Ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to AKVA Group's Capital Market Day. Thank you to all of you here in Klepp, and thank you also for those joining us via the webcast. It is always pleasant to talk about AKVA Group, and it is especially pleasant when we get to talk about innovation, technology, and the company's strategy for pioneering a better future. My name is Ståle Økland. I am the Chief Commercial Officer of AKVA Group, and I am also today's moderator. A couple of practical details before we begin. We have not planned any fire drills today, and in the event of an emergency, we ask everyone to calmly go down the stairs and out. We have two emergency exits, one down the stairs and also one right here to my left side. There are restrooms available on this floor behind the scene.
Please feel free to ask me or the rest of the AKVA team if there is anything practical we can help you with or answer to. Today, we hope to provide you with a good overview of AKVA Group's vision and our areas of operation. You will meet the company's most prominent representatives here on stage, and we will invite you to a Q&A after the first and the last presentation. For those of you who attend here in Klepp, you will have the opportunity to visit various workstations in our different business areas. We will conclude the day with a pleasant dinner this evening. Now, I would like to welcome the first speaker to the stage, our CEO Knut Nesse. Knut has been in the industry for more than 30 years, both as CEO of the feed companies Skretting and Nutreco before he came to AKVA Group.
He will provide you with a good overview on both the industries and AKVA Group's future perspectives. Knut, the floor is yours.
Okay, thank you, Ståle. Yeah, it's a great pleasure to wish you welcome to this Capital Market Day. I'm very pleased to see this great audience. Hopefully, many people are listening to the webcast as well. Okay, I'm going to talk in the beginning about the long-term SAM opportunity. Before doing that, please allow me one minute to talk a little bit about AKVA Group and our legacy. The vision statement of AKVA Group is pioneering a better future. We have been pioneering solutions and innovation for more than 50 years. To the picture to the left, you can see Hans Petter Meland , one of the founders of the industry as such. That's from 1973. He has a model of the very first, world's first plastic cage in front of him.
The picture next to the right is his partner, Steinar Leysen, at Eilert Låven, which became a kind of gravity center for development back in the 1970s. Steinar has in front of him the very first real plastic cage produced. The plastic cages today look a bit different, but as such, it was a very important innovation which took place there 50 years ago. I would say one of the top five innovations in this industry, even though from a basic starting point, if I may. AKVA, as of today, we are a modern company with three business platforms. We have leading technology for the sea, all the sea-based operation, land-based operation, and digital. Over the year, we have been functioning as a technology innovator across multiple areas.
Automated feeding, that was the original DNA of AKVA Group back to the start, Bryne next to here in the 1980s and the 1980s. That was automated feeding. More recently, over the last five, 10 years, it has been a lot of focus on deep farming, which is today fully commercialized. Over the last three decades, from the very basic starting point on smolt, through flow-through technologies, evolving into RAS technology with a high level of recirculation, and all the way to land-based growth, which is being demonstrated today. There is no doubt that we have proof of concept of post-smolt, and we believe that proof of concept is also there for the full cycle. In China, we are producing, or Nordic Aqua Partners is producing a salmon of seven kilos. Also, digital, we have been a front runner in. That is where we came from. That is AKVA Group.
If you look at the industry as such, I said the industry started to industrialize in the 1970s, and it took a few decades, all the way to 2001, for the global salmon farming industry to come to the first one million ton. That was in 2001. On the back of more industrialization, more growth, also consolidation, it took another 10+ years to arrive to the next two million to add another one million. That was in 2012. In 2021, which is the last peak year, actually, we passed the three million mark of global salmon production. Following 2021, it has been some years of stagnation, not growth for the entire salmon farming industry. We can talk about a few industry barriers which have been kind of hindering growth. It has to do with fish health. We have seen more mortality.
We have seen more diseases. That next to the regulation system, which is today blocking growth, at least the big growth, both in Norway and Chile. It has been some kind of headwind. Our social license, the hidden agreement between the industry and the society in large, has not been favorable either. Some of the critics is, of course, valid, absolutely. Also, more recently, you can say that new financial risk has also been introduced in terms of resource tax. We did not talk about that three, four years ago, the norm prices and tax regime uncertainties in general. By the way, we will see some growth in 2025, 5% +, by the way. As such, this has been the big picture over the years.
However, we still believe being in this industry for 30 years, I believe still consumption of salmon is representing a mega trend on the back of the rising middle class in the world. Salmon on the back of the sushi sashimi trend, easy to cook, easy to prepare, even the youngsters can do it. We believe that it is deemed to continue the growth. The challenge is how to double salmon production by 2040, 15 years later. That's 5% annual growth. That's what most analysts believe is a kind of consensus of how much growth consumers can absorb. We believe that could happen. It needs to be on the back of new technology to overcome the industry barriers. That takes investments. You need new investments and new technology in order to drive new growth.
If you reflect on that, investments are needed, but also investments require a stable framework. I like to go over the principles here. At least I learned about this back in the days as the golden triangle. This is a little bit a Norwegian model where you have government with a role as the regulator, even including the enforcement. The R&D institutions, certainly a lot of R&D is done by the private companies. However, since you are literally in the same water, there is also a need for doing basic R&D and science across the industry. For that, we have R&D institutions, which is publicly funded. That has been one of the strengths of Norway. Then the industry with the sole purpose of driving the business, growing the business, et cetera, et cetera.
In the middle of this triangle, it's about trust and mutual trust. This has been the recipe for success and the growth of the Norwegian salmon industry, which has a unique position in the world today as the locomotive. Without saying anything about where to place the burden, the mutual trust is a little bit gone today. However, it's very positive to notice that today we will have voted, there will be a voting in the Norwegian Parliament for the new Norwegian white paper. Even though this is going to take a bit of time before it's hammered out, a new regulation, we hope that the new regulatory framework is going to be based on a predictable policy environment, regulatory efficiency. It cannot take forever to get approval for our new license, whatever, support for growth, technology neutrality, and trust-based collaboration.
We think if that is the outcome, we will be back in a better situation when it comes to this golden triangle, and that will revitalize the collaboration between the core institutions. We think that is very much needed. What are the technology possibilities if we are to double this industry globally over the next 15 years? If the starting point now is a base of 3,000 tons of Atlantic farm salmon, we believe one building block could be related to deep farming. We believe that if deep farming is supplied globally, that could add 15% capacity. I come back a little bit more to the details in a minute. The next building block we believe is related to post-smolt. We believe post-smolt, if that is supplied by the industry across, you can grow your volume by typically 30%.
In the 2040 vision, we believe there is also space for some on-growing of large salmon on land, in particular closer to the consumer. We have other new emerging technologies like semi-offshore and also improvements related to vaccines, new treatments, et cetera, et cetera. There are some from the new frontiers and some from improved efficiency. I will go over them one by one. First, about the deep farming. We think that there is some argument that deep farming can increase volume with something like 15% from existing licenses. There is documentation today that if you apply deep farming, you can reduce the sea lice treatments with up to 85%. That has a big value because that gives proven improved fish welfare.
Also, if you have proven improved fish health, less mortality, so far we see documentation about numbers of halving the mortality, you are also closer to improving your social license. The regulators will be more deemed to provide you with growth opportunities. We think it is a totality there which will work in a more positive manner. Today, deep farming is applicable for close to 60% of the location. In accordance to our calculations, there is a NOK 6 billion market there to get to the 60%. We will come back to more explanations about how this is calculated later during the presentations, not my presentation, my colleagues. Post-smolt. We think post-smolt today is established as an accepted industry growth strategy. Many companies are talking about that and have it as a part of their core strategy.
Post-smolt comes with the advantage that if the starting point is 1 kg post-smolt, which you grow on land, you reduce the number of months in the sea from 17-18 to seven, eight, nine. That is 10 months less in the sea, and that is way less sea lice, less mortality. In addition, you can optimize your own licenses in terms of growth possibilities because the cycle is just shorter. This is very interesting. Land-based growth, big salmon on land has been a kind of difficult birth there, but we see it is starting to mature these days. 25,000 tons produced last year, but likely more in the direction of 200,000 as installed capacity in the year 2030. We come back to examples there, including Nordic AKVA partner in China. Also, we expect a lot of improvements from digital solutions.
We ourselves, AKVA, we have invested a lot of money, NOK 500 million to create a leading digital platform over the last four or five years. We see high growth opportunities with AKVA Observe, which enables automated feeding, which is more precise when it comes to monitoring and achieving the FCR, the feed conversion rate, and also gives some opportunities on the OpEx side as well. We have a global scalable business there with 90%+ recurring revenue. I mentioned that one of the advantages with regards to post-smolt is the reduced number of months in the sea. This is real data. This is from Barnswatch. That is the advantage in Norway. Everything is so extremely transparent. We have downloaded real data over the last 12 years, more than 5,000 production runs. The graph plot is on the horizontal axis.
You have the number of months, six to nine, nine to 12, blah, blah, blah, all the way to 18 +. You have the percentage on the vertical axis. We have seen that we have then mapped the number of PD, pancreas disease. You see that if the fish is more months in the sea, there is a tripling of the PD cases. In terms of the need for sea lice treatments, biomechanical lice treatments, you see it's a doubling there if it is more months in the sea. This is basically telling you that from real data, empirical data over many cycles, the more months in the sea, the higher mortality effectively. This calls for companies to consider either a post-smolt strategy or to protect the salmon from the sea.
That's deep farming today, which is the number one proven technology. Just to sum up a little bit, AKVA Group today is a global leader and a trusted partner. We are present in the market for technology for salmon based on three business platforms. We have sea-based, which is a bit less than 80% of our turnover. With regards to all the operation you see in the sea, AKVA Group can basically deliver everything you see there, not the whale boats, not the genetics and not the feed, but everything else we basically do. Land-based, we have developed our technology platform over the years to go from basic smolt, post-smolt proven, and we expect on-growing full-cycle salmon to also grow. For digital, we have a complete platform as well. One reflection, we believe that technology can really be used for improved fish health.
This is our most important ESG contribution as well, because if you can significantly reduce mortality by applying new technologies, you are part of the solution. This illustration, this graph is basically showing you what has been the investment level by the salmon companies over the last nine years from 2015 - 2023. The light blue is the growth or the development of the investments, either in post-smolt or barges, sea-based technology. If you see over the cycles there over many years, the growth category is 12%. 12% is the growth in investments by the salmon farming companies, which, as a real coincidence, also matches the growth of AKVA Group over the same years. That has been 12% as well.
Less so in the last couple of years related to quite a few headwinds, but we think the industry will come back to growth again, a bit fueled by this white paper being voted today. We think that's going to be good for the investment climate going forward. Ending up my part by talking about financial ambitions, where we came from, we have been through a turnaround both in many ways, the way we operate. We have changed a few people, managers as well. We have been changing the business model. We have a more robust and resilient business model today, both for land-based and in other parts of our business as well.
Last year, we were reasonably pleased with last year and the performance, but now we need to look for growth because we have invested a lot and we have capacity for more activity than we saw last year. That is why the 2027 target is revenue of NOK 5 billion, which happens to be the same 12% growth on the basis of 2024. We think that is realistic. We have relatively good visibility through our order backlog, in particular in land-based, which we expect relatively the most growth to come from. We have good visibility on the activity level all the way to 2027. Of course, we need to land a few more contracts, but that is based on ongoing customers and ongoing activities. We think that can happen. We also expect a continuous focus on deep farming and, of course, our digital applications as well.
In combination, that's going to give the NOK 5 billion. We are relatively fully invested, including the overhead it takes to run a growing business. That's why we foresee that the EBIT level should be pretty much higher than in 2024. The target is 9%. 2027 is a real target based on the visibility we have. 2030, we have less visibility. There we have more ambition on the basis and expectation that there will still be need for investments in technology to grow a sustainable salmon farming business. Summing up, the key investment highlights for AKVA Group is related to that. Once again, we have fully invested business platforms with capacity to double our revenue based on physical or production capacity, people, leadership, et cetera, et cetera, technology-based. We are perfectly positioned for profitable growth across the three segments.
Over the last few years, we have developed, over many years, we have developed an attractive business model with an increasing share of recurring revenue. We are less volatile with regards to changes in the salmon price than we used to be. Also, now we have a more strong balance sheet. Also, since we are invested, we do not foresee any M&A in the next two-three years. We have a true organic growth strategy. That is why we have more predictability on our cash flow and we will provide competitive returns. Also, always hard to talk about yourself, but I think we can make the claim that we have an experienced management team, at least in combination. We have been in the industry for more than 100 years. That is the summary. I like to open up for Q&A.
Just to explain to you the concept, we do one Q&A related to my session, which is more the bigger picture and the high-level growth opportunities. We will do a detailed presentation from all the three business platforms, including the financial summary. We do a Q&A following that with everybody who has presented available for Q&A. We have allocated 10 minutes for the first round, which is related to my part. Please, if you have any questions, you raise your hand, you get the mic.
We'll start here with the audience here in Klepp, and then we will follow up with the questions from the webcast. Those of you who are online, please post your questions now. Celia over here, she will hand you over the mic if you have any questions here in this audience. Please raise your hands.
Thank you.
Hello? You hear me?
Yes.
Hi, my name is Ole Gabriel Kverneland. I'm not in the business anymore. I used to be. One question. I think about 70% of this planet is water, yes? But most of it is offshore. We have developed world-leading technology and experience for offshore installations to produce oil and gas. Now it seems AKVA backed out of these plans for offshore farming. Still, I think we should have extremely good technology and experience in Norway for offshore farming. Do you have any thoughts about that? I mean, deep farming sounds very exciting, but I think the potential in offshore should be substantial in the future.
I agree in principle if you take the starting point of the nature being there or the sea being there and the salmon is typically out in the sea from the side of the nature.
I think the answer to the question is a regulatory answer. It's a bit boring. Ironically enough, it's about the resource tax to start with because the government did not impose a resource tax to this new kid on the block, offshore farming, because they think the risk is too high. They reserve the right to do it in the future. That's not a very attractive business proposition for investors. I think you will need a new regulatory regime in order to stimulate relatively risky investments for that space. You have the other questions about the licensing, et cetera, et cetera, which is not clear either. It's a bit of a boring question because it has to do with the regulatory conditions. Over time, I think it will come.
With regards to AKVA Group, we are humble about the very huge technical installations it takes to farm out in the sea. That's probably not for us. That's for the players which know how to do that. What is for us is probably to participate on the feeding, on the digitalization, and all that part. We do not have a strategy to produce those big technical installations, but we have a strategy to follow with feeding cameras digital in case this will evolve in the future. I think it's a question about time, but not a few years. It will take more time for sure, in accordance to my view at least. We have a next one over there.
Sundar, can you say in English, can you say anything about the growth rates, the back mirror and going forward, how much is volume and how much is CPI inflation?
In our numbers, we have our normalized inflation for 2027. The majority of the NOK 1.5 billion step up has to do with increased activity, the vast majority. Ronny can come back to the details there in his presentation, but it's basically higher activity. One example, land-based was NOK 620 million last year, NOK 1.4 billion in the 2027 target. That is based on the order backlog we have and the visibility and continuation of NOAP in China, Laxa Sea Farms at Iceland, and post-smolt in Norway. That's how we have done it as a general answer.
With the 12%, if you go back, explaining the 12%.
That's nominal money. The source there is Fiskeridirektoratet. That's the statistics from Fiskeridirektoratet. Sorry, you said back mirror, so I.
Knut Halla Nilsson. You spoke about the deep farming. Maybe we'll get back to that.
As you go deeper down in the ocean, it's colder water. How does that impact the growth, especially during the winter?
So far, the data is showing that it has a relatively neutral impact on the growth. The growth pattern will be a little bit different down in the deep rather than when you do surface farming. It could be more beneficial in the winter and a little bit the other way around during the summer. For the full cycle, it has been relatively the same growth.
Ola Thorvaldsen DNB Carnegie. You show a high correlation historically between the revenues of AKVA Group and the investments in fixed assets for the salmon farmers. How do you expect this correlation to develop going forward?
One disclaimer there. This is just the development of the fixed asset investment.
It doesn't take the so-called OpEx related, but it's just an indication that it's an important indication that investments in technology is higher than the growth in the biomass. That's the key takeaway there. We believe that will continue as such. If you believe that there is a case for 5% growth going forward, we believe that the investment CAGR will be higher. The combination of OpEx or service-based revenue and so-called fixed asset or investment-based revenue will be higher than the 5%, at least the double. It has to do with that you are basically doing fundamental investments in post-smolt and you are upgrading barges. You are moving into new technology platforms like deep farming, et cetera. In sum, this is calling for a higher growth than the growth in the biomass. That's the key message.
Thank you.
Mid Hatzaet from Hervel.
Thank you for a good presentation so far. Can you please provide a bit more color on how the change in product and service mixes is supposed to lead to the targeted improvement in EBIT margins?
Yeah. On sea-based, we have seen a relatively good growth in our service-based revenue, higher than on the so-called investment-based revenue. We expect that the service-based revenue and the relative growth there will continue, but we expect to see more to regain growth on the investment side. That is why we have a 7% CAGR for sea-based. Land-based is very different because that is project-based. That is why I'm saying we have relatively good visibility on the activity we can expect till 2027. The starting point is our order backlog, plus the expected awarded contracts over the next six 12 months. That is the basis for the activity in 2027.
That we put on NOK 1.4 billion. That is a very different CAGR than sea-based, of course, because that is project-driven. Digital comes with a lot of new possibilities. We also expect a pretty good CAGR there, more than 20%. On the uplift of the EBIT margin, Ronny will explain that more in detail, of course. At high level, we are fully invested in the technology. We need to still allocate money for maintaining and further development this year, but we do not foresee M&A. We think we have, from a managerial or capacity point of view, what we need, at least for the 2027 target. You have a scaling impact that if you do NOK 5 billion on the same overhead, you uplift the margin. We have the same gross margin. We do not expect to sell smarter or better.
That's at least not in the projection. It's a scaling impact, first and foremost. We can have one last one. We keep the time here. Is there anything from the webcast? Okay, final here. Yes, one final.
Sundhar, can you say anything about how you package the service revenue or the service part? Is that a cost plus or is it more a long-term agreement?
It's a mixed bag. I want to park the question for now because otherwise I'm preempting everything for my colleagues because we are going to explain this pretty much in detail. I park it for now and then you pick it up again in the general Q&A session if it is not answered in a good way. Otherwise, they will go after me because I'm preempting everything. Sorry for that. Okay. We move on. Back to you, Ståle.
Yeah, thank you so much, Knut. Thank you so much for the questions. To our audience online, there will also be a second chance at the end of the day. That goes, of course, for you here in Klepp as well. I think this was a good overview. Now we are moving on. As you heard Knut say, AKVA Group has been part of the Norwegian salmon farming since the beginning, basically. During the years, the technological evolution has been remarkable. I think we can all agree on that. We believe, of course, it will be so in the future as well. Technology is part of the solution. To present today's and our future ambitions in the sea-based segment of aquaculture, you will now first hear from Kristian Botnen , who is a Chief Operating Officer in our Nordic department.
Then after Kristian has done his presentation, you will hear from Glenn Mo, who is Chief Operating Officer in AKVA Group Egersund Net. In total, they have more than 30 years' experience. They are going to tell you a little bit about the practical side of aquafarming, of fish farming, and also the big picture. Before I give the floor to you, Kristian, let's have a look at this video. Thank you.
[Foreign language]
Yes, thank you, Ståle, for the introduction.
Glenn and myself will now spend around half an hour, guide you through the sea-based segment in AKVA Group. To continue what Knut said, we have been pioneering aquaculture for more than 50 years in the sea-based segment. We have a long innovation history in pens and in feeding. We introduced, as Knut said, with the help of the farmers at Låven, we introduced the first plastic pen to the market. We have been leading the field of automated feeding and waterborne feeding. Together with customers, we have been driving forward deep farming from the start with a tube net we introduced some 10 years ago to the submersible Atlantis solution and to the current solution we call Nautilus. We are committed to deliver and to offer sustainability in all of our products.
We introduced, as you see on the screen here, the first pen made out of recycled material. We introduced the first carbon-neutral boat hull, and we introduced the first fully recycled net. We can say we have been innovators, and we will continue to be innovators in everything we do. To move a little bit into our operation. As all of you know, Norway is the biggest salmon producer in the world. With our Norwegian heritage, it's probably not a surprise that the largest part of our business comes from the Nordics, a little bit more than two-thirds of the revenue. However, we are operational in all major salmon farming regions. Got around NOK 550 million in revenue from Chile and from Canada, NOK 250 million from the EMEA, ex the Nordics, of course.
We have a smaller portion of our revenue coming from Australasia, more specifically Tasmania. As you see on the right side, left for me, of course, you see a pretty stable overall revenue during the last couple of years. However, we see a solid underlying growth of around 16% annually in our service part of the business, which we also call the OpEx-based revenue. We have experienced for the last couple of years lower investments, CapEx investment in sea-based, especially on barges. This reflects the reduced willingness to take on CapEx investment, especially after the changes in the fish farming taxation regime back in Norway from 2022. As we hope to show you today, we expect the growth to be higher in the years to come in CapEx investments. We expect continued growth in the OpEx-based segment.
To move into our product line, in our day-to-day operation, we want to meet our customer as a one-stop shop in everything they need in order to operate in a good way. We have a wide variety of quality marine infrastructure equipment for better operations. We are number one in steel pens in Chile. We are number one in nets in Norway, number one in net cleaning in ROV in boats. If we are not number one, we have a clear number two position. We have delivered more than 450 barges worldwide, strong position in feeding, strong position in lights and in cameras. That tied together with the digital that Knut and Rishi will present later today. Finally, the most exciting part, the new kid on the block, as we often call it, the deep farming, Nautilus. That's the key main growth driver for us.
We have a clear number one position at the moment. We believe that deep farming offers a very efficient solution to the life challenge faced by the industry. I will get back to the technology and also the market opportunities in a minute. We take pride in our product offering and believe that a great part of our success lies in the fact that we produce most of what we deliver to the customer. We produce in-house. While this poses some challenges in tougher times, we believe this enables us to capture a higher market share over time. As an example, you can see here on the screen some good examples. You see on the left, you see polyacrylic boats. You see polyethylene pipes manufactured at Helgeland Plast in Mo i Rana. On the bottom middle, you see ROV manufactured at Sperre, ROV technology at Nordodden.
Both are 100% owned companies of AKVA Group. We have feeding systems. We have cameras. We have lights. Most parts manufactured or assembled right here at Klepp. Some of you will hopefully see that later today. We have the barges which we design and equip specifically tailored to our customers. They are normally built at international shipyards at our specifications. With that, I'll hand it over to you, Glenn. You're going to take us through the net and service business, also a large and profitable part of the sea-based segment.
Thank you, Kristian. I'm responsible for Egersund Net, the largest entity of AKVA Group sea-based technology. We are a market leader in fish farming. We have delivered nets since the early 1970s, and we see ourselves as a true pioneer developing good and safe nets for different fish species all over the world.
As you can see behind me, most of the picture here is from our production facility in Egersund, where we produce around approximately 1,500 tons of netting. In the picture below, you can see our production facility in Lithuania, Tauragė, where we produce around 1,000 nets a year. We have 300 amazing employees in Lithuania and 500 excellent employees in total. If we then add we have a production and service facility also in Izmir, in Turkey, we will claim that we are one of the largest suppliers of fish farming nets and service in the industry. As Kristian already mentioned, service has made up an increasing part of our business over the past years, both in Norway and international. In Norway, we have 16 service stations from Egersund in south to Kvalsund in Finnmark in north.
We have spent a lot of time and a lot of money building this and over time built customer confidence and trust. We are serving a large installed base of marine infrastructure, and this offers a stable and recurring service and after-sales revenue base. We strive to serve our customer 24/7. We are always trying, and we have the ambition to keep improving the service level and maintain our position as a trusted partner globally. In this picture here, you can see one of our employees. She has been now working in the company for 29 years. Even if she has a fantastic office in Egersund, she still believes that going out in the field here in this picture, she is out with a customer in Hordaland, just out of Bergen, is the best place to be, good or bad weather.
We take pride in repair and maintain all kinds of equipment we supply 365 days a year. Most of our best innovation has, in fact, happened out in the field together with our good customers and users. Speaking of innovation, let's not forget that we have a team of 35 innovators designing and optimizing the best solution for the aquaculture industry: marine infrastructure, precision feeding, and fish performance. This is a highly specialized group of marine engineers and technical designers working out mainly from Bergen. We also have a lab and testing facility in Egersund. This is a competence center of innovation and product development, but they also offer technical support for sales, certification, and project management. The team is both helping customers optimize existing solutions and develop new solutions.
One of the main developments over the past years is, of course, the deep farming Nautilus, which we can see as one of the main growth drivers in the years to come. Now, Kristian, I leave it back to you, and you will explain a little bit more. What is the Nautilus? Thank you.
Thank you, Glenn. You, Glenn, and your team are a great part of the success of deep farming and Nautilus, which is a concept we have developed with key customers to solve the challenge with sea lice. The current solution we call Nautilus builds on more than 10 years of experience from the tube net, as mentioned, and the Atlantis solution. The basic concept of deep farming is as simple as it is effective, sorry.
You submerge the fish to around 30 meters below the surface to separate the sea lice and the salmon. The sea lice normally operate in the upper part of the upper layer of the sea from the surface to 10-15 meters below the surface. Deep farming with Nautilus speaks to all the key issues Knut laid out earlier today: to drive, to improve fish health, to improve fish welfare, to drive growth, and then create value. Our customers typically report on 80% or more in reduced sea lice treatments. With fewer stressful sea lice treatments, you would get a healthier fish, a more happier fish, some would say, lower mortality, and more time to feed. This, in turn, yields higher production volumes and also with less lice and lower mortality. That means that the fish farmer is allowed to grow.
On the value side, with higher volumes, a higher share of superior on your fish, and lower cost with less sea lice treatment, we help create value for our customers. Although the basic concept is simple, we needed to come up with two key innovations in order to enable the concept. We have the air dome, which gives access to air for the salmon. You have waterborne feeding, which gives access to feed to the salmon. Deep farming also relies more on comprehensive digital support as the fish is out of sight, so to speak. That drives demand for our Aqua Observe solutions and Aqua Submerge solutions. To look into the key innovation number one, if I can say so, that is an engineering feat where we provide secure access of air for the salmon, which it needs to fill its swim bladder.
In traditional cages, open cages, the salmon swims to the surface, snap air, and go down again. That is not possible if you have a submerged cage. We have developed an air dome that gives the salmon a sufficiently large air pocket at the top of the cage. Overall, we offer an air solution that is secure, stable, efficient under all conditions. When you submerge the fish, you, of course, need to present the feed in the depth. How do we do it? We take feed and we take water, mix that together on the barge, transport it by feed pipes to the pen and to a lit area under the air dome. Then the salmon both can see the pellet, can see the air pocket. The salmon behaves in pretty much the same way as it does when you feed in a traditional cage.
Waterborne feeding holds a significant advantage over airborne solutions. It is more gentle to the feed, more gentle to the equipment, typically triple the transport capacity, and reduces the energy consumption quite significantly. We are offering waterborne solutions on new barges. We are retrofitting on existing barges. We can provide a hybrid solution combining water and air. To give you an example of the energy consumption, if you have a hybrid system, you would typically halve the energy consumption compared to airborne solutions. To sum up Nautilus, we have introduced the market to a relatively simple concept: to submerge the cage and avoid sea lice on the salmon. Let us go into the value for us. Deep farming requires much more than just a net. As I showed you, you need the air dome. You need waterborne feeding. You also need plastic pens. You need new mooring systems.
You need winches to hold the net up and down. You need more lights in the cage. You also need a submerged camera to count sea lice. Of course, as Rishi and Knut will show you later today, you should deploy our Aqua Observe solution to monitor and to improve fish performance and feeding performance. Nautilus and deep farming offers a high return on investment for fish farmers. The combined value of these deliveries is why we see the order intake and revenue really starting to pick up in the sea-based segment. Hopefully, this will continue. Moving into the market, we are the deep farming pioneers, early movers, and we have so far retained a high market share in that area. We have deployed more than 200 Nautilus cages on 30+ sites.
To give you a rule of thumb, one site in Norway has on average seven cages. I will refer to the sites in the following slides. The 30+ sites we have deployed, starting with Sinkaberg-Hansen some years back to last year, where we delivered half a dozen Nautilus to half a dozen leading fish farmers. Several new ones will be added to the list this year, and the opportunity list keeps expanding. The reason for this, to be a little bit unpolitical, that's because this shit works. To quote Henning Beltestad in Lerøy: "This has been a game changer for us." Going into the market as we go along to 2030, we see a market opportunity of around NOK 6 billion. In Norway, there are in total around 1,300 approved fish farming sites. Around 600 are active sites at any given time.
We have used data, market research, bargains, watch, mapped the sites. We see that between 50% and 60% of the sites are suitable for deep farming. We believe that most of those sites will have some kind of shielded technology within the next five years, with deep farming as the most widely deployed solution. With the deployment of 50-70 sites annually, that implies a market potential of around NOK 1 billion annually. As I said, we are the clear market leader in deep farming, and we expect to take our fair share of the market in the years to come. To leave Norway a little bit behind, although Norway is two-thirds of our revenue, we also have a long-standing track record and strong market position in Chile, the second biggest salmon producer in the world.
As I mentioned, we are number one in steel pens. We are market-leading in net cleaning service, feeding, digital systems. Like in Norway, we have a large recurring service and after-sales business, roughly half of the revenue in Chile. We now see innovation-driven growth as we have started to introduce deep farming in Chile and other international markets. Chile struggles with lice, as in Norway. We have done some market research. It shows that around 30% of the sites could be suitable for Nautilus with some adoption, of course, to Chilean conditions. This brings a significant potential, especially for nets and for waterborne feeding in Chile. We are meeting demand for off-grid energy solutions in Chile.
We actually already installed the first, what we call a low-emission farming site in Chile, where you combine, as you see here, floating solar panels with battery systems and providing renewable energy to the fish farmers. I would like to show you a short video of that first delivery that MOWI Chile has made.
[Foreign language]
This is a 50-meter diameter cage, plastic cage. We can produce approximately 360,000 kW hours per year in this region. That actually can provide the movie site with over 50% of the energy need covered with completely clean renewable solar energy.
[Foreign language]
Normally, if a ponton is running only on generators 24 hours a day, those generators will last maybe four, maybe five years. If you add a solar panel to it, you're adding a green generator. You're using the diesel generator less. We are looking now at the possibility of 15 years.
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Yes, great potential for us in the future. That's exciting.
Unfortunately, we do not have time to take a deep dive into other international growth opportunities. I will summarize that quickly. In Canada, we see potential for net service and net cleaning. In the U.K., we see potential for nets. We see potential for cleaning, barges, and digital systems. In Turkey, we see actually potential for deep farming in the Black Sea with trout. In other emerging regions, we see an increasing activity as new farming areas are being developed. Moving to the fun stuff for probably most of you, the financial side. Let's put it into a financial context. Pretty stable revenue during the last couple of years, NOK 2.7 billion-NOK 2.8 billion, despite limited growth and low willingness to take on investments. We have seen a clear uptick in order intake in 2024 and now into 2025, mainly related to Nautilus.
Combined with the continued growth in the service business, we are forecasting a revenue of NOK 3.4 billion in 2027. Despite the flat revenue, we have improved the profitability, moving from 10% - 12% in 2024. We are aiming for around 14% EBITDA as we go along, achieving the NOK 3.4 billion in revenue. Looking a little bit further ahead on the 2030 ambition, steady growth up to NOK 4 billion in revenue and with accretive margins fueled by deep farming and international expansion. To summarize the sea-based, we are an industry leader with a strong and stable core business built on decades of innovation. Deep farming with Nautilus is unlocking the next growth frontier. We have a growing recurring revenue base and a resilient service and aftermarket. We are present in all key salmon farming markets globally.
With that, I will say thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Kristian. Thank you, Glenn, for an excellent presentation. We will now have a break, 20 minutes. Please be back here at 13:25 . 13:25 P.M., that is. Then we will start again. Thank you so much. Welcome back to our AKVA Group Markets Day. Many people smiled when pioneers in aquaculture started to farm fish on land. Fish on land, they said, was that really possible? The land-based revolution has shown that it was indeed possible and also necessary to create growth in aquaculture and salmon fish farming. The next presenter is Johan Fredrik Gestal. He is the Chief Operating Officer of AKVA Group Land-Based. He has been in AKVA Group for eight years and as COO for five.
Before I invite Johan Fredrik to the stage, we're going to have a look at a short video that shows what is actually possible.
Nordic Aqua is the first producer of fresh Atlantic salmon in China. Using cutting-edge technology, we're leading the way in providing sustainable and premium Atlantic salmon for the growing Chinese market. Our advanced and state-of-the-art systems and close partnership with industry leaders such as AKVA Group and Skretting ensure the perfect environment for healthy Atlantic salmon with low mortality and no antibiotics. It is the future of sustainable aquaculture, built on centuries of wisdom. Over 2,000 years ago, the Chinese fish culturist Fan Lee emphasized the importance of clean water, proper fish care, and responsible farming. With Fan Lee's spirit at heart, we continue to follow his timeless principles and combine them with our newest knowledge.
Located in China, we offer reliable and fast delivery to meet the rising demand for top-quality Atlantic salmon. Backed by decades of expertise as well as governmental support, the Nordic Aqua team is ready to scale. From ancient ponds to state-of-the-art fish farms, we carry Fan Lee's legacy into the future, ensuring both people and the planet can thrive. Nordic Aqua, the world's first producer of fresh Atlantic salmon in China.
Thank you, Ståle, and good afternoon to everyone. Also, within land-based, we have a very proud pioneering history. We have been doing recirculating aquaculture systems for over three decades. We were among the first who introduced RAS for Atlantic salmon in Norway in 2007. We built the world's first post-smolt module in the Faroe Islands in 2014, and we took post-smolt to the next level with a one-kilo post-smolt for Tytansvik Aqua in 2019.
More recently, we have built the world's first successfully scaled RAS facility for grow-out in China for Nordic Aqua, as you saw in the video. We are also the technology partner to Laxa, who is a front-runner within grow-out in Iceland, where we are using reuse technology. The land-based segment has indeed seen significant developments over the last 25 years. Going back to the early 2000s, the smolt was small, and the low biomass volumes could be produced by low-tech flow-through technologies. As more and larger smolt was needed to grow production in sea, water became the bottleneck, and also more flexible and controlled production environments were needed. Hence, RAS became the enabler for growth.
Now, with the Grow Out segment commercially proven, the land-based industry or segment as such is, per our view, fully industrialized, as our projects today are about building large, complex, and fully integrated salmon factories on land. The next step, we think, is about really enabling precision farming on land. This is about taking automation to the next level, where we utilize data and decision-making tools to realize and implement an intelligent farm in order to further improve fish performance, but also make the farms easier to operate. As a supplier, we have also seen significant change in recent times. Over the last couple of years, we have been through a radical turnaround. We have spent some NOK 300 million in negative EBIT in carrying through and completing a very comprehensive transformation and restructuring of the land-based business in AKVA Group.
In short, we have rebuilt the organization, we have improved our execution capabilities, and we have improved and documented our technology platform. Lastly, we have also built a solid service offering, including our production advisory services, where we offer services and assist farmers in getting the optimal and best possible production in their facilities. We are today 250 employees in the land-based business. We have a solid backlog, and we are well positioned to capture market share in a growing market. We deliver end-to-end turnkey RAS technology and facilities from hatchery to Grow Out with all relevant support systems. With basis in production capacities, a production plant, and relevant water quality parameters, we design an optimal facility with respect to footprint, investments, and operations. Everything based on our standard RAS technology.
As we know, salmon is a clean water species, and you need to have low particle load in your system to achieve the best possible fish performance. Our technology really excels at capturing organic and biological matter very efficiently. Thanks to the high level of automation and the streamlined and holistic design, our system and technology ensures exceptionally good water quality while maintaining operational stability and ease of use. With basis in our size, our extensive track record, and presence in all salmon markets as well as emerging Grow Out markets, we are the only RAS supplier that can truly be defined as a global supplier and technology provider. Also, a part of our global reach includes a well-developed global delivery model. This ensures quality, predictability, and consistency, ensuring that our projects are delivered in a very solid way around the globe in all relevant markets.
Zooming in on the post-smolt market, it is, as already said, clear to us that post-smolt is one of the main tools to solve the growth challenge within this industry. A larger smolt reduces the time in sea, and this shortens the time period where the fish is exposed to sea lice, pathogens, and also undesired water temperatures. This significantly improves fish health as well as reduces mortalities. Also, shorter time in sea provides a better utilization of your sea licenses. Going from a regime where you have 150 g of smolt to something closer to 1 kg, you will see a 30% + increase in your production volume coming out of the sea licenses. We see post-smolt as a tremendous value creator. You achieve better fish performance, your biological cost is reduced, and the production volumes are increasing.
We have a very strong reference post-smolt track record and reference list globally on the back of regulatory changes in the Faroe Islands in the early 2010s. We built the first post-smolt facilities to both Bakkafrost and Hidden Fjord. Bakkafrost is now producing a couple—sorry, Hidden Fjord is now producing a couple of thousand tons of 700 grams of smolt, and Bakkafrost is also on their way towards those numbers in terms of smolt size. Beyond the Faroe Islands, we know that Norway is indeed the most developed post-smolt market today. Most farmers, they do have a clear growth strategy built on post-smolt. One example here is MOWI.
We have worked with MOWI and the Nordheim facility for close to 15 years, building this facility to what it is today, MOWI's largest post-smolt facility with a production capacity of 6,000 tons, and the smolt is reaching an average weight of 700 g there as well. Bremnes and Grieg, they have received a one-kilo post-smolt from Tytansvik AQUA since 2019. To date, we have built four modules, bringing the total capacity up to 6,000 tons also there. We do see that post-smolt is getting more and more traction also internationally outside Norway. One example is Chile and Zealand Aquaculture, as you see here. We have delivered several post-smolt modules to Zealand, and they have a capacity now of 4,000 tons of post-smolt at 400 g. Let's look at some concrete examples from our customers. This one is from MOWI.
In this study, they have been comparing large smolt of 700 g and larger with smaller smolt, 150 g and down. We see that when they compare these two production systems, we see that the mortality is reduced with some 50%, and also that the number of treatments, lice treatments, are reduced with 40%. Also, lastly, the growth rates are also in favor of larger smolt. We have some data from Grieg Seafood, Grieg Seafood Rogaland. In Rogaland, Grieg has over the last 10 years been working very consistently and steadily by increasing smolt weight towards a kilo. Effectively, they have reduced the time in sea from 15-16 months down to seven. We see that the share of fish that receive lice treatments has basically been more than halved.
We see that the survival rate is improving some seven, eight percentage points when you compare the larger smolt with smaller smolt. Lastly, and perhaps most interesting, I think, is the volume. We see that following this post-smolt strategy, the production volume in sea in Rogaland has increased with some 50% for Grieg. In the years to come, we expect a very strong post-smolt market. This is both to support the overall growth ambitions within the industry, but also to provide the farmers with larger smolt assets. Looking closer to Norway, Norway is the largest market. We believe that the number of smolt will increase steadily. However, we will see a quite large increase in the smolt size. We expect the average smolt size to close in on 400 g in 2030, up from 200 + g today.
This is effectively doubling the smolt biomass over some five-year window. What does this mean for us? This growth translates into a RAS technology market of around NOK 2 billion per year. As a tier 1 RAS player, we aim for no less than 20-30% market share. We see a revenue opportunity in Norway north of NOK 500 million. Again, there are also a lot of interest and opportunities outside Norway. We are well positioned, and we see revenue opportunities there or a market share providing us with more than NOK 200 million per year from the post-smolt segment. Moving over to the Grow Out segment and farming fish on land from egg to slaughter close to consumer is indeed an intriguing opportunity to get sustainable growth in the industry.
It has, as already mentioned, taken some time to master this new sport. If we compare with producing post-smolt, yes, this segment and the projects here have a higher complexity. This is partly driven by the size of the projects and the scope. It is also significant greenfield infrastructure requirements tied to most of these projects. Also, there is quite a lot of technological and operational integration needed across the value chain. If you produce salmon locally, you are basically competing with salmon which is imported to the country. We see this as a new salmon product, meaning you have to invest quite a lot in marketing and building or supporting your product with advertisement and branding. We also need to stress the importance of food standard requirements. This is something you need to comply with. In our view, this is about delivering extreme water quality.
It's about having very good fish health, and it's about having control over everything that comes in and out of your facility. Lastly, ensure transparency and traceability across the value chain. It's a complete package. Thirdly and lastly, yes, this segment has also brought some new challenges you need to master. One example is flavor or off-flavor of the fish. As you probably know, our customer Nordic Aqua in China did experience two high levels of geosmin, which gives a certain off-flavor to the fish. This was an issue in parts of the facility. This issue is now managed, which was a result of a joint effort where we worked together with Nordic Aqua to implement the appropriate technology and optimize also operating procedures. We are now at a turning point when it comes to land-based salmon farming.
The segment is becoming commercially viable, and meaningful volumes are being produced. 2024 had an output of around 25,000 tons, two-thirds coming from RAS facilities, the remaining one-third mainly coming from reuse facilities. With basis in projects or capacity under construction and planned expansions, the volumes are expected to triple towards 2027. We still see RAS as the preferred technology in the sense that this technology has a much broader flexibility when it comes to geography. Reuse is dependent on a lot of seawater with the right quality and with the right water temperature. Reuse technology remains relevant for certain geographical areas. However, reuse has indeed a favorable investment profile and also, to a certain degree, less complex operations when we compare it to RAS. Within reuse for Grow Out, our most notable delivery today is to Laxe on Iceland. This collaboration started back in 2021.
We were awarded the contract for the hatchery built on RAS technology. From there on, we have expanded the collaboration, and we have delivered reuse technology to the post-smolt module and the Grow Out module. We have taken the next step by the award of a EUR 20 million contract for the second Grow Out module earlier this year. This delivery encompasses a complete reuse technology package from AKVA. Laxe, they have a plan to construct six Grow Out modules in total and also additional post-smolt capacity, bringing the total production up to 36,000 tons hog. Within RAS Grow Out, Nordic Aqua is indeed a flagship project. We are now busy with constructing stage two, which is increasing the capacity from 4,000 to 8,000 tons. This is a 20,000-ton project, but there is also an option for additional 30,000 tons hog.
Our scope here is end-to-end RAS with all relevant support systems, feeding, Skada, two examples. We do have the contract for stage three, but that is not in our backlog as NUAP need to confirm financing and final go-ahead for that stage. We see NUAP as one of the first players who is proving that grow-out production on land using RAS technology is commercially viable. With that, we mean that NUAP is producing fish according to the dimensioning and the design capacity of the facility. It is interesting to look at the KPIs. NUAP, they are slaughtering fish at above 6 kg. They have a very solid and consistent superior rate of 99%. The survival rates have stabilized on a solid level above 98%. Lastly, the fish production, the biomass, extremely efficient facility producing a lot of large fish.
As the larger seafood market, China is indeed an interesting opportunity for locally produced salmon on land. Today, approximately 100,000 tons is consumed in the country. This is imported, as we know, and the predictions are forecasting this to double over the next five-year period. We know that consumers in China, they want the large fish, a fresh fish, and we do believe that producing fish on land locally can actually be part of unlocking additional consumption and demand in the country and Asia as such. Also, food security and self-sufficiency is a key priority for the local or the Chinese government. This results in a favorable framework for land-based developments in the country. We know that that's part of the key to get projects moving. We are very well positioned to take part in the growth for land-based in China and Asia as a whole.
Certainly, NUAP is our main local reference and proof of concept, but we also have project references in South Korea and Japan. We do have a strong organization locally supporting project execution, site operations. Also, we have spent a lot of time establishing a strong network of sub-suppliers. Around 80% of what we deliver in projects today in Asia is sourced locally. Looking ahead in terms of activity and revenue, we had a strong backlog of NOK 1.4 billion end of 2024. In Q1, this has increased to NOK 1.55 billion by inclusion of the small contract to Cermaq in Chile. We believe that this backlog gives a very solid fundament and visibility towards 2027. With the significant opportunities within post-smolt and also Grow Out, we are aiming for, or we are targeting a revenue level of NOK 1.4 billion in 2027.
As you can see, with the continuation of activity and projects for Laxe, as well as NUAP 3, a significant part or the majority of the step-up is accounted for. The third item is post-smolt, mainly in Norway. In terms of financials, we have had a flat revenue level the last couple of years. However, we have completed a comprehensive turnaround of the land-based business area in a fairly challenging market, and we have been improving profitability. We had black numbers in 2024, and we do have a continued positive development, both top line and profitability, going into and first parts of 2025. We are now ready to scale the business. We see that with NOK 1.4 billion revenue in 2024 as our target, the EBITDA margin will improve to some 10%, which again is mainly the scaling effect.
Beyond 2027, we have an ambition to keep growing 15%-20% per year and see some further strengthening of the EBITDA due to additional scaling effects. Summing up, we are very well positioned as the global tier 1 RAS player. We are positioned to grow market share, both within post-smolt and Grow Out. We have a very solid technology platform. Our facilities deliver best-in-class fish performance. Lastly, with the solid backlog and qualified pipeline, we see strong and accretive growth going forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Johan Fredrik. You and your team are true pioneers. The aquaculture industry is undergoing also a digital transformation. As in all other industries, artificial intelligence is a big theme. To present AKVA Group's status and ambitions on the digital business area of AKVA Group, you will now hear from Knut Nesse again, who is already introduced.
We will also hear then from Mr. Hemang Rishi, co-founder of Observe Technologies that now is part of AKVA Group. Before, I'll give the floor to you, Knut. Let's have a look at this short video.
For years, the fish farming industry development has been affected by often person-dependent knowledge, a plethora of different tech suppliers, local differences, and slow adjustments of feeding schedules and habitat technology. Until now, accurate data is vital for making informed and good decisions and accurate predictions. AquaFusion aims to connect all parts of the industry, new and old, setting a new standard for communication, control, and cooperating, sharing and utilizing data from aquaculture. AKVA Group already delivers top-of-the-line underwater observation technology, giving farmers valuable insight to the behavior and health of the fish.
Observe takes it one step further, using AI to register and interpret the visual information, giving us vital clues about growth rate, appetite, and well-being, and enabling automatic adjustments to optimize feeding. More precise feeding means less waste, improved water quality, and less use of natural resources. This also generates data that can help farmers make better business-critical decisions for the entire supply chain going forward, creating a more effective and sustainable aquaculture. Good and accurate information, together with the integration of third-party providers, enables AKVA Group to develop the best simulations and predictive models available, making planning new farms and expansions easier and more profitable. FishTalk follows the entire life cycle from egg to grown specimen, processing, and finally as a high-quality product available for consumption. Tracking fish performance throughout the life cycle enables farmers to make better decisions with regard to sustainability and fish welfare.
Global need for food, especially protein, calls for a more sustainable aquaculture industry and trusted data across production chains. Informed and environmentally conscious consumers can follow the fish's journey down to the last detail, and farmers and producers can more easily implement improvements like minimizing food waste, chemical use, and production costs. Receiving vital information and sending out crucial operating signals, Aquanonnect lets farmers remotely monitor and operate farms, increasing productivity, reducing costs, and creating new job opportunities in coastal communities. AquaFusion blends all aspects of the industry together through accurate data and reliable technology for a more effective and sustainable aquaculture industry. This is just the beginning.
All right. Just explaining very quickly why I'm here. We are in the midst of a leadership transition in digital. Asle will retire in the second half of this year, our current manager of our digital.
His success will be there right after the summer. I will do the first part, and then Rishi will take over a little later. Starting the presentation, it is not only within sea-based and land-based we are pioneering in aqua. That also goes for digital in particular. It goes back in 1982. I mentioned earlier this afternoon that we started the automation of the feeding in 1980. I quickly understood that that needed to follow by also control system. That was the first control system introduced in 1982. When you were able to do the feeding from a physical point of view, you realized you also need more like a biological ERP system. You need to know how much feed you have given to the fish and how the fish is growing. You need to plan your harvesting.
That was 1985 with the first biological ERP system. More recently, we became the owner of Observe on a 100% basis last year. That's the world's first AI-driven feeding system. In general, talking about digital, we have seen that there is an increasing focus on digitalization and what AI can bring to this industry over the more recent five, 10 years. If you go five, 10 years back, it was more about historical data, a bit the back mirror. That moved to more focus on having real-time data, maybe using our biological ERP system as a basis for BI tools, et cetera, et cetera, real-time data. Now it's more about data-driven decision-making that AI can support your decision-making, and you can even automate it.
To the right, you see that quite a number of the big names, they have a digital agenda or the digital one high on their agenda, focusing on smart farming, precision feeding and farming, followed by cost reduction, growth, and fish welfare focused as well. This is what we learn at the marketplace, a lot of focus. That is also why we as AKVA Group, we have invested substantial money in this field over the last four or five years in particular. It is actually as much as NOK 500 million, which is a lot of money for a company like AKVA. Roughly NOK 300 million on M&A, acquiring 100% of Observe, come back to Observe a little later, and also Submerge, also coming back to that one. In addition to those NOK 300 million, NOK 200 million on developing the solutions and the platform we have.
This has resulted in a rather comprehensive solid digital platform containing FishTalk, the biological ERP system, AquaConnect, Submerge, Observe. I will present them one by one in a minute. We are also present in all the major markets. Norway, of course, the biggest one with 57%, but also big in Chile. We are the clear market leader in Chile when it comes to the digital space as well. Present wherever salmon farming is taking place. It is all about the art of precision farming and precision feeding. That is about improving fish health, fish welfare. It is about optimized feeding, improved biomass control, health monitoring, and lower mortality, driving growth and creating value as volume and higher volume and quality. FCR, the feed conversion rate. That is kind of the holy grail. Overfeeding is not good because then you are wasting feed.
Underfeeding is not good either because then you are not utilizing the full growth potential of the fish. It should just be precise. In order to have precise feeding, you need support, you need tools. Rishi will, of course, explain very much more about the feeding part because that's what he's living and breathing. We also believe that new technology, centralized feeding stations, and more precise feeding, automated feeding, can also come with lower operational cost as well. This is the complete overview of our digital platform. I think it's fair to say that we have the most complete digital platform within the industry. Starting to the left, then I'm talking FishTalk. That's the biological control system where we have a 60% global market share. The other legacy system is the AquaConnect, the control system.
In the midst, we have the more new kid on the block, which is about AI-powered decision-making. I take them one by one. AquaFishTalk. Six out of 10 salmon farmed in the world is on our biological ERP system. That is a strong market position to have. It is about the control and planning and also about financial control. This is enabling optimal planning, efficiency, focus on fish quality, and not at least the harvest planning as such. Of course, investing in an ERP system is not a decision you make every year. Typically, you are there to stay. That is what we see. We have 95% customer retention over the years. What is new with FishTalk?
We have invested quite a bit in getting rid of some old technical debt and modernize and improve the system, make it more transparent or open so you can use APIs on the system. The next level of development is that as the first mover, we are now moving our FishTalk solution to the cloud. We are introducing a software as a service model. The idea is that the fish farmers will move from their own on-prem solution up to the cloud and be there in a standardized and open architecture. We think this makes a lot of sense also from an IT security standpoint, seen from our customer and from our side. This also makes a lot of sense with regards to improving our recurring revenue base, also customer stickiness, predictability.
The first customers are moving now, and we expect to see traction on this new additional service model or business model in the months to come. What we will end up with, or what we hope to end up with, is a complete library of more than 50 million tons of biomass accumulated over the years, of course, on this cloud-based system. I do not have fantasy enough today to explain to you what someone, right, a competent company next to us, if we partner with someone and if we can use this enormous fish database in order to find or search for new solutions and combine it with other data libraries, I think that is going to be a very powerful muscle to have in the future.
We are now organizing contracts in such a way that we can use those data on an aggregated and anonymous basis for what is the better thing in terms of developing the industry. AquaConnect, five out of 10 Atlantic farm salmons will be on our control systems. This is also based on a recurring business model. It is basically about enabling feeding, bringing hardware and software together, same with the cameras and the same with the barge control as such. Closing off with Submerge. Submerge is a smart AI-powered camera. It is not developed by AKVA Group, but with some third-party founders. We acquired this company a bit more than a year ago.
We acquired that because we see that there is an enormous focus and movements in the direction of having AI-powered cameras also in the last, or today, I said that the new regulation is being voted for. One element in this as a principle in the new regulation is that the government wants to introduce automated sea lice or lice counting. You need AI-powered camera for that. Our technology is delivering on this automatic sea lice counting. It is also approved by the food authorities, one out of two or three. It also gives accurate weight distribution, which is relevant for the farmer in order to do their harvest planning. Also, we have developed a number of fish health KPIs, and a bit more work is to be done there. Commercially, we are now out there in the market with quite a number of pilots.
We now are picking up on the first commercial contracts. In all humbleness, commercially, we are a couple of years behind two competitors there. They have commercialized their smart cameras over the last couple of years. We think in fairness that technically we are at par level now, also demonstrated by the fact that our sea lice counting is authorized by the food authorities. We expect to see a good pace now in our commercialization and scaling up of that. We think it is attractive for the customer to have something which is part of our digital platform where the Aqua name is behind in terms of security, in terms of guarantees, in terms of service and follow-up. This is going to be exciting to follow in the next couple of years. Rishi, you tell us everything about feeding. Thank you.
Thank you, Knut.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Rishi, and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Observe Technologies, a company that is looking to pioneer precision feeding in aquaculture. Today, I'm going to go into how fish farming can be further optimized, the solution we've created for it, the proven value, why we stand out, our customer-first approach, and why we'll maintain and increase our market position today. Everyone knows that feeding is the biggest cost in aquaculture. Behind it is an intensely manual process. It involves an operator sitting behind these many screens. Imagine if you're an operator. You come in in the morning, you would look at your feed systems to make sure everything is up and well. You would look at your cameras and adjust them to be just the right position.
You would look at your sensors to make sure you're on the right environmental range to feed your fish. You would look at tables to understand the theoretical values that you need to feed your fish to. You would look at the previous day's data. At that moment, you're ready to feed your fish. They then go back to the feed system. You would then press start, and you would look at the cameras and look at the appetite and the pellets in each of these video screens. You would then also continuously examine the sensors, make the small adjustments, all to optimize the balance between overfeeding and underfeeding. You do not want to overfeed because it'll be a waste to the bottom of the ocean floor. You do not want to underfeed and compromise on fish performance and growth.
You will not do this for one hour or two hours. This will be for eight hours a day. In fact, across the next seven-day shift, 56 hours in total. At that moment, you will hand over to a colleague. That colleague will make different decisions based on what they think is the best to achieve that balance. You would compare notes. Those notes would just be the amount of food delivered and then the potential growth. It is an art because it is an information overload. It is non-standardized feeding, and there is no reliable benchmarking. That is what we do. We introduce the science. We aim to unify and bring all the tools in one place, something that fundamentally was not possible in the last 10 years. We process it in milliseconds and give actionable outputs either in a decision support system or an automated system.
Left, red, stop feeding. Orange, decrease. Blue, stay stable. Green, increase. Just like here. This solution is proven. We've seen a 10% reduction in feed costs in sites in Chile. We've seen a 3% growth increase in sites in Australia. Although we don't focus on this, the feed data has given some customers an idea of anticipation of fish health issues. We've seen a reduction of training time, something pivotal when new people enter this industry, particularly in our coastal communities. This is further backed up by one of the lead producers in Chile, which has said, "Observe AI's sites produced better results than those ones used manually." In fact, we have trust of over 100 locations in this industry. We don't just integrate with Aqua equipment. We're agnostic to equipment. Farms do not need to require extra CapEx. We can use what's there.
We have worked with 11 different camera providers, four different feed system providers, six different sensor providers. With this recent acquisition, as Knut has described, we aim to leverage AKVA's footprint in the market today and make further ground into Norway. We do this with a customer-first tailored package. We start with a recommendation-based system, which is a decision support system designed to gain the trust of our AI outputs of our operators. Once that trust is achieved, we can then go into a fully automated solution of feed and cameras with a commercial upsale for us. We are thereby developing an even more automated solution with more things around a farm. We've proven that this model works. We've seen that decision support system is now being upsold commercially worldwide by more than 50% of our customers. We don't plan to stop there.
Part of our autopilot package is working with the biomass and sea lice cameras in our industry and providing an enriched experience with Aqua Submerge. While Observe provides a lot of data around the feeding, we miss a core thing in the feedback loop, which is the biomass and the health data. By reducing that time and understanding further, we can be even more precise in our feed delivery. We can deliver the right amount of food at the right time with it being fully automated. We are confident we'll see even better results in the long run. To summarize, at Observe, we are recognized to have one of the most advanced feed automated solutions in the market. Number two, we're proven. Number three, we have a roadmap that will keep us there commercially and technically in the long run. Thank you.
Thank you, Rishi.
Now, you probably have some sympathy why we invested in the company. They have leading cutting-edge technology, AI-based, and also very impressive leadership, I have to say. Rishi and his team are located just outside London City Center. We have 25 true AI specialists. You do not find them here in this area, we realize. You need to go to a bit smarter places. We are very, very happy with the onboarding of Observe and Rishi and the team. It works very well for us. Summarizing the growth opportunities here with the base of last year to start with, there will be some building block. Number one is about some underlying growth, which is representing the growth in the biomass because our revenue model is following the increase of the biomass. This is from 2024 - 2027, I am explaining. Then you have new sales opportunities.
New sales opportunities will basically be there are three drivers behind that. One, it is about the new SaaS model for FishTalk that will generate new revenue. It is selling more sites, number of sites for Observe, around 120 today on our recurring revenue model. We have the ambition to increase that number and not at least Submerge, which I explained some 10 minutes ago and the possibilities there. That is the new sales stepping block. You have Upsell, which is very much about with the base we have in Observe, the 120 sites plus the new sites, and bring it all to autopilot or in other terms, full autonomous feeding. That is basically doubling the income broadly if we are able to bring customers there, which we think we will do. We have a rather low churn today of less than 5%.
We expect that to continue. That is the stepping stones in order to arrive to $250 million for 2027. We have seen reasonable growth in the last few years. EBITDA more flat is because we have been investing a lot. Now we will scale and leverage on higher revenue. The ambition is to get to or arrive to $250 million three years later. The EBITDA will be more like it should be for this kind of business, 40%. The 2030 ambition is to double on the back of this being a mega trend, a lot of focus on digital, certainly. This is the key highlights for digital. We have a unique end-to-end platform, powering position fish farming globally. We are really positioned for profitable growth following our large investment.
I said NOK 300 million M&A in the last few years and NOK 200 million for upgrading the technology platform. We expect a strong financial outlook with high margins for recurring revenue and scaling globally. We want to unlock the value from the SaaS model, AI-driven feeding, and also the data capitalization. That brings me very much to the end. Ståle, I hand it back to you, please.
Thank you, Knut. Thank you, Rishi. We will now have a break, a short break. Please be back at 14:30, 14:30, and then we will dive into the financials. Thank you. Welcome back. Now we're going to take a deep dive into finance. Our next presenter is AKVA Group CFO, Mr. Ronny Meinkøhn. He assumed his position in August 2020 after some years in the oil and gas industry.
Ronny will present the financial overview and his thoughts on AKVA Group's future perspectives. The floor is yours, Ronny.
Thank you, Ståle. And good afternoon. Before we dive into the numbers, I would like to do a short recap of what we have presented so far today. Knut set the scene at the start by illustrating the growth challenge in the salmon farming industry. It is clear for us that continued innovation and investments in new technology are required to overcome the growth barriers. The license to grow for the industry lies in improved fish health and fish welfare, and to reduce the mortality in a financially and environmentally sustainable way. That will create value for the industry through increased harvesting volumes, but also through improved quality with a higher share of superior fish.
We believe that AKVA has the solutions to help solve these challenges and enable growth with deep farming, post-smolt, full growth facilities, and also digital solutions as key enablers for growth and also key value drivers for AKVA the coming years. Improved fish health and welfare is obviously AKVA's main contribution to secure a sustainable industry. As the leading global supplier, we are also aware of other ESG responsibilities. Rishi talked about the importance of feeding from a cost perspective, but to reduce waste from feeding is also important to reduce the impact on the environment of the industry. Johan Fredrik talked about the importance of clean water, supply chain transparency, and also about sustainability standards in land-based farming of salmon. Kristian and Glenn, they showed a few examples on sustainable solutions within sea-based, such as the recycled pen, recycled net, and also the carbon-neutral boathouse.
Kristian also showed a video from Chile, the project MOWI with the floating solar panels, which we are very proud of. We believe that there is a great market opportunity for AKVA with this solution going forward. Let's continue with the financials. As you have heard today, AKVA is entering a new growth era where we expect to move from an average growth of 2% in 2022 - 2024 to 12% in 2025 - 2027. In other words, we expect to lift revenue from NOK 3.5 billion to NOK 5 billion in 2027. We see the strongest growth in land-based, both in absolute and in relative numbers. The good start we had to 2025 is really supportive to our revenue targets. We had a revenue in Q1 this year, which was 30% higher than in Q1 last year. Our revenue growth will be profitable.
We will continue the positive EBITDA development we have seen the past few years. We managed to lift the EBITDA from NOK 158 million in 2022 to NOK 381 million in 2024, which was driven by this restructuring process in land-based cost optimization processes. We have improved on project execution, and we have spent a lot of time and effort to really improve on contract management. We improved the EBITDA from the low 5% in 2022 to 11% in 2024 on more or less the same revenue basis, the same revenue amount. Looking ahead, we are targeting an EBITDA of NOK 700 million in 2027, which is corresponding to an EBITDA margin of 14%. We can see that all segments will contribute significantly to this improvement with the NOK 140 million from sea-based, NOK 115 million from land-based, and more than NOK 65 million from digital.
Looking deeper into the segments, we see sea-based increasing revenue from NOK 2.8 billion to NOK 3.4 billion in 2027. EBITDA set to improve from 12% - 14%, driven by economies of scale and continued cost efficiency. As Kristian showed you, the order intake development during 2024 and 2025 is positive, which is a strong indication that a new period of growth will come for the sea-based business, which is driven, of course, by deep farming, but also we have a very steady growing recurring service and after-sales business. For land-based, we look at a sharper increase in revenue from NOK 600 million in 2022 all the way to NOK 1.4 billion in 2027. The target we have for this year, 2025, is of NOK 800 million-NOK 900 million. We can be quite firm on this target since we have already the contracts in our order backlog.
The growth beyond 2025 is related to an increased number of smolt and post-smolt contracts and also clearly identified full growth projects in Asia. We have spent a lot of time on finalizing old loss-making projects in this business segment, become more cost-efficient, and also improved on contract management. This resulted in a slightly positive EBITDA in 2024. Entering this new growth period with critical mass, we will increase towards the 10% level in 2027, driven by high operational leverage. We have a solid order backlog, close to NOK 1.6 billion in Q1 this year. The revenue from what we consider to be a very qualified pipeline is topping up the order backlog conversion in the years to come. Digital is increasing from NOK 137 million in revenue in 2024 to NOK 250 million in 2027.
We see the strong increase in EBITDA from 22% - 40%. We have talked a lot about this in our quarterly presentations. We have invested a lot in the digital business segment, but also in the digital organization. The current organization has both the capacity and the capabilities to manage a significantly higher revenue level than we are at today. We expect this business to really, really scale in the years to come. Also, more than 90% of the revenue is on a recurring revenue model with high opportunities for both upselling and new sales on a customer base with a very, very low churn. Turning back to group level on EBIT, we have improved from the low 1% in 2022 to 5% in 2024, which reflects a successful turnaround in land-based and also improved underlying performance in general.
Looking ahead, we forecast a capital-light growth and are targeting a 9% EBIT level in 2027, which means that overall we see the opportunity to grow the operating profit by 30% on an annual basis. With regards to CapEx, we are already well invested to deliver on our business plan. We have spent approximately 5% of our revenue to build strong delivery platforms across all three business segments. Looking ahead, we foresee only a slight increase in absolute terms on CapEx, but the CapEx intensity will decline towards the 4% level on the back of a higher revenue. We will continue to spend approximately NOK 100 million on innovation on an annual basis, which is approximately 50% of our total CapEx spendings. The financial performance we are forecasting will result in a sharp increase in return on capital employed.
We managed to improve from 2% in 2022 to 8% last year, and this year we are exceeding the 10% level. We have the target to double this within 2027 and deliver a 20% return on average capital employed. Based on the financial outlook, this will strengthen what we consider to be an already strong financial flexibility. At the end of Q1 this year, we had available cash of NOK 500 million and a net debt of NOK 1.2 billion. With regards to the networking capital, the revenue growth we are forecasting will not increase the relative networking capital. For land-based, we will still stick to the principle to be cash positive or at least cash neutral on all projects. In digital, we will continue with monthly or upfront invoicing.
While the situation is somewhat more complex with all the products and services in sea-based, overall, due to more impact from land-based and digital revenues, the net working capital ratio will decline the coming years. With a net debt/EBITDA ratio below the 2.5 level and improving cash flow, we will have ample headroom to covenants, and we will have the room to pursue both growth and dividends in the years to come. These forces will continue to strengthen. We will have a significantly improved cash flow over the next years. We will have comforting headroom to covenants. We have a sufficient capital base to deliver our business plan. CapEx intensity will decline. We have the potential now to significantly increase the dividend capacity in AKVA. We aim to reward shareholders both through an increase in the share price, but also through competitive dividends.
Finally, we resume dividend payments in the first half year this year after suspending for two years in 2023 and 2024. We have also introduced a new dividend policy, which is tied to our cash flow generation. Over time, we intend to return between 40%-50% of cash flow after CapEx to our shareholders in the form of cash dividends. Given the financial outlook we are seeing, this should give ample headroom to expand dividend payments in the years to come. All in all, we expect revenue to increase from NOK 3.5 billion-NOK 5 billion in 2027. The corresponding EBITDA impact is to improve from NOK 381 million-NOK 700 million. On EBIT, it is increased from NOK 184 million-NOK 440 million.
This will give us a high financial flexibility and the opportunity to increase dividends at the same time as we enable high organic growth and also maintain the robustness in the company. We have significant ambitions also beyond 2027. We believe that technology is more important than ever for the industry. AKVA has a unique position to take advantage of these opportunities. We have set an ambition in 2030 to improve from the NOK 5 billion in revenue in 2027 to NOK 7 billion in revenue in 2030, supported by an EBIT margin of minimum 10%. Summing it all up, we are fully invested on all business platforms, and we have the capacity to double the revenue over the next five years. The growth will be profitable and capital-light. We strongly believe that we have an attractive business model with an increasing share of recurring revenue.
Last, after some years with financial headwinds, we finally have a strong balance sheet. With the increased cash generation, this will result in competitive returns to our shareholders. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Ronny. We would now like to invite today's presenters on the stage for today's second Q&A. Again, if you are joining us via the webcast, please post your questions online. If you are joining us here at Klepp, please raise your hand, and we will pass you the microphone. To make this as efficient as possible, we will start with the questions from the audience here in Klepp, but please do post your questions online already now if you want to.
Yes, Ola Thorvaldsen, DNB Carnegie. First question to Knut. How do you see the potential for synergies across the three divisions in AKVA Group?
We like to be owner of both the land-based, the digital, and the sea-based business platform. We have one big platform on the basis of very often the very same customers. Everything which comes to customer relationship, intelligence, we share this information across those three platforms. We think that's basically the biggest asset. If I personally see a CEO in a farming company, I can talk through the three business platforms with one guy. That's typically the guy making all the decisions. I'm not saying we have a huge amount of cost synergies. I think you could, from a pure cost standpoint, you could have in theory done it differently. From the customer and market knowledge, I think there are true synergies.
Thank you. Maybe one more. Can you comment on how much of the digital revenues is coming from FishTalk?
For 2024, that's around half. As we have demonstrated, to go from 137 to 250, we expect the other parts to be the big drivers. For 2024, it was around half of the 137. That's fair?
Yes. Thank you. Last one from me. Why do you foresee a smaller margin expansion going from NOK 5 billion-NOK 7 billion in revenue versus NOK 4 billion-NOK 5 billion?
We are pretty clear about 2027. That is why we call it a target. A target is something we should be pretty serious about. We have, of course, a big financial model behind this. We believe we can target the 9% for 2027 and that we can be pretty clear about the activity level. For 2030, we have less visibility on 2030. We just expect that there will be uptake on land-based, also still traction on digital.
We have set a reasonable target also on the EBIT for 2030. Of course, with less visibility. The CFO said minimum.
A question about Nordic Aqua Partners. Because AKVA Group is a shareholder, and I think you own a stake of 10%. Is that correct? What is correct?
3%.
3%. Okay. Then indirectly, actually, you are a competitor with other customers. There is a small stake, but still. Do you have any problems with that? Do you have a strategy for exit? Do you have any future commitments for expanding the project?
This is a bit of a historical decision. We wanted to give birth to the first mover on RAS technology on land. In that context, it was meaningful at that point in time to raise capital that we also invested. That is not typically what we are going to do today.
We are a shareholder today. We are happy to be there. I'm even a board member there. So we follow this company very closely. I don't think typically we will invest a lot in new farming companies. Talking NOAA, you see quite a few Norwegian salmon farmers also being shareholders there. I think it's not seen as a conflict, no.
Okay, no. I mean, fish farmers are your customers. That will not be, what should we say, other cases would not be normal that you invest in the projects. It was like you call it to kind of giving birth to this project.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah. Okay. One more question. Last year, Billund Aquaculture went bankrupt. You took over this project in Ådal Aqua. Did you take over other projects?
Have you noticed that this competitor is gone, that you have increased your competitiveness in RAS projects?
Billund went broke last summer. We took over their contract with Ådal, as you said. We also took over their contract in Chile. They are building a very big smolt facility for Cermaq. In Chile, we were only two players, Billund and AKVA land-based. Since they are gone, we are now the only one there. That will, of course, change the dynamics somewhat into the future. Those two projects were the two main projects at that point in time. We think we came to a good solution for AKVA Group in that situation.
Hi . On sea-based technology, how much is increased scale and how much is cost efficiency regarding the EBITDA margin that you're presenting today?
Yeah. The majority is scaling of the increased profitability in sea-based. Absolutely. We believe we have the current organization, but also the current production facilities for nets, cages, pens, etc., has the capacity to increase without adding a lot more costs to it. The majority is scaling.
It is increased capacity that you already have.
Yeah. The capacity we already have. Yeah.
One more. The sea lice. How sure are you that the sea lice will not move down another 15-20 meters on the deep?
No, you can never be sure about that because it is adaptable. You can comment on that, Kristian.
Thank you. Tricky question. As I presented, we can see that the fish farmer are experiencing 80% or more in reduced sea lice treatments.
You could experience sea lice in all of the depth, of course, in the sea, but you reduce it quite significantly compared to open or traditional pens. There is no yardstick on that specifics.
Yeah, one more question about sea lice. I guess the problem with sea lice is a big driver for investing in deep farming and also RAS or land-based farming. We all know the problems in Norway. How are the problems with sea lice in Scotland, Chile, other countries, Iceland? I only know the problems in Norway because I'm a salmon fisher. That's a big problem.
How about if we take the Chilean situation? Chile is by far the second largest producer, roughly half of the volume of Norway on Atlantic salmon. They have a little different type of sea lice too. It's not the Norwegian version.
It's called Caligus. It behaves a little differently. Basically, it's causing the same type of problems, which is need for treatment and higher mortality at the end of the day. You have seen a relatively high increase, almost like an explosion of the sea lice problem in Chile as well over the last 12-18 months. It's a little cheaper to treat in Chile than in Norway. As such, the underlying problem is the same. It's causing treatments and higher mortality. We are now adapting Nautilus to Chilean conditions as well because we see a market potential there. 30% of the sites in Chile from a physical condition or depth point of view can be suitable for Nautilus.
There is one important innovation which needs to happen that the net solution we have in Norway is not suitable for Chile because they have an issue with the predators, the sea lions. You need to protect against the sea lions. We are now completing that adjustment of the Norwegian version of Nautilus, and we will have two pilots there in the months to come. First without fish in order to test things and then with fish. We expect to have a commercial solution there at the end of this year.
We have time for one or two more questions if you like. Is there any question from the call?
Not now. Not now.
One last one. Yes, over there.
Hi, Tim, again. Can you talk a bit about packaging the service revenue going forward? Will that be a cost plus or more longer-term agreements?
No, you can start on it and then hand over to the specialist afterwards.
We have a mix. The majority is on cost plus contracts, not long-term frame agreements. We have a mix in Norway. The majority is cost plus. In Chile, we have more on contracts. There is a mix. Maybe Glenn can explain a bit more. You can explain about your service stations.
Yes. I'm not sure if I answered your question, but we believe service will keep growing as we see Kristian presented and I explained. The need for us to go out, helping our customer out in the field, helping make the solution work as well is very important. We strongly believe that the service revenue and after-sales will remain and grow over the years to come, for sure. Was that answering your question?
Partly.
Yes, that's quite good.
As explained today, the service business and the relative growth there has been very good in the last few years. We are happy about that because that gives more resilience to our business model. We expect that to happen. We have really invested in the service stations. On average, the replacement cost or the cost today for investment in a service station is ± NOK 100 million. We have nine of them. It is a pretty relatively well-protected business model. It is hard to replace the thing or enter this space. In that sense, and also within Seabase, the other part of Seabase, we have 40 people, 40 something. It is generating a customer presence. We are there on the site on a daily basis with those 40 guys. Yeah, it is just a good business model.
All right, Ratan Demir, can I just follow up a question on service revenues and the growth? What is the driver of the growth of the service revenues? Is it you taking market share? Is it that equipment is becoming more and more complex? Can you say something about the drivers of growth of that?
If we go to the service stations, we added two or three of them in the last five years. Two or three?
Yeah, two and a half.
Two and a half. Okay, that's a good answer. That is giving us more capacity. We have invested in more capacity. That is a big driver.
Final question over there.
Hi, Hans-Mette from SmartBank and Markets here. The geosmin issue in Nordic Aqua Partners, how big of a surprise was it to you as a technology provider?
Sorry, can you repeat the question?
Yeah, the geosmin issue, how big of a surprise was it to you as a technology provider?
You can start, Johan Fredrik, and I can fill in .
I think it's fair to say that it was a surprise that we couldn't solve the issue with the technology already installed. Remember that if we compare to post-smolt, this is not really a topic, right? I would say that between ourselves and our customer, we saw some surprise in this. We have worked, as I mentioned, we have worked very strongly in a strong partnership shoulder to shoulder to effectively control and manage the issue. As I also mentioned, technology and kind of the water treatment is one part of it.
The way you run and optimize your facility in terms of operations and procedures and so forth is also very, very important. I guess this is partly how it is when you are sometimes pioneering.
No, we always said that some new issues will pop up, but we do not know exactly what it will be about. We just need to be prepared for the unprepared. Okay, this is the situation now. It is being managed. I think this is a scalable business.
All right. I think we are on time now. I have to say thank you very much, first and foremost, to the people showing up here. We could not do with real participation. Otherwise, it would have been very boring, at least. Thank you very much for taking the effort. Very much appreciated.
Thank you to people in the call and in the webcast for following this for a good three hours. Saying that, I like to close the AKVA Capital Market Day. Thank you very much.