Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter results presentation. My name is Eirik Fadnes, the CEO of Cambi Group. I'm joined by Maarten Kanters, the Managing Director of Cambi Invest. Before I start, please read the disclaimer in the presentation material and also in our quarterly report. If you have any questions, please use the Q&A tab, and we'll answer the questions after the presentation. Let me first start with having a reminder of the drivers of our technology and also taking a look at the market.
I won't go through the full value proposition, but mention that in many cases our solution provides the lowest life cycle costs, which is the basis for our existence over the past three decades and our strong position in the U.K. especially, being the only privatized market in the world where we're currently treating almost 50% of the sludge volume in the U.K. Also, the THP is providing the lowest carbon footprint irrespective of biosolids outlet, and we see this driver is becoming increasingly more important and adding to the drivers of our solution. More utilities are setting net zero pledges. Global Water Intelligence has identified 65 utilities that have set net zero pledges.
Out of these, 13 utilities are current Cambi customers, having 33 Cambi THP plants. Of the other 52 utilities, we have 21 in our active pipeline, meaning that they are considering at various stages to use THP, and we have assessed that there is a sound business case for our technology at one or more of their plants. The remaining utilities, that's not in our active pipeline or not current customers, are obviously utilities that we are looking into, and we're looking at the plants that they own and operate and whether there's drivers for our solution, both financially and environmentally. We believe that the drive to become net zero is adding to the already strong drivers for our solution.
During the COP26 summit earlier this month, the methane emission cut was front and center in discussions, talking about the challenges and also the opportunities that it brings, and we believe that we are very well positioned in capitalizing on that focus and given the drivers that we have. We're also seeing record gas prices. One element of it that's impacting Cambi is obviously the fact that the biogas production is up to 40% higher with our solution, but it's also impacting the cost, the treatment cost for alternatives like drying and incineration, pushing the drivers, the financial drivers for our solution even further. I've also talked about in the past the use of Cambi THP on agricultural substrates.
I did mention about a year ago that this is a long-term view, something that we're keeping a close eye on and that is still the case. We believe that this is something that potentially may be a good business opportunity for Cambi beyond 2022, but we have seen also in the last couple of months a higher interest for our technology, private companies approaching us wanting to explore the use of THP. We are sharing information, we're sharing lab data, and working together with several companies to see whether there's a strong financial and environmental business case for Cambi on other substrates. We've also talked about in the past the challenges with an aging infrastructure in our industry.
Many plants are very old, and based on technology from the 1800s, and the drivers back in 1800s, the Victorian drivers, were more around disease outbreak control and not the current drivers when we're talking about circular economy, like energy recovery, nutrient recovery, et cetera. We see a need for changes to bring them up to the 21st century drivers. There are packages that is being put in place in various countries. You can see the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. We believe that this will accelerate the decision process on projects, but we also see that this will take time, and we don't expect that to impact 2022 for Cambi, but beyond 2022.
If you look at the kind of activity level in Cambi, it's growing, and it's high. We see a growth in our active pipeline of 15% this year. Tender activity, we've submitted 73 quotes with a total value of NOK 5.4 billion. These are at various stages, from feasibility to firm quotes. But as a reminder, we can, in our industry and our business, move directly from a budget quote to contract negotiations, passing very quickly through a firm quote as part of contract negotiations. During the quarter, we signed a framework agreement with Irish Water for the upgrade of the Ringsend THP plant. It's not meeting the criteria to be part of our backlog, similar to the LOI signed with Charlotte Water earlier this year.
It is because of requirements for a call-off or there may be firm contracts to be signed based on the agreements. I have been asked about these several times, and I do see a need to share more information about these, although I'm prohibited to talk about each project specifically in terms of estimated value. What I can say is that the estimated value of these two contracts and the recently signed contract in Belgium is NOK 290 million. We believe that the lion's share of that will turn into revenue after 2022.
If you look at the third quarter and year to date performance, I see that as a strong sign of the business model that we have, the scalability of our business, where we delivered a revenue growth of 28%. We saw an EBITDA margin of 12.5%, which was up 795 basis points. The growth is coming from the Cambi Group segment, with Cambi Invest still experiencing challenging market conditions, which Maarten will come back to.
The revenue growth is coming from strong execution of projects in Cambi Group and also higher activity in the services segment, both in terms of services on annual shutdowns at our plants and spare parts, but also that we see a higher revenue from upgrade projects this year compared to last year. The margin growth that we have seen, as I mentioned, is due to scalability and the fact that we are able to deliver the strong growth in EBITDA margin while making important investments in sales, business development, and also preparing support functions for a growing pipeline is bolstering our confidence in our long-term growth plans.
When we talk about order intake and backlog development, as you've seen from the announcements during the quarter, there were no THP contracts signed in the quarter. But we had a few important recycling contracts signed, which Maarten will come back to and talk about more in detail. In terms of backlog distribution, you can see that 45% is expected to be delivered beyond 2022. And also for next year, you can see. Sorry, for this year, you can see NOK 105 million to be delivered this year. And looking at also the outlook, which I'll come back to, you can see that we have risked this backlog distribution. This is based on planned project deliveries.
We have revised this so that we expect an outlook to be somewhat lower. I'll come back to that in more detail later. Our financial position remains strong. We have had a positive operating cash flow during the quarter due to several milestones achieved and deliveries to site, especially in the U.S. during the quarter. With that, I'll hand the word over to Maarten.
Thank you, Eirik, and good morning, everyone. I'll talk you through the results for Cambi Invest. You can go to the next slide, Eirik. The EBITDA result for the quarter is significantly lower than it was last year at NOK 0.8 million, and this is due to a combination of factors. At NOK 25 million, the turnover for the recycling business is lower than last year. I have to say that 2020 was an exceptional year for Grønn Vekst. In addition, the cost levels have increased, and this is both connected to growth investments in recycling as well as an increasing activity in DBO projects. Within Grønn Vekst is primarily the soil demand that's been disappointing in the third quarter.
The lower activity in the construction industry has created a lower demand for top soils, and this is a trend that has been confirmed by other suppliers of goods and services to construction sites. In addition, we have experienced in the third quarter a slightly unfavorable development of the product mix as well. If we go to the next slide, Eirik. During the third quarter, Grønn Vekst was awarded with two important contracts. Bergen has been a very important customer for the past four years, and we are pleased that we again have won the tender for another two years with two optional years.
The total contract value here is NOK 64 million. As part of this new contract, Grønn Vekst will also set up soil production in the Bergen area and establish a presence in this market, which will also open up for more soil sales growth in this region as well. In addition, over the past 10 years, Grønn Vekst has already been handling the biosolids from the Bekkelaget plant in Oslo. This has been as a subcontractor, but under the new contract, which was awarded in the quarter, we bid directly, and our position towards the customer is even stronger. This is a one-year contract with one optional year with a total contract value of NOK 10 million. The remaining order intake come from soil sales to projects.
The total order backlog for Cambi Invest at the end of the third quarter is, this is solely based on the recycling segment, is NOK 129 million, and that's up from NOK 59 million a year earlier. If we go to the next page, we'll go over to the DBO segment, where we see a continued high activity in project development, and I still expect to be able to sign the first DBO contract within the timeline as we communicated earlier. We do see an increasing number of opportunities in this segment. It's both initiated by customers, but also as a result of our efforts to initiate this type of cooperation. We have also seen an opportunity come back, as a realistic option for us.
Although we do not usually comment on individual projects, I would like to use this as an example to demonstrate why predictions are difficult to make here. Because during our capital markets day, I already informed you that Cambi had decided to drop a project, right before the summer. This tender was actually subsequently canceled by the customer in September, as only one bid was submitted. Currently, the customer is preparing to retender this project next year, and provided that our initial concerns about the project are addressed by the customer in the new tender, we are this time even better prepared to deliver a proposal. This is the reality we are facing in public tenders, but I'd like to explain that we're also working on other development approaches that could give more predictability.
We are actively reaching out to private operators of wastewater treatment plants to suggest implementing thermal hydrolysis under existing concessions. We've made several feasibility studies and are in ongoing dialogues on this approach. As mentioned earlier, we're also looking for opportunities to establish independent sludge treatment facilities or so-called merchant plants in locations where we can serve multiple customers on long-term contracts. We do also approach municipalities and public utilities with unsolicited offers. We typically develop these together with local partners, where the intention is to enter into direct negotiations with the customer, where that is possible. That's not always the case, and sometimes customers might be required to go through a tender.
In addition to the tenders that we have initiated or where Cambi has been involved in the early stages, we also closely monitor all other tenders being published in the market and carefully selecting the ones where we believe Cambi can contribute and that are in focus for DBO development. These are the different approaches we are applying. Of course, combinations of these are also possible. With that, I would like to hand the word back to you, Eirik.
Yeah. Thank you, Maarten. We'll finish the presentation by taking a look at the outlook for the year and for next year. As you've seen from the report, we have revised the outlook for 2021 downwards. We were in good shape and on track to deliver on the outlook communicated as part of the second quarter. We have secured the contracts needed and the activity level in services and in Grønn Vekst are as expected, but we have experienced delays in project execution. It is not due to Cambi execution of the projects, whether it is on the manufacturing or at site, but due to customers being delayed at site.
They're not ready to receive the equipment from Cambi and not ready to do the installations based on the original schedules. Because of that, we do not expect to meet the milestones that we had in our forecast in the second quarter. We now see a revenue range of NOK 460 million-NOK 480 million. This will have an impact on percentage of completion from the revenue, obviously, with the revenue range and but also the EBITDA margin. You'll see a flow-through to EBITDA, lowering the margin expectations to 9%-10%.
When it comes to the outlook for next year, we have a stronger visibility on projects in the pipeline that we had in our forecast originally, but we do see a risk of delays. Because of that, we have lowered the revenue expectations for the year down to NOK 510 million. There are no underlying changes in the pipeline and our comfort in securing the contracts included earlier, but it is a timing effect where we see a risk of more of the orders coming later in the year or will slip into 2023. On EBITDA margin for next year, we expect that to be in line with 2021, despite the increased revenue.
That is because we will continue to invest in primarily sales and business development and also, as mentioned earlier, continue to preparing the organization for a higher activity, which will include some support functions and also resources in manufacturing. As an important message on the updated forecast is that we do not see any underlying changes in the pipeline that is impacting our long-term growth plan. It remains the same in the long run, but for the 12-month period of 2022, we do see a lower revenue than what we have communicated.