark, because, there's two things: We are more vertically integrated than some of our peer group from a manufacturing point of view, and our service and sales presence, as we've talked about, which is a great strength, probably also has a higher cost than our peer group. But that's a cost that we're, you know, really willing to bear because it is, you know, one of our barriers to entry, and it's what underpins the growth. So for us, you know, we will move, you know, we'll obviously improve our SG&A overall. Structurally, it may remain a little bit higher.
Yeah, and when we get to 20% in 2026, then we'll think about, you know, what are the further opportunities.
Great. Thank you.
Sorry, just, yeah, just keep on that side for now. Sorry.
We'll go down this way.
We will come to you.
It's Bruno Gjani from BNP Paribas Exane. So the step up in margin, it, it's ambitious, it's impressive, but there's a large self-help component to it. So when I take a step back, it actually looks a little bit conservative, because to get to the 20%, essentially, we're saying 3% organic sales growth over the next three years, that drops through at a 30% drop-through. What are your growth assumptions in terms of top line over that same period? Is it safe to assume mid-single digit to high single digit? Is 7% within the realm of being delivered? And if that's the case, can a drop through of 30%-35% also be delivered over the same time frame?
Because if that's the case, then the margin in 2026 can be closer towards 22%, which would put you, I guess, on par with some of the best operators in the space.
Look, I think, first of all, we felt it was important, you know. I think, you know, it's, it's a big step up in margins that we've set out today. We wanted to be very clear that that is within our control, and hopefully, you've, you know, I think you said it, you know, you've seen today, a lot of the detailed granularity of, action plans that sit behind delivering on that margin. So that's why we've put the margin target out there. That's why we feel, we feel very good about it. The reality is, you know, yeah, we are expecting growth over the next, three years, through that program. And as I said, you know, that growth assumption at this point in time is towards the lower end of our through cycle, guidance.
You know, that's probably where we are in the cycle. If the cycle is better than that, then fantastic. But I think it's really early to call that just now for us.
Got it. And if we just go back to the HPGR pipeline, I understand you don't want to disclose the specific number, but then when I go back to 2017, the Iron Bridge order would have been in there, and that was close to GBP 100 million. And if it's 8x, is it safe to assume that that HPGR pipeline is above GBP 1 billion today? And then just secondly, could you perhaps add some color around the brownfield part of it? What is the typical conversion like on the brownfield side? Because I guess you have greater visibility. Is it, say, two years when it enters your pipeline, it converts? And then, sorry, just lastly, how much of those, I guess, orders in the pipeline never convert? Is it 10%, or what kind of rough proportion just don't come through for whatever reason?
All right. Well, I'll answer the first question. Andrew, maybe give us just a bit of color in terms of the sales opportunities-
Okay.
and what we're doing. But as Andrew said, we're not giving an absolute number on the pipeline because it's commercially sensitive, so we're not giving a number on the pipeline. Suffice to say, it's kind of, you know, materially bigger than it was, you know, back then. And there are some big projects in there. So, you know, they may or may not happen. I think they probably will over time, but, you know, it is a question of timing and when they will come through. But, you know, back to what you heard in Andrew's speech, I think, you know, we feel that we've now got a really big reference site. Those HPGRs at Iron Bridge are the largest format HPGRs anywhere in the world.
They are going to demonstrate exactly what that kind of Redefined mill circuit will do. You know, I expect customers to still continue to be conservative, but, you know, we're sort of really trying to show leadership and move the dial in terms of actually this is really transformational. You saw the numbers, and we hope it comes through quicker.
Yeah.
In terms of some of the specific initiatives on driving the HPGR growth, Andrew?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, so back to the, the greenfield piece is the part that's hardest to call, takes longest to convert logically. In a brownfield, even in a brownfield, you find it can be tough to call when will a customer get over the line in an HPGR project, but fundamentally, they do realize quicker. And when they do, we used to talk about a go-get ratio. When they do decide to go, we get the majority of the HPGRs that are out there. That continues to be the case. It's predicting the goal precisely when. So that's the part where, again, maybe the last few months, you see with all financing rates, et cetera, customers reworking their numbers. But as John says, I don't underestimate the value of Iron Bridge and just showing the plant working in case, because it's...
It always has been a case in mining. Everybody wants to be second in terms of new technology. People love the idea to do all their work, but nothing convinces them more. So we've already had customers who take them to the site and show them around. So that's why I would expect the brownfield to start to come through pretty quick, and we remain confident that we will get, you know, more than our fair share, as it were, of those that do convert, because we know our lead position in many of them. It's just back to, it's tough to predict exactly when they come. When they do come, even in a brownfield case, they tend to be major reengineering projects, so you are talking 12-month-type lead times to delivery because a lot of engineering goes around it.
But yeah, that gives you an idea of how we kinda see it coming through.
... finally, just on the redefined mill circuit, could you give us a rough sense of just how much larger the pie is for you, if it is indeed larger? Is it a 1.2x opportunity relative to the traditional mill circuit, or just, just any additional color there would be useful.
I think for us, I mean, before, again, we were never, we don't provide SAG mills, Ball mills. So for us, this is all a white space we've moved into effectively. So for us now, on a Greenfield copper mine, the opportunity for our equipment portfolio is a multiple of what it was before on the OE side. As John said, in the aftermarket, the ratio, because again, we focus where we know we can differentiate based on our hydraulics or mechanical wear tear, so it drives the aftermarket. So yeah, I mean, back to that, compared to the last cycle that we lived through, if there was another mega cycle, we have a far broader range of top quality differentiated technology. That would mean that the opportunity per 100,000 concentrator is a multiple of what it was when we were fundamentally a slurry pump business.
Yeah. Even with, you know, if, you know, Iron Bridge, where the order was placed in 2019, four years later, if that opportunity came again, we would have a bigger addressable market in that mine than we did four years ago. So it's constantly growing. Right, where are we going next? Max.
Thank you. It's Max from Morgan Stanley. Could I just ask you, you showed that slide where you had the kind of market shares across Minerals, where you had sort of very strong in slurry pumps and less strong in some of the comminution. Could you talk a little bit about the margin differentials? And, I mean, should we be worried? I mean, I've seen slurry pump margin numbers that are sort of in the mid-20s%, even high 20s%. I imagine your other parts of the business are quite a bit lower. So could you give us any kind of feel of where the margins are of those divisions? And it does feel like a lot more of the growth will be coming from the maybe comminution and the cyclones.
So how do we think about that from a mix perspective? And I assume you've thought about it, so how do we get comfortable with it?
Yeah, I mean, right now, the combination margin, it's more OE we're selling than aftermarket, back to when did the equipment get commissioned, and so right now, that's more the future of the margin differential. The core aftermarket margin, the part supplying is not too different, and indeed, we see opportunities continue to actually improve that. Again, as we get scale and we do the things I talked about, we know we can lift the margin as we leverage that. So there's left a differential on the aftermarket mix, and I think perhaps you're implying.
Then maybe you talked about the sort of business services where you... I think you talked about there was sort of duplicate, a lot of duplicate workforce. So across all of those plans, do you have a number in mind for how many people are actually leaving, how many people will leave the group? What the actual kind of employee reduction might be from all of the work that you're doing?
It's actually relatively small in the scheme. I'm not going to put a number on it, because obviously, we're in processes at the moment, which we, you know, can't talk about. But, you know, net net, it's going to be a relatively small number, you know, across the group. It's the arbitrage of moving these jobs to, you know, low-cost locations where we can benefit from economies of scale and elimination of duplication. That labor arbitrage is really going to drive the savings, but it's not a huge number of people.
Just finally, it's a bit more of a housekeeping quote, but I mean, when we think about the central cost line, do you expect to see kind of some of the benefits coming through there, or just for sort of purely modeling purposes, do we think about it kind of mainly coming through the divisions?
I mean, the way I would think about that, Max, is to say that, you know, assume central costs will remain flat for now. So we will be getting some savings from Weir Business Services through central costs, but also we've got, you know, inflation coming through and, you know, we're having to... The world is such that we're having to invest more in compliance and reporting and so on. So I think, you know, if you think about central costs, the kind of inflation because of those things you're seeing will be offset by the savings. So just assume it's flat for now.
And just one final one on the HPGRs. So you've obviously shown kind of it's quite compelling when you put one of these in the energy savings. I guess what I'm curious about is if we think about kind of all of the mines that are out there, where is the technology kind of most applicable, and what is the kind of realistic target market within existing mines? Is it very relevant for 20% of them? Is it 30%, 50%? Because I know it's not every mine is suitable for one of these.
Mm-hmm.
So how do we think about that? And then secondly, just how do we think about the payback for a customer investing in one of these, if they were to on a broad level?
Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think it's applicable in most mines. It's not all mines, you're right. It really comes down to, again, what's the moisture content, particularly in the ore, but it covers across all commodities back to particularly hard rock, iron ore. It's an application across all of that. So we know it's applicable in a big range of mines, both that are there today and will be there in future. Sorry, second question was in terms of the-
The payback, if-
Yeah, payback, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, again, in a way, it's no different to our, our products, back to what is the operating cost from it, and that to me is the real benefit, is back to if you can save 40% of energy, energy is a massive part of the running cost, so the payback is absolutely there. So that's why we sort of talked there about in a corporate example, the full flowsheet typically can get up to sort of 20% operating cost reduction. So the payback basically pans out pretty quickly. The overall CapEx is a little bit more than the traditional circuit, but it does pay back pretty quick.... and that's why, again, most flow sheets that you see now coming out for greenfield, more and more is designed around an HPGR-type circuit because of that.
But most of what you're doing is brownfield expansions-
Yes.
Rather than necessarily any kind of replacement of existing SAG mills or anything like that?
Yeah, well, again, brownfield expansion depends what you mean. So again, we talked about modular. Sometimes you would, if you want more capacity in an existing mine, you can put an HPGR side by side. So if the capacity constraint is a mill, and you want a major additional capacity, you can run an HPGR or two to the side, and it would then run back into the flotation-type circuit. So it, it can work modularly side by side. Often in mines, perhaps more common than that, brownfield pipeline is major expansions, where you're putting an additional concentrator line or you're reconfiguring, you know, a whole line to basically upgrade. And that's why, as you can see from the pie chart, it's not quite half and half, but the brownfield is a big proportion of it because of that.
So yes, you wouldn't end up looking for a 3% increase, but we'd be looking for a substantial step-up. It absolutely can be used.
Yeah. But if you do a modular expansion like that, the payback will be-
Mm-hmm
weeks, probably. Yeah. Okay, any more for any more? Yeah, we've got one over here, Elizabeth.
Hi, John. It's Ed Maravanyika from Liberum. I've just got more of a kind of bigger picture question. ESCO got you closer to the rock face into the mining pit. Would you look at other acquisitions that did something similar, that had other more upstream adjacencies?
I think where we are today is that, you know, we've got—we've created very clear bookends for our business, you know, where the earthmoving machines, ESCO, hits the dirt right through to concentration and tailings, you know, the back end of what mineral does. And I think there is, as you hopefully have taken away today, there's loads of opportunity for growth between those bookends. Organically, for sure, if we can do bolt-on acquisitions for the kind of reasons we talked about earlier to accelerate our strategy, fantastic. But I think we're at a phase now for the next few years where we wanna allocate our capital to grow, in that space. So that's going to be the focus.
Very clear. Thank you.
Okay, wonderful. Well, thank you very much for coming along today. Thank you very much for all of your questions. Hope you've enjoyed it. And of course, I think we've got a few drinks next door if people have the opportunity to hang around for a little while, and we can take any further conversations and, yeah, and catch up a bit socially. So, but thanks again for coming. I really, really appreciate it.