Good morning, and welcome to the Stolt-Nielsen Capital Markets Day. I'm Alex Ng, Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy, and I'll be your emcee today. First, some housekeeping. There are no planned fire alarms today. If you do hear an alarm, please make your way out to the nearest available exit. Please also make sure that your phones are muted. Included in this presentation are various forward-looking statements. Please take 30 seconds to familiarize yourself with our disclaimer around these statements. Further details are available on our website. Now, onto the agenda. We open with a welcome from Niels Stolt-Nielsen, our Chairman. Udo Lange, our CEO, will touch on group strategy. We will then hear from the leaders of our four business units. I will then cover Stolt Investments, before our CFO will present on capital allocation.
Udo will summarize the day with some final remarks, and then we'll conclude with a Q&A panel. There is a lunch planned for around 12 o'clock, and we hope, we hope you can join us for some refreshments after the presentation. We're really excited to be able to present Stolt-Nielsen and showcase the businesses today. You'll hear from the leaders of the four business units and of the group. In the audience, we also have a number of senior leaders who will be happy to answer your questions during the breaks. Thank you. Please welcome Niels Stolt-Nielsen, our chairman.
Good morning, and welcome again to Stolt-Nielsen Capital Markets Day. I think this is the second one we have. The last one was in 2014, 10 years ago. It gives me an immense pleasure to stand here today to introduce the Stolt-Nielsen leadership team. It is not the assets or the digital platform that makes our company, it is the people and the culture that we have in our company. And what is that culture that attracts and retains people that make us market leaders in what we do? We innovate, we Go Further, we act pragmatically, we collaborate, we think long term, we remain focused on our long-term strategy. We care for our people, our assets, and the environment. It is not one thing or one person that makes us, it is the combination of all of these things.
I could not have found a better person to take over for me. I'm so pleased to see how our new CEO, Udo Lange, has embraced our culture, and how he has connected with our management team, and also how he and I are working together. Our strategy of delivering a long-term, sustainable, growing EBITDA is now paying off. With record financial results, record dividends, and a record share price, things are looking good. I'm confident that Udo and the team will continue to deliver on our strategy, and that we will see some strong years ahead for Stolt-Nielsen. And with that, I'll give the word to Udo. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Niels, for this wonderful opening, and I have to say, I couldn't agree more. Stolt-Nielsen is a wonderful company, amazing culture, and we have really great people. My name is Udo Lange, and I have 25 years in the logistics industry. I've worked for integrated logistics companies like Schenker, DHL, or most recently, FedEx. And when Niels reached out to me, probably more than a year ago, I actually had just been promoted at FedEx, and I had zero intention of leaving FedEx. And but then I got more interested in Stolt-Nielsen, and I fell in love with the company.
I'm like, "Oh, my God, this is an amazing company, and it has so much opportunity to go even further in the future." So, I want to share, together with our wonderful leadership team, more about our company today with you. But first of all, of course, a big welcome to all of you. Thanks for joining us here in London to our Capital Markets Day, and let's make it a very special one together. Thanks, Niels, for picking me as the first non-family CEO in 64 years. That's an honor on the one side; it's also a burden, particularly when I leave the office in the evening. I think the company has very strategically placed a painting of Jacob Stolt-Nielsen right at the exit door.
So every day I go out, Jacob is asking me, "Are you doing a good job today?" And so, it's just, it's really an honor for me to be in this company. So today, what I really want to do with our leadership team is achieve three objectives for you. Number one, provide more clarity about our businesses. What are the markets that we are in? What are our customers? Who is our competition? But most important, what is our unique value proposition that differentiates us? Number two, this is a very special day today. I'm really excited to launch our new strategy to all of you here in London, and we aspire to be Simply the Best for our shareholders, customers, and people. And you will hear more about our Simply the Best strategy during the course of the day.
Finally, of course, most important for all of you, why should you invest in Stolt-Nielsen? We go deeper in the investment case on providing more color for you on that. Let's first look at the company overall. We are a leading liquid logistics provider and a leader in aquaculture. Our business is really having three pillars. On the one hand, a liquid logistics business with leading position in Stolt Tankers, number one, Stolthaven Terminals, number six, Stolt Tank Containers, number one, operating in a $380 billion, very large logistics market. Number two, we are leading in land-based aquaculture with our Sea Farm business, and operate in a market which has $110 billion market value.
And finally, we have Stolt Investments, where we are going into innovative things and also explore new markets like, for example, on LNG, but also on businesses which connect to the rest of the corporation. And all of these business together then lead to close to $3 billion in revenue, $863 million EBITDA, close to $3 billion market cap, $5.6 billion assets, and 7,000 people around the world. We have been founded in 1959, and we have always been a trusted global pioneer in liquid logistics and land-based aquaculture. And our purpose for liquid logistics is, we move today's products for tomorrow's possibilities. And for aquaculture, and Jordi can say it so much better, we ensure that future generations continue to enjoy wonderful seafood.
You think about the purpose of these businesses, and they're very important in the here and now, but they will be even more important in future with all the changes that are happening in the world. Let's have now a look at our video, which tells you about the history, but also the essence of our business and its importance in the world. Every time I see this video, it just gives me the goosebumps. It's so amazing what this company is doing with our wonderful people and the impact that we have on the world. Let's go a little bit deeper on the logistics side. What drives our logistics business is that it's a truly global business. We operate in more than 30 countries on six continents. What is really unique about us, that we have the end-to-end liquid supply chain solutions.
So on shipping, we are not only having a leading deep sea fleet, we also have strong regional fleets, really provide an end-to-end shipping capability. But even more important, we connect with our terminals. We have 14 terminals around the world. And then finally, we have also a tank container business, which on the one hand allows global shipping, but on the other hand, connects also with our terminals for local distribution. And so with that, we have this end-to-end capability, which helps us to make the supply chains of our customers simpler. And then what is the impact on the world? We serve diverse markets: electronics, automotive, food, textiles, construction, new energies, packaging, paint and coatings, agriculture, health and beauty, you name it.
Whatever you probably touched today, or a car you were in, or what you're wearing, it's very likely that Stolt-Nielsen has been a part of this. And we touch all of our lives every day. And with that, of course, we are also resilient across many industries, because if one industry goes down, well, we are serving other industries, so we really have a resilient, balanced business. Now, of course, the key part of the presentation: Why should you invest in Stolt-Nielsen? So let me unpack this for you, 'cause we have, on the one hand, value drivers that are critical, then we execute against these value drivers, and with that, we produce an attractive outlook. So let's go step by step. On the value drivers, we have an exceptional track record across all our businesses.
We are in the business, not a shipping company. We are the leaders in liquid logistics, and we are also leading in land-based agriculture. In my section, I will go particularly deeper on the liquid logistics side, and then Jordi will later, as our president for the Sea Farm business, go deeper in our investment case on aquaculture. So now you have this exceptional track record and this amazing position, but how do you execute against that? You need a strong balance sheet, and thanks to Jens' leadership and Niels' stewardship, we have done exceptionally over recent years, and we have a very strong balance sheet in place. All of that is supported with very strong market fundamentals. The value drivers are in place. Now, how do you unlock that value as a company?
And I'm so excited to launch today our Simply the Best strategy, where we aspire to be the best choice for our shareholders, delight our customers, and be the best employer for our people. And that's really driving all of us in becoming better and better and better in all of these three dimensions, and that has tremendous energy and power and unlocks creativity in an organization. So it's no surprise that all of that then results in an attractive outlook. So let's now go step by step into each of these six chapters. Let's start with the exceptional track record. We are delivering on years of focused strategy. As you know, under Niels' leadership, launched, committed to go further, and it has been exceptional. And he has been very smart because, at the record high, he says, "I'm stepping down.
Udo, now you take over, and I expect you to do even better." Of course, we are committed to do that. But if you look back, our revenue from 2019 to 2023, 8.5% CAGR. Our profitability doubled to $866 million EBITDA, but even more important, our ROCE tripled to 13.1%. And as part of that, our portfolio gets stronger and stronger. We have an EBITDA CAGR from 2014 to 2016 of 12%, but now, from 2021 to 2023, we are at 27%. Our average EBITDA in the first period was 22%, and we are now delivering 27%. Our portfolio became more balanced, growing from $4.4 billion to $5 billion. But most important, we are not just a tankers business.
We have created significant scale in the non-tankers business, delivering now $339 million EBITDA. If you look at the world, the evolving importance of supply chain solutions is in our favor. I'm working with customers in executive sponsor roles since more than a decade, and what is very interesting to see is how the customer view supply chains before COVID and now. So, and it's also how all of us look at this. If you think about before COVID, logistics was like a light switch. You would go, and you switch it on, and the product is there. Wonderful. And then you had Amazon, and then like, "Oh, now I can even see where it's around," and, "Oh, I want to have it a day faster," and then they did that. And then suddenly COVID hits, and somehow the light switch is not working anymore.
You had CEOs during COVID who were standing in front of the capital market, and they had to announce that they are missing earnings by $50 million or more, and the analysts asked, "Well, why is that?" They said, "Well, supply chain disruptions." Then it was like, "Well, give us more color," and there was not more color. The reason for that is because there was no competence on the C level on logistics, and even sometimes not on the SVP or VP level, sometimes even only on a director level. The reason for that was because logistics was a light switch, so all you needed to do as a company, tactically execute. Now fast forward after COVID. We are now living in a VUCA world. We have high volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and it's not going away.
Supply chains are actually becoming more and more complex. So what does this mean? Logistics today is by far more important for customers than before. So you have a by far higher focus on the C-suite. So I can meet now with CEOs, Chief Supply Chain Officers, which before probably would not have met with us. And the value that we are delivering, of course, we need to execute tactically, but you're also a part of the supply chain planning, which is now more and more important. And the visibility of all your products is critical. And finally, customers need resilient and flexible supply chains. So you may wonder when I open up and say I fell in love with the company, well, why is that? Well, let me lead you a little bit through, starting with dry goods.
So in dry goods, you have many integrated logistics providers, and my PhD is actually about the advantage of being an integrated logistics provider. So I'm, I'm excited on this topic since many years. So in dry goods, you have customers like DSV, FedEx, Maersk, Schenker, Kuehne + Nagel, CMA, DHL, and UPS. Very established players. So here, Nils reaches out to me, and I look deeper into the liquid space, and there's only one company who has businesses at scale to provide end-to-end supply chain solution, and that company is Stolt-Nielsen. And what is really exciting is, if you just go into our top 50 customers, 72% of our top customers today are using already more than one service, clearly proving that we are not a shipping business, we are a logistics business.
Since 1959, we are delighting our customers with our value proposition around quality, reliability, and flexibility. Of course, there's many amazing company logos here, but what is really interesting, that on the one hand, you see the renowned, iconic Fortune 500-type companies, and then on the other hand, you see the upcoming medium-sized companies, and we serve the whole spectrum. But also, we have classical petrochemical or energy companies, but we also have companies who are now coming in from a new energy angle. So we really cover the whole spectrum. Well, you heard me talk a lot about the customers and how they like us. Well, let's hear from one of our customers and see what they think about working together with Stolt-Nielsen. So I'm happy to introduce to you Carsten Weers, Vice President at BASF.
Hello, my name is Carsten Weers, and I'm the Vice President of Global Logistics Procurement of BASF SE, working together with Stolt-Nielsen in this function already for a couple of years. BASF has a long-standing and very close relationship with Stolt-Nielsen. For us, Stolt-Nielsen is a strategic supplier and an important service provider in our logistics procurement portfolio. What makes our cooperation so unique is easily explained in a few words. It is Stolt-Nielsen's commitment to serve BASF in the best possible way, taking into account the specific requirements of the chemical industry. It is also the global presence of Stolt-Nielsen in combination with its complete service coverage across different modes of transport, such as parcel tankers, tank containers, or tank terminal storage, that are crucial for BASF's value chain.
Lastly, in addition to this competitive portfolio of services, Stolt-Nielsen has the necessary capabilities in business-critical areas such as digitalization and sustainability. This creates the basis of our strategic partnership and will help us to intensify it even further going forward, so that our two companies, BASF and Stolt-Nielsen, can shape the future together.
Well, a big thank you to Carsten Weers for this wonderful testimonial, but even more important, for the excellent, excellent partnership between BASF and Stolt-Nielsen. I think you hear it loud and clear. He talks about our logistics capability at global scale. We've heard about the exceptional track record and our unique positioning. Let's now look at our capacity from a financial side. You see here our strong balance sheet, which provides significant flexibility to support our growth, and that's how we can execute against our strategy. Again, big thanks to Jens and the whole team. We reduced net debt from $2.2 billion to $1.8 billion, and as such, our net debt to EBITDA sits now at 2.5, significantly below our target of 3.5.
As such, we have ample investment capacity to grow, and we have significant capacity for shareholders' return. Let's now look at the market fundamentals, and they come out very strong. First, on the demand side, growth is expected to continue aligned with the global GDP growth, and so expectation is around 3%, pretty much in line what you have seen over many, many years. But what is more important is the very strong supply fundamentals. Let me walk you business by business to some key features on the supply fundamentals. In our tankers business, led by Maren and Bjarke, we are only seeing a low 2% net fleet growth up to 2026. And the strong MR markets are limiting the swing tonnage. In Stolthaven Terminals, led by Guy, across the board, terminals are close to effective capacity.
But even more important, our chemical terminals are well positioned for the new energy storage at higher margins. And finally, in our tank container business, led by Hans, there's limited near-term ISO tank ordering expected, and we have built a business which has a significant scale advantage, and we have the capability to capture the volumes without adding further fixed cost. So I walked you through all the value drivers, but now what is our strategy to unlock this value for you as our shareholders? So we aspire to be Simply the Best for our shareholders, customers, and people. So let me walk you a little bit through how we got to this strategic scene. So when I joined the company, I talked with a lot of customers, but then I also had a survey with all our people.
We had a so-called Big Listen campaign, and we asked the whole organization 4 questions in the first 4 weeks. Number 1: What makes you proud to work for Stolt-Nielsen? Number 2: What can we do better to support you to make you more successful? Number 3: What can we do better to make our customers more successful? And number 4: If you were the new CEO, what would you do to create more shareholder value? And we got an amazing response. We get 4,000 responses back, which, of course, helped us to shape our strategy. But what was very prominent in the responses, and this was not a multiple choice, this was free, open text. Many of our people said, "We are proud to work for the industry leader." And then, when I walked through the different strategies, I found words like, "We want to be world-class.
We want to be the most respectable provider. We want to be the best in our space. We want to be the leader," and so on. So you had already a lot of the spirit about aspiring to be the best in each of the businesses and also in how the people looked at that. But also, when I talked with customers, I got the same feedback about the exceptional value proposition that we deliver, as you have heard from BASF, and you will hear three more customer videos during the course of the day. But then I have to share a fun story with you.
So my first industry conference last year in September, and so the team said, "Well, we'll have an industry cocktail party with our customers, and it's gonna be at 5:00 P.M." And I looked at Bjarke and said, "Sunday, 5:00 P.M., we are doing a cocktail for customers? Nobody's gonna show up." And Bjarke said, "Udo, don't worry, we do this since many years, and you will be surprised." And I was not surprised, I was blown away. Sunday afternoon in Vienna, 300 people showed up, customers and leaders from the industry and partners. And the reason why they show up is because we are the industry leader, and we basically kick off the whole conference. So that tells you a little bit about what we want to achieve. The best choice for our shareholders, best solution for our customers, and be the best employer.
So why is the word simply in the strategic theme as well? That has to do with how we want to go about it, and that's really about our culture and DNA. Of course, it all starts with safety first. Safety is vitally important for all of our businesses, and you will hear that across the board later as part of the presentations. But then, Niels pointed already out the culture and the Stolt way and our specific values, and you really can feel them in the organization. Then finally, our sustainability ambitions. So all of that can be captured in the word simply because we live in this complex world, and our customers have complex supply chain. And our objective is to simplify their supply chains and make them really more effective through our Simply the Best strategy.
So the key takeaway is here that we are solutions provider in this volatile world, and we create solutions, but we make it simple, and that delivers value for our shareholders, customers, and people. So now we have this aspiration of being Simply the Best. So of course, you can have all kinds of aspirations, but if you are far, far away from it, then that may be a long, stony road. So let's take a look at where we are. First, on the shareholder side. Since 2020, our share price has grown by 484%. We have delivered $1.2 billion in dividends, and most recently had a dividend of $2.50 per share. On the customer side, we are embarking on a customer experience journey, and these are early days, but it's very promising. We overall had 340 customer responses, and we sit at a very strong NPS of 35.
Of course, there's room for improvement, but that's a strong starting point. And you see here, we win customer and industry awards across all our businesses. And then finally, on the people side, our sustainability engagement score sits at 89. I have never in my career seen such a strong employee engagement survey as the one at Stolt-Nielsen, and it's just wonderful. If you look at it, we are outperforming our peers. In 16 out of 19 categories, we are beating the logistics norm. But then there's this other norm where you take the best companies in the world across all industries, and even in that category, we beat 12 out of 19 times world-class companies. So that points to what Niels talked about, this very strong cultural foundation that we have. So let's look at the shareholder side.
I joined in September, and since then, we are outperforming our tankers and logistics peers. Since September, our share price has grown by around 80%. As such, we are better than our tanker peers, but we significantly outperform the logistics peers. On the lower side of the chart, you see different groups around tankers, asset-heavy logistics, and asset-light logistics. We are now at a P/E of around about 8.5%, 8.5 times, and as such, we are edging away from the shipping and tankers peers, but there are still significant headroom towards the logistics peers. Let's now go deeper into the strategy. Our Simply the Best strategy has two key elements. Number one, our strategy elevates business performance and then unlocks group-wide synergies through our connector strategies. Let me go and give you an example on how this works.
So we recently had Guy Bessant presenting in our board the terminal strategy. And what we are doing there is we're building a strategy terminal by terminal, but on the onset, we tell every leader, "What we expect from your strategy is, tell us what will be the best performance that you can do in this particular market, and what is the underlying strategy?" And so if you think about this business, your market in the U.S. or in U.K. or Australia is completely different in terms of customers, in terms of competition, in terms of demand. But now you unlock that creative energy, and people came forward with by far better strategies on a terminal-by-terminal basis. Because it's very inspiring to think about, how can we be simply the best in our space?
And that's the North Star for all of our business and how we drive this company. It's this spirit of being simply the best in everything that we do. So how do we then unlock value across the businesses? And that's through our connector strategies. So the idea of the connector strategies is that you don't just have businesses and they run separate. No, there is so much knowledge and expertise that you can share best practices and share resources to create even more value. The first one is around liquid logistics. We have our three logistics businesses, and while they compete in separate market segments, they can create even more value for our customers if they work together also on a strategic level, and that's what we unlock with liquid logistics.
If you go through the rest of the businesses, then through operational excellence, customer excellence, people excellence, digitalization, and sustainability, that's really the DNA of our strategy, where we strive for excellence in all of these dimensions. And, I would like to make a big shout-out to Anne van Essen, who sits there in the, in the back of the room, and in our business, she's really in the front, I can tell you that, because people excellence is absolutely vital for us, and Anne and her team are doing an outstanding job in making the people experience better and better every day. I now want to double-click on digitalization and sustainability. I cannot share the whole strategy with you, but just give you a little bit more color.
These two themes, later on, when you go business by business, every business leader will give you more color around digitalization and sustainability. So first, on digitalization. We have a long legacy of innovation in the digitalization. As we mentioned, we are the pioneers overall from a DNA, but this pioneering spirit also is present on the digitalization side. And you probably know this guy here. That's Bill Gates, and you may wonder, what is Bill Gates doing in a capital market presentation of Stolt-Nielsen? Well, in 1995, we won the Bill Gates Innovation Award for the Microsoft Windows World Open. What is even more important is not only that we won this award, but that this shows we have this innovative spirit in digitalization, and that continues until today.
We continue to lead the digital innovation in our industry, and our digital strategy is second to none, and it's summarized in our Digitalization Planet. Let me walk you through our Digitalization Planet. So of course, in nowadays world, we all talk about data. So no surprise, at the core of the planet sits data and working on master data across the businesses. When you get that one right, this data can be used in data science and unlock value, and that value can be unlocked for customer experience or sustainability on the external side. But on the other hand, it can also unlock value in your applications across the businesses or for your corporate functions. Underlying all of that is one tech stack with our modern architecture and, of course, a very solid governance structure.
But then, of course, in nowadays world, you also need to be laser-focused on cybersecurity and understand the capability of your IT operations. And, unfortunately, our CIO, Peter Koenders, is sick today, but I want to give a big shout-out to Peter and the digital team because this is clearly leading edge, and I can tell you, this is delivering value for our shareholders, our customers, and our people. Let's now look at sustainability. We are focused on sustainability for our people, our planet, and our customers. And we are committed to the sustainability strategy and the United Nations commitments around Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action, and Life Below Water. Even more important, if you think about the global energy transition, it can only happen if you have logistics infrastructure in place, and that's where Stolt-Nielsen comes into the play.
We support the global energy transition through our logistics capabilities. As you have heard, innovation is in our DNA and a key driver of our sustainability efforts. With that, it's no surprise that we help reduce the CO2 impact for our customers and provide sustainability insights. You heard before about our Digitalization Planet, and this is just a wonderful example how this works, because underpinning all of this is Stolt-Nielsen's digital sustainability platform, supporting all businesses. We heard about the value drivers. We heard about our Simply the Best strategy. What is the outlook that this can all deliver? We see a very positive outlook for the foreseeable future. We are set up for winning in today's favored markets, while also investing in our long-term growth.
Over the last three years, we invested $450 million into growth CapEx, significantly extending our asset base, and this investment level will continue in the future, where we expect growth investments of $600 million-$700 million in the next three years. As already mentioned, the market fundamentals are strong for the foreseeable future, and we have the capability to outperform the market. Let me unpack this further for you. First, in the short term, we continue to provide our quarterly TCE guidance, and Bjarke has later in the presentation, some exciting news for you on this one. Second, while forecasting is always challenging, it becomes even more difficult in this VUCA world. Hence, instead of one outlook, we are looking at different scenarios. As an example, you see here the Bloomberg 2026 estimate, which predicts an EBITDA of $876 million.
This scenario is pretty much in line with a 2026 Stolt-Nielsen scenario, which assumes, first, a reopening of the Red Sea, and second, also the Panama Canal. So now, as we all know, while the Panama Canal is starting to reopen, the Red Sea is still technically closed. And I would like to remind you that a $1,000 change per day in TCE results in an annualized EBITDA impact of $23 million. In conclusion, SNI's unique portfolio and our Simply the Best strategy allows us to outperform the market. And you will hear now more details on this from our wonderful leadership team. And I'm so excited. Welcome, Maren Schroeder, to our stage, who will talk about delivering now for the next generation in our tankers business.
Thank you, Udo. Good morning, everyone. My name is Maren Schroeder, and I'm the Chief Operating Officer of Stolt Tankers. And I'm delighted to say that as of July 1st, I'll also be the president. I'm a naval architect and marine engineer. I've worked all my life in shipping, and I joined Stolt Tankers five years ago. But that's enough about me. Over the next 30 minutes, my colleague, Bjarke Nissen, who is our Chief Commercial Officer, and I will show you what Stolt Tankers is about, how we're planning to further grow the company, and how we aspire to be simply the best. Here's what you're going to see. We'll first start off with a brief introduction around some facts and figures around the company. We'll show you our fleet profile and how we're positioned within the market.
Bjarke will then talk about our customer-centric approach and about market dynamics. Finally, we'll show you how we plan to further grow the company, the potential the business has, and how we're planning to create value. So, this is who we are. We're the leading global operator of deep sea and regional ships, and we operate 160 chemical tankers worldwide. On an annual basis, we transport over 12 million tons of cargo, and that is in deep sea alone. If you look at the numbers here, with an operating revenue of $1.7 billion and an asset base of $2.1 billion, in 2023, we had an EBITDA of $527 million, and that is just an incredible margin. So in a nutshell, we're big, we have scale, we're able to serve our customers globally and flexibly, and we're truly specialized in chemicals, and we're an expert in the market.
So let me start off with what a chemical parcel tanker actually is, and some of you will know this very well. Forgive me, you have to sit through this for two minutes, and for the other ones, I hope it adds value. As you can see here, a crude oil carrier carries crude oil, crude oil only. You have product tankers, and sometimes we call them MR tankers, and they usually carry clean petroleum, and there's a sub-segment that also carries commodity chemicals. They can also carry crude oil, and even the normal product tankers, they sometimes go into commodity chemicals. Chemical tankers, chemical parcel tankers, usually carry commodity chemicals or specialized chemicals. That depends a little bit on the ship and on the expertise. We can also carry clean petroleum products if need be.
Now, if you compare your average chemical tanker against product tankers, we have many more tanks, 40, sometimes 50, and with all these segregations, we can carry different cargo grades from different customers at the same time. That also means we spend much more time in port, because we have to get to all the different terminals to actually load and discharge. And that does give us an advantage when it comes to life extensions, because when you look at your average ship, they're designed for 25 years, give or take, and that is because of their material fatigue characteristics. So if you take a piece of steel, a ship, and I'm sure you've all done it with a paperclip at one point, so if you just bend it long enough, eventually it will break, right?
So now, don't quote me on it, "Maren said ships will break at 25." There's a safety margin, of course, but they will get starting to show some signs of trouble beyond 25. Now, in our case, we spend so much time in port, sometimes 40% or more, so we can actually use these ships longer, and that allows us to life extend them and have that flexibility when the market is good to just keep going. I want to circle back a moment to the product tankers. So sometimes we refer to them as swing tonnage. You'll hear that later on from Bjarke, and that is because of their ability to tap into different cargo segments, into crude oil or into commodity chemicals. And again, Bjarke will go into more details later, but just remember that part.
And then when we look into our cargoes, we usually carry commodity chemicals or specialized chemicals, and specifically, the specialized chemicals are interesting because they have the high margin, and this is where our expertise really comes in. These chemicals, they need a lot of special care: heating, cooling, nitrogen, and of course, the tanks also need to be super clean because you don't want to have any contamination from the previous cargoes. You won't see a lot of companies that actually carry cargoes like propylene oxide or isocyanates, and these cargoes are super specialized. They require a lot of expertise, and they come in very small parcel sizes. And this is where our expertise really comes in and where we have a real advantage being the global leader in Chemical Parcel Tankers. What you see here is our fleet profile and the mix between deep-sea and regional ships.
So we operate 76 deep-sea and 84 regional ships, and having this good mix of ships allows us to really provide end-to-end services to our customers. So the smaller ships, they also have access to the smaller ports, and we can really get the cargo to where the customer wants it. And we're the only chemical operator with that good mix of deep-sea and regional ships. I just mentioned that we spend a lot of time in port, and that comes with the nature of the, of the trade and the industry, and that is okay, but this is not where we want to spend our time. And having this good mix of deep-sea and regional ships, and also the barges, allows us to really optimize our network.
So to give you an example, we do around 130 transshipments a year, and in the port of Houston, we have introduced three barges, and they're there to offload cargo from the bigger ships if the terminals are not ready to receive them yet. So that allows the bigger ships to go on about their business, reduces port time for them, and it also reduces fuel and emissions, because now it's the smaller barges that are waiting, and the bigger ships can just do whatever they have to do. There's another advantage here, having this regional fleet, and that really gives us good first-hand insights in these regional markets. We do see a lot of growth potential there, and having that first-hand information allows us to grow with these markets there. So again, another big advantage for us.
So I mentioned several times now, you know it by heart, we're the world's largest chemical operator. I've talked about the fleet mix, but there are some more dynamics at play here. And you heard Udo talking about the VUCA world, and it is true, we are facing a lot of uncertainty these days. Especially these last years, it feels like we're adding crisis on top of crisis, and we're never really resolving one before the next one hits. And that doesn't make our life easier. We had a pandemic, we have wars and sanctions, we have weather events, and we have lots of new regulations coming at us, many of them in the ESG space, and that, again, adds a lot of administration.
So all that extra admin, but also all these geopolitical events, make it very difficult to operate for shipping companies if you do not have scale. You need to be able to react fast and flexibly, and for that, you need to be big, and you also need to be able to cope with all this extra administration that is coming at us. And we do see a lot of smaller operators struggling, and that is why we think there's room for consolidation in the future. So with that, let me hand over to my colleague, Bjarke Nissen, who will talk about our customer base, market dynamics, and profitability.
Thank you, Maren. Good morning. My name is Bjarke Nissen. I'm the Chief Commercial Officer for Stolt Tankers. I have 30 years of experience with the company. I'm here today to talk to you about markets. We're gonna talk about supply, we're gonna talk about demand, we're gonna talk about industry dynamics, and finally, we're gonna talk about the outlook. Before we go to the future, I wanna take you back in time. We've been tracking demand in our industry since 1983, and as you can see from this slide, it's a good story. We've seen almost continuous improvement every year on demand growth. Even when we encounter black swan events, like the financial crisis, like COVID, we only see very modest drops. So we should be here today to celebrate 41 years of continuous profit and high returns on capital. That's not the case, as many of you know.
We see continuous demand. The challenge in our industry has always been around supply, so this is really about a supply equation. So let's look at supply. You'll see we talk about the MRs and the chemical tankers. We talk about the MRs, there are 1,750 of them in the world. When their markets are challenging, some of them go into chemical tanker markets. Right now, we are seeing the MR sector at historically strong earnings. We're looking at an order book for the MR sector, which is moderate, and after we assume scrapping, we are seeing an expected fleet growth in the MR sector of around 5%, which is closely matching the demand increase we expect. So that, we have a good view on. We also have a moderate order book for chemical tankers. It's around 11%.
What you can't see with the small letters is that we are now operating with a model where we are assuming scrapping at 28. Historically, we always talk about 25. Now, at today's earnings, no one's gonna scrap unless they absolutely have to. But it is noteworthy that if scrapping was to take place at 25, as is normal, we would actually encounter negative fleet growth. We don't expect that in our scenarios. The point of this slide is that we have a solid view of supply in both sectors for the next 2-3 years, and it's very positive from a ship owner perspective. I wanna go back, Maren talked about the age of the fleet. Age itself is not an issue.
Our ships are very well-maintained, and they can easily trade past the age of 25 years and still have an excellent safety record and still meet all ratings. The reason I bring this to your attention is, we are now looking at a scenario where 14% of the world's chemical fleet will be over 25 years of age. We've not had this scenario before, and what that means is, we now expect that any ship that's 25 or older is fully appreciated. In the past, we had a much younger fleet, and what that meant is that owners had such a heavy debt burden that no one could lay up tonnages, no one could do early scrapping. What we see now going forward is that for the first time in history, the industry has a buffer.
If and when markets turn bad, we can start to retire tonnages with no financial consequence. Let's talk about demand growth. Take you back to the first slide, we saw almost continuous demand growth. That is because demand in our industry typically grows by a small multiple of GDP. The GDP outlook is positive. We track this closely, but we also follow three different companies for analysis. I won't have to go into detail here, but it's safe to say that everyone expects a 3%-6% demand growth in our sector. A lot of that is driven by the fact that the world is growing, but also because production facilities now are increasingly placed in Asia, in the Middle East. It means that our ships have to sail longer. That extra, that longer voyages takes out supply from the market.
So we have a demand growth, and over the next 3-4 years, we actually expect demand will outgrow supply growth. Let's talk about our industry and our customers. Somewhat interestingly, almost every single industrial process in the world has a use of chemicals. It also means that we service eventually every single industry in the world. We carry more than 600 different types of chemicals. With that sort of diversification comes resilience. We see that when one industry goes down, another industry picks up. I think the best example I can think of is that we typically have a very large amount of our cargoes that goes into the automotive industry. During COVID, I'll be honest with you, when COVID started, we did sit back and have a little bit of, "Oh, boy, here we go." And automotive stopped.
But then you all think back to having to disinfect your hands. There was a surge in the need for disinfectants. At the same time, people were sitting at home, they're looking at the walls, they're saying, "This place needs painting." We started to order more furniture. We got bored, we ordered a new barbecue. Go back to the first slide, one industry goes down and another one picks up. So my point here is that our industry is resilient. Let's talk about our customer base. We have 350 unique customers in our company, in Stolt Tankers. We typically serve chemical producers, we serve large and small trading houses, and we serve some of the largest oil companies in the world. Our customers are solid counterparts.
I think it's also worth mentioning that with some of our customers, the relationship goes back to 1959, when the company was founded. Our relationship with our customers spans decades, so we have solid, strong counterparties, and we have a long-term relationship that brings stability to our earnings. Contract portfolio. We have... Our contract portfolio basically is how we can optimize earnings and adjust for good and bad markets. What we see here is that we typically have a contract ratio of around 70%. We've been gradually lowering that to around 50% today, and we did that ahead of market developments because we expected the market would go up, and we wanted to participate in the growth of the spot market. Below here, you'll see that we did make the right call.
Our earnings went from around $16,000 a day up to over $30,000 today. My point with this slide really is that we have a commercial strategy that allows us to extract the most from any market, be it good or bad. And as Udo mentioned earlier, I had some positive news to share with you today, which is that we are seeing a significant jump in our Q1 earnings to Q2 earnings of 8%-10%. Now, this is a busy slide. So in a sense, I prefer just to talk about today's earnings because they're historically high. But as you also know, we're in a cyclical industry, so I thought it's fair that we take a look back at a cycle of the last 10 years.
I'm not particularly happy as CCO to share TC earnings around $15,000 a day with you, but I am pleased to share that in an industry as cyclical and demanding as chemical tankers, we have only experienced 3 years of losses. The worst year we had was 2014, where we had a loss of $29 million. It's not a loss we're proud of, but it's a loss of, with an asset base of $1.8 billion and revenues of $1.3 billion. So the point is that even in the worst year, our losses were modest. More importantly, that same year, Stolt-Nielsen Limited, our parent group, had a profit of $79 million. We benefit from being part of a larger group.
Having access to that means that even in our worst year, we can continue to invest in our ships, we can continue to maintain them to the highest possible standard. We don't lower our safety. From a commercial perspective, it also means we have the ability to buy countercyclically. We have picked up secondhand tonnages at very attractive times in the market because we always have access to that capital. So despite being a cyclical industry, our aim is to be profitable in any market. I think one more point I want to make here is the bottom one. We've had some tough years, and when you're not able to increase your revenue, you have to look at cost. We've been laser-like focused on our cost picture here. We invest heavily in digital tools.
We're very focused on operational excellence, and that meant that we've been able to drive operational costs down. Our cost management has been break even down to a lower point now than since 2018. So, in conclusion, we see historical demand growth, we have positive, positive demand growth going forward. We talked about the MR market. It's at historically high earnings, modest order book in MRs, which, which benefits us, and we are seeing crucially, a favorable supply development. So we have a favorable view of the market for the next 2-3 years. Now back to Maren.
Good. Back to me. So that was market dynamics, customer base, and profitability. So now, now I'll take you into our fleet strategy, capital allocation, the regulatory landscape, our sustainability efforts, and digital strategy. What you see here is our strategy around capital allocation when it comes to our asset base. So we believe in a good mix between new buildings, second-hand acquisitions, life extensions, and asse- light strategy. So we've just ordered 12 new buildings in China, with the first ships on the water in 2027, and we order ships to replace old tonnage that goes out of the company. So we do not order to add capacity to the market, but simply to replace existing ships. And that allows us to have a good mix of fuel-efficient and state-of-the-art ships in the mix.
Building to our specification also helps us to have good interchangeability with the existing ships in the fleet, and that adds more flexibility to our network. We always look for attractive second-hand acquisitions, which then allows us to target specific gaps in our fleet, and of course, we can capitalize on these appealing business cases. I spoke about life extensions earlier. Again, more time in port, but also the stainless steel section that we have that makes the ship extra strong, allows us to life-extend the ships and take these decisions on short notice, also, when the market picks up, or to recycle when the market slows down. Asset-light, of course, we pool, we time charter, and that again gives us flexibility to react with the markets.
In short, new building, second-hand acquisitions, life extensions, and asset- light to make sure that we have a good asset base and optimal capital allocation. What else is going on in the industry? In this world today, that is ever-changing, with so much going on, it is important that we not only comply with rules and regulations, but we also need to make sure that we're well-positioned for whatever is to come in the future. We also believe that as a shipping company, we need to be actively involved in shaping future policies. Because, again, the world is changing too fast around us to leave policymaking to a few individuals that are often way too detached from the challenges that we face on a daily basis.
That is why, for example, we're a member of the Maersk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, and we have a few secondees to the center, and that allows us to really understand future fuel requirements, regulations, but also the challenges that come with that, and that allows us to take better decisions. We're an active member of the Sea Cargo Charter that is all about Scope 3 emissions reporting for our customers, and that is important to them. Being a member allows us to give feedback and to actively shape the emissions reporting mechanism. I'm not going into all the details here, you can read that, but there's one more thing I want to mention, and that's the Carbon Disclosure Project, the CDP score of a B minus, which maybe doesn't sound that great.
B minus, okay, but for a shipping company, that actually puts us in the top category, and that's something we're very proud of. Udo mentioned already, safety, protecting our employees, the people, the planet. So for us, safety is really a value, and I say value and not priority, because priorities can shift and values stay with us. We have 4,500 seafarers, and it is really, really crucial for us that they're safe and returning the same way home that they joined the ship, in good health. So this is why we have our behavioral safety program, which we call Slash Zero, and that allows us to address topics around leadership, competency, care for our people, for the planet, on board and in the office.
Having procedures is one part of the equation, but behavioral safety is even more important to make sure that people have excellent situational awareness and that they can take the right decisions at the right time. Mental health and wellbeing is something else which is very important to us. Because, as you can imagine, being 6 months on board a ship sometimes, well, depends a bit on the contract duration, can be 3 months, can be 6 months, but with people you haven't chosen, can be challenging. It's important to make sure that our colleagues at sea have whatever they need to be mentally in a good space. You heard Udo talk about our Sustainable Development Goals. There are three for the group, of which two are relevant for Stolt Tankers, and that is climate action and life below water.
Climate action, of course, is all around carbon abatement and emissions reduction, and that is why we have a lot of initiatives around fuel efficiency, to make sure that our ships really are as efficient as they can possibly be at this moment. And of course, the new buildings will also help to further drive efficiency and make sure that we reach our ambition of net zero by 2050. Life below water, zero pollution, of course, is always the goal, but we also have initiatives around protecting whales and mammals. So somebody asked me yesterday, what are cetaceans? So this is whales and their friends. It's about routing and underwater noise. We manage our discharge, and we want to reduce plastic. So this is really just in a nutshell what is happening in the ESG space.
Let me show you what is happening in the future on the regulatory horizon. So we have the IMO, the International Maritime Organization, which is really regulating our shipping space, and they have just changed their course to net zero in 2050 or around 2050. The Carbon Intensity Indicator, the CII, has been introduced last year for shipping, but has been, in the meantime, identified as largely deficient, and there will be a full revision in 2026. We still have to see what that means. And they also just announced they're working on a global pricing for emissions, for adoption in late 2025, but we don't have any further details of what that will look like, so we're, we're ready as, as far as we can be ready.
In the European Union space, we have the Emissions Trading Scheme, which is enforced since January this year for ships, for the larger ships, and the smaller ones will be added on by 2027. As of next year, we'll have the FuelEU Maritime Regulation. Why am I telling you all this? Because as you can imagine, it adds a lot of uncertainty and administration also. Cost is not so much the issue, so that is being passed on to the customers, but it's really about, as a company, being able to react, to cope with all that administration and to react fast once we know how these regulations will look like. Again, you need to have scale for that. We do see a lot of smaller operators struggling, and we do believe there will be room for consolidation in the future.
What you see here is an artist's impression of the 12 newbuildings that we just ordered in China, 2 times 6 in Wuhu and in Nantong Xiangyu, and the first ships will be on the water in 2027. They'll be 38,000 tons deadweight with 30 tanks, and of course, they'll be modern, state-of-the-art, fuel efficient, about 20% more efficient than the youngest ships we have on the water today, and the engines will be methanol ready. So what does that mean? It means we can convert them for the use of methanol if and when we believe that this is the way forward. They will also be shore power ready. So you may know that other ship types, they already today have to use shore power.
For container ships, they will be added by 2027, and for sure, tankers will be added to the mix as well. However, there's no defined standard today for tankers, so terminals don't know what to install, and ships don't know what connection is needed. That is why we're part of an industry work group together with OCIMF and Intertanko, so with terminals, oil majors, and other ship owners, to define that standard so that we know, when the time comes, what we have to install. That was our deep-sea new building program. To show you what we do for the barges, what you see here is the Stolt Ludwigshafen. If you go into the coffee room, there's a small model. You can have a look if you want to see it in 3D.
You just heard from Carsten, from BASF, that we have a long-standing relationship. The Stolt Ludwigshafen is a good example of how we co-create personalized solutions together with our customers. In 2021, the River Rhine was hit by historically low water levels, and BASF, they had trouble to get feedstock to their main production plant in Germany, which is in Ludwigshafen, and of course, they weren't too happy about that. Together, we brainstormed whether we could build a barge that could still operate at very low water levels, and this is how the Stolt Ludwigshafen was born. With her 135 by 17.5 meters, she's considerably larger, but also has lower draft than conventional ships on the river.
At moderate water levels, she can still carry 2,300 tons of cargo, and at very low water levels of up to 1.6 meters, so that's. Well, I'm wearing heels, somewhere here. She can still carry 800 tons of cargo, and that is pretty impressive, because other ships can't. Fuel efficiency, of course, state-of-the-art, so 30% less than what is on the water on conventional ships, and nitrogen oxides even reduced by 70%-80%. The generators also can be converted for the use of methanol, and they can also be exchanged with hydrogen fuel cells once that technology reaches maturity. So personally, I'm super excited about this. That's where the naval architect in me comes out, and again, the model is in the coffee room if you wanna have a look.
You heard Udo talk about digitalization, and we truly believe that companies cannot survive without innovation, and living in the digital age, a lot is happening in that space, of course. So at Stolt Tankers, we use digitalization to enhance customer experience, take better decisions, make life easier for our colleagues, optimize processes, and to simply play with new technology. And let me just give you two examples of what we're doing and how this looks like. So, for customer experience, we have recently launched our customer portal, and that allows our customers to log in online, trace their cargo, and get all kind of documentation and information around their cargo, and that really reduces a lot of administration for them and for us, 'cause it's a lot of ping pong emails and phone calls that we don't need anymore now.
Similarly, on the employee side, we now have our crew self-service application, where the crew can log in, and they can view, update, and submit all kinds of information around their employment. So if you think about their payslip, but they can also submit expense statements, they can update visas and certification, and again, that reduces a lot of admin for both of us. So there's a lot of exciting stuff happening in that space. I won't give away too much of what else is happening, but it's all helping us to become more efficient and for our customers to have a better experience. And that brings me to the end of this presentation. I hope Bjarke and I have been able to give you a clear view of what Stolt Tankers is, and how we're aspiring to be simply the best.
To summarize, we have a market-leading position, being the largest chemical operator, both in deep sea and regionally. We're a core supply chain partner to our customers, and together, we create personalized solutions. We invest in growth through our fleet renewal strategy and digitalization, and the market outlook remains strong for the foreseeable future, with very positive supply and demand dynamics. With that, let me hand over to Guy from Stolthaven, and thank you very much.
Good morning, everybody. My name's Guy Bessant. I'm president of Stolthaven Terminals. I've been roughly three decades in the industry, chemical, energy, having worked twice for Stolt-Nielsen, firstly in Asia, across actually all of the businesses, and then two of our largest customers. Came back about 10 years ago and run the business for roughly a decade. Four main areas that I'll touch on today, so an introduction of Stolthaven, who we are, similar to the Tankers presentation, the market we serve, how we've performed, myself and the team, really over the last decade, building on a strong foundation, and off that strong foundation, then positioning ourselves for future growth. So who are we? 14 terminals. You'll see in a moment a map of where we're located.
Of those, four are joint ventures, and, yes, December last year was the 25-year anniversary of our first joint venture, so long-term partnership with our joint venture partners. We store 250 products globally, and on any given day, that would equate roughly to between $3-$5 billion worth of inventory that we look after on behalf of our customers. From a financial perspective, operating revenue last year was $300 million, with an EBITDA of $169 million. Slightly different to the Tanker situation, we're an infrastructure company. Unfortunately, I can't move my assets. So we've really gotta make sure we're in the right location, we provide excellent customer service, so that we can keep our customers, and then also look at future trends, so that we can position ourselves for the future.
You'll see on the next map, we are one of the truly global independent storage providers, located across all major regions. We're an owner and operator of infrastructure which serves the chemical industry, specialty liquids, gases, and the energy sector. We're an owner of land in key locations, and later when I touch about growth, I'll share how much more capacity we can add at those locations. We have a diversified portfolio, and I'll touch on that in the next slide, and we are performing at the moment. But we are different from other infrastructure players. One thing also to bear in mind is in our sector in the last couple of decades, infrastructure pension funds have really come into our industry, but most of those players have an exit game, normally a 5-7-year window. We're long-term players in the market, steady, growing EBITDA.
That doesn't mean that we don't continually look at our portfolio, and where necessary, divest. We're also affiliated to our sister companies, Stolt Tank Containers and Stolt Tankers. That brings a differentiated value proposition, which Udo alluded to earlier, and also internal synergies, both operational and commercial. If you look at the numbers here, 99% of our contracts at the owned terminals are CPI-linked. We have 75% of our business around non-petroleum related products, and I'll go into details later on that, and importantly, almost 50% of our contracts are two years and above, bringing that stability that we need as an infrastructure player. A busy map, I'll try and talk you through it. So on the left-hand side, a split from a capacity perspective of where we are regionally.
I'll dive into details in Asia later, but as you'll see, it's a nice split, and from that I say we're hedged. We do see, yeah, both some of the events that have been mentioned earlier, COVID, weather events. One market can have a slight dip, but often we see another market pick up. If I start in the USA, strong market domestically. I'll show some growth figures later. It's also a strong export market because of the feedstock base and the energy price that they benefit from. Counter to that is Europe, of course. The energy prices have come down post-Russia-Ukraine invasion, but they're still much higher than the U.S., and the feedstock cost is still higher.
So what we're seeing is a consolidation of the chemical industry in Europe, but there's still demand here, and that feeds import flows, which is good for us as a storage company. Asia, as mentioned, I'm gonna delve into a little bit deeper later. The green terminals here, three of them, different stages of a pipeline. So Taiwan is currently being constructed, will be operational end of the year. Turkey, we're waiting for our partner to go ahead with final investment decision, hopefully within this year. And then Pecém, we're waiting for news on a tender, which we've submitted a couple of months ago. But overall, again, nice geographic presence, serving different markets. And the markets we do serve. So core is around the chemical market, and that's growing at a multiple of GDP in all regions.
If you look at the petroleum market, that's a different story. So in Europe, you do notice a slowdown of core traditional petroleum products, but often being replaced by new products, sustainable aviation fuel, et cetera. In Asia, strong demand continues. And then an exciting opportunity is around energy transition and circularity. So we're seeing good opportunities around sustainable aviation fuel, biofuel feedstocks into those products. And then circularity is nicely linked to our existing customer base in the chemical industry, and that's the recycling of plastics back into a liquid and going into their production sites as its feedstock again. So that's an area we see as a good opportunity going forwards. From a growth perspective, very similar story to what Bjarke was mentioning earlier.
So increased demand for sustainable fuels and feedstocks, a growth in emerging market economies, that's both Latin America, Asia-Pacific, India, and other regions, and that's very much driven by population growth, specifically in Asia-Pacific, and of course, that, urbanisation, so the people buying paint that Bjarke mentioned, too, and just upskilling their livelihoods. And then we do see, again. And that's the nice linkage with tank, as we see trends ahead of time as well, is the increased complexity of supply chains. So, post-COVID, there was a real realization by some of our customers that they needed a China plus one strategy, so not putting all of their production in China, but maybe putting something in Southeast Asia or close by just to de-risk themselves. So within Asia-Pacific, you can really see that's where the growth is gonna be driven.
So, the white number in the yellow half circle is the chemical sales in trillions of dollars, and then the white number in the black semicircle is the expected compound average growth rate for the period. So Asia's really gonna be driving growth in the chemical sector, and as you saw on the earlier slide, we've got a nice position in Asia-Pacific and de-risked in regards to being in multiple countries in that region. Europe, although slower, is growing, and we have a presence in that region, and in the Americas, again, strong domestic consumer demand, but also an import/export flow, and again, we've got a presence in that market. Just wanted to drill down into a couple of terminals within the presentation, and the first one is Dagenham.
So this is 30 minutes drive from here, on a good day, roughly 30, 30 minutes. And why have I picked this one? So this talks nicely around the energy transition.
So when we did a strategic review a couple of years ago, and then linked it to what we see externally, and particularly government mandates within the UK around diesel-fueled cars and such like, we said, "Okay, how are we gonna make sure that that terminal, which we can't move, has a sustainable future?" So we said, "Okay, our biggest exposure at the moment is clean petroleum products, and one in particular, diesel." So we said, "Okay, how are we gonna balance the risk that we have there?" And what we've done over the last five years successfully is reduced our dependency on that one product and replaced it with products which we see having a much brighter future, those being biofuel feedstocks, replacement for diesel, et cetera. So we've nicely grown the business. Importantly.
It's not been done at the cost of reducing revenue or our margins. In fact, the opposite. We've actually grown the revenue there. Same capacity, we've just swapped products around and customers. At the same time, we've had an extensive capital investment program within Dagenham, a new jetty, and other investments which really position it for the future. As with Maren's slides, very similar in regards to sustainability, and again, safety for us and across Stolt-Nielsen really is a value that we have to focus on. We expect our people to come to work safely, work safely with us, and get home safely to their families, so that's really a priority area. A slight difference for Stolthaven Terminals versus Stolt Tankers is we don't have an IMO-type equivalent body globally setting directives for us.
That doesn't mean that we shouldn't do things around sustainability. We know that things will be coming at us, and of course, there's customer-driven demands as well. So on the left-hand side, really focusing around the people aspect and then around the environment. If you look at some of the highlights, so EcoVadis really is the accreditation that particularly the chemical industry is focusing on, so that's one that we've decided to focus on. We get tested on this. We have a $280 million Singapore loan, which is actually linked to our EcoVadis Silver Award, and in fact, there was an announcement today with our partner bank in Singapore that they were awarded an award for that loan that they arranged linked to the sustainability.
On greenhouse gases, as mentioned, there isn't an IMO body that's saying we have to reduce our emissions by X amount by a certain time, but since 2018, we've reduced our footprint on CO2 by 20%. That hasn't been done at a negative to the business from a financial perspective. In fact, what we've identified is waste, so we've reduced cost leakage and at the same time providing a good service to our customers in that we're not overcharging. It's an energy-efficient process that we have now. And then personally, I see some really nice opportunities around sustainability and particularly the storage space. So Maren mentioned earlier future fuels. Green methanol is one potential that we're looking at, and specifically bunkering opportunities.
We have a project in Houston looking at storing renewable electricity in a flow battery, and that uses basically the same storage tanks that we have at the moment. Then we're evaluating a green ammonia export terminal, which was on the map earlier in northern Brazil. Digital, again, a trend running through a lot of the presentations. Same Digitalization Planet and same focus areas. So what can we do to improve efficiency? What can we do to drive safety? What can we do to deliver customer service? So if you look at the screenshot, which is deliberately vague, I think, this is a handheld device that we're piloting at our Singapore and Santos terminals at the moment, and it will do away with paperwork in the field. Every operator will have a handheld device.
Now, it makes their job easier, it reduces mistakes, so improves safety, and importantly, the data is real time and then fed into this online My Stolthaven customer portal, so real-time data for our customers. At the same time, the data from here feeds into that master data, which Udo mentioned earlier, is then linked across multiple business units. Another terminal just to drill into, or terminals, is our U.S. terminals. So over the last five years, we've seen an opportunity to improve the results of those two terminals. We've done that really threefold. One was around commercial excellence, so really focusing on the customer, customer centricity, understanding what the customer needs are.
Then looking and getting real visibility linked to the Digitalization Planet on the margins, the cost that we have in that terminal, and then because we understand the customer and have a good relationship, we've then been able to have, frankly, difficult conversations with them and increase rates, and where we haven't been able to agree, we've parted on good terms with the customers and replaced them with customers who pay higher rates. Operational safety excellence, again, talking to the theme of safety and our values, big focus in both terminals, and they've really driven efficiency, improved safety, and also delivering on that customer service. A customer won't pay a higher rate if the service isn't good. Thirdly, capital investment. We've put significant sustaining CapEx into both terminals, but that has actually led to younger assets and also reduced operational costs. What does that mean?
From a revenue per lease capacity over the period, in Houston, we've increased by 41%, and in New Orleans by 52%. What we've then done is said, "Okay, are there learnings from that project that we can then spread globally?" And that's what the next slide will show. There we go. So over the period, same period, 2018 to 2023, we've actually only added 300,000 cubic meters of capacity. about 6.5% growth. But over the same period, because of some of the programs that we've put in place, we've basically added a little bit over 11% improvement on revenue per capacity. And then proportional EBITDA, again, same period, increasing by 21%.
What's important from this is all of the improvements we've made and the learnings, and then partnering with our affiliated companies, it then means that growth is well-positioned off a very strong platform. So you'll see on the next couple of slides, our growth story, and specifically bearing in mind this global platform and being able to grow off it, our focus really is on organic growth. So we have two projects currently underway, one in Houston and one in New Orleans, both for roughly 70,000 cubic meters of capacity. And as I mentioned earlier, we've got a significant land bank at a lot of locations. Depending on market dynamics, we can add roughly 1.5 million cubic meters of capacity to those terminals. That's our focus because it gives us our biggest bang for the buck.
We have existing terminals, we have existing management teams, infrastructure, et cetera, so adding incremental capacity expansions actually has a really meaningful impact on the bottom line. Second priority area is greenfield growth. So we have two projects at the moment. Taiwan, I mentioned earlier, that will be operational within this year, and then Turkey, which is an industrial terminal on a long-term contract with the partner. We're hoping for final investment decision within this year. Both of those locations have the capability for expansion, and we've also got a pipeline of other opportunities globally that we're looking at. New Energies, I've mentioned already, so around the hydrogen value chain, ammonia, et cetera, and then the biofuel space, and multiple other opportunities that we're looking at at New Energies. And then strategic M&A is admittedly less of a focus.
The reason I say that is the pension and infrastructure funds that I mentioned earlier, they're still paying quite high multiples for assets in our industry, and we don't see that it's worth competing with those companies at those multiples. However, we do talk to them, and if you know of anybody who's looking at assets and wants a reputable company to manage them, then I'll give you my phone number later. Last but not least, linking again to Simply the Best strategy, and Udo mentioned it when he went round the businesses when he first joined, he heard "respected," and that was from Stolthaven Terminals. From 2019, our vision has been to be the most respected global storage provider. What does it mean? Basically, respected means different things to different people. So to investors and shareholders, we give a good return to you.
To our employees, we're a good employer. To customers, we provide a good service, and then, of course, we operate in communities, and we are good players in the local community. All linked to aspiring to be simply the best. The bottom four bullet points, I've talked around the infrastructure model, so bringing stability, bringing good earnings and stable cash flows, and of course, remembering that we are different to traditional terminal companies because of our link to the other business units. Strong focus on the customer. Because of that, that allows us to see opportunities for growth, and we believe that there are strong market outlooks and fundamentals which will support that growth going forward.
Thank you. My name is Hans Augusteijn. I'm President of Stolt Tank Containers. I've worked for over 20 years in logistics and in container shipping. I work now for more than four years in Stolt-Nielsen, and I'm proud to be leading an amazing group of people for the last two years in Stolt Tank Containers. This morning, you first heard from our Chairman Niels Stolt-Nielsen. You then heard from Udo, how we aspire to be Simply the Best. My colleagues Bjarke and Maren then told you about the first business unit within Liquid Logistics, about tankers. Guy gave you an update on terminals, and I would like to round off the three business units within Liquid Logistics to talk more about Stolt Tank Containers.
After that, this afternoon, it's very exciting, because you'll hear more about our aquaculture business from Jordi. Alex will talk about Stolt Investments, and Jens will talk a bit more about capital allocation before Udo will round off and take questions. So we also hope that equally as the morning, that the afternoon will be an exciting time, and at the end, indeed, there will be room for Q&A. But I'm actually passionate and excited to talk a bit more about Stolt Tank Containers. And equal to my colleagues, I hope to give you a bit more insight about what we do in Stolt Tank Containers. Therefore, the agenda that I have for you today, I do need the clicker.
The agenda that I do have for you today follows a bit the same thread, but the core story for us in Stolt Tank Containers is that, of course, we would like to give you more insights into the business. Also, because historically, I think we have a lot of details about tankers and other parts of our business, but this time, also a lot on Stolt Tank Containers, especially the market that we're in. In a high-growth market, we're an asset-light business, and I'd like to give you a bit more on the market fundamentals that are at play and also we are proud for over 40 years to be the market leader. And why is that important in this business, and how do we build a more scalable platform?
I will talk a bit about, like the other business units, about digital, because especially in what we do, digital is crucial to build that scalable platform. And lastly, I will round off to talk a bit forward about how we believe that we can grow this business, even, even further. But let's start. I've spoken to some of you, so I know that, many of you, know who we are, but I'd, I'd like to start with the, with the essence of, Stolt Tank Containers. The team that operates around the globe operates, 51,000, tanks. We execute for our customers 150,000 shipments per year, actually, even, even more.
We have, and I'll show you that around the world, 21 depots and hubs, and that for ISO Tank shipments is actually very crucial because what we do there is we restore and repair our units, but we also clean them for our customers, and we store their cargo at these facilities. We are a really, truly global business. We reach virtually any country in the world, so we reach over 100 countries with all the shipments that we move. Some of the key financials, $700 million in revenue.
We have an asset base of over $650 million, and we are proud to be gold on EcoVadis, which in the logistics industry, only 3% of logistics players are, who are on the ESG journey, were awarded the gold status. Like I mentioned, many of you know what an ISO Tank is, but maybe for some of you who don't know, under your seat, you find a goodie bag, and in the goodie bag, there's a little miniature model of an ISO Tank. So we hope that when you go back to your office, that you don't forget about us in Stolt-Nielsen, and don't forget about Stolt Tank Containers. But also, if you don't know what a tank container is, have a look at it.
But I think for all of us who know logistics, we know that over the past decades, the world has containerized, and logistics has, to a large degree, containerized, because having a standard unit makes a supply chain very efficient, to operate. So our tanks look like this. We load about 25-26 thousand liters in a tank. It's a standard 20-foot unit, and that means that we move it from a truck on a barge, on a train, put it for our customers in storage, and ship it on a container vessel to the other side of the world. Containerized supply chains are very efficient, they're very resilient.
They are also increasingly becoming more sustainable, and that's why we've seen that this mode of transport, in terms of ISO Tank shipments, has been growing at an average rate of 10% in the last decade, because of the efficiency and sustainability elements that this product has for our customers. As I mentioned, we are for the last 40 years, the market leader within this business. Similar to what you've heard from Bjarke and from Guy, when they spoke about their business, we are strong in liquid logistics, and the strength of the group is really that we have a similar portfolio of customers. So the key takeaway from this slide is that in the ISO Tank, we basically move any liquid.
So indeed, the chemicals, lubricants, you'll hear more also about new energies, like what Guy spoke about is for us at play, but also other liquids and also including foodstuffs that are moved into an ISO Tank. And the point that I wanna make with this slide is basically similar to what Udo mentioned to us, is that the customers we work with are customers we have relationship with for a long time. They are in very different industries, but they also serve a wide area of end markets.
We deal, and like what Guy and Bjarke mentioned, we deal with the large chemical players, the oil and gas industry, traders, agricultural, industrial, a wide range of customers, who then, on their part, serve a wide range of industries, similar to what Udo mentioned, and with that, also in our business, touch millions of life towards the end consumer. So an ISO tank, basically any liquid towards a wide range of customers and industries, making us quite resilient to any changes that we see in terms of demand. If you look then, while introducing what the ISO tank is, who we are, and the market we play in, you actually see that we operate not only in a high growth market, but also in a quite fragmented market.
I'll demonstrate to you a bit later. I'll explain why market leadership for us is important part of our strategy. If you look at the industry, over the last years, you have seen an increase. So actually, the top 10 list of operators have about 50% of the market, but then you also see that there's a long tail of 230 other operators who have the remaining 50% of the market. So it's quite a fragmented within that, as you can see, Stolt Tank Containers is the largest operator. So with that, a little bit about us, a little bit about our customers, and a little bit about the competitive environment. Now, let's get into the market fundamentals of this business.
What you see here on the slide is two lines. You see GDP growth in the blue line, and then the yellow line is the growth of ISO tanks in the world. And looking from a distance, you can see that this is a high-growth environment. Basically, we've indexed it here in 1992, but you've seen that also in the last decade, actually, this business has been growing at a very healthy growth rate of 10% per annum. But you also see that, back to the last slide, that over that time, the number of tank operators has tripled. I showed you a bit about our number of tank shipments, but we estimate that the market is about 2 million tank shipments per annum.
What drives this 10% growth? Because you also saw, Bjarke and Guy mentioning about the underlying growth of chemicals, and, this is a significantly higher growth rate than the underlying growth for, for lubricants and chemicals. Well, here I go back to the point about containerization. Over the past decades, basically any packaged good that you buy or any supply chain involving, involving, non-bulk dry goods, has been containerized. 99% of all non-bulk goods move in a container around the globe. Basically, when you then go to the supermarket and you buy,